“One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing.”
C.S. Lewis God in the Dock
In my latest National Post column, I point to a Page One story in Monday's paper about children with three genetic parents to underline my warning, in the print edition that same day, that scenarios we thought we might wrestle with ethically in the future are here now. Yet we seem unready to wrestle, even unable to.
"Religion makes us joyful about the things that matter. Fashionable frivolity makes us sad about the things that do not matter."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, February 16, 1924, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 #8, July/August 2000
"The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from this is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News October 21, 1905, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani, Chesterton University Student Handbook
In my latest National Post column I say, from hearing a series of outstanding talks at Moses Znaimer's ideacity conference, that the future is here now.
Cardus' Faith in Canada 150 venture includes The Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing. There's a total of $25,000 in prize money, with $10,000 for first place in both the poetry and short story categories. So if it sounds like you, submit your entry or entries by June 30. (The rules and so forth are on this page and the link to submit is at the bottom.)
"I have always felt myself to be a stranger here on earth, aware that our home is elsewhere."
Malcolm Muggeridge in 1988, quoted in Joseph Pearce Literary Converts
"the one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle – and not lose it."
G.K. Chesterton "Time’s Abstract and Brief Chronicle" according to Dale Ahlquist. It was paraphrased by Kara Kelley in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #5 (March-April 2005) as "The most romantic thing in the world is to fight a losing battle, and not lose." Which is almost the only case I know of where somebody rephrased Chesterton and may have improved him.