General Eden Assumes the Visionary Position: The night before last, John Appelbaum and I went to the "second monthly meeting" of the New York City Chesterton Society at the West Village pub Fiddlesticks. I've been a proud member of the society for a year now, but had never before attended the second monthly meeting. Unlike the main meeting, the second one has no organized discussion, being mainly an excuse for us to engage in free-ranging conversation on Chestertonian topics.
While the regular meetings are centered around a single Chesterton work (we're currently working on The Everlasting Man), attendees of the second meeting are invited to bring in an article or book passage for discussion. Kevin Flaherty read Jeff Jacoby's excellent Boston Globe editorial Criminal Priests and the Commandments, as well as a passage from a 1942 book that was unfamiliar to me, Christopher Dawson's Judgment of Nations. Rick Stuart read from Chapter 7 of one of my favorite books, C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters.
I hadn't planned to read, but decided to do so in answer to a question someone had posed at the last meeting. They had wanted to know if the Old Testament made any reference to the afterlife. I accidentally rediscovered the passage after that meeting, when I happened across Job 19:25.
"Is that the King James, General Eden?" Group member John Martin teased me as I turned to the group at Fiddlesticks, holding aloft my vinyl-bound Bible. But he liked the passage I read:
For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
It felt so good to read Scripture to a group of people who appreciated its beauty and truth. It also felt special, in a way that it hasn't felt when I've read in church. There's a certain joy in being able to share about the Lord within an intellectual context. By that, I don't mean that one needs an intellectual life to believe, or that such a life enhances one's faith. But, for one who has been given a hunger to read challenging literature in addition to the Bible, it is somehow reassuring to know that our reasoning and striving has an end in faith. It's why, even though I'm not a Catholic, I can relate to Chesterton's famous saying that "all roads lead to Rome."
After a couple of hours, the Chesterton meeting broke up, and John Appelbaum and I headed over to our favorite restaurant, Japonica. As we shared a delectable Rainbow Roll, he revealed to me that he was considering starting his own blog. I hope he does, as he possesses superb political insight and a sharp wit, as demonstrated in his memorable contribution to Opinion Journal (the last item on the page, under the heading, "Not Serious Enough to Be a Kangaroo Court").
I also learned something new about John that night: he has a whimsical streak.
It happened while were discussing a mutual acquaintance. I discovered that John could not say this acquaintance's last name without breaking into a giggle. While the name doesn't strike me as particularly funny, I can see how a poet might have fun with it. Its unusual combination of vowels and consonants makes it come out sounding nasal. But John's not a poet, and, while he can appreciate a good joke, he's normally pretty serious. So it was a fun surprise to discover how a name that I would normally say without thinking would cause him to chuckle. It's something to add to my list of unexpected small pleasures in life.
1:33 AM
