Sunday, October 23, 2005

The Curt Jester Inflicts A "Neverending" Reprise

The "Curt Jester" - one of the funniest and most Chestertonian of the many nephews and nieces of our dear Aunt Frances and Uncle Gilbert - has mentioned this blogg and asked me to look up the fifth line of the 23rd post:


1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blogg along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.


My comment to him was that all this will prove is that King David has written the postings on all bloggs. (Also that I use "UDP", which is one-way, and so do not tag others. If you read this, you are free to try it, or not, as you like.)

But the connection to King David and the Psalms is strangely borne out by the result which I discovered, when I found that my 23rd posting was on June 8. The title is "Thanks!" referring to the gift of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story which I had just received - and the fifth sentence is:


I have read it many times, and am now reading it again.


Hence, let the choir respond:

"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His story is neverending..."

Uh, Psalm 23 verse 5? (No, not really!)

But there actually is a connection to Chesterton here too, and I will quote him at length because it is one of my favourite passages:


...the sanity of the world was restored and the soul of man offered salvation by something which did indeed satisfy the two warring tendencies of the past; which had never been satisfied in full and most certainly never satisfied together. It met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. That is why the ideal figure had to be a historical character, as nobody had ever felt Adonis or Pan to be a historical character. But that is also why the historical character had to be the ideal figure; and even fulfil many of the functions given to these other ideal figures; why he was at once the sacrifice and the feast, why he could be shown under the emblems of the growing vine or the rising sun. The more deeply we think of the matter the more we shall conclude that, if there be indeed a God, his creation could hardly have reached any other culmination than this granting of a real romance to the world.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:380]


I know I didn't quite adhere to the request, but then this way is so much more fun and inspiring... "I have read it many times, and am now reading it again."

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