I was laying on my belly under the shady tree by the volleyball pits; it was Bible camp week. Spread out in front of me, at the edge of my trusty Mexico blanket, sat two items. A folded up Anglican version of the Apostles’ Creed and GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. The Apostles’ Creed was necessary in order that I might understand Orthodoxy, for, as Chesterton put it, “When the word “orthodoxy” is used here it means the Apostle’s Creed, as understood by all who call themselves Christians… until a very short time ago.” 1
So, a book called Orthodoxy, an Apostles’ Creed, blue sky’s in front, and volleyball pits behind. This is how I entered chapter one…
According to Chesterton, the Maniac is the type who needs all the answers, who puts fairy tales in there proper place, who, instead of floating easily “on the infinite sea” seeks to cross it and make it finite. 2 This is the man who sees an unreasonable universe and tries to make it wholly reasonable, which of course it never is. The Maniac tries to fit the heavens into their head and can’t. The land of the maniac is not Narnia, Hogwarts, Middle Earth or Dagobah.
This isn’t to say that reason is bad, it isn’t, Chesterton merely warns against reason divorced from its dancing partner; mystery. For when “you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.” 3 A normal life demands the abnormalities of imagination, of this I try my best to indulge. For instance, I trend towards these fantastical images as my computers desktop background, stuff like orange hued skies with bending trees or little Gorp’s investigating flowers; I love these things, they speak the language of mystery and can be trusted to lead the way to truth and sanity.
Why after all, the universal imagination, the vivid dreams of other lands if we’re just “leaves inevitably folding on an utterly unconscious tree,” if we’re just following the “blind destiny of matter.” 4
Image Credit: daewoniii
