A Blog? In The Middle Of The Week?!

I know, I know... I told you you might be seeing more of me.

Honestly, this is an excuse to relax -- it's the first time I've gotten to sit down all day. I didn't know how much work being at home was. SHEESH! I need to go back to work just to take a vacation.

The month of November sees me at home 3 days a week. December, 4 days. I'm tapering off my attendance at work so as to take the training wheels off little by little. That way, when I'm totally gone after Christmas they won't freak out and nosedive. It seems to be going well. And it leaves me more time to get things done around here (ie., having dinner on the table every night for Tef; he's so happy, sometimes I think he's gonna' pop).

Good thing is, all the laundry's done; the floors are vacuumed; furniture's dusted; goldfish pond has been de-leaved; Christmas wrapping paper and gift tags have been bought; dishes are done and put away; beds made; menu planned for the week; bathrooms scrubbed; errands run... I can't go on with the list -- I'm too tired to think about it. But the house is neatly settled and I am constantly finding ways to save or stretch a buck. I'm in Happy Holly Homemaker Mode and I couldn't be more ecstatic; but I'll tell ya' -- I'm pooped. With a capital P. Again, SHEESH!

So today? Yeah, yeah... the Republicans lost the House. Yeah, yeah, we'll probably lose the Senate too. Yeah, yeah, Rumsfeld has stepped down (presumably to avoid impeachment from the now Democratically-controlled Congress), but I remain optimistic. Christians have survived worse regimes. We actually seem to thrive in the midst of chaos and debauchery. So say the Scriptures anyway. You know, the wheat amongst the tares and all that?

Today's work of art of point to? GK Chesterton, "Orthodoxy."

Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and in fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. If you leave off looking at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

Sounds like he's writing for today's reader? "Orthodoxy" was published in 1908.

Again, I reiterate -- we'll be fine.