I’ve heard this phrase a few times over the years, but never really thought to figure out where it came from. I always assumed that it was just some rough metaphor for a sort of ubiquitous, sweeping change. But when I came across it while reading about a Danger Mouse album (of all things) I decided to look it up.

Lo and behold, it’s actually from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which is is at once both crazy and completely unsurprising to me. A huge number of English idioms can be traced back to either the Bard, or to the Bible (or both), but while I have yet to read The Tempest I was surprised that I had never come it as the source for this phrase. Specifically, it is found in a song being sung by the spirit Ariel while he is enchanting Ferdinand, the King of Naples’ son:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

What a queer and evocative piece of verse. The idea of “sea change” is therefore not necessarily some wave-like rippling change, but a transformation, that is organic and in some way different or “other”. And more specifically a transformation into something uncanny but also deep and interesting.

I was struck by how well this idea describes the sort of change the is characterized by the kingdom of God. It is both strange and otherworldly, because it is, in fact, of another world, and yet it is good. Its strangeness is welcoming and stirring, and despite being otherworldly there is a sense that the change taking place has an aroma of homecoming.

Furthermore the kingdom of God is, in its other-worldliness, much like the sea. Inhospitable to man in his natural state, but thrilling and adventuresome to reach and experience, and yet despite how much one might want to dwell there he cannot, without a sea-change.

Death’s darkness calls,
Though his sting removed,
Casting his shadow tall
Over all that may by lost or loved.
His appeal rings with clarion clarity
To doubt what we trust as certainties

For the redeemed he is a servant
Saying to those with ears to hear,
God makes no promise of eighty years.
This message through many means he merchants
That we would from self break free
And fiercely love in word and deed.

Clerihews in the news!

Kim Jong Il
Fired a missile
Disguised as a satellite;
The U.N. sees it as unpolite

Do you clerihew?

Judge Sotomayor
Has got some sore
For saying she’s keener
By being Latina

I know it’s probably not the impression she meant to give, but the quote is just too funny to pass up:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life…” [LA Times]

David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page sets the stage in the following way:

Charles Dickens has probably had more influence on the way that we celebrate Christmas today than any single individual in human history except one. At the beginning of the Victorian period the celebration of Christmas was in decline. The medieval Christmas traditions, which combined the celebration of the birth of Christ with the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia (a pagan celebration for the Roman god of agriculture), and the Germanic winter festival of Yule, had come under intense scrutiny by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. The Industrial Revolution, in full swing in Dickens’ time, allowed workers little time for the celebration of Christmas.

The romantic revival of Christmas traditions that occurred in Victorian times had other contributors: Prince Albert brought the German custom of decorating the Christmas tree to England, the singing of Christmas carols (which had all but disappeared at the turn of the century) began to thrive again, and the first Christmas card appeared in the 1840s. But it was the Christmas stories of Dickens, particularly his 1843 masterpiece A Christmas Carol, that rekindled the joy of Christmas in Britain and America. [em. mine]

If you have been alive in the United States or Britain for, let’s say, at least 12 years, then chances are you have been exposed to the classic short story A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. The work continues to be an enduring classic; even after 160 years we see it revisited again and again through theatre, television, cinema, and other mediums.

But did you know that Dickens wrote other Christmas books after A Christmas Carol? Indeed, he wrote several. My suggestion for this Christmas season is to read A Christmas Carol if you haven’t already. The actual text is incredibly charming. If you are one of the lucky ones that has read it, then have a go at one of these (titles link to online texts):

• The Chimes (wiki): “Toby “Trotty” Veck, a poor working man, loses his faith in human nature and comes to believe that he and his fellow poor are naturally “vicious”. Then he is afforded a nightmare vision of his loved ones’ future after his death. The spirits or goblins in his local church bells show him how anyone, however good, may descend into degradation and ruin if sufficiently driven by circumstances. The chimes teach Trotty that nobody is born wicked, that crime and vice are man-made conditions, and that poor people have the same right to seek improvement and happiness as the rich.” [1]
• The Cricket on the Hearth (wiki): “The story centers on John and Dot Peerybingle whose marriage is threatened by a wide difference in their ages. When confronted with the possibility of Dot’s infidelity John consults the spirit of the Cricket on the Hearth whose chirping Dot has said brings luck. The cricket assures John that all will be well. In the end the misunderstanding is cleared up and the couple’s happiness is restored. The story also features the Scrooge-like conversion of hard-hearted toymaker Tackleton.” [2]
• The Battle of Life (wiki):

“The Battle of Life centers on a change of heart, but this time without the aid of supernatural beings. Doctor Jeddler’s daughters make sacrifices in love which convert their father’s cynical view of life.” [3]


• The Haunted Man (wiki): “Mr. Redlaw is a chemistry professor tormented by painful memories. He is visited on Christmas Eve by a phantom, a double of himself, who bestows the gift of forgetting these painful memories. The catch is that others who come into contact with the professor also lose remembrance of past hurts and sorrows.” [4]


1. “The Chimes.” Wikipedia. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_chimes>.
2. “Dickens Christmas Books.” David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Bage. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://charlesdickenspage.com/christmas_books.html>.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

This morning the frost that’s gathered overnight
Rests on every surface like salt;
On the car’s windows and hood,
On every curled brown leaf,
Across the driveway and the porch,
In the air; it’s white with cold.
In my breath, in and out.

It’s different every time I see it.
And how strange the world looks
Through millions of crystals
Distorting, glazing, crunching,
Or clarifying.

It is new while it lasts
And will be tomorrow if the weather is right.
It’s new each time I see it;
For as many times as it’s come
I wonder if it will ever grow old.

But today will be warm enough that
This first frost will burn off;
The steam is already rising slowly
From beds of stiff, heavy leaves,
And the sun won’t let this new place stay for long.

Already his bright shafts pierce patches on
The ground, where they mingle, cold and indifferent
With sparks just as bright.
Each cold dancing light is crying out
With joyful first breath and melts away
To the gutter, or the earth.

Come again, Come again,
Exultant lights,
Before sister snow
Covers your faces.

G.K. Chesterton never fails to amaze me. In fact, I’m really depressed that I hadn’t started reading his stuff until lately. I’m catching up now, though, so I might be able to read it all eventually. If anyone can be said to have a “rapier wit,” it is him. And the humor and beauty that comes out of his writing is hard to beat. Lately I’ve been reading The Everlasting Man and I usually don’t get through a single paragraph without hitting something enlightening, or inspiring, or heart-wrenching. I’m halfway through it now (it’s divided into two books) so I’ll probably post my thoughts on it soon.

Right now I want to explore a quote from another one of his works, Heretics, which, along with its successor, Orthodoxy, is probably a more familiar title. In this section Chesterton is examining a philosophy of the time, which I take to be some sort of prohibition sentiment, that says that one ought only drink wine for medical benefits and never to seek after pleasure in it. Chesterton responds by saying that drinking wine as medicine is the only truly dangerous and immoral way to use it. Why? Because in using it as medicine we are trying to get at something natural, something that we “ought not to be without; something that [we] may find it difficult to reconcile [ourselves] to being without.” Whereas in seeking after pleasure in drink we are seeking something unnatural and exceptional, something that unless we’re crazy we won’t chase after every hour of every day. To sum it up: “[i]t is easy to deny one’s self festivity; it is difficult to deny one’s self normality.”

Chesterton then expands on the idea of turning pleasurable drink into somber medicine. This type of seeking after a thing meant to be pleasurable because you need it is dangerous. We ought to drink because we don’t need it. That is the happiness of irrationality. To rationalize this happiness is to destroy it. Chesterton continues:

Walter Pater said that we were all under sentence of death, and the only course was to enjoy exquisite moments simply for those moments’ sake. The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendour of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in. In all great comic literature, in “Tristram Shandy” or “Pickwick”, there is this sense of space and incorruptibility; we feel the characters are deathless people in an endless tale.

It is true enough, of course, that a pungent happiness comes chiefly in certain passing moments; but it is not true that we should think of them as passing, or enjoy them simply “for those moments’ sake.” To do this is to rationalize the happiness, and therefore to destroy it. Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized. Suppose a man experiences a really splendid moment of pleasure. I do not mean something connected with a bit of enamel, I mean something with a violent happiness in it–an almost painful happiness. A man may have, for instance, a moment of ecstasy in first love, or a moment of victory in battle. The lover enjoys the moment, but precisely not for the moment’s sake. He enjoys it for the woman’s sake, or his own sake. The warrior enjoys the moment, but not for the sake of the moment; he enjoys it for the sake of the flag. The cause which the flag stands for may be foolish and fleeting; the love may be calf-love, and last a week. But the patriot thinks of the flag as eternal; the lover thinks of his love as something that cannot end. These moments are filled with eternity; these moments are joyful because they do not seem momentary. Once look at them as moments after Pater’s manner, and they become as cold as Pater and his style. Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant.^[1]

Such a powerful message about true happiness. Do you find yourself assenting? Anyway, I want to examine just the sentence in bold. What is Chesterton contrasting here? “Gathering rosebuds while ye may” and “the immortal rose which Dante saw”; well, what are these things? The first you probably recognize. It’s from the first stanza of a poem by Robert Herrick called “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, and in its time was responsible, along with other of Herrick’s poems in this vein, for restoring interest in carpe diem verse; that genre which loves youth and despises old age, and extorts the young to take advantage of the time they have. Not an altogether wrong message, but wrong-headed all the same. I’ll quote the poem in full (because I can).

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day,

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,

The higher he’s a-getting

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times, still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time;

And while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may for ever tarry.

I believe Chesterton means to say that “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is a way of saying to seek after moments of happiness as if they were the very breath of life, and thus makes a mistake in seeking after “the moment for the moment’s sake”. It is essentially just another way of saying “the moment will be gone and it you will have missed it if you don’t grasp it now.” That’s true of moments like those described, but it misses the point; and in creating the hunt for such moments, turns it into a journey filled with despair. Because how could you have great joy if you are forever seeking after that which you must necessarily lose? You will never gain every moment. And since the moments are fleeting and the trek down from their high emotion much longer than the moments themselves, you will forever be chained to such a search in futility. The further you get away from such moments the more desperately you seek them till you are an empty and useless hungry void.

So what about the second part, “the immortal rose which Dante saw”? Here Chesterton is paraphrasing a part of the Divine Comedy, specifically canto 30 (and maybe 31) of Paradise. I don’t have even a remotely good understanding of the Divine Comedy, and I haven’t yet started Paradise, but I shall venture an explanation based on what I’ve read nevertheless. In canto 30 Dante sees a vision of an endless “river of light” from which issue ‘living sparks” that sink down into the flowers along the banks, and then “plunge back into the torrent.” This vision is then expanded upon when Dante drinks from the river. He sees the whole host of the heavenly saints as an enormous, eternal, snow-white rose that expands, spreads and multiplies even beyond the size of the Sun. It appears that this vision is the result of trying to grasp the continuous flow of time to eternity in a static picture of a single moment for the purpose of intellectual as well as spiritual understanding.^[2]

So what Chesterton is saying is that great joy does not seek after temporal moments which must come and go, rather it finds in those short moments an infinity from which it draws its happiness, but then the moment is gone. “Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant” is a fantastic creed; and true, I think. We find great joy in the immortal things, or in the mortal things that we understand as immortal. If that is true then we must also find the greatest of joys in the greatest of immortal things: that which nothing greater than can be conceived: the God of Anselm, the God of Dante, and, dare I say, the God of Chesterton.

1. Chesterton. G.K. Heretics, Chapter 7.
2. http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0045.03#nt.ci030_ln88

Undercurrents of a sweet, sure morning
Flowing behind a night stretched tight across
The drumhead of the sky, when punched through by
Mindful words would they run, and fill my cup?

Today I’ve been browsing through some of G.K. Chesterton’s poems, which, like much of his writing, are fantastic. If you haven’t read The Battle of Lepanto, you must, you must, you must. The poem that I want to look at right now is titled (as is this post) To St. Michael in Time of Peace. It’s basically a one-sided conversation from the poet to Michael the Archangel, and describes various things related to him, i.e. the fight with Lucifer:

When the world cracked because of a sneer in heaven,
Leaving out for all time a scar upon the sky,
Thou didst rise up against the Horror in the highest,
Dragging down the highest that looked down on the Most High:

The part I really want to take a closer look at is this stanza on the incarnation. The wording, imagery and theological truth are profound. Here, take a read (remember: Michael is the “thou”):

When from the deeps of dying God astounded
Angels and devils who do all but die
Seeing Him fallen where thou couldst not follow,
Seeing Him mounted where thou couldst not fly,
Hand on the hilt, thou hast halted all thy legions
Waiting the Tetelestai and the acclaim,
Swords that salute Him dead and everlasting
God beyond God and greater than His Name.

OK. I recall when I was much younger I went to see a play put on at a local church. I believe it was my aunt’s church but that’s rather inconsequential. It was basically a nativity story but had a neat twist where the angels are all debating about how God is to come to Earth. Will he be a great magician? A mighty warrior? A fearless leader? A brilliant philosopher? No, he will be a babe. And of course the angels are astounded.

This stanza of Chesteron’s similarly echoes the wonder of of the inarnation. Not that He came as a little child, but that He came, and was able to come, at all. Angels and demons who are forever immortal gape with wonder at the everlastingly immortal God dying, and the whole world hushed for possibly the most beautiful word in the Greek language, or any language for that matter: tetelestai, it is finished.

I thought this little poem was appropriate given that fall officially started on Saturday. This is definitely my favorite season, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps because the change is so swift and dramatic. The leaves turn and then fall off and the days grow cold and boom! It’s fall! Spring comes on in strides: the winds, and the rain, and the slowly greening plant life. Maybe there’s just something enrapturing about the sudden onset of a rainy, cold, death-ridden season, which should be dismal, but is not.

One day soon, maybe not this week,
Or the next, Our Lady Autumn will rise
From her long, deep slumber
With the remnants of a previous year’s
Merry-making caking her tawny eyes.

A long sigh will escape her lips
Out of the west and into our very woods,
And nestling there in the tree creaks
And cicada’s dying drones,
Will slowly sink towards earth.

Her shaggy robes, remended,
Will snap and beat the lingering warmth
Under the loamy rugs,
To join their own unrestful hibernation
Till Spring cleaning.

Autumn will then burst upwards,
Dousing in cold stillness the lifeblood
That beats faintly out of Summer’s weak heart.
And his fantastic death shrouds will blaze upon the pyre,
Then pale and tatter with a last wheeze.

In a sibilant rush, the Lady will dance
Here and there, making sure all is prepared
For her inaugural feast:
The lights strung up between branches, out of reach,
And the carpeting laid down layer on crunching layer.

Pumpkins and gourds arranged in
Colors that match the decorations,
Cider weeping out through smashed skins.
The brown brew dyes the harvest-producing death;
A funerial tribute to plenty.

At last we will make a solstice toast,
Raising glasses by firelight
To the last fading greenery.
And the mortal crowning of
Our Lady Autumn.

It appears that writing verse in the future tense is strange; too many uses of the world “will.” Anyone have suggestions to get around that?