Creative Monotony
I’ve been reading the seminal Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. The start was a bit shaky, I must confess. I felt indignant at his polemics; the opening chapters seemed written so gruffly that they bruised opponents and friends alike. All who might face such words, whether friends or foes, were beaten back by dogmatic passion. I felt that I might heartily agree if not agreeing were more permissable, but since the only place of right standing was complete adoption I could not agree.
The tone has become more genial and Mr. Chesterton and I may be close friends yet–I’ve always had a warm place in my heart for Father Brown, and The Man Who Was Thursday is another dearly loved classic.
A certain passage from Orthodoxy reminded me of a similar (and yet by all appearances entirely opposite) passage found in Lewis’s Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer. Both passages follow:
His routine might be due, not to lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”: and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. …It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, pgs 60-61
It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest candidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore. And how should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once.
-C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer, pg 27
Infinite creative energy both embraces and eschews encore. Epic.
Aug 30th 2005
Could you make the connection you see more explicit?
Aug 31st 2005
Oh yes, the linkage. I’m certainly guilty for not being very clear about the whole thing. Here’s to fleshing it all out, and hopefully everything will be alles klar.
Chesterton’s passage about God’s youthful exuberance and how it may be expressed in Divine repitition speaks to me of a remarkable joyous energy; an enery “strong enough to exult in monotony” and an infinite capacity and bigness.
The linkage between the two, for me, is in the idea of this infinite capacity and bigness. Chesterton says that God’s bigness of life may find some of its outlet in what we may call monotony; Lewis describes the same bigness, the same infinite capacity, and asks why a God so big, so infinitely huge and abounding with energy, should ever repeat himself.
A classical soloist usually saves her best piece for the encore–it is a piece more magnificent than all the previous. I had the good fortune to see Itzak Perlman perform this spring–he is perhaps the greatest living violinist. He did not perform an encore. And it would have been wrong if he did–it would have been impossible to outdue his main program pieces. It would have been like the Louvre putting a Renoir on display in the bathroom–over the top–kitsch–demeaning to the genuine resplendence of everything else. Perlman didn’t need to encore, and God doesn’t either. Behold, I will do a new thing…, and the fact remains, He is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
God is the same, he does exult in “monotony,” and yet this exultation is never meaningless repitition, is never a profane encore. It is Divine creative bigness, content and at home with itself–delighting to “do it again”–and also ever doing new things, because His creativity never ceases.
I hope my thoughts on the connection between the passages are clearer now, but I suppose I should ask: are they, does this help?
Aug 31st 2005
I liked the original connection and I like the clarification still more. Well said!
As well, I hope to hear more of your thoughts on Orthodoxy. I agree, G.K.’s rollicking style can be slightly abrasive - hopefully it won’t deter you from his “romantic” take on theology.