“Through what fierce incarnations, furled In fire and darkness, did I go, Ere I was worthy in the world To see a dandelion grow?” ~ G. K. Chesterton
The common dandelion (otherwise known as Genus Taraxacum) could be considered a scapegrace or wannabe of the daisy family, for it is indeed part of that family, as repugnant as that might sound. Yet for all of its gold-like splendor, man spurns it, forgetting that it was forged in the divine mint of a Creator’s mind as currency for joy. Nevertheless, in all of its hated existence, it does stand out as being an example of the command, “Be fruitful and multiply,” and the process with which the dandelion carries this out is through a process of drying and striking.
The drying of the dandelion comes after the flower (yes flower: I will call it a flower, for that is what is) has been properly pollinated and flowered for its fruit (or in this case, parachutes) to mature. The drying process takes a couple of days, usually one to two, after which the folds come off, revealing the cotton sphere of seeds tied like soldiers to their parachutes. This globe has been referred to as “dandelion snow.”
Upon reaching this stage, the next begins: the striking. This epoch in the existence of every dandelion is carried about by you, me, the wind, grass, falling leaves, and any object that finds itself convenient enough to disturb this happy summer snow-globe. Upon blowing, or being struck, parachute and seed disperse with speed and purpose, even as the soldiers of D-Day, to the ground where they will be planted in order to start the process over again in a matter of days.
Thus, the process is complete: from summer golden-sunshine to winter cotton-snow, the dandelion has filled its existence with more flourish than all the others of his family. Though it may be a wannabe or a scapegrace, to be met with the sight of a dandelion after the trials of “fire and darkness,” or emotions high and low, or tempers often hot, or shoulders often cold, one comes to the conclusion that it, like a lions tooth as its name suggests, bites and devours the cobwebs of tomorrow and ushers in the light of the sun—the sun, as yellow as its peddles. It is indeed God’s currency for joy!
I’ve always liked making album covers to the albums in my iTunes library that don’t otherwise have one. These are two of my latest and greatest. Enjoy.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2
There is a spectre and demon that haunts the good man. This demon screams loudest when good men stand tallest. He pushes and drives and urges towards weakness and depression. He presses and drones to destruction and passivity. Hold! Yes: his destructive purpose is passivity, for gray twilight makes bats blindest.
He is a tedious beast who never rests until you give in—he is the cousin to busyness, only differing in tactic and style. When you rise to speak for a worthy cause he shouts you down, when you walk to carry out a plan and purpose he whispers your inadequacies, and when you set your face like a flint he laughs at you and causes you to doubt.
He always stands on the mid-cliff, calling you down from the heights and up from the depths; never desiring either your joy or sorrow, but only sharing in your boredom.
He was there before Adam’s fall, and he urges you towards yours. He is the younger weakness to an older strength, purpose, but lulls it to sleep through half-baked dreams and cockeyed schemes. He is relentless when you are tenacious, and he never stops until you ever cease. He is busiest until you are laziest. He is life’s paradox, its worst paraclete, and its greatest para-dink.
He advises the causes to life’s greatest sorrows, and is present to all their births. He himself is neither life’s greatest wrong nor right, vice nor blessing. He stands taler than the others but shorter than the rest. He is only just so-so.
When you walk slow he tells you to walk fast, and when you walk fast he tells you to stop. When you take the lead, he shouts that the back is best. When you slouch in the back, he says the front is better. When you whisper in gentle counsel, he softly says, “Harder!” When you point out another’s weakness, he screams, “Softer!” All is better elsewhere, and everything is nothing unless you have something else.
He is Mediocrity and Malcontent: a two-faced and double-minded fiend. When you point the finger at him, he points it at someone else. When he is to blame, another carries the shame. He is man’s first sin before his first fall, and the cause of man’s first great divorce.
I have yet another Chestertonian quote, from his book, Tremendous Triffels,the chapter entitled, ”The Advantages of Having One Leg.”
“All pessimism has a secret optimism for its object. All surrender of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed. I feel grateful for the slight sprain which as introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God’s image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of all visible things— wink the other eye.”
I found this today: some thoughts by Milton’s on free-will. From Paradise Lost, Book V, §519-543.
To whom the Angel. Son of Heav'n and Earth,
Attend: That thou art happie, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
This was that caution giv'n thee; be advis'd.
God made thee perfet, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, ordaind thy will
By nature free, not over-rul'd by Fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntarie service he requires,
Not our necessitated, such with him
Findes no acceptance, nor can find, for how
Can hearts, not free, be tri'd whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By Destinie, and can no other choose?
My self and all th' Angelic Host that stand
In sight of God enthron'd, our happie state
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds;
On other surety none; freely we serve.
Because wee freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall:
And som are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n,
And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall
From what high state of bliss into what woe!
The word content is not inspiring nowadays; rather it is irritating because it is dull. It prepares the mind for a little sermon in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield about how you and I should be satisfied with our countrified innocence and our simple village sports. The word, however, has two meanings, somewhat singularly connected; the “sweet content” of the poet and the “cubic content” of the mathematician. Some distinguish these by stressing the different syllables. Thus, it might happen to any of us, at some social juncture, to remark gaily, “Of the content of the King of the Cannibal Islands’ Stewpot I am content to be ignorant”; or “Not content with measuring the cubic content of my safe, you are stealing the spoons.” And there really is an analogy between the mathematical and the moral use of the term, for lack of the observation of which the latter has been much weakened and misused.
The preaching of contentment is in disrepute, well deserved in so far that the moral is really quite inapplicable to the anarchy and insane peril of our tall and toppling cities. Content suggests some kind of security; and it is not strange that our workers should often think about rising above their position, since they have so continually to think about sinking below it. The philanthropist who urges the poor to saving and simple pleasures deserves all the derision that he gets. To advise people to be content with what they have got may or may not be sound moral philosophy.
But to urge people to be content with what they haven’t got is a piece of impudence hard for even the English poor to pardon. But though the creed of content is unsuited to certain special riddles and wrongs, it remains true for the normal of mortal life. We speak of divine discontent; discontent may sometimes be a divine thing, but content must always be the human thing. It may be true that a particular man, in his relation to his master or his neighbour, to his country or his enemies, will do well to be fiercely unsatisfied or thirsting for an angry justice. But it is not true, no sane person can call it true, that man as a whole in his general attitude towards the world, in his posture towards death or green fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be wise to cultivate dissatisfaction. In a broad estimate of our earthly experience, the great truism on the tablet remains: he must not covet his neighbour’s ox nor his ass nor anything that is his. In highly complex and scientific civilisations he may sometimes find himself forced into an exceptional vigilance. But, then, in highly complex and scientific civilisations, nine times out of ten, he only wants his own ass back.
But I wish to urge the case for cubic content; in which (even more than in moral content) I take a personal interest. Now, moral content has been undervalued and neglected because of its separation from the other meaning. It has become a negative rather than a positive thing. In some accounts of contentment it seems to be little more than a meek despair.
But this is not the true meaning of the term; it should stand for the idea of a positive and thorough appreciation of the content of anything; for feeling the substance and not merely the surface of experience. “Content” ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased; placidly, perhaps, but still positively pleased. Being contented with bread and cheese ought not to mean not caring what you eat. It ought to mean caring for bread and cheese; handling and enjoying the cubic content of the bread and cheese and adding it to your own. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it. It ought to mean appreciating what there is to appreciate in such a position; such as the quaint and elvish slope of the ceiling or the sublime aerial view of the opposite chimney-pots. And in this sense contentment is a real and even an active virtue; it is not only affirmative, but creative. The poet in the attic does not forget the attic in poetic musings; he remembers whatever the attic has of poetry; he realises how high, how starry, how cool, how unadorned and simple—in short, how Attic is the attic.
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. The absence of this digestive talent is what makes so cold and incredible the tales of so many people who say they have been “through” things; when it is evident that they have come out on the other side quite unchanged. A man might have gone “through” a plum pudding as a bullet might go through a plum pudding; it depends on the size of the pudding—and the man. But the awful and sacred question is “Has the pudding been through him?” Has he tasted, appreciated, and absorbed the solid pudding, with its three dimensions and its three thousand tastes and smells? Can he offer himself to the eyes of men as one who has cubically conquered and contained a pudding?
In the same way we may ask of those who profess to have passed through trivial or tragic experiences whether they have absorbed the content of them; whether they licked up such living water as there was. It is a pertinent question in connection with many modern problems.
Thus the young genius says, “I have lived in my dreary and squalid village before I found success in Paris or Vienna.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never lived in your village, or you would not call it dreary and squalid.”
Thus the Imperialist, the Colonial idealist (who commonly speaks and always thinks with a Yankee accent) will say, “I’ve been right away from these little muddy islands, and seen God’s great seas and prairies.” The sound philosopher will reply, “You have never been in these islands; you have never seen the weald of Sussex or the plain of Salisbury; otherwise you could never have called them either muddy or little.”
Thus the Suffragette will say, “I have passed through the paltry duties of pots and pans, the drudgery of the vulgar kitchen; but I have come out to intellectual liberty.” The sound philosopher will answer, “You have never passed through the kitchen, or you never would call it vulgar. Wiser and stronger women than you have really seen a poetry in pots and pans; naturally, because there is a poetry in them.” It is right for the village violinist to climb into fame in Paris or Vienna; it is right for the stray Englishman to climb across the high shoulder of the world; it is right for the woman to climb into whatever cathedrae or high places she can allow to her sexual dignity. But it is wrong that any of these climbers should kick the ladder by which they have climbed. But indeed these bitter people who record their experiences really record their lack of experiences. It is the countryman who has not succeeded in being a countryman who comes up to London. It is the clerk who has not succeeded in being a clerk who tries (on vegetarian principles) to be a countryman. And the woman with a past is generally a woman angry about the past she never had.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.
