Songs of Education:
III. For the Creche

I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall never entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram.
But mother is happy in turning a crank
That increases the balance in somebody's bank;
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free
From the sinister task of attending to me.

They have brightened our room, that is spacious and cool,
With diagrams used in the Idiot School,
And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see;
But mother is happy, for mother is free.
For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,
For love of the Leeds International Stores,
And the flame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,
With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.

For mother is happy in greasing a wheel
For somebody else, who is cornering Steel;
And though our one meeting was not very long,
She took the occasion to sing me this song:
"O, hush thee, my baby, the time will soon come
When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and hum;
There are handles want turning and turning all day,
And knobs to be pressed in the usual way;

O, hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon,
For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon."

Prayer before study, by St Thomas Aquinas

O ineffable Creator,
Who, out of the treasure of Thy wisdom,
hast ordained three hierarchies of Angels,
and placed them in wonderful order above the heavens,
and hast most wisely distributed the parts of the world;
Thou, Who are called the true fountain of light and wisdom,
and the highest beginning,
vouchsafe to pour upon the darkness of my understanding,
in which I was born,
the double beam of Thy brightness,
removing from me all darkness of sin and ignorance.
Thou, Who makest eloquent the tongue of the dumb,
instruct my tongue,
and pour on my lips the grace of Thy blessing.

Give me quickness of understanding,
capacity of retaining,
subtlety of interpreting,
facility in learning,
and copious grace of speaking.

Guide my going in,
direct my going forward,
accomplish my going forth;
through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Chesterton on Christmas:

What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it. It happened in this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good--far from it. And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me. Of course, most people who talk about these things get into a state of some mental confusion by attaching tremendous importance to the name of the entity. We called him Santa Claus, because everyone called him Santa Claus; but the name of a god is a mere human label. His real name may have been Williams. It may have been the Archangel Uriel. What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now, I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill. *

David Fagerberg writes in The Essential Chesterton:

Until we are grateful, we will not find the world miraculous; until we find the world miraculous, we will not find it important; until we find the world important, we will not be happy here. The difference between ourselves and Chesterton is that we don’t think our world important because it seems ordinary, while he thinks his world is important because he is ordinary. "I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term; which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them, and the rest of the normal traditions of our race and religion." (my emphasis)

This ordinary happiness makes up the essence of Chesterton, and, woven into all his writings, perspicuous on whatever page one opens, it is his gift to those who suffer boredom. A happy saint is just the antidote we need.

"Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." - Dorothy Parker

"There's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me." - Gretchen Kemp

"For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it." - Ivan Panin

Quoting Pope John Paul II "No Catholic can be pro-choice when the choice is killing unborn babies. ... If America is the home of the free and the land of the brave, then defend life."