This is an introduction. My purposes for beginning this blog are twofold. In the first place, I would like to address all of my friends who have said that I “need to get a Facebook so I can keep up with everyone while I’m gone.” I think it will be sufficient to say that I see advantages and disadvantages to having a Facebook account, and I am not yet convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs. My first reason for beginning this blog is to prove that I am interested in keeping up with all my friends from home and that I am merely embargoing Facebook, not all online communication. I do hope to stay in touch with all of the friends I have made in high-school and previous years, and I hope it is not too narcissistic of me to hope that if anyone is actually curious about how I am faring at college they will be willing to type in my blog’s address rather than watch updates scroll down their walls. I will try to keep a few pictures and quick updates near the top of the page. However, for anyone who still believes in paragraphs, I plan to have some of those for you as well, which brings me to my second purpose.
You may be wondering about the title of my blog. After searching for a good name for several days, it occurred to me to look through books by authors such as Lewis, Chesterton and Shakespeare for a metaphor, name or idea that might inspire a title. In How to Read Slowly by James Sire, I ran across a quote from Hamlet: Polonius asks what Hamlet is reading. Hamlet replies, “Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams; all which sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.” Polonius responds, -aside, so as not to offend- “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” This may be a long introduction, but it’s hard to go wrong when quoting Shakespeare.
Polonius may have been the first to point out the idea of a method in madness, but Hamlet was not the first to fain madness to ease a king’s suspicions. King David did it (before he was a king: 1 Samuel 21:13-15). Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is an fascinating example of a mixture of method and madness. I have heard people say that Lewis Carroll’s work is meaningless and that it is merely the product of brain fever, narcotics and alcohol, but there always seemed to be some sort of pattern or message or rhythm behind it that made me wonder. Surely, Wonderland is nonsense, but maybe there was a method. To the best of my knowledge, madness and method are contradictory. Can two contradictory things exist simultaneously? They say oil and water do not mix, but the human body and the Gulf Coast both seem to have sufficient amounts of both right now. Oil and water may not mix, but surely they mingle. If method and madness truly contradict each other, methodical madness must be either method disguised as madness or madness disguised as method or little pieces of both thrown incomprehensibly together.
The Man who Was Thursday describes certain adventures of a man named Gabriel Syme. Throughout the book, Syme encounters character after character and situation after situation that are downright perplexing. The most perplexing of which is Sunday who seems to have planned every event that occurred throughout the book. All the madness in the entire book was merely his method of working his plan out. In the end, some things make sense, others do not. I think this earth is like that. Chaos and order dance and flow through our lives, combining then parting. One disappears altogether then wrestles and emerges the stronger of the two. Finally, one realizes it is all a matter of perspective. Most of the little pieces make sense. Then we try to step back and see the real picture, but then all our reasoning turns into madness. We see a pattern here and a pattern there, but the two patterns do not fit together like they should. Our perspective is not big enough to see the universal pattern. So all we see is madness.
Jesus Christ and Paul his apostle, also used methodical madness. Most people were bewildered by Jesus’ teaching. They did not understand what he meant by water that would quench thirst forever or how a kingdom could be like a mustard seed. Paul talked about how “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” and said that Christ crucified was foolishness to Gentiles. I would be very impressed if someone could explain to me in a literal, logical, comprehensible manner why one innocent man died and how that saved thousands of guilty people. I believe it. I do not understand it.
I know this is long and unorganized, but I think that way sometimes. This blog will not normally be like this. But this is an introduction.
