May 15, 2015 Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings Fellow WPA Chestertonians,

PLEASE NOTE: Our May meeting date has been moved from the second Friday in May, to the third Friday in May. This is because I have an immovable scheduling conflict for the second Friday this month. We will return to our regular second Friday schedule in June.

At the May 15th meeting we will complete our discussion of Chesterton's biography William Cobbett.  I still have copies of the book...they cost $10 each. Please contact me if you'd like one.


The Club of Queer Trades in June and  July...

We will begin a little light summer reading, The Club of Queer Trades, at our June meeting and finish it in July. 

Below is a synopsis and a review taken from the ACS web store description of the edition of the book available from the ACS.

Six mysterious adventures of Basil and Rupert Grant, who encounter what seem to be strange, unexplainable crimes, all of which turn out to have even stranger explanations. The Club of Queer Trades is full of whimsical short stories by the brilliant and witty English author, G.K. Chesterton. Improbable plots, marvelously funny episodes, evocative descriptions of late Victorian London distinguish delightful tales focusing on a club devoted to completely original and unusual professions. First republication to include all 32 of Chesterton’s own original and hilarious illustrations.

"Although this is not exactly G.K.’s “deepest” work of fiction, it is immensely funny and entertaining.... I successfully used this book to bait a friend of mine into reading Chesterton leisurely for the first time – and he loved it! Great plot, great twists, and great plot twists (in each chapter, no less!) Don’t expect the cosmic relevance of  The Man Who Was Thursday, or the obvious intellectual stimulus of  The Ball and the Cross with this one. Expect fun and the unerring Chestertonian preference for truth over facts."

The book is 146 pages, paperback. (It is also available digitally for free on the internet.) With our ACS local group discount, a real copy will cost $6.00 (includes S&H). If you'd like a copy, please bring $6 to the meeting, or mail it to me. I will order the books by the end of May, so as to have them for the June meeting. 

As a side note, group member Stephen Russell has informed me the Faith Builders Choir will be performing a concert on Saturday evening, May 23 at their facility near Meadville. This is an excellent choir. If you are interested in attending the program, email me and I will provide you with more information.


As usual, the meeting will be held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is a right turn off of Rt. 19N, approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, just past the Zion Lutheran Church. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors will open at 7:00pm for pot luck refreshments, with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting will wrap up around 9:30pm. 


Any questions, please feel free to email wpachesterton@gmail.com

April 10, 2015 
Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society
Changed to April 17, 2015

Attention WPA Chestertonians,

IMPORTANT: There has been a change to the previous meeting announcement. Due to a significant number of our group not being available for a meeting this week, we will NOT meet this Friday, April 10 as previously announced. Instead, we will meet next Friday, April 17, 2015. The doors will open at 7:00pm at the Community Center for our potluck of refreshments, with the meeting officially getting under way at 7:30pm. If you plan to attend the meeting, please email me so that I can get an estimated head count for the meeting. 

Our reading plan and the meeting time frame will remain the same, and you are still encouraged to bring contributions to our refreshments table. See the blog post that appears right before this one for all the details.

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

April 10, 2015 

Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Easter Greetings Fellow WPA Chestertonians and Friends,


"...They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."

~ G.K.Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

This Friday in the Octave of Easter...

Please join us as we gather April 10th for our monthly Chesterton Society meeting. At our March meeting, we discussed the first two chapters of Chesterton's biography William Cobbett.  This month we will continue the discussion that we began in March, with  the goal of completing a discussion of chapters 3, 4 and 5.  This will allow us to complete the discussion of the remainder of the book at the May meeting.  

Here is a link to the text of the Cobbett book available to read on the internet. 

Also, I have 5 unclaimed copies of the book from our group buy. With the group discount offered to local Chesterton Societies, the cost per book is $10. If you asked to be included in the the William Cobbett group buy, please contact me, so we can arrange for you to pay for and receive your copy. If I don't hear from you, I will consider the book unclaimed and will make it available to any one who would like to buy it. If you did not order a copy, and would like to purchase one of the unclaimed copies I have, you can do so at the meeting, or before hand if you let me know. 

Looking ahead...
After completing our discussion of William Cobbett in May, we will discuss a Chesterton essay (TBA) for the June meeting, and a work of Chestertonian fiction for our July meeting.  

In the Autumn, we will be reading and discussing Chesterton's provocative book Heretics. 

As usual...

Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors open at 7:00pm for pot luck refreshments, with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting wraps up sometime around 9:30pm.

Please consider bringing something for the refreshment table...
After our Lenten abstinence, the refreshment table will be resurrected at the April Easter meeting. Please consider bringing something to help the table surpass its former glory!

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

March 13, 2015
Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings WPA Chestertonians,

We will gather this Friday, March 13 to begin our exploration into G.K Chesterton biography of William Cobbett. About the book, Dale Ahlquist writes,

"It has been said (never mind by whom) that Chesterton’s books about others are really about himself. The qualities he admired in these indeed admirable characters were qualities that we immediately recognize in Chesterton. This is especially true of William Cobbett.

Like Chesterton, William Cobbett (1763-1835) was a writer of many genres who cannot be pinned to just one. He was a social critic who defied the new and fashionable ideas of his day, defending local culture, tradition, the family and the farm. And for this he was called “paradoxical.” He had great literary gifts, but much to the frustration of his greatest fans, he poured most of his energy into scrappy journalism and his own small circulation papers. He was prolific, witty, prophetic, controversial. He spoke “too plainly to be understood.” He was “a great public character; form some points of view a great comic character.” And he was a Distributist before there was Distributism.

Chesterton was especially impressed by the insightfulness of Cobbett’s writing in two main aspects: his history, which was an honest look at the past, and his economics, which was a prophetic look at the future...."

You can read the rest of Dale's thoughts on William Cobbett by clicking this link to a page on the American Chesterton Society's web site. Better yet, read the foreword, introduction and the first two chapters of the book William Cobbett by G.K Chesterton, and come to the meeting on Friday where we will begin to answer the questions "Who was this guy?", "Why was Chesterton interested in him?"and "What does he have to say to us today?". 

Those of you who requested to order a copy of the Cobbett book but were not able come to the February meeting to pick it up, can get your books at the meeting this Friday. They are $10 per copy. For those who are without a copy, it is available to view or print on the internet at this link.

On a special note: 

In order to observe the Christian tradition of fasting and alms giving for the season of Lent, we will not have our customary refreshment table at the March 13 meeting. Instead there will be a collection box. In lieu of our usual contributions of food and beverages, we each will have an opportunity to make charitable contributions of alms designated for the American Chesterton Society. I will consolidate the money, and send it to the ACS as a donation of alms from our Western Pa Chesterton Society. If you miss the meeting and would like to participate, you can make your donation directly to the American Chesterton Society on their website www.chesterton.org, or mail it to me and I will add it to the collections from the group. In doing this, our Western PA Chesterton Society will support the American Chesterton Society's mission to bring Christ to people around the world by introducing them to Chesterton. Imagine the good that would be accomplished if every local Chesterton society member were to give something no matter how small a gift.

As usual...

Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors open at 7:00pm with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting wraps up sometime around 9:30pm.

As always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have and questions or comments.

February 13, 2015 
Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings WPA Friends of G.K.Chesterton,

We will be meeting this Friday, February 13, 2015. We will finish our discussion of The Blatchford Controversies. Please see the blog post for the January meeting if you need more info about the "Blatchford" reading selection. 

At the March 13, 2015 meeting we will begin our reading and discussion of Chesterton's biography of William Cobbett. For those of you who signed up to participate in the group-buy of the William Cobbett books from at the ACS,  I will have them for you at the meeting this Friday. They are $10 each. Please bring your money to the meeting if you want to pick up your copy at our February meeting this Friday. 

As usual...

Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors open at 7:00pm for pot luck refreshments, with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting wraps up sometime around 9:30pm.

Please consider bringing something for the refreshment table...

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

January 9, 2015 

Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings Fellow WPA Chestertonians and Friends,


As I write this, we are squarely in the middle of the Octave of Christmas. I hope you are continuing to enjoy Feasting, Festing and Resting. New Years Day and Epiphany are not far off, and the conclusion of this Holiday Season will be quickly followed by the Friday, January 9th meeting of our WPA Chesterton Society.

Our Reading for January...

At our January meeting we will begin a discussion of The Blatchford Controversies. The Blatchford Controversies is an early series of essays written by G.K. Chesterton in response to a "rationalist credo" published in 1903 by Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion newspaper. These essays were eventually gathered into a volume and published as a book.  They represent a spirited public debate which formed the basis for Chesterton's book Heretics, which then led to his writing Orthodoxy. 

At our meeting we will read and discuss the Introduction written by Masie Ward, and the first two chapters titled "Christianity and Rationalism",  and "Why I Believe in Christianity".

Where to find it...

The book is relatively brief, and can be printed from a digital source in under 20 pages. 

I will send an email to all those on our group email list, with an attachment of a pdf. file of the book. If the email and attachment does not show up in your inbox, email me and I will make sure you get a copy.

The Blatchford Controversies is also readily available to print from the internet.  Links can be found here or here. The book can be purchased for a Kindle device here for $1.29.

  

You may be interested to know that Volume I of the Collected Works of G.K Chesterton, published by Ignatius Press includes the classics Heretics and Orthodoxy, along with Chesterton’s The Blatchford Controversies, and is available from the American Chesterton Society web store. Later this year we will be reading and discussing Heretics. 

Coming up next...

We will take the months of January and February to discuss The Blatchford Controversies, covering two chapters per meeting. Then in March we will begin a discussion of Chesterton's biography of William Cobbett. You are free to obtain William Cobbett on your own, but we will do a group purchase of the book from the American Chesterton Society webstore. With the group discount offered to local Chesterton Societies, the cost per book will be $10. If you would like to be included in the William Cobbett group buy, please let me know asap. 

As usual...

Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors open at 7:00pm for pot luck refreshments, with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting wraps up sometime around 9:30pm.

Please consider bringing something for the refreshment table...

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

December 12,2014

December 12,2014 

Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings Fellow WPA Chestertonians and Friends,

The pink candle on the Advent Wreath is the signal to "Rejoice.... Christmas is almost here!". This year, our December meeting date corresponds with the weekend of the third Sunday of Advent, or Gaudet Sunday.  In keeping with our tradition of December meetings in the past, our gathering this Friday will be a somewhat festive occasion, with the content focused on the theme that was especially meaningful to both Gilbert and Frances Chesterton; The Incarnation.


At our last meeting, I had announced that we would read through a play by Frances Chesterton, but due to difficulty assuring that everyone could get a copy inexpensively, I have decided to alter the course of our readings. Instead, we will discuss the classic chapter "The God in the Cave" in Chesterton's  great book The Everlasting Man. To prepare for the discussion, please read the chapter before the meeting. If you don't have a copy of The Everlasting Man, let me know by email, and I will forward you the chapter "The God in the Cave" in a document format that you can easily print out. Do not worry if you haven't read the rest of the book, as the chapter can easily stand alone. As an addendum to your reading, you may wish to view this link to the video of a talk on the "The God in the Cave" given by Dale Ahlquist last December at a conference outside of Washington D.C. You may especially enjoy the Q&A that follows the talk after the host makes his announcements.

In addition to the discussion of "The God in the Cave", we will share some  poetry. I will be bringing some poetry by Frances Chesterton. If you have any particular "Incarnation-ally" themed favorites that you'd like to share from either of the Chestertons, please bring them along. 


(Please note... there is a link on Martin Ward's "G.K.Chesterton's Works on the Web" internet site titled "The God in the Cave", but it is only an excerpt from the chapter. If you are searching on the internet for a copy the chapter, make sure that you find the chapter in it's entirety.)



Please bring a contribution to the festivities... any desserts, fruits, cheeses or beverage contributions will be appreciated. Coffee, teas and paper products will be provided.


Please note the adjusted time frame for the December meeting only. This will allow plenty of time for each of us to have had dinner before coming to the meeting.

The doors will open at 7:30 pm for a pot luck of cheeses, desserts and festive treats, with the discussion beginning shortly thereafter. The meeting will wrap up sometime around 9:45pm. 

As usual...Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) 

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.