The Fairy Ship Sails Upstream

It is not the purpose of this book to trace the subsequent history of Christianity, especially the later history of Christianity; which involves controversies of which I hope to write more fully elsewhere. It is devoted only to the suggestion that Christianity, appearing amid heathen humanity, had all the character of a unique thing and even of a supernatural thing. It was not like any of the other things; and the more we study it the less it looks like any of them

I have said that Asia and the ancient world had an air of being too old to die. Christendom has had the very opposite fate. Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave. It is so true that three or four times at least in the history of Christendom the whole soul seemed to have gone out of Christianity; and almost every man in his heart expected its end.

The Church in the West was not in a world where things were too old to die; but in one in which they were always young enough to get killed

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died. How complete was the collapse and how strange the reversal, we cars only see in detail in the case nearest to our own time.

A thousand things have been said about the Oxford Movement and the parallel French Catholic revival; but few have made us feel the simplest fact about it; that it was a surprise. It was a puzzle as well as a surprise; because it seemed to most people like a river turning backwards from the sea and trying to climb back into the mountains.

In short, the whole world being divided about whether the stream was going slower or faster, became conscious of something vague but vast that was going against the stream. Both in fact and figure there is something deeply disturbing about this, and that for an essential reason. A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. A dead dog can be lifted on the leaping water with all the swiftness of a leaping hound; but only a live dog can swim backwards. A paper boat can ride the rising deluge with all the airy arrogance of a fairy ship; but if the fairy ship sails upstream it is really rowed by the fairies.

G K Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, The Five Deaths of the Faith

Turning the World

The World (Magnus Manske)

The immediate possibility of coming down from the Benedictine high was out of the question and I did not bother to even contemplate such a thing.

Instead, I submitted myself to the force of the higher power which had first taken over me the two weeks earlier. In other words, I proceeded logically and without any waste of ‘time’.

(‘Time’ is bound in order to be seen as captive rather than captivating).

In my state of heightened reason it seemed entirely appropriate that I should start to spin with this somehow supernatural energy.

Therefore, shortly after Benedict’s departure I stood in the centre of the room and started to turn around, faster and faster in a clockwise direction until the room was a whirl of spiralling white light.

I built up enough momentum to perform such a complete turn-around that it occurred to me in passing that I could spin the whole floor along with myself.

Detachedly impressed with this accomplishment, it seemed a relatively small step to make the spirals spread outwards until I was going so quickly that the centrifugal force caused the world to spin around with me. It was the beginning of a full-blown revolution.

I span around for a number of minutes until the world got going at finite speed – held ad infinitum with the momentousness of gravity – and then, when I felt aligned with a certain mysterious point, stopped dead on the very same spot (from which I had not once deviated) without falling, feeling dizzy or even moving at all.

Now, I’m sure you will agree that not only was this physically an incredibly impressive feat for any person – let alone a very stoned person – there is something highly unusual and somehow also relevant about having perceptibly turned the world.