Monday, February 20, 2006

“Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite."

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. - G.K. Chesterton

Therse are some of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. One of the reasons I like them so much is that they apply to my life so well. I have grown up in a terrible war between reason and emotion. I have been raised both at home and at school with a mind towards the rational. After all, people make stupid decisions based on emotions. But God is an emotional God and a mystical God. Life that is purely rational may not have great grief, but neither will it have great joy. In fact, great grief might result in the longing for that joy. Rationality and analysis are a great way to kill emotion, a great way to eradicate feelings or to protect onself from feeling. But I don't want to live that way. I want to feel; I do feel. Being female, I am essentially emotional, because God made me that way. I am tired of thinking that I ought not be be passionate about anything. I must walk by faith, not by sight. Faith is mystical.

So that is a short summary of the topic of my mind, and heart.