Hey, Tim Jones, here.
I can’t hope to give an adequate description of my experiences at the
2008 Chesterton Conference (my first) without writing some kind of
book, I can only – by way of apology – say with Inigo Montoya "Let me
‘splain… No, there is too much… Let me sum up…".
I’ll try to sum up by giving some sense of what it was like on the
last night of the conference, after all the speakers had spoken, the
presenters had presented, the toasters toasted.
The weather was iffy in Minnesota last Saturday night, so the ending
celebration – the after-party – was moved indoors. Now, "indoors" in
this case means into a college cafeteria… not exactly the kind of
place that oozes atmosphere or encourages warm conviviality. We had
enjoyed earlier some nearly perfect evenings drinking and visiting
under the stars late into the night, but we would have to cap the
conference milling around folding tables under fluorescent light
fixtures and acoustic tile. Blecch, right?
A weird thing happened though. People began to talk, and beer and
wine and cheese were brought forth, and very quickly it began to be so
noisy that we all had to shout to be heard.
I wandered around a bit, drifting into and out of the orbits of
ongoing conversations… comparing notes with a futurist (David
Zach)… trying to get a grip on the importance of beauty (Dale
Ahlquist)… watching a very spirited discussion between an
ebullient Englishman (Joseph Pearce) who seemed to be actually
defending the legendary obtuseness of Americans to an American (Scott
Richert) who had apparently grown impatient with it. The thing is,
these last two were arguing like brothers argue. They could be perfectly honest and passionate in their argument without fear of offending the other, because (really) they loved one another. Their differences were real, but what they had in common was much more real, and made the differences safe to argue with passion, and they knew this. It was a joy to watch.
One could be tempted in such a circumstance to think "These must be
important people", but that’s not the case. It wasn’t a matter of
"important people talking about things", it was just "people talking about important
things"… the only things that ultimately matter; Life, Truth, Beauty,
Goodness, Joy – things such as that – and all of us deeply grateful for
the opportunity. It was a truly liberating thing to know that most
everyone you met – even if they were very different from you – shared
the same common root, that grounding in the love of Truth which is the
love of God. This made our differences come alive, in a way. As Dale
Ahlquist had said earlier, "We don’t strive for diversity… we just
achieve it.".
In the various talks given throughout the weekend, there had been in
the audience always a joy bubbling just under the surface, the
readiness to laugh out loud or to interrupt (like one might interrupt a
family member without rudeness or worry) with a joke or comment. These
Chestertonians were (by worldly standards) just confoundingly happy and
indefensibly content. No one has the right to be that well adjusted.
You could hardly hear yourself think for all the laughter in the cafeteria that last night.
Imagine; You are standing with a cup of home brewed beer (or wine)
in one hand, a hunk of good cheese in the other, talking with new
friends about things that really matter, surrounded by laughter. There
are children ducking in and out and under the tables, squealing and
playing hide and seek. There is a group of teens and young people (a
surprising number, to me, given that we’re spending all weekend
ostensibly talking about a dead Englishman) off in a corner where they
have cleared a sufficient space, wheeling in some kind of wild,
improvised dance, like pairs of figure skaters who wandered in from an
Olympic ice rink (a little later, the teens are flipping the younger
children upside down, or swinging them around in great, breathless
arcs).
Then a man (Mark Pilon?) produces, seemingly out of thin air, a
hammered dulcimer and sets it up in a corner and begins playing; The Rights of Man, Star of the County Down… and he’s really good. Spontaneous hoots of applause and gratitude erupt from the crowd after every tune.
It’s a delightful, almost raucous scene… good drink, friendship, music, dancing, and none of it planned (well, the drinks were
certainly planned, but you can’t leave everything to chance). This
jovial spirit just seemed to rise up out of the floor like a mist and
coalesce into little pockets and eddies of good feeling.
It reminded me for all the world of Tolkien’s descriptions of the revelry of elves. It was like being in the House of Elrond, "The Last Homely House
east of the Sea… A perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or
storytelling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant
mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and
sadness.".
This was a group drawn together not so much by ideas, but by an idea… The
Idea that was in the mind of God in the beginning. We were all just
feeling around the edges of it together, and even that was – I believe
– better than any of us thought we deserved. We had had the great privilege, for three days, of learning more about this Idea, the foundational idea of creation, from G.K. Chesterton, a
clear-eyed observer and merry servant of the Idea… the Word, the
Logos. He, I believe, had a somewhat less obstructed view of the Idea
than most. I think it’s clear he was a saint. In fact, I’m now
following the example of one of the speakers (Geir Hasnes, a towering
Norwegian) by asking Mr. Chesterton to pray for me.
I’ll try to give my impressions on some of the featured speakers in
subsequent posts. I never was much for note taking, but I hope I soaked
in enough of their brilliance to give at least a rough sketch of the
conference highlights.
