From Spencer Roundtree:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! (And God Bless us all! Every one!)

We will be starting The Everlasting Man so for January read the Introduction. It is fairly substantive for an introduction, but still shorter than the other chapters of the book. it’s shorter, but everything Chesterton writes has more to it than meets the eye.

The next Fr. Brown story is The Red Moon of Meru.

The Introduction to The Everlasting Man has the subtitle, “The Plan of this Book.” That in itself makes it worthy of a whole evenings discussion. Knowing Chesterton’s plan and keeping it in mind as we read helps us to make sense of his wanderings and digressions. His path sometimes seems aimless when we don’t know where he’s going. I remember my first couple of readings of Orthodoxy. I liked what I read, but there seemed to be a lot of digressions, and I didn’t seem to get the last few chapters. His anecdotes and illustrations were so striking and original, and some of the passages were so eloquent I lost sight of the larger purpose of the book. It took a closer, more disciplined reading for me to get a grasp of the overall theme. But he had told us in the Introduction of that book what his plan for the book was, if I had only listened and remembered.

So I think giving some time to the Introduction at the beginning of our reading of the book, and recalling its guidance throughout the reading process, will serve us well. If the purpose of a passage or chapter seems unclear hopefully recalling the guidance of the Introduction, of the plan of the book, will make things clear.

I have high hopes for this next year. We will be reading The Everlasting Man this whole year at least. This book was so influential in the lives of so many people, and even pivotal in the lives of many others. Hopefully our study can lead us to see what they saw, and to understand what they understood.

I hope you can all come to our meeting. Come anticipating good things!