Kevin Belmonte - A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder

PRAISE FOR
A YEAR WITH G. K. CHESTERTON

A Year with G. K. Chesterton will be a treasure, both for those who are coming to his wit and wisdom as a fresh discovery and for those who have known and loved his work for years. I am among the latter but Kevin Belmontes reading is so wide, his eye for a gem so acute, and his principles of selection so original, that I have been as much surprised by previously undiscovered treasures as I have been pleased with familiar friends.

Chestertons talent for paradox and his ability to embody profound truth in simple images makes him as compelling now as he was a hundred years ago. Though Kevin Belmontes selection is full of Chestertons whimsy and humour, he has also brought out perhaps the most important side of GKCthat he was a prophet in his own time and a prophet for ours, speaking out against insidious evils and kindling us all again to a common love of the common good.

The Reverend Dr. Malcolm
Guite, chaplain of Girton
College, Cambridge
University

Kevin Belmonte writes in the preface to this excellent book that his editing of it has been a gift. As an author who has written regularly on Chesterton I can understand his sense of gratitude at having been able to spend so much time with a genius as genial as the great GKC. Thanks to Belmontes labor of love we can all spend a few moments of every day of the year in Chestertons inimitable company. All admirers of Chesterton and the Christian truth he explicates so sublimely will be grateful to Kevin Belmonte for this gem of a gift.

Joseph Pearce, author of
Wisdom and Innocence: A Life
of G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton once a day? Well, thats a start. It is good to see that someone is finally recognizing the need for a daily minimum requirement of mirth and meditation from GKC.

Dale Ahlquist, president,
American Chesterton Society

Ever since Frances Chesterton chose quotes in 1912 for a Chesterton Day book, people have enjoyed taking a strong daily dose of Chestertonian wisdom. This new book offers the world a multivitamin of sanity, which should be read each morning with coffee or each evening with beer. Kevin Belmontes new book will improve your health.

Nancy Brown, the American
Chesterton Society at
chesterton.org

Who could not be grateful for a year spent with GKC? The great subverter of everything taken for granted, he stretches and deepens us with his insights, shakes us with his startling paradoxes and delights us with his wit. Thank God there is no getting to the end of Chesterton.

Os Guinness, author of A Free
Peoples Suicide

Kevin Belmontes A Year with G. K. Chesterton provides a glimpse into the breadth and depth of GKCs workits ideal for dipping into for refreshment and insight, and also serves as a guidepost for further reading.

Dr. Holly Ordway,
professor of apologetics,
Houston Baptist University

A sagacious journalistic soupe du jour.

David Baird, trustee,
G. K. Chesterton Library,
Oxford; former president,
Oxford Lewis Society

2012 by Kevin Belmonte

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the KING JAMES VERSION.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 18741936.

A year with G.K. Chesterton : 365 days of wisdom, wit, and wonder / Kevin Belmonte, editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 978-1-59555-493-2

1. Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 18741936Quotations. 2.

ChristianityQuotations, maxims, etc. I. Belmonte, Kevin Charles. II. Title.

PR4453.C4A6 2012

828'.91209dc23

2012019231

Printed in the United States of America

12 13 14 15 16 QGF 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Joel Miller, for the privilege of traveling in Chestertons
company... and to the memory of Chuck Colson, a great
friend to me, and my books. Requiescat in pace.

[Chesterton] has a marvellous sense of transfiguration...The whole visible universe is full of magic and mystery.It burgeons into symbolic colours and shapes, and passeslike a pageant before him. There is hardly a living writerwho can so quicken our appreciation of the dignity andfantasy underlying common things.

ERNEST WILLING

CONTENTS

I was brought back... by the strong influence of two writers, the Presbyterian, George MacDonald, and theRoman Catholic, G. K. Chesterton.

C. S. LEWIS

The opportunity to craft a book called A Year with G. K.Chesterton has been a gift. It is as though one has been welcomed to an inn where a fire blazes in the hearth and a hearty meal awaits. Chesterton bids you enteramid a host of guests already seated at the table.

And like Samuel Johnson, whom he much admired, it is not too much to say that Chesterton was a host unto himself. Scarcely anything worthy of comment seems to have escaped his notice, and his reflections on all manner of subjectsfaith, literature, the visual arts, or philosophyare as trenchant and moving as they are wise.

One wonders where he ever found the time to read as much, and retain as much, as he did. But then, both he and his questing intellect moved about his beloved London in a hansom cab. People walked to places in his day, and took their time over things in ways that reveal what we have lost in our constant rush to get to who-knows-where with ever-increasing speed. Chesterton reminds us that it is well worth consulting a map of the cosmos before a swift departure from the station.

I believe those who take up the daily readings in the collection that follows will be glad of the chance to keep company with so thoughtful a friend.

I know I have been.

The recurring themes of his writing are so many boon companionstravellers well met as we journey to the far countrythe place where things we now see in twilight will become reality in the swift sunrise of Gods making.

Kevin Belmonte

Woodholme

December 2011

JANUARY 1

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 NKJV

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.