A bayou gem
Thursday January 17, 2008
Categories: Culture
One of America's best essayists writes a column for the Baton Rouge Advocate, and freelances for the Christian Science Monitor. It's not just me saying that because he's my friend. Danny Heitman -- who gave me my first Wendell Berry...
Filed Under: Danny Heitman, in character
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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I'm glad for your friend's sake he "made good."
I'm just not so sure he "done good."
The philosophy he espouses in his essay really isn't much different than that of the hot new best-seller out that ABC's 20/20 spent an hour on recently, "The How of Happiness" by Sonja Lyubomirsky (HTTP://)
www.amazon.com/How-Happiness-Scientific-Approach-Getting/dp/159420148X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200601485&sr=1-1
Which, from having browsed it extensively (though not cover-to-cover reading it), strikes me as being but one step up from Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret."
If that.
I think this article captures a bit of what we as "Crunchy Conservatives" can offer our children. We must teach them to use their God-given intellect to creatively capture and mirror that by which we are blessed, and ultimately thankful for. As with a great artist, it takes practice before our representations become masterpieces.
I love Frost. He's part of our blood where I grew up. He's inspiration that we too could do something great just by paying attention and capturing the beautiful, thinking the big thoughts, ringing true.
I always picture those woods filling up fast and white with giant thick snowflakes, the kind that completely cover your car in a minute. The type of unexpected beautiful moment that takes your breathe away.
Maybe that's where the easiest types of thankfulness lie like thick snowflakes in the awe of an unexpected grace.
Here's one I just found that I'm afraid our children have lost with all this fear of harm. Parents too fearful to let them explore. Relates to another post too.
Still I know what he's saying like the back of my hand.
'One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.'
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173524
So, Frost was a "Bircher", was he?
None Dare Call Him Cons' Pharisee.
Come, ye Sons of Birches, away. - after Purcell.
I doubt he was a Bircher given his speech at JFK's inaugural and everyone knows poet laureate's are political appointments. :)
But I did just dig up an interesting (specious?) fact while recalling Mr. Birch's Society.
"started by a group of twelve "patriotic and public-spirited" men led by Robert Welch, Jr., a retired candy manufacturer from Belmont, Massachusetts" Belmont,MA would that be Mitt's hometown? Hmmm - just kidding.
I just read a little more I take back the joke. There's alot I didn't know about the Birchers, shouldn't even joke about the false (Jonah-like?) association.
Back to Frost.
The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I've (No more) miles to go before I sleep. . .
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