He refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world...plodding around the whole planet to get back to his own home. (G. K. Chesterton, Manalive)
G. K. Chesterton's short novel Manalive tells the story of Innocent Smith, a man so filled with the exuberance of life that those around him can only assume he's mad. He woos his own wife again and again to rekindle his first love. He breaks into his own house to see his possessions anew. He travels around the world just for the joy of returning to his own home. Smith has learned to see everything for the first time, and so for him all of life is filled with wonder. All of these ideas he sums up in the cryptic telegram he sends a childhood friend: "Man found alive with two legs." What the rest of the world finds ordinary, he had found to be nothing short of miraculous: to be alive.
Chesterton wrote this book largely as an apologetic against modernism--appealing to the beautiful, the wonderful, the mystical as proof that the universe is more than the sum of its parts. But I think he also fancied he was describing the modern saint--a sort of overgrown 19th century St. Francis of Assisi, who clapped his hands in delight at all of Creation, for it all pointed him back to the Creator who had wooed his soul. For Chesterton, the life of the Christian is one that never ceases to rejoice at what God has done. Elsewhere he writes, still using the image of two legs, that if children can thank Santa Claus for filling their stockings with toys on Christmas morning, how much more fitting is it that we give thanks to one who fills our stockings every morning with "two miraculous legs?"
I found the phrase "alive with two legs" appropriate for chronicling my adventures first because, like Innocent Smith, I too am on a journey, "plodding around the whole planet" before coming to my true home. The next phase of the journey will be in Japan; after that, Wheaton; and beyond that only the Lord knows. And secondly because, like Chesterton's saint, I hope to find this whole journey filled with joy in the commonplace, incredulity at the ordinary, and gratitude at having not only life, but two legs with which to walk through it.
G. K. Chesterton's short novel Manalive tells the story of Innocent Smith, a man so filled with the exuberance of life that those around him can only assume he's mad. He woos his own wife again and again to rekindle his first love. He breaks into his own house to see his possessions anew. He travels around the world just for the joy of returning to his own home. Smith has learned to see everything for the first time, and so for him all of life is filled with wonder. All of these ideas he sums up in the cryptic telegram he sends a childhood friend: "Man found alive with two legs." What the rest of the world finds ordinary, he had found to be nothing short of miraculous: to be alive.Chesterton wrote this book largely as an apologetic against modernism--appealing to the beautiful, the wonderful, the mystical as proof that the universe is more than the sum of its parts. But I think he also fancied he was describing the modern saint--a sort of overgrown 19th century St. Francis of Assisi, who clapped his hands in delight at all of Creation, for it all pointed him back to the Creator who had wooed his soul. For Chesterton, the life of the Christian is one that never ceases to rejoice at what God has done. Elsewhere he writes, still using the image of two legs, that if children can thank Santa Claus for filling their stockings with toys on Christmas morning, how much more fitting is it that we give thanks to one who fills our stockings every morning with "two miraculous legs?"
I found the phrase "alive with two legs" appropriate for chronicling my adventures first because, like Innocent Smith, I too am on a journey, "plodding around the whole planet" before coming to my true home. The next phase of the journey will be in Japan; after that, Wheaton; and beyond that only the Lord knows. And secondly because, like Chesterton's saint, I hope to find this whole journey filled with joy in the commonplace, incredulity at the ordinary, and gratitude at having not only life, but two legs with which to walk through it.
