the supreme adventure

We have considered naming our offspring after GK Chesterton. Chesterton was a godly man. A wise man. An excellent and unique writer. Chesterton is dead. But three of his books sit on our shelf and often in our laps, at home. He is an author that demands the reader to read each paragraph at least three times to decipher what he is saying. Christa and I enjoy his writings quite a bit and we actually have about a dozen Chesterton sentences and paragraphs posted throughout our little house. He wrote from a common sense perspective but his truthful humor, his wisdom, his convicting commentary is seemingly uncommon. He was provoking and his material is relevant as ever: family, war, politics, sex, marriage, economics, art, love, crime. I recommend you purchase and diligently study his contributions.

As for naming our first-born after this Brit, this is another conversation.

No part of Gilbert-Keith-Chesterton resembles the 21st century. Not that we are only looking for a post-modern name to keep up with the trends of society. But no part of GKC's name sounds great with "Payne". We take our role as the name-giver very seriously. Adam got to name each and every member of animalia and we get to name one mammal. We're working on it. It's been fun. It's still a secret. Of course we're not the first couple to determine what an appropriate, meaningful, and strong/beautiful name should be. This naming-your-kid-thing has been done 100 billion times in human history. We do though, want our kid to like his/her name. TBD in late April/early May.

Naming aside, I want to share an excellent paragraph from our dead friend. When I compiled our wedding reception slide show, I included a few Chesterton quotes that seemed to compliment our mood and our perspective. Here is one of them...

"The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale." Heretics, page 143.

I can't believe we are where we are. We're family. We're healthy. We are richly blessed. We're eager to love our little man/woman to death because that's all we know. It's what parents do. First they name their kid and then they love their kid with all they've got. Chesterton, you're right. It is a supreme adventure. And it is splendid. A trap? But a good trap. With lots of aunts and uncles. We're waiting in that bush, ready to leap. The fairy tale is about to encounter an addition to the story.