Guns & Books

Guess what, punters, it's cold and raining here in the wilds of North Central Texas. Not unlike an English Spring, when you think of it, or a Welsh summer. That in mind, I finally got 'round to cleaning up the Compound and reorganizing its upstairs rooms. 

Part of this sizable project involved adding books to the gun room, turning it into a handy theology library as well as a place to put the few firearms which weren't lost in a tragic boating accident. You see, there were all these theology books, good ones too, lying about in a guest room, doing nothing. Useless. So move all those books to a place of action, let them be with the guns.

typical books

Net result, you can now sit down and read Etienne Gilson, Berdyaev, Jacques Maritain, Aquinas, Farrer, Mascall and all the rest Then take a break, clean a gun, drop a trigger group into an AR, or whatever, and after you've washed your hands read something edifying. Maybe Belloc's Europe and the Faith, your call, there's no shortage of books.

gunnery

Who knows, maybe it'd make sense to put a screen in between the bookshelves so theological gunmen can watch videos off the internet, a third potential activity in just one room. In other exciting news, I have to sort out the guest rooms. 

random Basil Hume

Not that they're a mess, but they need organizing, for example, where to put an absurdly large science fiction collection? Good question. Likewise, would one room benefit from an antique desk/drawers/bookshelf sitting idle in Dallas? 

Perhaps, we'll see. In the meanwhile it's all going on in the cold, wet Texan steppe.

Ex Libris,

LSP

Theology, innit.

I know this isn't about guns, horses, dogs, the failed modernist liberal humanist secular project et al., but it is about God, or rather one of His followers - St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. Maritain has this to say:

"Between Aristotle as viewed in himself and Aristotle viewed in the writings of St. Thomas is the difference which exists between a city seen by the flare of a torchlight procession and the same city bathed in the light of the morning sun."

Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy

Here's an excerpt from one of Thomas' hymns, the Pange Lingua, which he wrote for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in the 13th C. Some believe that the rythm of the hymn comes down from a marching song of Caesar's Legions: "Ecce, Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias."

PANGE, lingua, gloriosi

Corporis mysterium,

Sanguinisque pretiosi,

quem in mundi pretium

fructus ventris generosi

Rex effudit Gentium.

The translation doesn't do justice, but...

SING, my tongue, the Savior's glory,

of His flesh the mystery sing;

of the Blood, all price exceeding,

shed by our immortal King,

destined, for the world's redemption,

from a noble womb to spring.

As the legend has it, "Thomas, you have written well on the Sacrament of my Body."

Have a blessed (late) Feast of Corpus Christi.

LSP