To Life!

The Baby has taken to toasting, as in, the old style of lifting your drinking cup, and heartily banging it in the air with the cups of fellow diners while shouting “Cheers!” Her cup is lidded, so the contents remain safely contained therein; while ours tend to escape, at times, due to the enthusiasm displayed by said baby; who, despite the appearance of delicacy, her right arm packs a powerful toasting punch! It is quite humorous. And, speaking of toasts, I would like to toast a newborn babe, C. Stanislaus, who made his appearance on October the 12th: he is the son of C. Marian, The Marian Room’s graphic artist. He is a little prince-elf who, when placed in my arms, caused me to think, again, of the following from G.K. Chesterton’sA Defence of Baby Worship:

The two facts which attract almost every normal person to children are, first, that they are very serious, and, secondly, that they are in consequence very happy…The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea..The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

But the humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

“…their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.”

Indeed!

There is something astonishing about holding a newborn babe: you look at its face with its closed eyes, and tiny nose, and know that behind it lies an entire universe; an unrepeatable, individual person who possesses an immortal soul, housed in the form of its body.

Additionally, holding a newborn, reminds one of Christmas morning when Our Lady, the Immaculate Queen, held Our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. It is no wonder that the shepherds came to see; for amidst the hardships of life, there are brief moments, as in, the birth of a child, where the veil is lifted, and we catch a glimpse of the happiness (and humour!) that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven (G.K.C.).

So, today, we lift a toast (of flowers!), and declare, To Life: to C. Stanislaus, prince of  a patch of land, west of the Atlantic, on the planet of Earth! 

May you have a good day.

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•Image by A. Therese, October 10, 2018, at a PA flower farm