Chesterton and his Tremendous Trifles

a tremendous trifle

 G.K. Chesterton could write about almost everything and make it... entertaining...amusing... profound,,,.mysterious...and, yes, sometimes a little weird. In one essay, he imagined lying in bed and drawing on the ceiling. In another, he filled his pockets with colored chalk, got some brown paper from the old woman in the kitchen, and went out walking and drawing. Speaking of pockets, he once wrote an entire essay on the contents of his pockets. Once he was challenged by the police as he stopped in the woods and practiced knife throwing at a tree. He mostly missed. And then there was the weird tale of his ride on a train carrying a dead body. His book of essays, Tremendouos Trifles, is filled with essays about nothing and everything and is, indeed, "tremendous" and one of my favorites!

So I was thinking today about what in my life is a trifle that strikes me as tremendous. Sometimes I make trifle for dessert and my family thinks it's tremendous. It seems like a metaphor for Chesterton's collection of trifles. Take stale cake, layer it with a sprinkling of spirits (cream sherry is good), add a layer of fruit or jam and spread pudding over all, repeat the layers, cover with whipped cream and top with slivered almonds or shaved chocolate or berries. Quick, easy and delicious as are Chesterton's essays.

As I was cleaning up after our honey harvest I thought about the bees, their community and their behavior. St. Francis de Sales often discusses bees in his spiritual writings. "You catch more flies with a teaspoonful of honey than with a barrel full of vinegar." is one of his famous sayings. And of course it's true. There's much to learn at the bee university. 

First of all bees demonstrate for us the importance of community life. We need that in both society and religion. "We the people of the United States....We hold these truths to be self evident...." Jesus also taught us the importance of community in our worship. When asked how to pray, He said, "Our Father....give us this day our daily bread." Of course each of us has an individual relationship with God signified by the vertical beam of the cross. But it takes a horizontal beam to change a post into a cross and that signifies our relationship with other. Jesus didn't stop after telling His followers to love God. He gave them another command to love neighbors. 

Bees also teach about division of labor and hard work. Worker bees, the majority of the colony, have progressive duties. They start as nursemaids to the brood, take a role as guards, and ultimately leave the hide to collect nectar, pollen, and water. Everything the bees do is for the good of the community. The bees zealous hard work reminds me of the apostles sent out to share the gospel in the great commission. They nurtured the faith as they developed nucleus communities which makes me think of the bees swarming to spread their work in new places. 

Just like Chesterton found meaningful lessons from everything in life, we can do the same. Thinking about his Tremendous Trifles reminds me that there is no such thing as trivial events. All is for our instruction, our growth, and our pleasure. Even sin can become a source of conversion and great love as Mary Magdalene teaches us. Finding the lessons in the little things will help us with the big things. I want to be more like Chesterton so I can say with a glad heart:

I have gone through most of my life looking for an uninteresting subject — or even an uninteresting person. It is the romance of my life that I have failed to find either of them yet.”          (Illustrated London News 01-11-1913)