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| Gilbert and his beloved Frances |
He is a real-life Santa Claus, not only in his girth, but in his magnanimous spirit. I use that word deliberately, a word that comes from the Latin: "magna" for great, and "animus" for soul. He was, indeed, a "great soul" who loved his fellow man and never preened his brilliance to impress an audience. When asked, "What's wrong with the world?" he responded humbly without a pause, "I am."
Thinking about Chesterton recently, I embraced the acronym WOW! to describe him. Three of his greatest characteristics were his sense of WONDER, his OPTIMISM, and his WIT. He exuded joy and cheerfulness, a man who, like comedian and social commentator Will Rogers, "never met a man [he] didn't like." He could debate and criticize an atheist contemporary without the conversation degenerating to the level of animosity. Don't we desperately need that kind of respectful exchange today? In fact, the writer H.G. Wells, with whom he vigorously disagreed, once said:
