The 30th Annual Chesterton Conference

Jessica and I and another couple from the D.C. Chesterton Society were at the Chesterton Conference in St. Louis this past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We drove out to St. Louis with an overnight stop in Louisville, Kentucky which helped make the journey manageable by car. It would have been a pretty long drive in one day although coming back we did a drive that would have been about as long.

Hanging out with Chestertonians is always great fun. We saw only a little of the Thursday night program because we went to dinner with friends we knew in the area, but got back to the Conference in time to hear the end of the talk about "Lepanto" by Christopher Check. I enjoyed the talk so I picked up a 3 CD set by Check to listen to. We made everything on the Friday agenda except the performance of Chesterton's play "Magic" which we had seen in Washington with the D.C. Chesterton Society which generally meets on the first Saturday of each month at Famous Dave's in Sterling, VA. SEE HERE

Some of the highlights for Friday were Robert Moore-Jumonville, a professor of Religion at Spring Arbor University and a columnist for Gilbert magazine. His talk had the somewhat bland title "Paying Attention: the Poetry of Prayer" but despite the title was one of the best talks of the session. I enjoyed all the talks but his most of all. Chuck Chalberg who does dramatizations of G. K. Chesterton despite being at least a head shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than Chesterton was also a highlight with a talk "The End of the Armistice" which addressed the rise of Nazism in Germany. Finally, the last talk we saw was by Leah Darrow, a relative of Clarence Darrow who Chesterton trounced in a debate, and who was a contestant on the reality show, "America's Next Top Model". She talked about the emptiness of modern culture and her own personal recovery of faith.

We missed Saturday because we drove North to Apple Valley, Minnesota to picnic with old friends on Sunday and see what society had done to our old stomping grounds. It was almost unrecognizable. Sic transit gloria mundi!