About

The title "Laughter like a lion" is a line from G.K. Chesterton's poem "The Wise Men." (Read at bottom)

I really like this poem. I don't understand it by a long shot, but there's something about the lines (and that one line in particular) that stirs something inside me. Call it joy, the Flash, inspiration--it's pretty amazing, whatever it is.

The first blog I was ever exposed to was "Insanity Comes Naturally" by Anna, a person whose writing I very much admired. Really. Her writing is stunning. I still get swept away when I go through her archives and look at her poetry or musings on life and God. I wanted more than anything to write like that--to be able to express my thoughts in a coherent way, and online is awesome because it won't burn or accidentally get deleted.

Great, so I'd decided I was going to start a blog. But what kind of blog? Awesomely deep and writerly, like Anna's, with prose and poetry and musings? A place to spew all the crazy, funny stories of farm life/college life/life life? An actual, serious blog about writing or Christianity or something non-fictiony? Therein lay my problem--I WANTED TO DO ALL THE THINGS.

Actually, that's still my problem. I don't want to be just deep or just funny or just intellectual...I want to be ALL of them. So I deeply apologize if this blog ends up being a weird conglomeration of random things. Including stories about scorpions in the shower and how my characters talk to me sometimes. But I've been looking for a creative vent for months and I've finally given in and decided to give this one more try.

So, I decided I could blog about all the things. But then there was the trouble of the TITLE (Odyssean Journeyish Quest Thing just wasn't cutting it) and that's where Chesterton saved the day because "Laughter like a Lion" sounds both funny (laughter) and serious (lions are serious) and deep (why is the lion laughing?).

I don't anticipate readers. I really don't, because I've written papers about how the "Blogosphere" (y'all, that's the technical term for this imaginary internet world) is just too many people with too much to say to too few readers. But I do anticipate growth, and writing practice, and hopefully an artifact for me to find someday, carefully preserved in the dusty virtual archives of the internet.

(yes I know the internet isn't dusty, stop looking at me like that)

-----

Title of the blog is taken from this poem:

The Wise Men

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Step softly, under snow or rain,

    To find the place where men can pray;

The way is all so very plain

    That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore

    On tortured puzzles from our youth,

We know all labyrinthine lore,

We are the three wise men of yore,

    And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill

    And lost the wood among the trees,

And learnt long names for every ill,

And served the mad gods, naming still

    The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil

    Of vision and philosophy,

The Serpent that brought all men bale,

He bites his own accursed tail,

    And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…

    With voices low and lanterns lit;

So very simple is the road,

    That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,

    And blinding white the breaking day;

We walk bewildered in the light,

For something is too large for sight,

    And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun

    (…We need but walk a little way,

We need but see a latch undone…)

The Child that played with moon and sun

    Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,

    The old strange house that is our own,

Where trick of words are never said,

And Mercy is as plain as bread,

    And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,

    And low and large and fierce the Star;

So very near the Manger lies

    That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes

    To roar to the resounding plain.

And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,

    For God Himself is born again,

And we are little children walking

    Through the snow and rain.