Log24

A Living Church

"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living. To know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before."

— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

C. P. Snow on G. H. Hardy in the foreword to A Mathematician's Apology:

"… he had another favourite entertainment.  'Mark that man we met last night,' he said, and someone had to be marked out of 100 in each of the categories Hardy had long since invented and defined.  STARK, BLEAK ('a stark man is not necessarily bleak: but all bleak men without exception want to be considered stark')…."

S. H. Cullinane on religion and Hollywood:

"If the incomparable Max Bialystock were to remake 'Up Close and Personal,' he might retitle it 'Distant and Impersonal.'  A Google search on this phrase suggests

a plot outline for Mel Brooks & Co."

In memory of
producer Ray Stark,
an excerpt from that plot outline:

The Oxford University Press summary of

God:
Myths of the Male Divine,
by David Leeming and Jake Page

"They [Leeming and Page] describe the rise of a male sky God as 'the equal to, the true mate, of Goddess, who was still associated with Earth.' In the Iron Age, the sky God became more aggressive, separating from the Goddess and taking his place as the King God, as Zeus, Odin, and Horus. Ultimately he emerged as the creator, a more distant and impersonal force. Here Leeming and Page also illuminate an important trend–a sense that the divine is beyond gender, that it permeates all things (as seen in the Chinese Tao and En Sof of the Kabbalah). They see a movement in the biography of God toward a reunion with the Goddess."

As for the Goddess, see

Art Wars: Just Seventeen

(December 17, 2002). 

Stark, a saint among Hollywood producers, died yesterday, January 17.  If, as Chesterton might surmise, he then met Plato and Shakespeare in Heaven, the former might discuss with him the eternal Platonic form of the number 17, while the latter might offer the following links on Stark's new heavenly laptop:

Cartoon Graveyard and

Art Wars: At the Still Point. 

This concludes the tribute to Stark.  For a tribute to Bleak, click here.