Comic book salvation

… Stand up and keep your childishness:

Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;

But don’t believe in anything

That can’t be told in coloured pictures.

Chesterton would not have liked many of the stories told in coloured pictures by American comic books, which these days tend to dystopia and sado-eroticism – an all-too predictable reflection of the present state of our culture. But some he would have liked, and I dare to think I could show him my own comic collection without (much) embarrassment.

My personal golden age of comics was in the late 60s and 1970s, when I would roam the streets of London looking for the latest American imports: Batman or Green Lantern, The Fantastic Four or The Mighty Thor, and a dozen other titles, illustrated by such artists as Neal Adams, the Buscema

Song of the Angels

“'The angels sing praise to the Creator, and in doing so, they, with Holy Wisdom, bind and heal the created order.' ...It is this song of the angels that we should listen out for, now that the coming of Christ has reunited humanity with the celestial liturgy that Adam heard before the fall."

In this way the Telegraph columnist, Christopher Howse, concludes his very fine piece about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent book this year, Lucy Winkett's Our Sound is Our Wound. The book is not all about the Angels (please read the full description), but the remark caught my eye since it connects so directly with the themes of Beauty for Truth's Sake, and with earlier postings on this site, such as this one on Sacred Music, this on the Music of Creation in Tolkien, and this on the Sphere of the Angels.

If this Lent Book is as good as last year's - Timothy Radcliffe's brilliant Why Go to Church? - it will be well worth reading in the weeks ahead. And it certainly sounds so from Mr Howse's description.