something borrowed

Chesterton’s appreciation for tradition (which he called “the democracy of the dead”) was one of the things that shook my brain loose from much of the twaddle of contemporary thought and made me see things in the clear light of common sense. He pointed out that Tradition was not something covered in cobwebs but was rather something that was rooted in the experience of a thousand previous generations of men and women who were quite as smart and full of prayer as my generation of clever people suckled on TV—perhaps even a bit more! He insisted that people be given a vote in how we order our lives, even when they happen to be dead. And he pointed out how much of our lives are, in fact, ordered by and dependent on simple human trust.