The
English writer G.K. Chesterton loved pointing out that we are
surrounded by seemingly “ordinary” things that are in fact so suffused
with beauty and mystery, that we ought by all rights to be walking about
in a perpetual state of stunned wonder. As he famously put it: “There
is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If
you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.” What he meant is,
that thousandth time, you might slough off your old perceptual habits
that took the thing for granted and see the thing for what it is: a
pure, mysterious gift.
One
of the ordinary things that Chesterton sought to show us in a new light
was the family. A quote often attributed to him goes like this...
