The Confessions of Saint Allen, No. 2

I smoke Cigars. I suppose I should begin by explaining how I fell into this delightful habit. It all started with C. S. Lewis. Actually, it was more the Inklings [Excuse me while I google Lewis, Inklings, smoking]. OK, I'm back.
Here are the basics (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings):

The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction, and encouraged the writing of fantasy. Although Christian values were notably reflected in several members' work, there were also atheists among the members of the discussion group.

"Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections."

As was typical for university literary groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. (Dorothy L. Sayers, sometimes claimed as an Inkling, was a friend of Lewis and Williams, but never attended Inklings meetings.)

A number of Inklings participants were smokers. And drinkers. They smoked pipes and/or cigars. A few years back I began to think about--and envy--the Inklings and their camaraderie. I could picture them gathering, Friday afternoons, at the London pub they frequented, the Eagle and Child (Which they renamed the Bird and Baby). By all accounts they enjoyed brandy along with their cigars, cigarettes and pipes. We live in a much different day and age with a much different set of values.

I had quit cigarettes more than a year before I began smoking cigars. By this time, I had no residual cravings for nicotine whatsoever. What drew me to cigars was the mental image of the Inklings and the camaraderie they shared. I began to wonder if there were, anywhere in all of San Diego, a place where men got together for interesting conversation. I could find none. Still, the picture in my mind remained. It was a picture of men of like mind sharing themselves and their thoughts together in a way which was pleasing to them and fulfilled the need all men have for camaraderie.

As fate would have it, that month National Review (a political fortnightly) had a full-page ad from Thompson Cigars for a sampler pack of six cigars--which came with a free humidor/carrying case. I went for it and ordered the cigars. I smoked them one by one and found one brand I really liked--C.A.O. (Still my favorite: the Brasilia Samba. Ummm...) I was so inspired, I began, in January of 2005, the Chesterton Cigar Club--named after none other than the great Victorian journalist (and cigar smoker), G.K. Chesterton (Seems everyone in that period dropped their first to names to initials. Just call me D.A. Randall)

There you have it--confession No.2. It is 7:00p.m. straight up. I am now going to go select from my humidor a big beautiful cigar and celebrate a day well spent relaxing, shopping, putzing and blogging by lighting one up and contemplating my next confession.

* The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949.^[1] Its most regular members (many of them academics at the University) included J. R. R. "Tollers" Tolkien, C. S. "Jack" Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien's son), Warren "Warnie" Lewis (C. S. Lewis's elder brother), Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, R. A. "Humphrey" Havard, J. A. W. Bennett, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill.

**The Eagle and Child is a pub in St Giles', Oxford, England which is owned by St. John's College, Oxford.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings

Meet My Beloved GKC

G.K. Chesterton—Manalive!

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists."
“You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion."
“The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms."

Quotes like these gave me an intellectual itch to read more from the wit who penned them. Let me tell you the story of how I so happily came to scratch that itch and, in the process, added another character to the pantheon of dead folks I’ve come to think of as friends and acquaintances.

Brian, the owner of Adams Avenue Books, seemed as excited as a kid hearing the ice cream truck when I told him I had yet to read any G.K. Chesterton and asked, “could you recommend which book I should try first?” As he took me upstairs he began to go on and on about what a wonderful and witty writer Chesterton was and even telling me stories from Chesterton’s life as if he were some beloved but eccentric relative. Beaming at me like a grandma offering her grandson freshly baked cookies, Brian held up two rather thick books and suggested, “Give Heretics a try—it’s a real hoot!” Now I’m beginning to wonder if the book business has perhaps pushed Brian over the edge and whether I really want to tackle Chesterton after all. Yet my curiosity got the better of me and I left the bookshop with both Heresy and Orthodoxy—along with some of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. As I crossed the store’s threshold and emerged onto a sun-splashed Adams Avenue, I felt as if I had, in some fashion, just made Brian’s day. I also had a vague suspicion that I’d just taken my first steps into some quirky Chestertonian brotherhood. I had.

Chesterton has changed the way I look at life, God and myself. He’s taught—no, he’s re-taught me—to view life and creation with proper childlike wonder. He did this by introducing me to the wonderful Mr. Innocent Smith. You can meet him too. He resides between the covers of the delightful little novel, Manalive. In Heresy and Orthodoxy Chesterton showed me the connection theology has to philosophy and, indeed everything in life. This too has changed the way I see the world. Regarding the way I look at myself, Chesterton has taught me to take myself—and life--less seriously. He has also taught me to take them both more seriously. If you think what I’ve just said is some sort of strange paradox which doesn’t seem to make much sense, you’d be half right. It is a strange paradox; and paradox was Chesterton’s favorite tool for opening his reader’s mind to those truths which timid conventional thinking has kept them from seeing. As Chesterton himself said so well, “He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative."

Speaking of eternal rebels, perhaps it was my ever-active inner rebel who inspired me to begin the Chesterton Cigar Club a few years back. This was right when the anti-smoking puritans were hiking tobacco taxes and driving smokers from the very last nooks and crannies of the workplace. I only mention the the illustrious CCC with the happy intention of spreading its fame and perhaps, like a good fisher-of-men, enticing some fellow smoker to join us for our monthly meetings.