The Natural Home of the Human Spirit and The Ambassadors

The Catholic Church is the natural home of the human spirit. The odd perspective of life which looks like a meaningless puzzle at first, seen from that one standpoint takes on complete order and meaning, like the skull in the picture of the Ambassadors.

Hilaire Belloc to G.K. Chesterton
upon hearing of his conversion to Catholicism

Just to make it easy I'm including the painting that Belloc was referring to. You can see the odd shape in the bottom of the picture which, viewed at just the right angle, is seen to be a skull.

The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger

Wikipedia tells us:

The distorted skull which is placed in the bottom centre of the composition, rendered in anamorphic perspective, is meant to be a visual puzzle as the viewer must approach the painting from high on the right side, or low on the left side, to see the form as an accurate rendering of a human skull.

Hence, Belloc's comparison. I must say, for my own part, Belloc hits the nail on the head. The world didn't make true sense to me until I looked at it through the lens of Church teachings. 

Here's the skull, adjusted so we can see it as if we were the ones coming down the staircase.

The anamorphic skull, viewed  at an oblique angle

Why is breakfast different from all other things?

I would very much like to know what those who have an answer to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment, we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat noting more till the halt ... Dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get up at nine and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold pheasant, toast coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after which they will boast that their race is the hardiest in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in the pursuit of Empire. But what rule governs all this? Why is breakfast different from all other things, so that the Greeks called it the best thing in the world, and so that each of us in a vague way knows that he would eat at breakfast nothing but one special kind of food and that he could not imagine breakfast at any other hour in the day?

Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome

The Path to Rome is such a wonderful book to idly read here and there in your day. It is the story of the pilgrimage Belloc made on foot to Rome in as straight a line as possible order to fulfill a vow he had made. It is a delightful travel book with all sorts of discoveries and musings, such as above!