Shelf Life.(three books)(Brief Article)

-- James v. Schall, a Jesuit priest and professor of government at Georgetown, is one of the most valuable participants in the public life of our nation's capital; against the political obsessiveness of his neighbors, he proposes a more reasonable understanding of what life is about. His exceptional learning -- as well as lightness of heart -- is on display in his new book, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing. Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing (ISI, 189 pp., $24.95). He meditates on the Latin phrase Ludere est contemplari ("to play is to contemplate"), which connects two essential aspects of a happy life. Play and contemplation have in common the fact that they are not utilitarian; watching a Redskins game, and prayerfully reflecting on eternal truth, are similar actions in that each is done joyfully, purely for its own sake.

Schall also has a healthy contempt for the pretensions of the intellect. He cites Hilaire Belloc as his guru on the question, and summarizes Belloc's thought as follows:

A man with a steady and balanced mind, with a clear gaze, only has three things to remember to keep him sane. These are: (1) "After all it is not my business"; (2) "Tut! Tut! You don't say so!"; and (3) "Credo in unum Deum . . ." All the analytical powers of the pedants and the professors are but "dustheaps" by comparison.

If one keeps in mind Belloc's three rules, one may read the op-ed pages -- and even watch political talk shows -- without fearing the forces of darkness: To the pure, all things are pure.

Schall is a good-natured companion to the wisdom of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas -- and Denver Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski, whom he quotes as follows: "If you love what you do, you don't have to work a day in your life." The linebacker speaks with the voice of the perennial philosophy -- which looks beyond articulation, to the truth in things themselves.

-- There are plenty of laughs in Jack Stevens's comic political novel Spark's Tract (Xlibris, 351 pp., $22.99). Stevens was a right-wing activist in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s and 1990s, and learned a contempt for environmentalist kooks and grasping politicos -- who are now objects of his satire. The plot has to do with a likeable hero and his friends standing up to bureaucrats, but the real joys of this book are the comic vignettes. Here, for example, is an exhortation at an environmentalist religious service:

"Let us feel the pain of the tree as the chainsaw rips through its belly. Let us see the tree as more than condominiums, toilet paper, and board feet to be exported to Japan. Let us see instead billions of years of cellular memory and an entity of intrinsic value. Let us be like native peoples, who saw trees as wise spiritual beings, not just wood for their canoes, homes, and medicine objects. Let us know the tree, be like the tree, become the tree."