C. Henry Warren

"The Dalai Lama once wrote that the object of human existence was to be happy. This sounds extremely glib as happiness in the popular imagination is a feeling and in the words of the song 'the greatest gift that we possess'. On the other hand, von Hugel wrote 'Religion has never made me happy; it's no use shutting your eyes to the fact that the deeper you go, the more alone you will find yourself' This small masterpiece by the late Fr Herbert McCabe of the Dominican order steers a steady courss between these two extremes. We feels instinctively that human beings are designed to enjoy themselves and to be happy and yet we are told that suffering is good for the soul. But in the Catholic tradition the true object of human existence is the vision of God and nothing less than this will ever make us truly happy. But Fr McCabe explores much deeper issues. Is Happiness a pleasure or a pain? You hardly know. Certainly it is not a comfort for comfort spells seciurity and hapiness can take you out of yourself to a degree where all secutiry is left behind. Behind a feeling of exultation, you can sense the flame of incandescent terror. This short book is entirely original and will further enhance McCabe's posthumous reputation."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

from the book's blurb: Its central figure ... an old East Anglian farm-hand, whose life-story is mainly told in his own words. At seven years of age Mark Thurston was already a worker in the fields, and at seventy-seven he is still active, vivid in his memories, and possessed of a very individual point of view. He can remember, with a clarity and detail that makes his words as informative as they are entertaining, the days of scythe and flail, gleanimng and horkey, milling and brewing and baking. HAPPY COUNTRYMAN is more than the picture of an heroic old man: it is also a picture of the village in which he lived. Larkfield (under another name) is shown in the guide-books as a 'picturesque' village, complete with ruined windmill and Green. Mr Warren has looked beneath the picturesqueness and tried to bring Larkfield to life in all its teeming diversity - a typical village in the East Anglian corn-belt, where the surrounding fields are still a chequerwork of thriving arable and where all the year's activities still lead up to the colourful climax of harvest.