Tradition!

Disclaimer: this is a pretty much unadulterated copy of what I'm turning in for a homework assignment on cultural limits on expression tomorrow. Sneaky, you say? Certainly! But I only have so much time, so I better do double duty where I can. This is homework, you say? Forgive me, I shouldn't do homework when writing a present-tense semi-stream of consciousness reflection on browsing Pinterest sounds like a good idea.

I can’t sleep, so I get on Pinterest and look at wedding stuff. There’s lots of planning to do in the next year, and the best place to start is by looking at what everybody else has done, right? There is precedent for that method, after all.

Our expressions are just a filtered and regurgitated imitation of another person’s expressions. Classic artists recreated scenes from mythology and history—both things others did or created. Painters learn to paint based on the styles of people who came before them.

Now, thanks to the Internet, we can learn about what everyone else is doing ever more quickly. We see cool ideas, and since everyone can see them at the same time, it becomes a movement before most people know what the source was. 

So whose idea was it to decorate for weddings with burlap and Mason jars? I wonder as I scroll down. Is this going to be a tradition that will last? It’s certainly popular—there’s even a word for it now: the DIY wedding. Maybe it’ll eventually be a cultural movement that people will say reflects resourcefulness. Or maybe it’ll just be a weird thing that people will eventually get over, like wallpapering houses with arsenic in the Victorian age.

An anthropologist might look at all the frills of a wedding and identify the inherent ritual, from the truly ritualistic ceremony to the near-universal (at least in the West) extras that people have added over time (white dress, sending out save-the dates, color themes). He (or she) might also begin to notice how much the modern wedding has to do with expression—and the limits impressed upon them by social norms.

Maybe that’s what tradition is.

The white wedding dress was popularized by Queen Victoria. That was less than 200 years ago, but now it’s considered shocking to wear anything other than white. Though she chose the fabric in support of British manufacturing, we’ve attached the value of purity to it. As this theme has been played on a hundred different ways, people even begin to lose this falsely-impressed symbolism, since purity has nothing to do with most weddings. Again, the social norms of expression are key in maintaining the tradition.

The wedding blogs tell me it’s all about me and what I want on my day. It’s funny how lots of people tend to want the same things. I don’t want to be like everyone else by default, but the tradition still matters to me.

And because of it, I want to have a white dress.

And maybe a few mason jars.

Insidious

I made a rule for myself earlier this year that I would not do homework on Sundays. So far, I've been able to stick to it (except for when I do my American lit readings on Sundays, because that's reading and it's enjoyable, right?). Tonight, though, I'm going to bend my rule a little further, because it's not homework if it's a blog post!

This semester I'm enrolled in a lit seminar focused on C.S. Lewis. We've been going over The Great Divorce, which I read my freshman year when an actor named Anthony Lawton performed an excellent adaptation of it. Describing Lewis's words can't come near to the way he puts things himself, so if you haven't read The Great Divorce (or The Screwtape Letters), I urge you to drop all the things you're holding and pick up a book at once. And then maybe this will sound more like a musing on a book than an adapted essay.

Something made abundantly clear when reading about the ghosts in The Great Divorce is that selfishness goes along with the bending of good and truth. In making something more important than God, you set yourself up along with it. Almost any sin tries to make us God. All sins fail in that they take us farther away rather than bringing us closer to Him.

There are sins I am prone to. I look down on others for being less competent than myself. I'm jealous of those more capable than me. I let myself be carried away by more extreme emotions because I want to think I deserve to feel the way I do, which lets me wallow when it's too hard to do something about my circumstances.

The thing is, even when I'm aware of these things, I can trick myself into thinking I'm doing the opposite. Instead of being irritated at someone for doing poorly, I can pity them instead. That feels like compassion, right? Jealousy is just a desire to learn to do better. And when I know I'm letting myself get carried away, I can just try to get over it, and aren't I so strong and noble to be overcoming myself so?

Sin is insidious. It sneaks into the things we try to convince ourselves are right. It hides in the dark without knowing how big the light is.

The Great Divorce highlights how ludicrous sin and evil really are. In the face of God, in the knowledge of how deep and beautiful and enduring Truth and Goodness are, our shifting thoughts, self-justification, writhings and whimperings make for a pathetic show.

In Lewis's encounter with the Tragedian and the Lady, the Lady tries to make her husband understand. "Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their will self-crossed?"

No matter how we try to justify ourselves, Hell cannot veto Heaven. The things we would claim for ourselves cannot be right or great or truthful if they are not in God, even if born out of a desire to struggle for truth.

The real answer to all our desires can only come with eternity. With his usual deftness, Lewis puts it in words assigned to the character of George MacDonald:

"All answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain.... But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see -- small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope -- something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all."

In time -- or maybe, as Lewis puts it, once we're outside time -- we will see how small we currently are. We will grow bigger than the insidiousness that tries to claim us. Heaven will be an answer better than all our theories and strivings, better even than all Mr. Lewis's words can make us hope for.

Busy Days

One of the greatest things about Taylor is all of the opportunities to participate in the community. On the other hand, the worst thing about Taylor is all of the opportunities to participate in the community.

Case in point: for the past two weeks I've gone to musical and dance rehearsal, set construction training, worked in the costume shop, done lots of homework, ushered for a play, worked, gone to open houses, gone to small group, worked on projects, practiced piano, and spent more of my time than is feasible being entertained by all the weird stuff people do on campus. This weekend is Homecoming, and I'm going to go to the world-famous Airband tonight, usher for another play tomorrow night, go to a piano recital the night after, help a friend with a photography project, spend time in the library navigating a contorted fortress of databases that seem devoid of information on my research topic, probably work in the set and costume shops some more,  work on a math project, practice piano again, and try intramural soccer. In the next few weeks I'll  participate in a book discussion group and write book reviews for two more books I volunteered to read. That's right, I chose two books when I could have put it off or chosen just one, and my professor wants me to finish them as soon as possible.

There are many people even more committed than I am, and there are lots of classes with much heavier homework loads. Still, I tend to feel overwhelmed. My main problem seems to be that I like things that suck up my time (like theater). I'm glad I'm in such a wonderful place as Taylor and get to be a part of all this, but even more glad that it hasn't killed me yet.