Post-Grad Life

I graduated from college last Saturday. It's strange, but expected, and probably won't sink in until next Fall when I will not be moving into campus housing, but to Philadelphia for a season. Walking across the stage, shaking President DeGioia's hand, and getting "hooded" were a profound reminder of the grace and faithfulness of my kind and sovereign God in my time here on the Hilltop. I am thankful for the extraordinary work on my soul he has begun the past four years and will finish to the end.


Senior week was full of exhortations to and excitement about choices - we have more choices than earlier generations did because we don't have to get married or find a steady job right out of college, we can choose to go "set the world on fire" instead of going home, we can choose our passion, ambition, which consulting company we want to work for - and my waffling distress over my cynicism for "inspirational" talks. What if instead of living in endless "what ifs" I want to live in certainty? Dear Boyfriend and I were talking over dinner during Senior week about how beautiful the sovereignty of God is: small events that seem meaningless are all ordained for him to delight in them. This truth motivates me more than any other exhortation to do "big" things.


Now I'm home with my family for a bit. My room still has a Pirates of the Caribbean poster hanging on the walls and my softball trophies adorning my young adult lit bookshelves that have been (rightfully) ransacked by my younger sister. I have grand plans of fulfilling the telos of Pinterest by taking advantage of my mom's sewing machine to attempt some projects from my "domesticities" board. I bought Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, which has been mercifully simple so far due to the Russian case endings boot camp I got Freshman year. And, lest I make myself seem productive, I've watched a lot of TLC the past few days. I'm trying very hard to understand gypsy culture.


I look forward to figuring out more to blog about this summer. 

The telos of Pinterest

My friend sent me this question the other day: What is the telos of Pinterest? When I stopped being offended at his obvious mocking tone, I admitted that I had been thinking about it. 

In his last lecture my professor asserted that if Memory is mother of the Muses - the Arts - then memory must be the basis of culture. In this case, I would argue that the domestic arts, too, must be based on memory. In the past (perhaps a glamorized past, admittedly) mothers would teach their daughters to quilt or knit or, more generally, keep a home; however, the shift from traditional mores and familial culture has fragmented families through individualism (I'm going to keep beating that drum) and the mass consumer culture has made housekeeping less of an art and more of a chore through devaluation of unpaid work and increasing dependence on modern appliances.

So, I come to the question: what is the telos of Pinterest?

"An affection includes a duty"

 “The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded, on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and, by their abilities and virtues, exact respect.” – Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

I've decided that Mary Wollstonecraft is my kind of feminist. She would probably object to the pink in the Women aisle of the Christian bookstore as well.