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.

Marrying Alone: The New Elopement

Forget bowling solo. The new trend is getting married alone.


Since I read an excerpt from David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise for class, I have greatly enjoyed stalking the New York Times Wedding page in all its Ivy League-educated, matching eyebrow height glory (See: the photos requirement). A month or so ago, the Times ran an article on the "New Elopement." An increasing number of upscale brides and grooms are planning elaborate weddings without any guests. A comment from one such couple:

“I wanted the dress, the vows, the flowers and the pictures,” said Ms. Provost, 36, who took the unconventional step of turning the couple’s elopement into a blowout. “But when you have guests, we felt like it ends up being more for them, not for the bride and groom. We wanted it to be for us.”

This sentiment is common for eloping couples. From a wedding blog's profile of another "wedding for two":

"We felt from the bottom of their [sic] hearts that we had to bring the focus back on us, regardless of what anybody else wanted and to remember what we would want first and foremost from our day and that was to celebrate our love for each other, our love for traveling, and enjoying every moment of our day with each other." [Emphasis mine.]

I find this idea of a "wedding for two" particularly interesting for two reasons. First, the radical detachment from any importance of relational ties in marriage and second, the drastic difference between what the Christian's idea of where the focus should be in marriage and the extremes of what this kind of individualism means spiritually. 

"It All Turns on Affection"

Mr. Berry from the second row(!)

My friends and I went to see Wendell Berry give the 2012 Jefferson Lecture at the Kennedy Center last night. His lecture, "It All Turns on Affection," was quintessentially Wendellian and traced essentially every line of his thought from localism to scale to husbandry to homemaking. You can read more about the lecture here. While I have read many of his essays and some of his fiction, I have not yet read much of his poetry. Last night, Bobbie Ann Mason read a rather moving poem, "VI," from his collection Leavings and now I can say that I intend to read more.

The audience made my friends and I laugh a bit. It was a fantastic mix of Who's Who in this very small subset of conservative thought with grungy agrarian-looking types, a few of whom looked like they had just come from camping out in McPherson Square. It's a big tent.

Last Name Project

My friend (and freshman Bible study leader!) Danielle is hosting a series on her blog "profiling an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry." She graciously gave me the opportunity to submit. You can find my post (and my elusive first name) here.

Recovering the "Mistress of Herself"

Girls (Photo from here)

HBO's new show Girls and its creator/writer/star Lena Dunham have been attracting a lot of buzz recently. The show centers around four friends living life in New York City, but it's more grungy Williamsburg than Sex and the City Upper West Side. The main character, Hannah, is also a writer, but instead of an advice column regarding shoes and sordid nonsense, she is (briefly, in the show) an unpaid intern at a publishing company who, at age 24, has written 4 out of a projected 9 essays of her "memoirs," which she has not yet completed because she has to live them first. 


I watched it (it was free on YouTube) and enjoyed it. It's funny, but in an extraordinarily sad trombone type of way that earns its comparisons to Louie. The main thrust of the pilot is watching the characters suffer consequences of bad decisions. For me, more than the career mishaps or the silly things Hannah says ("I think I may be the voice of my generation...or at least a voice of a generation."), the bleakest part was the women's relationships. Hannah hooks up with a deadbeat "actor" who pursues woodworking because it's "more honest" while living off his grandmother's $800/mo checks. Jessa gallivants across Europe having seemingly free-spirited flings with an endless menagerie of foreign men only to find herself facing some unintended consequences back in America. Marnie stays with her boyfriend even though she recoils every time she touches him. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni's March 31 column entitled "The Bleaker Sex" hits the nail on the head with his question: "Gloria Steinem went to the barricades for this?"