The Experiment

Last year, I began this blog as a way to keep friends and family updated on my life as a student. Unfortunately, I was a hopelessly negligent blogger. I wrote more facebook notes than blog entries. Most of those consisted of quotes from literature I was reading at the time. This year, inspired by one of my roommates (Kate, whose blogging expertise far exceeds my own), I'm going to attempt to resurrect this blog. However, I would like to have a focus in my posts. For the next few weeks, I'll try out one or more options for the focus of this blog. If the first one works, I'll keep it. If not, I'll try another.

Thus, for the immediate future, I will be attempting to find and describe the color in my life. I use the term color as a concrete concept, but also as an abstract one. I will write about ways I have encountered color in what I read, see, hear, and experience. However, I will also include ways my life has become more colorful in the sense that it has become more full. There are several reasons I'm doing this. First, I am a student. As such, my education should be a process that leaves me more enriched--better able to live a fuller life. Second, I am a student of literature. The only reason to study literature is to gain a broader knowledge of the human experience, and thus to live a fuller life. Third, I am a student of Christ. Learning to imitate Christ brings the freedom to live a life full of color, rather than the gray life of enslavement to sin. Paul said that we learn to walk in righteousness so that we can "take hold of the life that is truly life" (1 Timothy 6).

The Dead Poets' Society read poetry in an attempt "suck the marrow out of life." Patients of Freud and Lacan embraced new theories in an attempt to break out of their psychological imprisonments. Jesus' disciples followed Him because they saw that He had the words of eternal life (John 6:68). The people in these three cases were searching for that "life that is truly life," that life full of color. The reason I think noticing moments of color, literal or figurative, is so important in our lives is that I believe these moments give us a glimpse of the world we were made for. The imagery of heaven in the book of Revelation is one filled with hard, shining color. Much of it seems harsh and glaring when I read it; it's for creatures more powerful than I with my unresurrected body (yes, I'm recalling Lewis in "Weight of Glory" and "Great Divorce" here). Learning to pay attention to the moments when that world of terrible beauty breaks through ("the kingdom of God is forcefully advancing") can make an enormous difference in our lives. Living in a state of wonder at these moments reminds us of God's presence, of what we were created for, and it brings us great joy. Truth be told, that's the real (selfish) reason I'm focusing on this in my blog. I need to be reminded to pay attention, to look for color, and to live in wonder.


It's late on a Saturday night (or early on a Sunday morning), so I'll just give one example before I get some sleep.
Boys Like Girls' newest album, "Love Drunk" has a song called "Real Thing," and the chorus goes like this:


"'Cause this is the real thing
When love changes everything
This is the night when every heart's exploding
The real thing
Slow down, it's happening
'Cause you got time to burn in the heat of the moment
That summer radio
Fireworks off the patio
A 3am string of green lights in a row
And the real thing
Love can change anything
If you can just let go"

First off, I have to say that the "string of green lights" reminded me of "The Great Gatsby," (sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it!). But the real reason for me posting those lyrics is that they demonstrate that we all recognize the feeling of the "real thing." Yes, this band's talking about a crush, but a crush can be a kind of color in our lives. This is "just" a punk/pop song written by some twentysomething boys, but it might as well be Byron's "She walks in beauty like the night" when it comes to describing human experience. It feels like summer radio, driving with that song turned up loud, singing with your friends on the freeway. It's like fireworks, making you jittery, exploding in light and sound, giving you a rush like when you light them off your patio.
The initial crush is an obsession with a person as a whole (yes, this is Lewis on Eros in "The Four Loves"). Every little thing about them seems perfect. It's infatuating; it reminds you have great life can be. It can actually be a quick snippet of unconditional love; for a short time, the beloved can do no wrong--we feel he or she was "made for me." Like all glimpses of color in this world, this life, it comes to an end. It may come and go, or it may disappear forever. For a brief time, however, it brightens our sight with crackling fireworks of color.

P.S. Sorry for writing about something as shallow as lyrics and crushes, but it's Saturday night; what's on your mind?