Bleak House: Chapter 7

I find Charles Dickens extremely verbose. Soooo many words... so little plot movement. I couldn't even read the last paragraph of the chapter because I couldn't keep my eyes open. It will be a sheer act of will if I ever finish this book. 100 pages in, 717 to go...

Bleak House: Chapter 4

I don't ever want to be like Mrs. Jellyby. For all the good she did for others, and all the time she invested, she alienated her own husband and children, those whom she should have been taking the best care of as a wife and mother. But her reactions to Peepy were horrible. And her poor husband was estranged from her, though living in the same house. All of her housekeeping had gone to pot. Her house was a mess and her children were filthy. Her only concern was for the Africans, and I can't see how her neglect for the family God gave her was glorifying to Him.

I don't ever want to be like Mrs. Jellyby.

I don't ever want to be so busy with church commitments that I can't spend time with my husband and make him feel loved. I don't ever want to be so caught up in my own hobbies that I don't spend time playing with my daughter. I want them to know that they are important to me, and if I place them behind other things, no matter how good those things may be, they will not feel important. They will not feel loved. They will feel second rate. And I never want them to feel that way. Leif is second in my life, behind God, but not behind the church. Ellie is behind Leif, but again, she comes before church, and she comes before scrapbooking. I find in scripture where I am commanded to love the Lord with all my heart, submit to my husband, and train my child, but nowhere do I see that I need to overcommit myself to the local church and so push away the ones God has given me.

No, I don't ever want to be like Mrs. Jellyby.

Bleak House: Chapter 3

Ah.... NOW we're starting to get somewhere. The plot begins.

Bleak House: Chapter 2 (On Fashion)

Once again, there was one paragraph that really stood out to me in this chapter. It is the second paragraph of the second chapter, and it reads like this:

[The world of fashion] is not a large world... There is much good in it; there are many good and true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up too much in jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle around the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

Initially this struck me as I am considering what material I want to cover for Protocol this year. There is a place for fashion. We ought to take care in how we present ourselves, as God's creations. But if we get caught up in it, we reveal not the Life that is within us, but the death we are allowing to foster by our misplaced focus.

What Dickens wrote about fashion in the 1800s is true about fashion today. That is not because the fashion itself has remained the same, but because humanity has. And his truth about fashion can apply to any area of life if we allow it. In any God-given field, there is much good. There are people who hold to that which is good and true about it. But there are those, too, who are so wrapped up in this tiny little world that they do not see the other worlds God has created around them, nor the God who created them. And so the challenge is to see the world as God sees it, within the context of Himself and all that He has created, and to take what is good, and true, and right from it and discard what Satan has distorted to blind us.

Using Dickens' example of fashion, we must ask ourselves, "What is good, and true, and right about fashion?" Is there anything good about it? Or is it wholly and completely shallow and base? What are the origins of fashion?

And so we go back to the beginning. Genesis 3 gives us the first account of clothing. When Adam and Eve sinned, they realized they were naked and sewed fig leaf coverings for themselves. After the curse, God made garments of skin from a sacrificial animal. The purpose of clothing is to cover our nakedness. It is a symbolic of the sacrifice Christ would make in order to cover our sins. So when we consider fashion, we ought to remember first and foremost modesty. Is the purpose to cover or reveal? The boundaries of modesty are dictated by culture. In the Victorian era, it was considered immodest for a woman to show her ankles. Not so today. In Irian Jaya, it is considered immodest if a man is seen without his gourd, despite the fact that the gourd really doesn't cover anything by our standards. In the same vein, if an American man tried to walk down the street wearing only a gourd, which would be completely modest by Irian Jayan standards, he would most certainly be arrested in a heartbeat for indecent exposure here. Modesty is dictated by culture, and we would do well to make sure we know what our clothes are saying about us before we wear them.

Once modesty has been made the priority, we ought to choose clothing that is appropriate for the event or task at hand, and finally something that is pleasant and flattering to look at. After all, we are representatives of God, and as His creations we ought to reflect the goodness and beauty that He possesses. But if we focus our attention on the form first, we will almost certainly lose sight of the Creator and His purpose. And then we reflect not Him with our dress, but our own sinful desires. And that is not fashionable at all.

Bleak House: Chapter 1

I started reading Bleak House last night. I only read the first chapter, but it was a good start. The first chapter is all about Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a case which has been dragging on forever and ever. Just as the High Court of Chancery is at the very heart of the fog in the city, so this case leaves all who are affiliated with it in the fog of its complication and despair.

This paragraph in particular caught my attention:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

I have no idea where Dickens is going with the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit, but I can tell you where my mind goes with it. Sin. It reminds me of sin. It is twisted and complicated, just like sin. The longer it goes on, the more it consumes. People fall into it, often without knowing why or how. Entire generations are born into it and die out of it, their whole lives defined and tormented by it. Sin is an ugly thing.

Like I said, I have no idea where Dickens is going with this suit. But I'm guessing that, like God did with sin, Dickens is going to provide resolution to the suit. He's going to provide redemption for those who are caught up in it. Now I just have to read on to see how.