Who cares what was Gone with the Wind?
Beauty, gone.
Culture, gone,
Safety, gone.,
Men, gone.
Decorum, gone.
Etc.
To be replaced with what!
Ungenteel evolutionism.
“We built this culture!” Anglo, Euro, American, polite society! They seem to scream incessantly. I don’t blame their sad and sullen embrace of the prereconstructionist south. It was beautiful. Hauntingly beautiful so that long after it was plowed to the ground the characters who beautified the landscape told their stories to the mourning of a pre war country.
I was never southern and I have never had much respect for the supposed culture that was being mourned in my ears through my civil rights era minds eye.
It was better then, they sang more and more loudly. Why can’t people see that. It was better for some and it was worse for some.
I was a student of Steinbeck and I see now that his stoic realism was more in line with the America that I experienced and saw the fruit of and heard the stories about. Raw and city. The southern decorum was a myth hat I had never even heard the stories about. I do believe the stories of a culture that had risen to such expressions of beauty and lucidity . I believe that the teenagers had time to beautify themselves and learn piety and poise. Other people were enslaved to allow them this privilege. That is true and when God snatched it out of their paws they couldn’t believe that it was as though it had been a dream. The depression came trampling upon this country with a vengeance. The culture was razed to the dust.
Chapter one of the book makes me jealous and angry, but I press on. I have no right to be jealous of a girl of privilege or a culture not my own. None of us deserve the privileges to which we were born. I do not appreciate the inheritance of culture that I was bequeathed. It was a beauty of storytelling that is hauntingly beautiful and it belongs to all of us.
I couldn’t believe that until Hamilton. All of our hands were at the plow to create the memories that were woven into our American History. We can all play the parts because we inherited the catastroph of the tower of Babyl that fell on that fateful day.
“Frankly Scarlet…”. Who cares? We all care. But we all don’t know from whence we have fallen. The biblical knowledge that grew the decorum that was the precision war southeast a divine gift or a loan and what we do with it is everybody’s responsibility, much like our economy or the engineering of the wondrous subway system that makes me smile. The decorum and culture of southern life is a Biblical gift. It is tended by the garden of a couple of generations of people who were enlightened by the golden rule and other dear portions of scripture that are blinded in other areas of the country. Like a beautiful flower garden with secrets that observation cannot teach you, that is the southern cultural beauty. We must let the south teach the rest of the country the things that God has taught them. Do not despise the day of small things and the details of humble submission and respect for providence. I am very aware of the pride of the south as I am of my own northern pride, but I am choosing to focus on the image of God that I see in stark contrast to my own northern krassness. Help Lord as I delve into this book to put my emotions aside and learn of You what was “Gone with the Wind”. Amen.
