Leaders All
In which I read a fun novel and become sick to death of a lot of "modern" assumptions
Sorry to be so late this morning. I forgot I had to be up betimes for one of those fasting blood draws. Turns out I cannot actually think at 4am without lashings of orange pekoe. Then, while I was languishing in the waiting room, waiting to be pricked, I peered at those two awful New York Times headlines you might have seen over the weekend. One was “To My Daughter My Gender Was Never Complicated,” (ye gods), and the other was “The Case for Ending A Long, Mostly Good Marriage.” I didn’t read either one because I didn’t want to. Instead, today I would rather mull over some more over the question of “leadership.”
For the last two weeks I have been binge listening to The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. The reader on audible, Genevieve Gaunt, is to die for. I am almost done with Book Five (I know, maybe I am over doing it). To enjoy Emma M Lion one has to be—and I say the with the utmost gentleness, so as to offend no one at all—someone formed and shaped according to modern sensibilities, and yet suffering from nostalgic longing for a past one never knew. What is that called? I feel like there’s a German word for it. This clip doesn’t quite capture what I mean but it’s the best I can do:
What is particularly brilliant about Emma M Lion is that nothing bad happens to her. She is able to form and nurture a friend group including three eligible bachelors. She is the mistress of her own destiny. Everyone is anxious for her well being and when she breaks all the social norms, her circumstances always measurably improve. And You Know What, even though that literally wouldn’t have been a thing, as a person well versed in decadent 2026 cultural assumptions, I am Totally here for it. If you’re looking for a fun summer read, 5 out of 5, would recommend, though not if you are stickler for exact historical veracity. For that, my dears, you are going to have to fall back on the Real Victorian, Anthony Trollop.
Anyway, while I have been listening to Emma M Lion and suspending, judiciously, all my disbelief, I have, as you have seen by the avalanche of posts lately, been tripping a lot over the content of Sheila Wray Gregoire (SWG). SWG, for me, is swiftly passing into that great cloud of deconstructed witnesses about whom I will not be writing much anymore, on account of how they don’t sound the least bit Christian. (For Real, Emma M Lion is better at quoting the Bible than SWG or KDM, or BAB, or any of them.) The latest stumbling stone, which I wrote about on Sunday, was this question that she posed with breathless horror:
How, exactly, is a God that would make some people inferior to others (even if people claim “it’s equal but different roles!”) good?
The more I’ve contemplated this question over the last few days, the more baffled I have become. To ask it, it seems to me anyway, one has to become myopically blind to the state of the world as it is, and the little one does see one must regard as intrinsically evil. All the glittering variations of the created order must be flattened into a cement parking lot.
