Radical refusal to consent.
More specifically, radical refusal to consent to the spirit of the times. It's part of what I admire in them, but it didn't strike me until recently.
John Pondoro Taylor, in his memoirs, recalled having seen Maasai walking through Nairobi as if it simply wasn't there, as they had always done, dressed in their traditional fashion, and carrying spears. On their way from one place to another, refusing to consent that the development of the city meant anything in real terms.
I was recently waiting in the Church for the confession line to form. One of the Mantilla Girls walked in. I've seen this one once or twice before, but not at this Church. She not only wears the mantilla, and is very pretty, but she carries herself with pride.
They don't all do that. Some of the younger women who wear chapel veils do so very naturally. Some sort of timidly, or uncomfortably. With at least one, and I could be massively off the mark, it's almost sort of an affectation. But here, you see something quite different.
Or so it seems.
I don't know her. I could be wrong. But it's clear she isn't timid and it's not an affectation.
It is, it seems to me, a radical rejection of the modern secular world in favor of existential nature.
For those who believe in the modern world, in modernism, or the spirit of the times, or who are hostile to religion, that may seem like a shocking statement. But the essence of our modern lives (or post-modern, if you insist) is a radical rejection of nature, most particularly our own natures. Wearing a chapel veil indicates that the person deeply believes in a set of beliefs that are enormously grounded in nature. The wearer is a woman, in radical alignment with biology in every sense, and accepting everything that means, including what the modern world, left and right, detest. I nolunt. She's accepting of the derision, and ironically, or in actuality not ironically, probably vastly happier than those who have accommodated modernity.
Moreover, those who think they're reaching out for a radical inclusion of the natural, who don't take the same approach, never can quite reach authenticity. There can always be a slight feeling that something isn't authentic, and there isn't. Reserving an element of modernity defeats it.
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