Outward and upward
By Kinley Bowers · Contributing Writer
This article could be all bones — percentages, national rankings and ROI ratios that serve as objective testaments to Grove City College’s merit. I could exhume and assemble these statistics into some sort of static diplodocus exhibit right here in The Collegian: orderly rows of cervical vertebrae, heavy fewmurs and dorsal ribs.
Instead, the following is my attempt to put flesh on the skeleton and give life to the reasons why I love this school.
Last week, in my Food and Feasting class, Dr. Mitchell veered into a lecture on sin and its proclivity for making things shrivel. Indulging in gluttony, pride, sloth, envy, etc., Mitchell argued, will make you less of a person.
Mitchell used Tolkien’s Gollum to illustrate his point: The longer Gollum cleaves to the ring, the less there is of Smeagol. This is the case with many classic villains and monsters, who, in conjunction with their evildoings, grow ever less human.
People, places, activities and relationships can either be expansive or insulated. Unventilated relationships are the ones that tend to become toxic and inimical. At Grove City College, I believe that it is more difficult to be isolated than it is to be integrated, since the professors and students, the classes and clubs, the mission and action all press into an expansive approach to life.
Dr. Biddle calls this campus “the bubble,” but it’s also a bubbling world. It’s a place that lifts you out of yourself and teaches you how to live expansively and humanly.
With open hours, Ed Talks, Fivers, the Institute for Faith and Freedom, the Christian Writer’s Conference, ISI forums, the Hearth, theater productions, concerts, recitals, public debates … there are constant opportunities for students to seize the day.
When we stop learning and engaging, our world grows smaller and consequently less true to reality. Wendell Berry once complimented a group of men by saying that they “acknowledge freely and without embarrassment their love for the things they are trying to save.”
This can be said of the college as well. In an age that is dismissive of tradition, duty, beauty, humility, community and Christianity, Grove City has no choice but to be a bubble and it does so with brilliant resilience.
Our school teaches its students not only what to do for a living, but how to live. At the organizational leadership meeting, President Lingo stated that “this is not just a time to prepare for life and leadership, this is a time to live it. I’m sure that most of you in this room want to be great leaders. So, become a servant.”
The servant-leader is the person with the most expansive view; he has an outward focus from the bottom and the top.
I certainly fall short of expansive living time and again. But I’m thankful for places and people that have taught me repeatedly to look away from myself and toward the bigger picture.
I’m reminded of this when listening to Dr. Rawl recite “The Wild Swans at Coole” in Emmett’s Orchard, tapping a maple tree with Dr. Wood and his young family, reading Dr. Trueman’s “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” conversing with Dr. Brooks about the productive household and watching Dr. Edwards watch Elvis Presley sing.
This also happens with my peers, with young men and women who delight in a life lived for others. I’m thankful for irreplaceable people and a college, a home, that strives after the transcendentals.
As I warned you at the beginning, this is an inadequate attempt at invigorating the reasons why Grove City College matters. But I hope at the very least, you saw the diplodocus blink.
