words and ladeeeda words again

Write what you want, what occurs to you. Be free at the hour of creation. What’s important is the expression. What’s important is to let out the things you want to say, the things that want to come out, either because they hurt too much inside, all these bits of broken glass that cut you, or because they want to be shared, want to be contagious, want to give of themselves. Always be free and defend your liberty with blood and fire.
-Eduardo Galeano

My dad always says about me, “Catherine has never met a rule she didn’t like.” Mostly, he’s right. I feel safe in a black and white world, one with limits and expectations, rubrics and correct answers. You may be wondering, where is such a world? Welcome to my brain. I hope you enjoy your stay.
I can think of a couple examples of black and white worlds in my favorite young adult literature. While I’m talking about it, let it be known that I still prefer the young adult section in the public library. How does one know when she has graduated to the adult section of the library and is graduation ever compulsory?
The first book that comes to mind is The Giver, by Lois Lowry. The town where the book is set is literally black and white. People take pills to suppress their desires, and the rule book for behavior is exhaustive. There is no such thing as doing ‘what you want,’ because there is no concept of want. The Giver exists to contain all of the ambiguity inherent in the world—he is the keeper of memories, of the past, of pain.
Then there is the town of Camazotz in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. This is a town completely taken by IT, the over-sized brain (which was always repulsive to me as a child) whose pulsing dictates the shadow of evil spreading across the universe. Sounds dramatic, and I suppose it is, being the childish version of the good vs. evil, love conquers all sort of tale. Anyway, the pulse of this brain rules the town too. Balls bounce to it, paper boys throw to it, and business men walk to it. There is no individuality. Happiness does not exist, beyond conforming to the beat.
Moral of the story: black and white, rule-driven worlds are a bad idea. Hence, the trip back to the drawing board after Satan presented his plan. In Camazotz and The Giver, rules functioned to replace choice; they obliviated the emotions that let you know what you want and why.
Being a rule-lover, I have to be careful. I am asking myself now, do I keep rules because I want to keep rules or do I keep rules because they happen to coincide with what I want? I was going to say that obedience for obedience’s sake is silly, just as subversion for subversion’s sake is silly—but I’m not sure. It all depends on where the rules are coming from, doesn’t it? Maybe obedience and subversion should not be set up opposite each other. Maybe a better match for subversion is conformity. There’s another gospel paradox. Conformity that maintains and supports individuality.
I have often heard from people that when in doubt, start obeying the rule just to obey. The desire will come later. This works fine in a gospel context, but I don’t think this is a very good pattern for life in general. (Here I go separating life and the gospel again; shouldn’t they be the same thing? What in the world is a gospel context?) A lot of rules are total crap, and that’s what Galeano is talking about—knowing what you want enough to chuck the rules that don’t suit you. He’s talking about giving up the rules so that you can know what you want.