Sorority Rush in the World

Last night was bid night in Charlottesville.  Bid night--the end of sorority rush.  The night some girls are filled with pride as they feel accepted, loved, and wanted, and the night other girls feel rejected, lonely and unworthy.  "It's a terrible system," we say.  It's a system that those who are more reserved dread as they dig deep to have the energy for two weeks of superficial conversation with random girls who begin to blend together like the smoothies they make in their rooms.  It's a system where extroverted girls thrive displaying their personalities like the sparkles on the princess crowns they wore as toddlers.  It's a system where those who know very few girls already in sororities have no one to speak for them, and a system where those who made "mistakes" in high school and know many girls in the sororities have all too many to speak against them.  It's a system that works for some and doesn't for others.  And we like to say it's a flawed system, a fake system, a false system, but sadly I think perhaps it's not.  Sadly I think it actually is a microcosm of much of the world.

It's a microcosm of the world where we make snap judgements of others, where grace is rare, forgiveness is provisional, redemption is scarce and love is conditional.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  Brother Curtis Almquist writes:

Compassion

Jesus consistently showed how “the first shall be last, and the last first,” because this was very much his own story. And we could say that the last person on our own list, the person who may seem least or last or lost - or simply a loser – is someone on Jesus’ own list, someone for whom Jesus has an infinite amount of love and with whom he plans to share eternity.

-Br. Curtis Almquist
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Perhaps sorority rush and our view of it can help us look at ourselves; perhaps by recognizing the flaws of sorority rush we can recognize the brokenness in the world and then we can begin to change it.  Perhaps recognizing they are not different is in fact a start, a way to redeem both--sorority rush and the world.