“Staff” Can Be Beautiful Stuff, but It Does not Last

Last updated on: April 27, 2017 at 9:35 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

“Staff” Can Be Beautiful Stuff, but It Does not Last 2017-04-27T09:35:46-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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The City glistened by Lake Michigan and was so beautiful that visitors would cry when they saw it. The great Columbian Exposition of 1893 built a White City on the shores of Lake Michigan next to Chicago, a town better known for burning down after a cow kicked a lantern and for being, perhaps in revenge, very good at slaughtering animals.

Chicago showed the world, however, that she was also a place that could dream beautiful dreams and make them so in almost no time. Chicago created beauty.

In my office, I have a guide book to the Exposition and it is glorious. You could learn at the Exposition, technology was everywhere and also have some (a little-bit naughty) fun (belly dancing!) that passed all but the most censorious critics. For the first time ever you could have some Cracker Jack, and if you did not care if never came back then you could spend all your time drinking the award winning Pabst Blue Ribbon. The Exposition had the only Ferris Wheel in the world, since Mr. Ferris invented it for Chicago. As for a stroll in the electric lights at night, the man who designed Central Park in New York City poured his genius into the grounds with canals, a wooded island, and many romantic views of Lake Michigan.

Sadly, there is only one building left of the great Exposition. Chicago is given to winds, I am told, and to fires, but much of the White City ended up being made of staff, not very durable stuff : “a composition of plaster and fibrous material used for a temporary finish and in ornamental work, as on exposition buildings.” The glory of staff is that you can make highly elaborate ornaments quickly and cheaply, especially if you paint everything white. The stuff is easy to repair as it can be sprayed right on a building using hoses. If you have the labor, then staff can be made to look like glorious stuff . . .until stuff happens. Then staff becomes bad stuff and a gleaming city in the sun quickly becomes a burned out wreck to be carted off.

The Exposition was a dream of a better urban life and to the extent it inspired the “city beautiful” movement, then it was good stuff. However, one wonders what would have been if in addition to all the other genius architects and business leaders more of the Exposition had been made to last. It turned out to be possible to do it. .

Walt Disney’s Dad worked on The Great Columbian Exposition and this may be why we were blessed with Disneyland, a place that Walt did not build out of staff. Stuff happens, but then it passes, because it is only made of staff. True beauty endures and Walt wanted to build beauty more like the idea, more durable than staff.

Our broken world throws up many evils and some goods as it struggles to deal with the grit evil put in the perfect cosmic machine. It spews out stuff and the clever man can often save himself for a time by making staff of it. We create a dream and the dream lasts for a time, but other stuff happens: winds, fires, thievery and our White City ceases to gleam. It soon is dimmed by human tears.

Beauty endures and so best to build on the eternal, not just by building in brick and wood, though that can endure more of the stuff of life. Time destroys even the hardest granite or stone as the ruins of the ancient world show. Oddly, the ideas and the souls are what matter, because they are eternal. The Great Exposition vanished in a short time, but the dream of the alabaster city, undimmed by human tears lived. It lives now. We do better stuff if we build on good ideas, but we do even greater things if we allow the ideas to serve mind. It is Mind that is eternal, beautiful, and durable. It is Mind that no stuff can damage.

It is, of course, only in the Mind of God, known through the person of Jesus, that we can dream the most durable dreams: the true romance that cannot die and must be seen in the City of God that is coming. The day will arrive when a great City will come lowering down and we will behold the dream, not in staff or stone, but build by the Mind of God to endure for all ages of ages.

May we all enjoy that great exposition of the power of God.

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