Inner Rings

For those that don’t know I’m stealing the title from the annual “Commemoration Oration” given at King’s College by C.S. Lewis in 1944 (later published in The Weight of Glory). The idea of inner rings has really been on my mind lately. I’ll make an attempt to explain in a few words what is meant by inner ring, but for a thorough understanding of what I’m talking about read Lewis’s conclusion to his space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. Basically I think it can be best explained by focusing on the typical high school setting. Within the high school there is say a quarter of the students that might be referred to as the “cool kids.” They are an inner ring, however even within that group there exists smaller even more elite groups. So the way to picture it is concentric rings like an onion cut in half. While my example makes it sound like inner rings are bad, I’m not thinking of the elitist type of groups for this blog, but more the your “best friends” that form your own personal innermost ring. These groups may have a positive or negative effect on you, but either way I find it quite fascinating how they form and what they are like. Lewis wrote/spoke on it mainly because he saw it as the primary way in which the world will affect your walk with Christ.

At every stage of my life I can pretty easily narrow my friends down to a handful that would form my innermost ring. In high school I had the 4-bangers, during my undergrad the Waterford guys (and a Pigeon), during the summer was the BBM crew, while working for NASA the Poor Souls, and now in grad school the OC. What really makes these groups an inner ring is that each one has its own language or key words that will let those within it know that you belong. This is so true with friends…just pay attention when you are hanging out with a friend and you feel comfortable with them, but then their “best friend” shows up. They immediately start talking in some kind of foreign language and suddenly you feel like you totally don’t belong with that person anymore.

Now I’ll make my point really clear…for each group I’ll just list words. If you are a part of that inner ring or at least that part of my life it will make some sense or possibly bring to mind numerous stories. However any ring that you weren’t a part of the words will just seem like gibberish or at best pointless.

4-Bangers
Mohair, Beast, Black Velvet, Ron Style, Grande Marqi, cloves, the shed, po-po hunting, pregame subs, tip 21 w/ rum, warehouse ball, Hacker, 40 in 4-4-1, gummy worms

Waterford Boys
Tabasco, Shaq, 60 wings, Blitz, Chavez, mini-kegs, trickass, chaches, the Gathering, Taco Bell, Ben and Jerry’s, Good Ass Dave, 3am talks, goldfish, Miller Lite, kiss of the cross, come here girl I’ll hold you close, taquilla, Eldora, Beav, Hank, Lawrence, Iben, Fender

BBM Crew
Tucson, Boring Oregon, DJW, JB, honey wagon, Elmer, the rock game, Ann Landers, Lucky, Rascal, chocolate, icy wing, Oh did ja now?, 2lb steak, hiking at night, waders, sexual harassment notification, fishing

Poor Souls
Rock N’ Roll, sleep, highway, movies, enjoy yourself, tennis, Sunday church, rocket sled thing, drop tower, autonomous vehicle

OC
Now this group being that it is current I can’t really do the same thing with. In fact out of all the groups I believe this one is truly the least defined ring. It actually shows the full complexity that makes the inner ring hard to define (even for Lewis). See OC really isn’t a fair description of my “inner ring.” That is already a pretty large group and is part of an even larger group, NLC. One chain would be NLC – OC – OC (Wed) – Ocdudes, but that line excludes many of my closest friends. See at this point in my life there really are numerous splits with numerous overlapping rings. Lewis talked of the stability of rings and how the members aren’t obvious until it stabilizes, and that some may never stabilize. Based on the structure of my life I really don’t expect this one to ever stabilize, but even with an unstable system I’ve already formed some of the deepest relationships that I’ve ever had in my life.

At this point I don’t really feel like adding a conclusion to this because I really haven’t finalized my thoughts on it. Plus it feels so incomplete not even mentioning how destructive it can be for someone to try to get into a ring. I just find it so interesting how these inner rings (the best friend ones) form without anyone noticing or even trying to get into it. They simply just form because of similar interests and a common bond. Alright I’m going to end with that.