College, Scholarship, And Life Rant

[ChristinaTherese]

I just finished writing a paper on how my faith and my major/honors project interact. Well, I talked about that for about half of a paragraph and might make it longer. But I just couldn't come up with much connection other than that the education I have been getting here in college will profit me for other reasons, because I have learned so much about how to think critically and express that thought during the last three years and I know that will be useful for a very long time to come. Specifically, I quoted A Right to be Merry, where Mother Francis (Please, if anyone knows how to cite her name as an author, let me know.) says:

"A truly educated girl is equipped to draw on her own resources. She is trained in the schools to hold correct perceptions on life and is keen to discern the true from the merely specious. She has mental poise and a certain mental maturity which is at once the condition and the reward of the integrating and correlating of knowledge. She is more humble because of her education than she would be without it. True education always fosters humility, although mere accumulation of facts fosters pride. All these things are requisite in the cloister. Above all, authentic education fits a person for a life of solitude. A girl who has learned to cultivate the soil of her own intelligence is already conditioned for an interior life. Her education is thus supremely useful to her in the cloister.

"A cloistered nun who has been trained to relate one science to another will ordinarily be quicker to relate the unfolding mysteries of the spiritual life one to another, and also to recognize the superb paradox on which the interior life is built and in which all these mysteries discover their integrity: humility is exaltation, effacement is enrichment, death is life, and all the other facets of the one splendorous truth which is Love. A cultivated mind is accustomed to cut its way through mere excrescences to the core of things, and this aptitude is of utmost importance in the enclosed contemplative life, where one can so easily get lost in a clutter of inconsequentials and mistake a scratch on the epidermis for a mortal wound."

Except, I didn't actually quote all of that, just a little bit that didn't refer quite so explicitly to the cloister. And I managed to mention the Little Sisters of the Poor too, so I guess I'm winning at life. (I love both those orders.) But, really, I find no connection between faith and the study of linguistics, and even less with the study of the punctuation in Beowulf. I wanted to quote this poem, and I might take it to my professor as an extra attachment to the paper:

_Dialogue_

I am glad I thought of philosophers,
God said.
Their strenuous efforts swear in public confession
How my thoughts are not the thoughts of men.

Engineers to pan all stuff of earth
Are good
For witness of my ways' meandering
With casual mirth the sweat of all invention.

Artist to keep my archives in good
Order,
Poets to epic major enterprises
Of mine, spread out my glory everlasting.

The whole arrangement I have made,
God said,
Has worth. I like that race of theologians
Turning my diamond, face by face, on men.

Only I wish someone would chance
Along
To marvel at a candle through a window,
Slosh bare-ankled in the dew, and laugh

Because my ballerina gnats annoy
Some larger, graver creatures.
No one saw, I fear, (God said)
The mint blade in the gravel.

I know men are so busy telling
The story of me (even if unknowing).
I shall not regret the captains, thinkers,
Doers, talkers, workers,
Even makers. I only wish
(God said)
There could be someone now to notice things
I do just for your pleasure.

And I said:
Lord, take me!

~Mother Mary Francis

I understand the goodness in academic stuff, I see how people can and do serve God in their work, I just can't say that I see how I do or could because it's not me. Basically, I felt like I don't really belong here. My friends want to be writers, teachers, an actress, etc. And I... want to be a nun. Although as I said above, what I have learned about how to study and learn and think will always be worth very much.

Hence posting here, because I can say what I really mean without thinking about how this is kind of going into an academic paper and maybe I don't want to quite lay my heart entirely out there. I mean, if it was just Dr. C I'd be fine. But more people and ending up in the library (they're rarely looked ate, but all the old honors projects are there), I don't want to do that and I won't.

[Catherine Therese]

The study of linguistics?
EXCELLENT preparation for textual analysis of Scripture.

Scripture, and indeed all theology, is always study on one's knees - but "grace perfects nature", and facility with the various tools and devices of contemporary academic method is VERY helpful to have.

Take it from someone who studied some undergraduate linguistics - but a fair bit of postgraduate Scripture.

(TOTALLY appreciate that sometimes when frustrated one just has to have a rant, btw... but when you're feeling better, having got it all out there, I hope it encourages you to know that linguistics NEEDN'T be wasted.)



I can't speak to Beowulf, though... I've never studied it (or even actually encountered a copy of the text!) It doesn't seem to have the same popularity in the Australian curriculum as it does in the US... and I have to admit its never much appealed to me. Given, however, that the opinion of numerous smart people whom I trust seems to be overwhelmingly in the favour of studying it, however, at some point I intend to get around to it.

[nikita92]

Christina-How is your discernment going? Are you planning on graduating,and then enter somewhere?