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Notes from a Tuesday morning

Theology Tuesdays and Thursdays, as I now think of them, wind up being more reflective than the other five days in the week, as a rule. Between my Early Christianity class and Liberation Theology, I look for a place sit, read, write, reflect. Today, it is in a café down the street. Law students at the table behind me review for an exam on property laws, legislators from the capital discuss a bill being introduced by a party who “needs a lot of help,” and a WU employee eats breakfast with students from her office.

My notes on an Edward P. Jones story I am writing about grow; in a few days, I’m going to hear him read in person. Pulitzer prize winner. Macarthur “genius” grant. Reading his fiction, I am struck by the broad sweep of social issues that a few pages can encompass, his analysis more penetrating and “real” than a dozen volumes of non-fiction. That is why English appealed so much to me as a major; we are all studying the same thing, all of us who are interested in culture and society and politics and race and gender and poverty and oppression and beauty and art and what it means to be human. We simply look at it from different perspectives. Jones’s perspective happens to be particularly congenial for me.

A few moments outside, walking from café to library. The sounds of a flute float out the open window of a studio in the music building, filtering through the leaves of a cherry tree which only lately has started to show leaves under the blooms, bouncing off of rhododendrons and whispering joy to my spirit, whatever that may be.

I learn we have a new pope. Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger, has been virulently against liberation theology in the past and participated in church crackdowns on some of its great theologians…Boff, Gutierrez, etc.

The music of the flute is silenced and for a while, I grieve.

6 comments to Notes from a Tuesday morning

  • Tash

    I’d love to go out and just sit, write and people watch. Except i don’t think about how i personally can go out into the world and save it. I just think how futile it all is, and wonder what the death of the world will be like.
    Nothing like a good ol’ comment from a realist, eh? 🙂
    *hugs*

  • Anonymous

    I’m sad too, and plan to post about that later.

    Thomas–

  • J.M. Shiveley

    Man talk about the wrong pope at the wrong time…

    And still jealous of lib class…

  • B-Day Twin Julie who has Crrrraaaazy eyes and should be finishing her paper

    I thought about you when I read that good ol’ B (as I lovingly call him) was “not in support”, shall we say, of liberation theology. That’s my pope on the rebound. I mean, very nice man in place of power who is very…well aged.

  • Aja

    Such a disheartening of the spirit there for a moment…
    And I enjoyed the contrasts in the different people you observed in the cafe…

    Missing you.

  • Janet Parrott

    As a long time fan of the author, I long to read your papers and love to hear your thoughts….how are you? Will I be spending days with you at or annual scholarly convention??? Oh how I miss you…