I have completed my first month of school, and, let me tell you, I am so busy! I have never had to read this much before in my entire life. Here is just one week's Homework List:
Mormonism Class
- Quinn reading pgs. 66-194 &265-313
- Brown reading pgs. 3-52
- Stapley reading pgs. 53-117
- Stapley reading #2 pgs. 1-34
- Stapley reading #3 pgs. 1-33
- 1-2 page single spaced response
Virginia Woolf Class
- Old Bloomsbury pgs. 181-201
- Marius the Epicurean pgs. 1-8, 227-240
- Clive Bell's Art pgs. 1-48, 76-94, 150-238, 251-291
- Religio Medici pgs. 12-13
- A Passionate Apprentice pgs. 310-314
Theories and Methods Class
- What is Gnosticism? pgs. 1-343 (whole book)
- Harnack's "Outlines of the History of Dogma pgs. 541-567
- 500 word response
Love, Death, and Nothingness
- Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics?" pgs. 181-202
- Nishitani's "Religion and Nothingness" pgs. 1-76, 119-133
So, if I'm not mistaken, that is right around 1,000 to 1,100 pages of reading and two responses in one week. Also, I have to be able to converse about these readings with some insight since three of my classes are seminars (discussion-based courses with 16 or so students) and one has a section hour where we discuss with a group of 10 students.
So let's see, it has been a while since I posted since I've been so insanely busy. But September has been wonderful nonetheless. I finished up my last freelance editing project of the summer. It was a bit stressful to have to split my time between editing and doing homework, but I finished it by the deadline. (A total miracle . . . and lots of hard work.) On Labor Day, Spencer and I decided to go on a bike ride to explore the Beaver Brook Nature Reserve a mile or so up the road. It was so nice to get out!
Spencer and I also got to go to our very first clambake! Spencer's brother, Caleb, came down from Maine to spend the day with us, and it was a blast. It was the 48th annual clambake for the ward (talk about tradition!), and they always have a dessert contest. Well, I ended up becoming a judge, and, let me tell you, eating 20 or more desserts is not the pseudo-heaven that I thought it would be. It didn't take long for the others judges and I to come up with a system of splitting one portion between us all in order to survive the experience. :) But, it was delicious. Oh! I tried a clam! Sooooooo weird. I don't know if I'd go seek it out as a meal, but it was okay. Needless to say, I was simply proud that I tried one. After a day of socializing and playing games with Caleb, it was back to reality of school and homework.
Luckily my classes are going well, and I enjoy them. (Well, except for Theories and Methods, which is required. But I really like the people in my section group, so there's that.) I've settled into work and started into some extracurricular activities. The first activity is being a choir member pretty much every Wednesday for Noon Service. Noon Service is a hour or so gathering, everyone is welcome, where a religious or spiritual group on campus represents a worship service from their tradition. The groups take turns, so the LDS Student Association will be conducting noon service in a week or two, and so far, the Unitarian Universalists, Muslim Council, the Divinity United Church of Christ Student Group have led the noon service. This has turned out to be a very powerful experience for me. Something about singing just invites the Spirit, I think. And Harry Huff, our director is extremely talented. I've also gotten to sing songs that aren't typical or found within the LDS hymn book, so that has been fun. This last Noon Service was especially moving because a group of black students held a die-in after the opening remarks of the host group. They were bringing awareness to the deaths of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont, showing us with a very visceral presentation the danger of not addressing institutionalized violence, no matter why it is occurring. I can't really describe how it felt. I cried through the whole thing. As an empath, I was deeply overwhelmed by the grief, rage, and hope in the room. I'm not sure I will ever experience something quite like that again.
I've also joined a delightful group called HDS Creative Commons. We bond over crafts, and so far we've had a splendid time becoming friends over a crafty show-and-tell potluck, a visit to a craft night at a local craft store, and a guest speaker, who taught us about quilting. It is pretty much my favorite thing! I adore the people, I adore crafting (I'm currently working on a crocheted baby blanket.), and I love the mental, emotional and social health time it affords me. Photos to come.
The final group/class I've become involved in is Harry Potter as a Sacred Text. It is freaking awesome! So the basic premise is not that the Harry Potter books have an otherworldly sacredness, but that we make the things we love sacred by the way we treat them and interact with them. For example, I believe that my relationship with Spencer is sacred; therefore, I treat him (or try to) and love him in a way that shows my deep conviction toward the sacred relationship we have, covenants we've made, and future we hope to share. Similarly, we love Harry Potter, and, for many of us, Harry Potter has played a significant role in our lives as we grew up reading them. So every week, we meet to discuss and engage with the portion we read ahead of time. This is a year-long course, so we get to read at a decent pace. Each year of reading is also specifically characterized by a concept that we'd like to engage with. This year's is "Vulnerability is strength."
The first week, we read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone chapters 1-4. We open up the class by sharing our towers and dungeons (a high and low) of the week with a partner. Such a great bonding technique! We then summarize the reading, discuss the reading's themes, and then practice a form of Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina is a traditional Benedictine practice that deliniates levels of reading and meditation in our case, prayer in the real deal. It also asserts that you could open the scriptures to any sentence and find something meaningful in that sentence. So we pick a sentence, read it, have a moment of silent contemplation and then discuss the passage. We do this four times, once for literal events, once for metaphorical or allegorical insights, once for personal application, and once for a general call to action. We close by reading a weird poem and saying "mischief managed!" It is seriously the best. I already believe in the power of literature, and this is simply a wonderful platform for me to investigate a series I already love. No worries friends who are now suffering from exquisite jealousy! ;) There is a free podcast on iTunes called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. It doesn't follow our class, but it is incredible and is run by Casper and Vanessa, both incredible people that I've enjoyed getting to know.
So now for the skunk story. So Spencer and I were coming home late from a date, and as we walked into the back yard where our door is, we heard a rustling. Something weirdly hairy and black and white was rustling in a garbage bag it had gotten into. I knew immediately what it was. It was like a primordial instinct I knew so fast. SKUNK! I stopped dead. It took Spencer a moment longer to realize what it was. (He had mixed up the tail with the head and thought it may be a peacock.) As soon as he realized that we were less than 10 yards away from a striped skunk that hadn't noticed us yet, he began to lightly click his tongue. He was attempting to safely alert the skunk that we were near without scaring it, so that it would run off instead of spray us. I held my breath. After a moment, the skunk stopped rummaging, looked up, and just sat there. It was almost like it was trying to decide if we were a threat. We didn't move. In a minute or so, the skunk finally decided to scamper away. I heaved a deep breath of relief. Unfortunately, I crossed paths with probably the same skunk as I was coming home late another evening a few days later, and I repeatd the drill: freeze, freak out in my head, try to alert it to my presence softly with a few clicks, and then wait for it to leave once it had noticed me. So now I can saw that I have come within yards of a skunk twice without being sprayed. Thank heaven! Seriously terrifying.
Well guys, we're doing it! We're surviving my crazy schedule and work load, we're making friends (Spencer and I went to a fun dessert party hosted by Kris, who I met in the choir and Laura, who I met in my Virginia Woolf class. It was a blast!), and we're going to introduce my new friend Eliot to Miyazaki. I've become close to Sophia and Seanjoon through the crafting group. And I've gotten particularly close with Heather, a lovely Buddhist nun in my Mormonism class. We've gotten asked over for dinner multiple times by people in the ward. Spencer and I spoke in Sacrament Meeting for the first time together on the blessing of Modern Prophets. And overall life is really great. Oh! And I am going to meet with my primary care physician this next week, so I'll be able to move forward with getting an MRI to make sure my seizures aren't being caused by a brain tumor, so on and so forth. I'm really excited to move forward with treatment and building a relationship with my physician. Oh, and it is Autumn. Basically the most beautiful time of the year, and we just happen to be in New England. No big deal.
So there you have it! TLDR: Natalie's busy, insane life made possible by Spencer. :)
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