TARDIS: The Choice

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be a part of something great. I dreamed about the day I could save someone's life, discover something new, change the world. So, like generations before me, I read fantasy and watched sci-fi. But the books and films weren't cathartic: experiencing them, becoming involved in their worlds, was physically painful. I wanted so much to do something important. And it never seemed like I did.

If you read my other blog, I'm sure you've picked up on my most recent sci-fi obsession: Doctor Who. It's a show about normal--painfully normal--people who take up 'traveling' with an alien genius who takes them through space and time to change history and save lives. His 'companions' come and go, individuals given the once-in-a-billion-lifetimes choice whether to see the universe with the Doctor on his ship, the TARDIS, or to stay safely at home. I can imagine myself, as a teenager, praying for that choice, praying that my life wouldn't be "normal."

The thing is, my life isn't normal. It's amazing. It's full of people who love me, a community of support and dependency. I'm not normal, either. I'm equipped to live an extraordinary life and, best of all, have a fiance ready and excited to share it with me. For the first time in my life, I think I would say "No" to the Doctor.

I know I go on and on about vocation, especially for someone too young to really know much about it. But my life with Adam seems so exciting, so full of promise. Teaching, writing, making love, making lunches, hosting crafternoons, singing musicals with friends--all these things, now, seem so important. My vocation isn't, I think, to change the world in a revolutionary way. But I hope it is to live a revolutionary life of happiness and simplicity. As bizarre, maybe even cowardly, as it seems to me to say this, I'll take that life with Adam over traveling with the Doctor any day.

You can read more about my minor Doctor Who obsession here and here.

Trip to Italy

My brain is still a bit too comatose from traveling to have something serious and reflective to say beyond "I really missed Adam." The five days I spent in Italy made up the longest time I've been without having a conversation with Adam, I believe, since the day we met.

Until I come up with something clever to say, I invite you to read more about Italy and my trip on Amateur Anglophile.

We'll be back soon!

Men and Social Change

Several friends and I have been running a discussion group at the Chaplaincy this term called "Catholicism and Economics." The focus is primarily on distributism, an economic system based around the small and the local. Once again, I'm the only woman in a "serious-minded" discussion group, but, for the very first time in my life, I think the under-representation of my sex may bother me.

At one time in my life I was pleased, honored, and self-congratulatory when I found myself in a male-dominated discussion group. To be surrounded by men, discussing real issues in serious tones with big words seemed like a step forward. I loved to hear people--ie men, and particularly in Washington, DC--discuss the world's problems, and the grandiose, intricate plans they had designed to correct them. This was the same time in my life when I thought that success in life meant being like these men. Someday, I too, would join in the machine of government. I, too, would change the world.

But that was before. Three years of living and working in Washington changed my mind about changing the world. Humans fail. Systems fail. The humans who design systems fail. And Washington, any center of government, goes around in circles creating grand plans on a national level to correct local, human problems.

It really struck me tonight, sitting in the economics discussion group, how very masculine a way of thinking about the world that is. I joined the group to find out how I can make moral economic choices for myself and my family; these men want to start a revolution. How very confident, and mostly admirable, to see a problem and seek to correct it in a sweeping, universal way. The only problem is, I'm increasingly skeptical that any kind of real change comes from the top down. Or at least that that's the way I'm supposed to operate in the world.

Instead, I think I'll choose to change the world in a more feminine way. I'll focus on my own moral choices, and encouraging others to make moral choices also. I'll work--with Adam--to build up a community of people seeking to make moral choices and to live happy lives together. It's an approach based on family, on community, and--I think--part of the woman's vocation as a woman, a wife, and a mother.

Taking Things for Granted

Adam: I hope being away from you this long means it will take longer before I take you for granted. I just don't want to ever be bored or annoyed with you after having to not be near you this long.me: Awwwww!

I hope I'm not boring or annoying!

Adam: you aren't!

me: Aww!

Adam: I think most couples eventually take each other for granted and then have to learn to live togetherme: That's true.

We can try.

In the midst of my frustrated staring this afternoon at the late fifteenth-century manuscript I've been working on, I paused to stretch and look around. My gaze rose to the ceiling of the seventeenth-century library, the Duke Humphries Library, in which I do much of my work. The Latin motto of the university, Dominus illuminatio mea ("the Lord is my light") stared down at me fifty times. I looked out the window in the Fellows' Garden of my thirteenth-century college, Exeter. Then it hit me. I really don't notice these gorgeous parts of my everyday life anymore. Even some of Western civilization's most beautiful and historic treasures are now part of my mundane, every day life.

Several weeks ago, Adam dropped a surprising comment out of the blue: "I hope being away from you this long means it will take longer before I take you for granted. I just don't want to ever be bored or annoyed with you after having to not be near you this long." I'm so excited about marrying Adam, it's difficult to image ever losing my delighted pleasure in his company. Still, I suppose that if experience has taught me anything, it's that I quickly get used to new experiences. I could focus on this realization as yet another reminder to love life as it is, right now--I should love Adam in the same passionate, infinitely renewable way I do now. But I don't think it's in human nature to continue perceiving blessings as novel. In one way, Adam has to be right. My love for him will continue to evolve and change. We will have to learn to live together, even when we find each other boring or annoying. Of course, learning to love as it is here and now is an important part of living a life of gratitude. As annoyed as I may someday be with Adam, I hope I never take him for granted. He is a gift from God, a blessing I never want to forget.

The photo of Exeter is obviously a cheat. I don't have a picture of the Fellows' Garden in the springtime.

They're Gone

My sisters are gone, so hopefully I'll be back to regular (albeit lonelier) posting by this afternoon.