signing off

I’m done. Until the end of the semester… and so, until I return from Bosnia, I guess. I may post between now and then, but there are so many other things I need to be doing – and want to be doing. So I’d rather just sign off – for now, anyway. And I feel bad that I don’t read anyone’s blog… I refuse to check Reader, because it would suck me in and then I might never come out again. So, I’m sorry – to Claire and Cath and Astrid, especially. I miss you all, and I really hope you’re well. I’m much better about email, so please keep me posted if you get a chance, okay? I would love to hear from you. Really. Much love.

So… what does the blogging world need to know before I take my leave?... hmm…

I’m busy. But so is everyone else. I’m terribly cranky at the moment, hence being in on a Friday night, doing laundry, drinking beer, and doing pointless stuff like wrapping up my blog career. I did go to community dinner, though – something the divinity school does every month or so, which was nice.

I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time, overall. That’s not to say everything is peaches and cream. Because it’s not, and it never is for anyone. But I am surrounded by people who touch me, and inspire me, and make me laugh, and make me cry, and hold me, and let me hold them, and laugh at me, and teach me, and challenge me, and so many other things.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking – including trying to figure out where I’m going with my life, which isn’t easy and can be absolutely terrifying. So maybe that’s part of why I’m flustered… and also because 5 classes is a lot. There’s no getting around that.

I may drop my literature class downtown on consciousness in the novel. I have trouble finding Victorian literature worth my time at this point in my life. I don’t see it changing the world. It seems petty, insignificant. Fairy tales were fun – and in some sense, they were more important, I think – if only because children read them, and because in some way they reflect an oral, folkloric history that will always elude us and yet seems so much a part of us, across generations, and across the world.

I’m leaning towards Hebrew Bible studies. You could study any one book of the Hebrew Bible for the rest of your life and just scratch the surface. And since I came in saying I would study anything but Bible, I want to teach others to embrace – and to fight against – what they find there. That seems like meaningful work, and I’m lucky to know a Hebrew Scriptures scholar who floors me every day. More than lucky – I’m honored, blessed, and humbled.

Or, if not Hebrew Bible, then I want to study literature emerging out of conflict zones, like Bosnia. I want to look at the way religion and sacred texts are manipulated in the name of war and “ethnic” cleansing, the way “religious” mythologies fuel hatred, and then how communities rebuild, and reconcile, and rewrite their stories. That seems like important work, too. And I might be leaning more in that direction, actually.

I’m pretty settled on applying for a grant to return to Bosnia this summer (weird to say when I haven’t gone yet!), to learn the language, study the mythologies used by the Serbs to incite hatred for the Muslim population, and see what stories these communities are writing today – maybe, in particular, what they’re writing for their children. I was struck, reading Michael Sells’ book, The Bridge Betrayed, by the absence of any mention of women in this mythology that helped fuel unimaginable crimes – including rape warfare perpetrated against women. I want to know if women had any place in these distorted “Christian” stories, or if they had a mythology of their own, then or now. What kind of stories were they telling, are they telling, and why?

On that note… it’s time for me to wrap this up. I've archived my summer 2007 through winter break '07/'08 reading list... and will try to update my current reading on the sidebar. Other than that, I'm done.

Peace, Love, Namaste.