Trying to Catch Up!

I need to catch up on the blogging, so I apologize if what I am saying seems redundant. UGH! See you tonight. Gina

This is in response to: Living Inside the Bible (Belt) By Shannon Carter

The article regarding religious beliefs and college curriculum is an interesting one on a personal level. When I was writing the thesis for my MA, I wanted to really delve into the idea that the confessional poet, Anne Sexton, did indeed use her poetry as a means to unburden her soul. Unlike most Bostonians of her era, she chose to sort of let go of the strict traditional  roles of society and by doing so opened herself up to the kind of self-reflection that at times, bordered on narcissism. All that to say this: when I proposed this idea to my committee, when I said that I wanted to involve the Catholic church, combine the thoughts of  priests and poets in my research, along with empirical evidence from Sexton’s own life- I was told that all of that was fine, as long as I took out the religious aspect of it. I could not build on the obvious. Anne Sexton was indeed a ‘confessor’ but  I could not research that term in the most traditional of ways.

I am a Christian, I struggle with that when, in  my academic experiences, I run across something that challenges those beliefs, but I don’t feel the need to abandon one for the other. Similarly, I don’t feel the need to ‘share’ or try to ‘reach’ those who do not feel that same way I do. That said, by faith, I’m a Catholic,  I married a Catholic, our children have both made all the sacraments that they are supposed to have made at this point in their life, and yet, I really try to explain to them that not everyone is going to believe in  the same things that we do.  I tell them to  live their faith, but allow others to live theirs as well.

   

Academia is one of those other ‘faiths.’ Like it or not, academia is a religion. It has a hierarchy, a dogma , strict moral compass, and even its own rites and rituals. Not to mention a pretty standard course of study one needs to follow in order to enter into the fold, so to speak.  And let’s not forget that, in both, one can be excommunicated for the most egregious of sins. So fundamentally, what I think the authors of this article are trying to convey is that people should try to be more balanced when approaching either academia or religion. People don’t like to feel as though they are not being validated. People don't like feeling as though something they have spend such a large amount of their time on, is fruitless. Pointless. A sham!  At its worst, academia and organized religion are both pretty exclusive and narrow in scope. It is the true academic and person of faith that can take the best of these worlds to fashion a more  ‘humanistic’ stance both in their writing, and in their approach to both schools of thought. 

Gina Bove