Why do I always walk out a Reynolds lecture feeling more depressed, inspired, doomed, encouraged, confused, and enlightened?
All at the same time.
For Torrey students: Imagine a session Dante's Paradise with Dr. Campbell and then a Reynolds lecture on Plato. Yes. That really happened.
For non-Torrey people: Imagine having your brain removed, put into a blender, and then put back in your head and then being told to go out into the world and function. That was what I experienced tonight.
I walked away with so many musing. The essence of education is not to train me for whatever I plan to do after graduation. It isn't to get me to know the facts. It's to build my character. It gives me a brand new way of looking at my education. I'm not here to figure out to get my reading done most quickly so I have time to still hang out with my friends. It's about how much I can get out of the text. I am so conditioned into the English class reading where I spend the whole time looking for answers to reading comprehension questions that I perpetually forget that this text is what is important. That skimming doesn't work. That session will be even more enjoyable once I learn to love whichever book I'm reading. I am here to become a virtuous young woman who follows Christ. There's no short-cut to learning virtue. Hard work brings out the best and the worst in people. I think education is fundamentally about doing the hard work and teaching yourself to go through the hard work so that it brings out the best in you instead of the worst. And, along the way, learning important lessons from Plato, Dante, Virgil, Homer, and all those other dead guys.
I need to learn to know myself first. I'm not being selfish. But before I can go out and do amazing things for the world, it would help if I had a few things worked out first. Like what I believe. Because some days I honestly don't know. Like who I am and why I matter to God. Like what is the purpose of this whole adventure I've come to know as life. Big questions. I need to answer each and every one of these (along with others) before I can try to answer these questions for others. Walking into a coffee shop and telling the waitress she should believe in Christ because Dr. Reynolds has this awesome little quip isn't going to cut it. I have to really know it and love it for myself.
It's okay that I am confused. In fact, if I wasn't confused right now, there would be something very wrong. As a Torrey freshman, I am supposed to feel overwhelmed, confused, bewildered, and maybe even frightened. My guess is that this is the humbling process, which is something I have desperately needed and will continue to need.
Something else got me to thinking: Dr. Reynolds asked us, "Do you love people, or do you love what they can do for you?" Considering I just changed my major to sociology, a very people-related field, this is a good question for me to be asking. I like to think of people as living stories, but sometimes I forget to see them that way. I forget that they have pasts, presents, and futures, that they experience emotions, that they need to be served. I reduce them to one aspect of their personality. But people aren't here for me to know them by how they can best help me. People are here to be loved. If I see people for what they can to do for me, I will turn into Judas. That is a sobering thought. Judas used the King of kings for personal gain. That is not what I want to turn into. Christ says that what I do to the least of these, I do to Him. If that's true, when I love people because of what I can get out of them, I am doing this to Christ. I am being a Judas. The one Christ said it would have been better for him if he was never born. Criminy.
Lastly, if I wasn't already convicted enough, Dr. Reynolds issued to us a challenge: Are you willing to wonder? Wondering is hard work. It makes you question the very essence of life. I will question my most deeply-held beliefs. I will have to consider on any given issue, that I may be wrong and that if I am, this could change my entire worldview. But the good news is that wonder never ceases. It will keep happening and keep making me grow. It will be what builds me into a virtuous young woman: wondering and thinking.
I'm so confused right now. Yet so satisfied with my mind as it is. That's what a steady diet of goodness, truth, and beauty does to a young soul who isn't used to being challenged beyond what she could ever imagine.
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