Final Post Ever!
I've been trying to come up with a meaningful metaphor to describe my progress in this class. But it's Finals week, and I'm just not capable of doing anything that profound.
To give an honest overview, I think that Dante and Wordsworth were the authors that I struggled with the most. Dante was hard because I so stuck on Augustine still, and Wordsworth was hard because I am reading his stuff for another class - it was just too much Wordsworth for me.
In terms of blog conetent, I don't know. It's hard to evaluate my own postings, but I would say that there were definitely high and low points. I got caught up on certain issues/questions/comments that sometimes made it hard for me to read these authors from a "bigger picture" perspective. At other times I really felt like I was close to understanding something amazing. Sadly, as the term wore on, I found it harder and harder to connect with the reading material on a deeper level. Stress, final papers, and information overload were the realities of my winter term.
This class has been challenging. In a lot of classes, you can just rely on the teacher to spell everything out for you, but this class was different. Not that Professor Anderson didn't help clarify things, but I think that this class stressed a personal response to the readings. Our personal thoughts, responses, presupposed ideas, were all important factors. Blogging helped me to articulate my personal responses, but it was a challenge to come up with things to write sometimes. I always have something to say, that's not the point, but the point is that it was hard to dig deep and find something valuable to write. I had to force myself to keep thinking about these texts, instead of reading them and forgetting them, as I sometimes do in my other classes.
I enjoyed reading such a wide variety of genres this term - it really helped me to understand what spiritual autobiography is all about. It's not about how you say what you say, but it's about writing something personal - something personal that connects with something more than yourself. I also enjoyed realizing that being personal doesn't necessarily mean sharing intimate and in-depth information about your life. Being personal just involves sharing your ideas with others; it means mulling over the big questions and writing about that; it means putting in to words your doubts, your fears, your misgivings, and then saying that you believe anyway.
If there's one theme that seemed to tie all these authors together, then I think that theme is faith. In their own unique ways, each author expressed doubts or struggles that they have had spiritually. I think of Augustine and his rejection of Manicheaism, Dante's journey through Hell, Montaigne's acknowledgment that we can never fully know anything about God, and Wordsworth's faith in nature. Some of these authors were delightfully vague in their descriptions of their faith. Wordsworth, for example, barely even mentions God, or the Bible, but his faith in nature, and in a higher being are clear - and this faith clearly sustains and fulfills him.
At the end of this course, I am left wondering what class would have looked like if we had covered completely different authors. We briefly discussed the idea that you don't have to be writing about something "Christian" or "spiritual" in order to be writing spiritual autobiography. We also discussed the question of fictional works, and whether or not they, too, can be spiritually autobiographical. This was such an interesting class, and I wonder what similarities could be found (and what differences) if we addressed the same questions, but with different authors.
And now the time has come to end this post, and this blog. I don't know how to end this appropriately, or inspirationally, so I will just say this: It has been a fun ride. I don't know if I'm smarter, wiser, or changed, but I do know that I learned to read a little differently this term. And I always enjoyed coming to class and listening to the different opinions, thoughts, reactions, that people had to the same material.
That's it from me.
To give an honest overview, I think that Dante and Wordsworth were the authors that I struggled with the most. Dante was hard because I so stuck on Augustine still, and Wordsworth was hard because I am reading his stuff for another class - it was just too much Wordsworth for me.
In terms of blog conetent, I don't know. It's hard to evaluate my own postings, but I would say that there were definitely high and low points. I got caught up on certain issues/questions/comments that sometimes made it hard for me to read these authors from a "bigger picture" perspective. At other times I really felt like I was close to understanding something amazing. Sadly, as the term wore on, I found it harder and harder to connect with the reading material on a deeper level. Stress, final papers, and information overload were the realities of my winter term.
This class has been challenging. In a lot of classes, you can just rely on the teacher to spell everything out for you, but this class was different. Not that Professor Anderson didn't help clarify things, but I think that this class stressed a personal response to the readings. Our personal thoughts, responses, presupposed ideas, were all important factors. Blogging helped me to articulate my personal responses, but it was a challenge to come up with things to write sometimes. I always have something to say, that's not the point, but the point is that it was hard to dig deep and find something valuable to write. I had to force myself to keep thinking about these texts, instead of reading them and forgetting them, as I sometimes do in my other classes.
I enjoyed reading such a wide variety of genres this term - it really helped me to understand what spiritual autobiography is all about. It's not about how you say what you say, but it's about writing something personal - something personal that connects with something more than yourself. I also enjoyed realizing that being personal doesn't necessarily mean sharing intimate and in-depth information about your life. Being personal just involves sharing your ideas with others; it means mulling over the big questions and writing about that; it means putting in to words your doubts, your fears, your misgivings, and then saying that you believe anyway.
If there's one theme that seemed to tie all these authors together, then I think that theme is faith. In their own unique ways, each author expressed doubts or struggles that they have had spiritually. I think of Augustine and his rejection of Manicheaism, Dante's journey through Hell, Montaigne's acknowledgment that we can never fully know anything about God, and Wordsworth's faith in nature. Some of these authors were delightfully vague in their descriptions of their faith. Wordsworth, for example, barely even mentions God, or the Bible, but his faith in nature, and in a higher being are clear - and this faith clearly sustains and fulfills him.
At the end of this course, I am left wondering what class would have looked like if we had covered completely different authors. We briefly discussed the idea that you don't have to be writing about something "Christian" or "spiritual" in order to be writing spiritual autobiography. We also discussed the question of fictional works, and whether or not they, too, can be spiritually autobiographical. This was such an interesting class, and I wonder what similarities could be found (and what differences) if we addressed the same questions, but with different authors.
And now the time has come to end this post, and this blog. I don't know how to end this appropriately, or inspirationally, so I will just say this: It has been a fun ride. I don't know if I'm smarter, wiser, or changed, but I do know that I learned to read a little differently this term. And I always enjoyed coming to class and listening to the different opinions, thoughts, reactions, that people had to the same material.
That's it from me.
posted by Christine at 6:33 AM
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