| I wonder how many people are still subscribed to helena17 . . .
I guess we'll see, won't we? 
I have a 'new' xanga, here, but I don't post. I'm working on building back up my subscriptions, and then I will read and comment as my fancy leads me. Posting on xanga ate up too much of my time, and contributed greatly to a self-centeredness and a desire for approval that were (are) unhealthy for me. I've been lurking on and off all summer, and while the urge to start a blog back up has been overwhelming at times, I haven't done so, and I'm glad. I know far too little about too much, and xanga was the cause of many an ugly mouth-vomit on my part.
My life has changed a lot since shutting down on_bleecker_street and leaving PHC . . . . I miss my roommates dreadfully, and I miss everyone else, especially now that the school year has started back up, but facebook suffices to assuage my nostalgia, for the most part. VCU is definitely WAY different than PHC--even besides having over 29,700 more people. I drive twenty miles to school, park, and walk four or seven blocks to my first class (depending on the day). Instead of logic and Latin, I'm taking anthropology and Russian cinema. Hordes of college students of all shapes, sizes, colors, and creeds cross the streets of Richmond, fifty and seventy-five people at a time. A long-haired boy on a bicycle maneuvers in and out of traffic pockets; three girls dressed in pink and wearing high heels walk arm-in-arm giggling; young black guys in baggy pants stand in a circle freestyling; a dark-haired girl with thick glasses wears a skirt AND pants and carries an overlarge art portfolio . . . . I'm beginning to think VCU is where stereotypes originate, because I didn't make any of those up. But its quirky diversity is endearing, too: you can walk across campus for five minutes and hear three different languages. My anthropology professor, recently married (she hyphenates her last names and insists on the prefix Ms.--pronounced "MIZ"), has thick dreadlocks down to her waist. It is definitely not the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant campus that is PHC. There is no chapel, much less mandatory chapel, and campus ashtrays are always full. It's not all fun and romance, though. Some things that annoyed me about PHC have turned into things that I miss now that I am away from them: having classes with all the same people all the time drove me NUTS last year; now, I wish I could walk into a class and see a face I recognize. I felt stifled spiritually at PHC, but now in retrospect I appreciate that the people I lived and ate and talked with were capable of talking about God on essentially the same level.
But for all the awkwardness of this new beginning, for all the pain of transitioning and of change, I am . . . I don't think 'happy' or 'content' or even 'glad' are the right words, but perhaps 'grateful' . . . grateful to have the chance to move on and meet new people and face new challenges, grateful to get a restart academically, grateful to be fortunate to live at a financial level where the cost of going to college--though a burden at times--is feasible. The school year is still virginal, untried and unexplored, so no doubt I will begin to have stronger feelings one way or another, but for now this tender know-nothing confusion is okay with me.
There are other changes, too . . . 
No doubt all of you were anticipating an announcement such as this one, what with the theological frenzy that was my blog from January to May. The last time I corresponded with some of you, I was headed in a certain direction, and in my own mind I had decided definitively to pursue that path. But God's ways are unfathomable, and one day--literally overnight--I began to head the opposite direction. For months, unceasingly, I devoted myself intellectually to arguments, both polemical and irenic, detailing the differences in the structure and mind of the two paths in front of me. Eventually I tired of them, and--weary and with no idea where to go--I lay them aside. About a month and a half later, I considered them again, and I knew where I should go. It's been another month or so after that, and I have found such peace and joy in my decision that I can't believe I ever considered anything else! To dispense with my cryptic beating-about-the-bush, I rejoice to tell you that I will soon become a catechumen in the Orthodox Church. Over a year of searching has lead me to the Christian East, and it is a vast treasure trove of orthodox piety. Before I thought myself a hardened pioneer in theological inquiry and now I realize I am just a baby! But it is a rest for my weary soul to know that the bitter fights--freewill and the sovereignty of God, veneration of icons, the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, authority of the Church--that I was so intent on fighting myself half a year ago have already been fought (and won!) by worthier and wiser men and women than me. "Let us love one another so that with one mind we may confess the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and indivisible!"
Such is the conclusion of my whirlwind year at Patrick Henry College.
Drop me a line here or over on my new blog, and look for my comments in the near future!
Love to all. |
