This post has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days, but I ran out of reasons not to do laundry. More importantly, I ran out of clean clothes. And now it's about to go off in a direction I never imagined that I'd ever have to go. But I'll get there in a minute.
It all started with some random musings about Facebook, which I admittedly neglect only slightly less than my blog. Musing led to thinking about the fact that my Facebook page identifies my employer as a certain Catholic university. It also identifies me as the genius behind this semi-anonymous blog, and provides a link. Which suddenly makes this blog considerably less anonymous.
I guess I always considered my potential readership to be composed of people I told about my blog (for whom it is not the least bit anonymous) and possible random people who won't ever know who I am (until one of them decides to publish my memoirs and make me famous). I hadn't really considered the possibility that I might be writing for people who know me that I didn't tell about my blog. Like people who find me, and my blog, through Facebook. And if I don't know that they're reading, then how can I know what I might not want them to know?
All of this is a very long-winded explanation of my decision to re-visit one of my very first posts (from way back when I posted more than once every couple months) about my relationship (or lack thereof) with organized religion. Which is one of the things that I might not want someone from the Facebook network of my Catholic employer to stumble across. I thought about practicing self-censorship: I could delete the post, or the link to my blog from Facebook. Not because I think it will get me fired, or reprimanded, but because I feel like I need to explain -- maybe to myself more than anyone -- how exactly I've reconciled my uncertain relationship with organized religion with working for a Catholic university. Hence this post.
Even if I haven't found a church home yet, I've had the chance to rediscover the one thing I've always appreciated most about the Catholic Church. I've always credited my Catholic education with teaching me to think, to question, to keep digging until I find an answer that works for me. Everything and everyone I ever encountered about my present employer showed me that passion for education: for teaching students to think and for listening to and understanding them. So I'm putting my passion into doing the best I can in support of that mission, and still having long talks with God about all the things I haven't figured out yet.
Which brings me to what will probably be the topic of the next one of those talks. On Friday afternoon, our university lost its president in a car accident. Before my first interview with Brother Vincent just over two months ago, I had been cautioned that he would be "a little intense." And he was: intensely excited about the university and everything that he wanted it to accomplish. Intensely proud of the people and the place that he obviously loved. Every encounter that I had with him reminded me of that energy, enthusiasm, and optimism. Every day from now on will seem a little empty without it. But I will always be grateful that I had a chance to know such an amazing example of everything that's ever seemed right about our shared faith.
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