1. My academic training -- abandoned in favor of: moving to Boston, living in a high school, and tutoring sullen teenagers, then getting married, running child care and teacher training programs, and having babies -- was mostly in literary criticism. I occasionally break down and take another grad level English course for fun. I supplement this with recreational economics, math, and biology courses.
2. The upside to this education -- since I seem intent on not using it to attain an actual degree -- is that it informs the way I see the world I've found myself in. My faith, such as it is, is an integral part of this world. If I can use my academic training to make sense of this faith and how it might direct my life, the money I expect to be paying to AES for another decade will be well spent.
3. Other things that inform my efforts to articulate and "understand" my faith, and the God I believe in:
my bulimia (now, no longer an issue for me),
my husband and son (both perfect and much more than I deserve),
my family, career, and life (none perfect, though my family is close, but again, much more than I deserve or expected);
the reality that other people's lives are not as crazy-charmed as mine, that the world is full of preventable and unpreventable suffering;
the fact that the things I have that matter, I am completely powerless to keep, and will, eventually, lose altogether;
mostly, for me, the chasm between what I am able to do for and by myself, and what my life is when I am connected to God.
So -- given all this -- what can I know about God, and how should I be living out that knowledge?
