Pressure Cooker

"Don't make fun of the grad students, Bart. They just made a terrible life choice."- Marge Simpson

Last week was really icky. Grad school can sure mess with your head. Suddenly I found myself doubting and questioning pretty much everything in which I thought I believed. It was like there was a demon whispering in my ear that my life was pathetic and boring, and that there was nothing on this earth that could make me happy. Thank the Lord there were lots of good things on the horizon to cheer me up and give me a reality check. Here's the top ten in chronological order.

1. My grad prgram had a career panel consisting entirely of alumnae who are married with kids but also employed in museums. They all emphasized work/life balance and not neglecting your family for a stressful, high power job.

2. On my way out of town on Saturday, I ran to confession at a nearby church. The priest was a wonderful grandfatherly man who told me not to be too hard on myself. "You're just in a pressure cooker right now, gearing up for the next thing." Kind advice plus sacramental forgiveness = why I am glad to be Catholic.

3. When I arrived in New Jersey, I discovered The Beau had bought me flowers the color of autumn leaves :-)

4. After talking about it for ages, we finally cooked gumbo combining gluten-free roux (1/2 sourghum, 1/2 brown rice flour) with vegtables and stock

and chicken, andouille and rice. It was delicious.

5. On Sunday I tagged along to a choir concert/evening prayer at the Diocese of Metuchen cathedral. Why yes, I photographed the architecture.

6. On Monday I took another thesis field trip to New Tork, this time to Trinity Wall Street (the church at the end of National Treasure. Nicholas Cage did not actually find a fortune there.) The Trinity archivists were super nice and I even found some records of vestment purchases. A friendly security guard offered to take my picture while I was exploring the church.

7. I met my friend Laura for lunch uptown, emerging from the subway at yet another Anglo-Catholic church, St. Bart's.

8. After lunch, I went looking for a restroom. Laura suggested I try the Waldorf Astoria lobby. Good call!

9. The Trinity rector diaries were fun but not useful, so I cut out early and visited the Statue of Liberty instead. Hey lady, I'm tired and poor over here!

10.When I got off my train back to Jersey, I could look out from the platform and see where The Beau was doing homework and waiting for me. And when I got back to Delaware, my aunt was in town on business and we went out to dinner! It's nice to come home to people you love. Maybe I'll make it out of this pressure cooker after all.

Muli-dimensionality

This weekend I got to visit The Beau up in New Jersey, where he is a history grad student. There was particular cause for celebration because he had finished his first qualifying exam! Huzzah!

One of my favorite parts of New Jersey weekends is brunch after Sunday Mass. Our usual diner instinctively asks "How many this week?" when we show up. In Delaware I don't have a close church community, so I relish the chance to talk about my faith with people my age.

Sometimes conversation only deal with pop culture and the appeal of bacon, but this week we had a weighty discussion of metaphysics and the dimensions of reality. Does God exist in time, or in an outside fourth of fifth dimension? How does our concept of reality's dimensions affect our understanding of heaven, the Mass, and free will? I'm not sure I understood it all, but it was a welcome break from intense material culture research. Objects have meaning, but there is an entire universe of intangible concepts that is equally important.

Anyway, all these metaphysics got me thinking about the dimensions of my own life. Most of the time, I'm in the museum dimension. I fit in there with the colorful books, field trips, and endless conversations about material culture. But every few weeks, I inhabit another dimension up north. Over the past year I have gotten to know The Beau's church friends and his life there. Now I feel like I fit in there, with the Jersey diners, Sunday hymns, walks in the park, and endless conversations about what it means to be a Catholic academic. I am grateful for the opportunity to inhabit both worlds, I just wish they weren't so far apart.