Saturday, January 16, 2010

HOME

Greetings. I am one of the 'new' bloggers on TheStoryTellersInkspot, though I've been on the Hamline faculty since July '08.

Today has been yet another jampacked residency day of scintillating lectures and panels from faculty and students alike. My mind is brimming over with it all. We have one more day to go, and home is on all of our minds.

For this reason, Daniel's lecture, "The Search for Home In Children's Literature," has struck a chord. One tends to think of home as a physical dwelling, and of course we are all longing to return to our own familiar dwellings, full of comfortable personal possessions and hugs from those who have missed us. But, as Daniel pointed out, home is also (and frequently for children) made of friends, community, support, and acceptance, and that the ideal protagonist will leave home and then return changed. Isn't that what we have created here in this snowy, chilly landscape, on the Hamline campus, and even in the Radisson hotel in its barren industrial setting? As I begin to get the glimmer of seeing my dogs again, of being with my loved one, as I experience the thrill of shoving my dirty laundry into my suitcase and figuring out which shuttle to take to the airport Monday morning, I realize I may be going home, but I am also leaving home. The folks here are friends and colleagues with whom I belong. We all belong here--our common interests, struggles and epiphanies bond us and make a home.

And don't worry we still have one more reading, two lectures, a faculty meeting, a master's class (for those graduating), a graduation ceremony, and a final dinner to go, before we leave this home and return, forever changed, to the home from where we came.

6 comments:

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  2. Me, too. I was thinking the same thing after Daniel's excellent lecture. It's the feeling of community--this sense that everyone there somehow gets you, in exactly the way the rest of the world does not.

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  3. Home indeed. Goodbye, Hamline, until July! And to the graduates, let this not be the end! Stay connected!

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  4. Welcome Lisa! Glad to see you here. :)

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  5. When I scroll down the page of this blog to each new post, I like to begin reading it before I look to see who posted it. Can I guess the author by the voice in the post? Usually. It's so nice to hear these voices when I'm away from Hamline. It will be a lifeline for me now, and I will look forward to seeing your posts here, Lisa, along with those of the other faculty and my former classmates.

    When I arrived in St. Paul on the 8th, it really felt like coming home. I hope the new students who joined us this residency will feel that way in July.

    Speaking of July...if Mary R can arrange rooms for us in the grad housing, I hope to return. After all, the summer theme is...Theme, and I haven't heard those lectures yet!

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