Journey and Meaning Making 2025

In class a couple weeks ago, Dr. Redick brought up the film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind in his discussion of Thoreau and liminality. Specifically he mentioned a scene in which both characters, having had their memories of eachother erased but discovering a tape conveying the hatred they had for one another in the course of their relationship, are caught in a state of aporia and run through the hallway. Finally, Clementine repeats an earlier line from the film emphasizing her desire of independence by saying "you can't make me what you want," and thereafter the two decide to try to have a relationship despite of the past failure to make it work. I think that an especially interesting element of the film with regard to the concept of liminality is the central conceit of technology with the capacity to erase one's bad memories. The decision to take away the memories of experiences one had, especially in the impulsive and profit-driven manner that is portrayed wit...

One stanza from "In Baghdad, dreaming of Cairo; in Cairo, dreaming of Baghdad by Rumi reads,  “I wait and fidget and flop about // as a decapitated chicken does, knowing that // the vital spirit has to escape this body // eventually, somehow!” (Rumi). The vital spirit refers to what? The holy spirit? Well, maybe, but probably it is meant in a vaguer sense than that; spirit could mean liquor, the non -corporeal essence of living things, an incorporeal being, a soul, a differentiation of animate from inanimate objects based in non-physical essence, the mind, a good mood, or even a sense of supportive community. This is to say that it is not necessarily a specific term. And why is it escaping his body? It may manifest in his actions, but his actions are uncontrolled – the spirit moves through them. Perhaps spirit merely means journey; it is the difference between animation and inanimation, and therefore to move is to possess a state of spirit. It reminds me of Thoreau's point tha...

 As kids, through our schooling, we are taught that all statements can be one of two things: either subjective or objective. However, during in-class discussion, the topic of a third classification came up, the "intersubjective." This can be defined as something inherently subjective, but with which the general opinion is practically uniform, to an extent, we think of it in our mind as something objective. A perfect example is money. It would seem objective to state that money has value; however, this principle is only widely accepted because we all agree that it is this way. We all assign this value to money collectively. In regard to beauty, many would state it is entirely subjective. While this may be partially true, let us observe the heart of someone pure with a kind soul. Everyone would find this person's soul to contain beauty; it is inherently good. In this sense, we can explore beauty as something intersubjective, as there are always hints of fact and opinion beh...

In today's class as we read, we spoke at length about the use of asceticism in the reinforcement of symbolism encountered in the exegesis of the story of a journey, and the state of flow which allows for the understanding without thought, and I believe that the use of asceticism in its alternate definition as discipline is vital to the construction of the "flow state".  For many years, I was not an athletic type, sports did not appeal to me, and the tales of the experiences of others were heard but not processed, I heard them, but I was not listening as I could not find a common ground, I was lacking in the interpersonal part of the interaction. As I grew, I tried a myriad of things, football, soccer, basketball, dance, all of these were fun, but I did not connect with them. I experienced them, but they did not mean anything, and never did I have a goal in mind for any of these sports, they were a means to an end, but the end was without meaning. That was, all until one y...

Catlynh Phan: My Inchoate Happenings Up to a Moment      This past summer, my friends and I took a trip up to my friend’s, Cooney, lake house in the-middle-of-nowhere, New Hampshire. We drove 11 hours from northern Virginia together, crammed in two small SUV’s. One day we were sitting around the dinner table and laughing and talking over each other about everything and anything, and (similarly to Dr. Redick's experience on the trail with his students) all of a sudden I looked around and felt as though there was no other place I wanted to be, and that this must be the best place not because of the location but because of the people that I had been so lucky to know and even to love. In reference to Dr. Carney's essay, he met a woman on the way to Budapest who, in a way, lit up the gloomy and unknown air around him on the journey. In these journeys, the people made the journey meaningful not in fact the destination itself. The people were interlocutors that we were in commun...

Catlynh Phan: To Write is to Wager...     A few classes ago,  Dr. Reddick was reading aloud a passage from his book during class concerning story telling and one quote jumped out to me "to write is to wager." And, although this is not the complete quote, I remember talking about how writing and narrating  is to take a risk that something good will happen. And perhaps I might take that a step further to say that in recording and remembering our lives, we hope that something should come out of everything that we have done before.     The act of wagering is to take a risk and be vulnerable, like Ernest Hemingway famously stated, "to write, you must sit down at a typewriter and bleed." When we write, we commit ourselves to be judged, and maybe there is a sliver of hope that we want to be understood, but then again there is the inevitable chance of being misunderstood. We must confront the triumphs and tribulations of our story and the hard truths that maybe we ...

In the essay, " Reading as a Rebellion in the Age of AI" , b y Jason Ray Carney, the author spoke  passionately about the way he experienced a trip to Budapest, a  city of soviet architecture and mal omens presented to him by people he knew before. In the telling of this,  he explored an interaction with a graduate student of Hungarian History and culture, which came to be the  bond between them which catalyzed an association and even a friendship. It brought the context of the  gloomy city into a new light, he described it as a "pulse" within the city, lifeblood suffusing the  environment, a communal happening which gave him new understanding of the city and its people.  In that moment of "inverse trauma" as he and Yung describe such a thing, the understanding  forms and enjoyment is shared. Dr. Carney shared with us in class his thoughts about the alienating nature of  Ai and  modern technology in general. Of how if he and the graduate...

On the topic of two in-class discussions that have stuck with me, I wanted to discuss the difference between the "waiting" and the "happening." On the surface, these are simple, everyday English words. However, when used in a spiritual sense, they have a much deeper meaning. As a collective, we decided that the "happening" is when something feels real and vibrant, it's significant, and we are 100% present for these moments. On the flip side, the absence of this happening is the "waiting". During this stage, we are spiritually drifting and not growing; we are waiting for something significant to invade our lives. It's like a liminal space, where we are between two periods of happening, and thus, these insignificant moments will not help to build upon our souls. We spend most of our time in the waiting stage, where we go through the motions of everyday life, whether it be going to class, eating meals, or sleeping at night. The absence of jo...

 What is the happening? As defined by Professor Reddick it is an event that is currently occurring which has some sort of significant meaning to us which will show itself at a later time.  It is being present in the moment and inhabiting the environment around yourself or it might be with company which can only be attributed as the happening if they are also in the moment. One way in which someone can identify themselves in a moment of happening is by attributing an interlocutor to the situation as a helpful reminder. In Professor Reddick's example he used the idea of a bird watching over him and his students as they cowboy camped on a beach. What is the happening in this situation? It is the watching bird. What did it want? Was it a territorial thing, was the bird simply watching over curious as to what the people were doing on the beach or was it some other concept that attributed to the bird's desire to view the humans? The bird was spectating the happening in which there w...

 In line with the in-class discussion yesterday, which centered on an essay by Professor Carney detailing his trip to Budapest, the darkness and uncertainty he felt, and how he articulated this experience through words. He mentioned that he traveled to Budapest, unsure if he'd like it, and the brutal and dark social style architecture highlighted this feeling along his journey. In doing so, he took a significant risk, travelling across the world on a backpacking trip, not knowing what he would find. Amongst this darkness, he met a woman named Andrea, who shared a burning passion for the arts. They shared a beautfiul conversation, and it brightened the world for Carney amongst his journey.  Many people see human connection as the highest form of meaning-making. There is a famous phrase that sounds something like, "It's not about the journey, it's about the people you share it with." I would like to argue that genuine human connection doesn't come without vulne...

  Outside Reading In this blog post I will be reviewing Lecture I Religion and Neurology by William James on the Varieties of Religious Experience. As always, I start by asking myself a question: Is there a link between Religion and how our brain works? Going further, how does language affect our brain, and then affect our religion?  James says that this account will be looking at people who are “most accomplished in the religious life and best able to give an intelligible account of their ideas and motives”. (20 of 571) So we are going to look at people who can speak. James goes on to say that we are going to look at people that are well-accomplished in their field and have classic writings.  “Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents” (22 of 571) James says that Religion is built on top of stories. What then was it like to have the first stories in a religion? James then says that every believer has be...

  Page 4 Michael Taussig would suggest Juan's understanding of the meaning of a place emerges out of the process of an imitation of all the “differences” that we discern there. We mimic (in language and action) the full range of sounds, movements, and other sensory perceptions that come to us from the more than human world.” It’s hard to put a place that strikes us as sublime into mere words; we can try to describe it as a feeling and try to put language to that feeling, but sometimes the feeling of the beauty of nature or the power of a sacred space is too big to try to translate or make sense of. Would every place and experience be subjective, and would the discourse be the same? Would the mountain top make me feel the same as another? Or does my personal experience with the natural world and divine keep it intimate/ unique, or would my experience be relatable enough? The author uses the messiness, ambiguity, and mystery of people's deeply personal experienc...

  Go to the Journey and Meaning Making 2025 blog. Click “new post” to start your entry, you will then be able to write your blog. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry. Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These app...