Comfortable in My Bewilderment

In The Glass Bead Game, one of Herman Hesse’s characters says that “To study history is to attempt something fundamentally impossible yet necessary and highly important . . . Submitting to chaos and nonetheless retaining faith in order and meaning.” I’ll leave it to my historian colleagues to decide whether this is an acceptable description what is going on with the study of history. I am absolutely sure that it is an accurate description of the never-ending task of trying to figure out how to live a meaningful human life. This necessary task undoubtedly is both fundamentally impossible and highly important. And at its heart is the tension between ever-present chaos and the orderly imposition of meaning. Good luck to all of us. The first half of the current fall semester has given me ample opportunity to engage once again in the exhilarating and disturbing project of engaging with both chaos and order. Autumn is my favorite season; our fall weather this year has been particularly beautiful. It’s beauty has been an accurate reflection of what has been occurring on campus—a brand new humanities building to house the interdisciplinary program I direct, gorgeous landscaping all over campus to compliment the elegant architectural addition, smiles and improved attitudes throughout the faculty and student body, and a general positive buzz in the air. As I walked out of the Ruane Center for the Humanities a couple of days ago, I overheard a visiting parent, as she gazed across the newly landscaped green, say to her daughter “look how pretty this is!” “This is the nicest campus we’ve visited yet,” her daughter replied. Kudos all the way around. These positive events have raised my already high regard for the college I work at to a new level. On my walk most mornings from a six o’clock workout across campus to my new office in the Ruane Center, cutting directly through the most attractive areas of pristine landscaping, I keep thinking “I love this place. I love my job. I can’t believe I get paid for doing what I was born to do. I’m unbelievably fortunate.” It’s a happy fest all the way around, sufficient to even sustain and provide new energy during the most insane and complicated workdays. And yet. Something else has been going on at the same time as the feel-good, inordinately positive events of the past several weeks. A speaker was scheduled to give a talk on campus on same-sex marriage, a topic more controversial on a Catholic campus than many other places. A problem with the format arose, the problem was apparently solved. And then, as they say, shit happened. The talk was cancelled in such a way as to generate plenty of negative national publicity and make our LGBTQ students wonder whether they really are welcome on campus, while also accusing one colleague and close friend of violating college policy and casting aspersions on another colleague’s professional abilities. Serious questions were raised concerning the college’s commitment to academic freedom, and a relatively minor problem was turned by administrative clumsiness and tone-deafness into a messy and very public debacle that keeps on giving. Of such events are episodes of cognitive dissonance made. For several weeks my inner dialogue has frequently sounded something like this: “Another beautiful day! The campus has never looked so great.” “I can’t believe those assholes in the administration are this clueless. What the hell do they think they are doing? Did they really think nobody would care or notice?” “I am so blessed to be working at a place that commits millions of dollars to a new humanities building.” “It’s embarrassing to be teaching at a place that considers a talk on same-sex marriage too controversial for its students to hear. Let me introduce you to the twenty-first century, Providence College.” “But I know the main players in the administration, and they are good people. I can’t believe they intended the harm that’s being caused.” “Really? Either they intended it or they were too dumb to realize how big the shit storm to follow would be. I don’t know which is worse.” Annie Dillard writes that “Many people cannot tolerate living with paradox. Where the air is paradoxical, they avoid breathing and exit fast.”  And that’s exactly what happened in many instances on campus. People took sides and refused to listen to contrary evidence. Some days I was inclined to think that I was indeed working for an institution that was willing to cut corners on academic freedom and free speech in the name of conservative orthodoxy. Other days I tried to downplay the crisis as something that wasn’t really that important, although I knew I was lying to myself. But when I attended a student-organized event that took place at the very time the cancelled lecture would have occurred, an event intended as a forum both for expressions of anger and frustration as well as conversation about how to move forward, I encountered Herman Hesse’s observation in action. I grew up in the sixties and early seventies and am very familiar with protest for protest’s sake, gatherings intended as nothing more than organized complaints about the current state of affairs. People often attended protests without even knowing exactly what they were protesting, just to experience the energy and exhilaration of collectively expressed anger. But this night was very different. Although many at the microphone claimed to be angry, even outraged, it sounded like something else. The voices were those of deep disappointment, expressions of feelings similar to those that a young person might feel upon finding out that a loved parent has been having an affair for the last ten years. “I thought you were better than this. I love you, but you really hurt me.” And because they truly do love their college, this place that they consider as home, the atmosphere was one of unity rather than fracture—a true example of facing chaos squarely, armed with the faith that deeper meaning would be found. And so it goes. These weeks on campus have not been anything unusual, but rather reflect what we should expect from human beings—excellence and feet of clay, bravery and timidity, chaos and order. As one of my honors students wrote in an intellectual notebook entry, “I have never been so confused, yet at the same time so very comfortable in my bewilderment.” Comfortable in my bewilderment—that’s a place I would be happy to call home.