The tales of a notebook's inside cover

As a theology major, I obviously spend most of my time in theology classes. Bible and literature, synoptic gospels, early church, eucharist: liturgy and practice, sex, gender, and Christian ethics, philosophy of religion, Christian beliefs...just to name a few. Just because this is my area of study doesn't mean I'm on my knees whenever I can be pouring out supplication after supplication at the foot of the altar. It just means that God, spirituality, religion, faith, etc, in one way or another, has become a fixed topic of thought...whether I like it or not. And not only do these topics fill my thoughts, but also my conversations. Just imagine what it is like for my professors!!!

One of my favorite Jesuits here at SLU, Fr. Meconi, has a way of making his class (or his mass) stand as the sole fuel for thought and conversation when you are a part of it. He brilliantly opened the beautiful chaos of the Early Church to me last semester. I'm telling you. This man is brilliant. He wanders across the front of the room or sits with his feet propped up on a table and uncovers little known facts about the beginning of our Catholic faith as if they are the riddles on a Laffy Taffy wrapper. And at random intervals, Fr. Meconi will scrawl some foreign language (hebrew, greek, latin, whatever fits) on the chalkboard and explain as we write these undecipherable words and symbols in our notebooks to look smart. Ubi peccato, ibi multitudo. where there is sin, there is many. Caro cardo salutis. flesh, hinge of salvation. Ex opere operato. out of the work already worked. Memento mori. remember, you will die. Tolle, lege. Pick it up and read.

He teaches. He preaches. And he believes. 

And he says silly/stupid/inappropriate things.

On a regular basis.

And we record them on the inside cover of our notebooks.

For example:

"I just circumcised my chalk." after dropping his chalk during a discussion about Origen's self-castration.
"Paul's letter to the Fallopians" Fr. Meconi's personal translation of Humanae Vitae into English.

Sometimes my theology professors say things that are absolutely brilliant...in a human way not a 'let me stand at a podium and tell you about the fantastic things I know since I have 3 Ph.D.'s and am way smarter than you' sort of way. 

My Philosophy of Religion professor, Fr. Vitali, was one of these men. He broke down in class and cried twice. That doesn't happen in other courses. Take to a business student or an art student or a chemistry student--I doubt they've ever seen their professor cry. Fr. Vitali had a tendency to go on tangents about the movie 'The Godfather' and his love for hunting but he also spoke about his friendships. Fr. Vitali is no young bird. He's not old and senile but he is old. He is at that age where he is beginning to see friends pass away, and, as a result his is getting in touch with his mortality. We were discussing mortality one day and Fr. Vitali dropped this heartfelt wisdom in our laps:

"The desire for immortality is so real, not because you want to save your soul but because you don't want to lose the good which is so real. I hope to God that someday you feel the pain [of mortality] because that means you've lived...and loved."

And today, my "sex" professor, Dr. Rubio got real with us. I've gotten to have some really fruitful conversations with her during the times I've gone in to her office and so I know her heart is real and trustworthy...but it is guarded. Anyway, she mentioned she has been keeping a journal, on and off, since she was 9 years old. I'd guess she is somewhere in her mid to late forties (an educated guess made possible by knowledge of her undergraduate graduation date) and that means she's been doing this journaling thing for over 30 years. I haven't even been alive that long! She mentioned that she occasionally looks back and sees how terribly mistaken she has been about pretty much everything through the years. We're talking about the woman who did her undergrad at Yale and her masters at Harvard and got her Ph.D. while begin pregnant and then a new mom. Yeah, sure, mistaken...sure. Dr. Rubio presented us with her humanity and her reason for God:

"Knowing how wrong I've been and how many mistakes I've made forces me to see and acknowledge that I want something other than me leading my life."

All these things and more are scrawled in the inside cover of my notebooks as treasured mementos of the hours I've spent listening to that professor's voice. You learn a lot in college, there's no doubt about that, but the vast majority of what I learn has not come from a textbook. I remember having a conversation about that very concept with someone after my freshman year, saying that I learned far more outside of the classroom but now I'm seeing that develop even further. I'm learning much in the classroom that is not in a textbook or listed on the syllabus. Saint Louis University prides itself on being a Catholic, Jesuit institution striving to educate the whole person.