wisdom of the elders – Feminism and Religion

In My End: My Beginning by Margot Van Sluytman

In my end is my beginning.
T. S. Eliot

This year two colleagues of mine died. And my heart roared. Tears aplenty accompanied me. Poet that I am. Word-lover. Image-seeker. Meaning-making-hound-dog. Doggedly seeking a place to plant myself so that the ache of these losses within the crucible in which I find myself grounded, honed, chiselled, challenged, challenging, writing, wording, rewording, sculpting relationship with my students, who are too my teachers, is soothed. By tiny shards. Soothed. And death finds home everywhere. In each nook. Cranny. Crevice. Concreted crenellation or grassy llano, there she be.

What research, I ask myself, can we do when the heart fails to cease its eking, leaking ache, and crushing sorrow? What academic skill need we birth, resurrect, divine in order to erase this over-whelming tsunami of acknowledging our finitude? Where to look? What book? What paper? What journal? To what podcast need we creep, crawl, scurry, bound, fling ourselves in order to quell brutal, blistering despair? Self-immolation cannot work, for too, too many teeming tears douse the flames.