Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger is assistant professor of English and the director of The Great Conversation program at Gordon College. Corey Sparks is assistant professor of English at California State University at Chico, where he teaches courses on medieval literature, literary theory, poetry, and the digital humanities. Kerilyn and Corey join Elise to reflect upon their decade-long friendship, which took root amid the shared anxieties of graduate studies and has flourished despite their physical separation. Drawing upon ancient, medieval, and modern texts, the three friends meditate on tenderness, vulnerability, and viewing oneself through the eyes of one’s friends.
Piers Plowman is all about the trouble and the problem of trying to be in the world
Friendship developed in the mixed—active and contemplative—life
Friendship is a process of formation
We loved literary theory but, as Christians, we felt we had something to say back to it
Theology and theory were both interrogated yet allowed to speak for themselves
Learning must needs happen in community
Community is best understood concretely, as a group of particular people
Knowledge production is a shared, relational activity
Recognizing the individuality of others generates love, care, concern, and knowledge
Desire is the only way that change happens in the soul
The will involves both the things we choose and the things that befall us
Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal shared a deep friendship despite their separation
How does one practice vulnerability in one’s attachments?
The tenderness of douceur presupposes a relationship beyond social media “friends”
Joanna Newsome’s “Divers” is another version of the Pearl poem
Friendship presents us with the best version of ourselves
Narcissism reflects back the self in a hall of mirrors; friendship reflects the true self
The absence of friends makes their presence knowable
Being apart allows a new way of being together to emerge
Lyric poetry is always concerned with memorializing something absent
In friendship, memories have meaning because they are shared
Links:
The Great Conversation program at Gordon College
Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger on How Covid-19 Has Re-ordered What Matters Most
Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry
The Puppet and the Dwarf by Slavoj Žižek
St. Paul: Foundation of Universalism by Alain Badiou
Theology and Social Theory by John Milbank
The Monstrosity of Christ by Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank
“The academic job market is a nightmare. Here’s one way to fix it.”
“650,000 Colleagues Have Lost Their Jobs”
Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction
“How St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal Changed the World”
Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales
The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida
A Short Summary of the Medieval Poem Pearl