Inklings, Inkblots, and one more conference . . .

Kohleun and I just heard back about our last conference. We'll both be reading at Sigma Tau Delta's Faith in the Humanities Conference, at Northwest University (near Seattle, Washington). The conference is March 19th and 20th, the two days before spring break. We're still not exactly sure how we'll be getting up there, but I think one of our professors is going to road-trip with us. Which should be a lot of fun. =)

Kohleun will be presenting a creative non-fiction piece (somewhere along the lines of her first memory, and the church), and I'll be reading a paper I wrote two years ago for my C.S. Lewis and the Bible class: "C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Issue of Religious Inclusivism." Both papers are a little . . . heretical. So things should be interesting. =)

On a side note, the class/professor I wrote my C.S. Lewis paper for is still exerting significant influence on my thinking, and the thinking of my friends. Starting this spring, a group of us has been meeting every Saturday, from 2:00-4:00 (i.e. 2:00-5:30/6:00), to share ideas, fellowship, and papers. We jokingly refer to ourselves as the Inkblots -- similar to the Inklings, but with no beer, few men, and one two-year-old child (and rather less brilliance =). We meet at the house of a married student (who took C.S. Lewis and the Bible with me) and his wife (who grew up in Africa) and we drink lots of tea. Although the idea was to form a writing group, it isn't that exactly. For one thing, we read our papers aloud, rather than handing out hard copies, so it's very hard to comment on grammar, syntax, or form. Invariably, it becomes a discussion about content -- the ideas conveyed, the imagery used, and the emotional power expressed. Since I'm already in a writing group (two of my fellow writing/lit majors and I are doing an independent study with our favorite writing prof) this is a nice change of pace. A very different focus.

In many ways, this group is a culmination of ideas we've been discussing for the last two years (since taking Roger's class). For all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, the Inklings, Lewis, imagination, fantasy, Tolkien, etc. have always been significant (at least in the abstract), but I think Roger's class inspired a deeper academic/intellectual exploration of what those authors are actually doing, and why they are successful (an exploration that leaked into Shared Praxis the next year, and reading Charles Williams' work). I'll admit that this doesn't hold true for all Inklbolt members (*cough* Kohleun *cough*), but it's the foundation that inspired the group. And the core that keeps it going.

On a further side note, favorite professors should NOT go on sabbatical during students' last year of college. It is most distressing.

(While at Fox, Roger Newell's classes have probably had the most significant influence on my spiritual journey. I've found each of them to be transformative in some subtle, but powerful, way: Bible Survey, Christian Foundations, and C.S. Lewis and the Bible).