Discovering New Things

I suppose that I am most passionate about discovering new things. I travel a fair amount, especially in the U.S., giving talks and attending conferences. One of the most delightful aspects of this roaming is the chance to learn about other places. Recently I flew into Toledo, Ohio to give an address at the University there. I have been in other Ohio cities - Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus – but never in Toledo. It was cloudless afternoon when I flew in and, because I request a window seat so I can peer down at the landscape below, I was amazed to see so many of the homes on the rural outskirts of the city with ponds in their yards. Not swimming pools but ponds. All shapes and sizes. There were large bodies of water with homes ringing their shores but there were also uncountable number of separate properties with one home on it and a back or side area featuring a pond. It made me wonder about the ecology of the region (Toledo abuts the shore of Lake Erie) and the use put to those ponds (ornamental? fishing? even swimming?) It was a question I would have to put to my hosts when I arrived.

When a guest, I am often lodged in a generic conference hotel but, if given the opportunity, I will choose a more off-the-beaten-path lodging or at least try to walk the nearby neighborhood and scout out its unique stores, homes, landmarks, inhabitants and particularities. Another place I have had opportunity to visit recently is New Orleans, where I stayed in a somewhat long-in-the-tooth but historic inn which allowed me to amble through the French Quarter each morning on my way to the conference gathering and do a tour of my own through the storied district with its layers of history: the Old Ursuline Convent, the Cathedral with its prominent tableaux of France’s King Louis, the Creole restaurant where Andrew Jackson dined and I enjoyed the mufalatta.  Each unique environment has its own history and feel, its own natural and cultural ecology, its sense of the “place.” This fascinates me.

As a teacher and a scholar I suppose the same curiosity about things I don’t know drives my work. One of my main areas of academic research is Salesian spirituality (the tradition founded in the 17^th century by St. Francis de Sales) and I never tire of being asked to delve deeper into that tradition to ferret out new perspectives and ask unasked questions. More recently I have completed a study of Marian devotion in the “minority majority” archdiocese of Los Angeles, which incidentally is my home town. The research took me all over the vast southern California ecclesial environment and allowed me to speak with all sorts of people I never would otherwise have met: priests, religious, and sacristans, yes, but also members of rosary groups and sodalities of Our Lady, ordinary Catholics who taught me of their devotion to Mary in her many guises: Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Polish, Lithuanian, Nigerian, and Salvadoran.

At Creighton I especially enjoy students who ask a lot of questions, not that I always know the answers, but I appreciate the restless intellectual energy that motivates the questions and delight in the play involved in turning the question over and seeing how things look when viewed through the lens of a probing inquiry. The “what do I have to know for the exam” questions, while I can appreciate the often anxious motive behind them, are not the ones that most interest me. Rather, I delight in a student who finds connections between a topic we are pursuing in Theology and something read in a Psychology text or heard in a History lecture, or some observation they have made through their own experience, or some cross cultural encounter they have had. These forays into the world of ideas are not unlike my own roaming in unfamiliar cities: ancient or recent pathways traversed with new steps, seen with new eyes and sensibilities and a zest for wonder. These are the things that give life and generate passion.                                                                  

Kindly,

Dr. Wendy M. Wright, Theology