I had the privilege of hearing her speak and of spending some time in personal conversation with her this week. In 15-20 minutes of conversation, we talked about my college, feminist literary criticism (she was able to speak the book Persuasion with a better memory for the details than I had after writing a thesis on it several years ago), philosophically inexact languages, womanly receptivity, her "trinity" of favorite composers, motherhood, etc. In the course of that conversation, she mentioned words or phrases from 6 languages, including quoting Virgil in Latin and Dante in Italian as we spoke of literature and its relationship to philosophy. And yet, she claims to "not [be] a scholar," to be only "trying to be a philosopher," and to not really be a linguist but only someone who is interested in languages and has studied several. Her modesty is genuine, and her insight into this world and the next is profound. I will attempt in my next few posts to record some of the beautiful things I have learned from her this week.
As a reminder as we approach a time of year with many social gatherings:
Learn from those who have walked the path before you. Ask them about themselves, and you will learn about yourself through their experiences. And never ignore the person sitting silently in the corner; they may be the one God has entrusted with a gem of knowledge to give you in return for your hospitality of spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment