#61, May 19, 2005

Chapter 61

Which recounts what will be seen by whoever reads it, or heard by whoever listens to it being read.

I was recently complimented by a member of my division, Richard Stockton College’s Division of Arts and Humanities, for my understanding and application of pastoral theology.  I had been sending out frequent updates on all the things that my colleagues had been doing of late and this was considered a kind of engagement largely unknown to the division.  As a renowned scholar of the Greek Orthodox Church, this distinguished faculty member knew whereof he spoke with regard to theology, so this was indeed a distinct honor to receive such praise.

However, the word “pastoral” certainly triggered some sobering thoughts.  I immediately recalled that at the end of Don Quixote our knight errant takes up the notion of becoming a pastoralist (or shepherd) after his return to his village and in the brief period before he dies.  This got me thinking that I was perhaps in my own work as a dean dismounting from Rosinante, putting down the sword and shield, and taking up the more sedate life of the pastoralist.  My anarchic blog had not been updated in many a month, and if I had any claims to knight errantry in my past they lay in my errant ventures among the shades and enchantments of historiography.  I had surely tilted at many a wind-mill of my own creation.  I had assaulted many a bastion of history in the name of truth, honor, and all that lies in-between, those lies between.  Not, perhaps, so that anyone would notice – my blog was not mentioned in the AHA Perspectives (May 2005) update on all things bloggery – but enough to know that I was out there on my own (I had not yet located a Sancho Panza) fighting the good fight.

And it would not be fair to say that I had not been noticed.  No Moorish scholar had found my work and decided to chronicle my escapades, but I had received occasional notes from people indicating that the blog had been read, even one from a Don Quixote scholar.  The subject of the very first entry, “Narrative is Theft,” had even sent me a copy of what he was calling his “second heist,” and he claimed to be an avid reader – with pleasure being mentioned (I am sure he said something akin to that).  Not bad.  Indeed, it was the coincidence of receiving this book (about which I hope to write in a later entry) and my esteemed colleague’s pastoral reference, that made me decide to go off in search of my horse – Dreamweaver © ® ¥ β – and find my armor to don quixotically. 

This then is the beginning of my second journey.  I will not reject the pastoralism I have recently acquired, I will remain a dean for the interim; but we will see whether I become more or less radical, going to the roots of all those historic plantings festooned across my path, or instead just search for a route around such encumbrances. 

I only need two things: I need a Sancho to provide some comic relief and the constant reminder that even when charging at another historian’s ideas with lance (a lot like our knight errant) we might just be creating the mirror image of those things we oppose.  For, in the end, we are all pastoralists of the mind, situating ourselves in relation to the world through our own systems acquired from the pastures (gender, class, life-cycle, race) in which we find ourselves.  And I forget the other thing that I need – it probably encompasses everything.

© Rob Gregg, 2005