As I scroll through your postings for this week, I am reminded that graduate school has been and continues to be a "metaphysical club" for me. The life of the mind is a wonderful and dangerous activity that should not be endeavored (completely) alone. This kind of intellectual work is a gift-giving circle. A fact too easily lost in the shuffle of academic competition, job searches, tenure review processes, and disciplinary turf wars. Lewis Hyde says it best:
"A gift that has the power to change us awakens a part of the soul. Be we cannot receive the gift until we can meet it as its equal. We therefore submit ourselves to the labor of becoming like the gift" (The Gift p. 51).
My question for next week is: "If the metaphysical club is the intellectual/spiritual space or context of the circulation of the gift, what then is the gift?"
Connection
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