Where are we going?
Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to be older than I was. While other children played make-believe house and Barbies, I played Office. I’d have my phone positioned so I could spin in my chair, wrapping myself in the cord for visual effect, and my younger sister would bring me coffee as I hosted board meetings of teddy bears and American Girl Dolls. I started babysitting at age 11, around the time that my sister cut her finger with scissors while a pre-teen was watching us, and the babysitter passed out from the sight of blood. I was the one who coordinated with our neighbor and communicated with my mom, gauging the next plan of action.
How I could hear myself say, as Geeder said, “’I leave it all to you’… that means something is going to happen and I’m going to take care of it!” (9).
It’s not that I lacked a childhood: au contraire, my early years were filled with rich scenes blurring reality with pretend, lurking behind doors and under armoires playing S.P.Y with my best friend, playing in our box car made out of couch cushions for an entire day re-enacting our favorite plots of Boxcar Children. I wanted so desperately to grow up, though, to be a part of the adult conversation, to have others respect my thoughts and sentiments, that oftentimes I wished my current life-stage away. (It was later that I realized I’d been included the entire time, and that I was respected, despite my age.)
I don’t think I appreciated my little world I had carved out for myself—how rich it was, how sure I was, how important and powerful I felt in my world –until I crossed over in to adolescence, and now, in to adulthood. It is not to say that I do not feel important and powerful and surrounded by wonder now, but it’s different. It’s as if Dust has settled on me, bringing with it both understanding and self-consciousness.
Yet as I finished that last sentence, another thought occurred to me. I’ve been operating under the assumption that Lyra and Will’s journey through the universes was the crest of their transition from childhood to adulthood, that Geeder had discovered the real Elizabeth once more after her summer with Zeely, and that her rediscovery had a sense of finality to it. Thinking about these characters, I’ve been using the beginning-middle-end model where their growth is like advancing through the levels of Super Nintendo: “*cue music* Congratulations, you’ve advanced to level 5! Save Princess Peach from Bowser’s Castle!” and suddenly Level 4 world is gone. New setting, new quest, new day.
But life isn’t like that… my spiritual, emotional and physical growth has been gradual, not incremental. I’ve had experiences like Will, Lyra and Geeder where after coming out of the immediate situation, the lights have changed tone and I see my world in a different light, but my journey didn’t stop there.
Pondering this evoked my reaction to the Slam Poetry piece we listened to, where the father is juxtaposing his knowledge with his daughter’s innocence of the world in which they live. I experienced sharp longing and/or grief for the girl that couldn’t control her enthusiasm because Santa was coming, who waited up for the Tooth Fairy and who believed that she really was a Spy Kid and a CEO and an Explorer all in one day. What was most interesting, however, is that while I was grieving the loss of her, I felt so profoundly connected to that little girl who was me…surely our distance can not be that great if I can still feel her anticipation, excitement, longing.
The conversation between Zeely and Geeder resonated with me for more than one reason, but this particular exchange speaks to my most recent revelation:
[Geeder and Zeely are walking through the woods]
“I didn’t know all this was here,” Geeder said. “I don’t know where we are.”
“We are near the road,” said Zeely, “but far away from where we entered.”
How beautifully Zeely, intentionally or unintentionally, describes our spiritual journeys. At least for me (as I cannot speak for everyone), I am Geeder: wandering through the same world in which I started, in awe of things I had not seen before… having journeyed so far from where I started, but on the same path all the same. With age comes awareness of things once invisible. Perhaps it is similar to the experience that when you feel intense pain, you’re now fully aware of what intense joy feels like.
A spiritual journey, to me, means a perpetual state of developing awareness. It means that as I progress in a (hopefully) upward projection, my perspective of the world is evolving. Pullman so beautifully describes the evolution of consciousness through the image of sraf. If, as Pullman says, sraf/Dust is the embodiment of the Fall, then “ the Fall is something that happens to all of us when we move from childhood through adolescence to adulthood and [he presented] it as something natural and good, and to be welcomed, and, you know - celebrated, rather than deplored.”
I think back on moments in my journey thus far when sraf evoked a new level of consciousness inside of me….
When I was on a sixth grade retreat, and I had to do an hour walk in the woods alone from point A to point B, and I realized that I was, indeed, alone with my own thoughts.
When I first became aware of evil the summer after eighth grade when a neighborhood boy hurt a little girl I babysat for and suddenly the news stories that seemed so distant on TV were suddenly so close to home.
Looking back on photos of me in middle school and realizing that even though I was an objective fashion disaster, I had no idea at the time, and so had sacred moments of care-freeness later lost in adolescence.
When I went to France on an exchange program when I was sixteen, and for the first time, made very significant and life-changing memories separately from my family, causing me to experience a new level of self-awareness.
When a friend’s mom died our first year in college and I realized how fragile life is, but also how resilient the human spirit is.
When I went to India and, stripped of distraction, comfort zone, and cell phone, discovered aspects of my personality I didn’t realize I had.
To draw a parallel to Amber Spyglass, recall the ending, when Will and Lyra see each other for the last time through the window in between their worlds. They are back where they belong, but so far from where they entered.
So I’ve come a long way from where I’ve entered. But where am I now? And what have I learned?
Geeder “liked being by herself. Alone, she could be anybody at all and she would have only herself to take care of (8)”. I am just now learning to be by myself. All of this projecting the image of who I am supposed to be and trying to reconcile who I actually am has highlighted just how far I have to go along my path.
If there is darkness before the dawn, I’m in the darkness right now. I am wrestling with these gigantic identities in head-to-head battle, but I know that realization is going to come. In a sea of unanswered questions and unidentified purpose, I hold on to this story—a choice my father made when I was 5 years old:
My dad worked for an investment bank in New York City for a few years after college, and then my parents moved us to Atlanta. I was two at the time. The slower pace of the South didn’t stop the i-bank from working my dad the same hours as their main office, so he was never home. I was so little, I don’t remember this, bat five years old, I asked Mommy where Daddy lived.
He quit his job.
I hold on to this truth in the midst of uncertainty: when life presents me with an ultimatum like that, I will always make my father’s choice.
I don’t know when God is going to ask me to choose between career and family, or maybe it will be some other form of decision, but in the moment when priorities conflict, I pray that I know myself well enough to understand what is important to me. It’s interesting to see how other people’s choices affect the foundation for your decisions. The choices my parents made laid the foundation of my life for me.
I end with a thought stemming from a quote Lyra says, “We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.”
At this point in my life, I am looking at myself right where I am. I am trying not to look forward so often as to miss what is in front of me right now. I will not wish away this life stage in an effort to grow up. While I don’t agree that we should live as if nothing more mattered in the world than right now, I want these memories to be vivid now, not in hindsight. And so, I suppose my position on my spiritual journey cannot be followed on a Marauder’s Map of sorts. Some days I feel as if I am running with long strides towards awareness, and at other times, angels intersecting my path at the right moment are pulling me along. I think that is the beauty of the journey. So close to the road, but far from where we began.
The real question is: where are we headed? Or rather, is that question important enough to answer?
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This feels disconnected from the rest of the text… do you mean to integrate it into the previous paragraph?
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You use so many creative ways to link your own personal story with the characters’ stories.
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Maybe you could use a stronger sentence to connect the two paragraphs?
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This sentence could use a little more clarity.
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This sentence could sound/feel better if you didn’t use light twice. It could work though
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Agreed – take out one “light.” Also, “lights have changed tone” doesn’t make sense. Light is visual and tone is more audio.
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Great connection and use of the text
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Maybe you could write “my spiritual journey” to strengthen the first two sentences?
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This paragraph is really good, and I like the way you tie in Pullman’s work.
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You give good imagery here.
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Awkward wording, maybe
I end with a thought stemming from Lyra, she says…
or
To end, let’s examine a quote from Lyra, "
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Seems good, very personal, good use of references.
Many ideas pervade this paper, and I often had difficulty following. I think that could be ok but it may also be good to find something that can pull it all together. The question of the destination vs. the journey is a very broad one. You do a good job of relating it to yourself and your life but I just wonder if it may be too big. I think it could work though
I know this wasn’t super specific so I’ll try to come back to this again later.
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