Finished...

At least with the 15 page research paper. What a shocker to realize that my ideas must be substantiated by actual published material and not just footnoted as "because I'm the Mommy that's why." My best friend for this project was Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers. A great book for those of you writing papers or advising children in the finer art of class papers. Everything you need really is covered in this gem of a book. Mine is now littered with underlinings and bent pages. The spine has long since been broken from long hours left open by the computer and then crushed by various middle school text books that had "to go somewhere, Mom."

I did find out, among other things, that my eyes hurt when I stare at a computer screen too long. I was advised to take short breaks, staring into the distance, preferably at something green. Instead, I bought a red beta fish and added three clumps of spider grass to the top. The variegated leaves sprout out in all directions over the top like some hairstyle gone awry. The shiny white roots descend into the water and dig into the black stones at the bottom. The fish swims in and around them until it notices me or anything else that annoys it and then the beta puffs out in all its finned glory. I suppose it is trying to intimidate me so that I won't attack it. Instead I find its bluster beautiful. I watch it for awhile before getting sucked back into whatever paragraph I've been working on. The end result is that I have yet another live thing to care for, but on the other hand, my eyes do hurt less.

The research paper ended up exploring several of the topics floating around in my head. I did a fair amount of reading on Feminist Theology. A field that contains a wide, wide spectrum of thought. At least I have a tentative grasp on some of the names and ideas that are floating around out there. I settled on studying in depth Catherine Mowry LaCugna, a catholic, feminist theologian from Notre Dame who died of cancer at the age of 44 back in 1997. Her best known work is a fascinating book entitled God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. The paper focused on the Trinity, both its historical development as a doctrine and the implications that a trinitarian theology has for the life of the church. The underlying, more personal, question was whether a feminist could remain orthodox, yielding a perspective that is needed in the mostly male-centered world of theology or would such a perspective lead down the road to heresy. The paper took far, far longer than I had hoped. I find my lack of knowledge produces a high need to research which combined with a natural procrastination tendency and a full life outside of school, plus a general lack of formal writing practice meant that more than a month went by before it went winging onward to be graded. But I did love every minute of writing that paper and I'm looking forward to more. It is a sickness, I know.