Pretty View

The landscape served as a catechist, carefully drilling the catechumen in lessons of the holy.
Belden Lane. Puritan Reading of the New England Landscape. pp132
I have to confess that I didn’t really digest all the material I have read for class today. It might have been a lack of concentration or just simply overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to do; I can’t figure out the connection between the four readings or even the connection between the first page and the last page of the passage. However, I do like this metaphor/personification of landscape as Lane delineates. Landscape for Puritans is the gist of their freedoms, their imagination and their love towards God. The environment is the backbone of their believes, structuring the fundamental idea of Puritanism- reshaping the spiritual world. “God is not to be understood but to be adored.” What a strange way to describe God. I was brought up without any religious affiliation, and I was taken in to the spiritual world not long ago. I can never truly understand the relationship, but at least I could adore his creation- the scenery on earth.

Oh College

“The educational community today makes relatively clear distinctions between colleges, universities, academies, and other kinds of schools, but their definitions carried widely in different times and places. In order to avoid repeating “college and university” with awkward frequency, the term college is sometimes used in this work in a broad sense, as including most schools of higher education in America-although merely framing a definition of “higher education” is difficult, given the changes, over time, in the ages of students, types of curricula, and academic degree.”
Campus by Paul Venable Turner
College is not just a school. According to Turner, college is a community and a tiny version of society. There is so much more than just classes. There is library, dorms, places to eat, and athletic facilities for students to have another life outside of academics. “Americans departed from tradition by creating individual colleges in separate locations rather than clustering them at a university, and thus intensified the autonomous nature of each college as a community in itself.” I have visited many colleges in the United States before I decided to come to St. Olaf. Every school I saw was similar: somewhat rural and away from the cities, small liberal arts college, and gorgeous campus. My parents strongly opposed the idea of choosing a school based on things other than academic ranking and reputation, since they believed that nothing was more important and studying in college, which I totally agree that it is the truth. They made a list of all the colleges I got into, and told me to go the one that was ranked the best colleges on the US. News website. However, I was searching for a place where I can thrive. “The American university is a world in itself.” I am glad that I have found my world.

On the Hill

I can't believe that I have already spent nearly a month here.
I can still remember the first day, August 31th, that my dream of stepping in college finally came true. The campus was quiet, but it was filled with excitement, ready to burst out screaming with joy. No parents, no friends, just by myself, I carried my suitcases up the top floor of Hoyme, towards the end of the hallway, where I belong for the rest of the year. My stuff unpacked quickly, I stared in the empty room, wondering what my roommate was like, who would be my friends, what classes would I take. It was a complex emotion, mixed with both excitement and sadness, the same feeling that everyone else had. But I could feel something more. My limited writing ability probably won't allow me to express my true feeling, but every time I think about my parents, whose daughters are so far away from home, who spend Thanksgiving and Christmas alone, who can only see me once a year, tears are swimming. I guess that two years ago when I left China for going to high school in Minnesota, we had already made a pact. I am here for a reason. The international student orientation was fun. People all over the world, people like me gathered on campus, sharing our stories, and of course, our expectations and joyous for the upcoming semester. Soon all the first year student poured into St. Olaf. Parents were crying, and grandparents were crying, and even the puppy was sobbing.
"When do you think he is going to go home?" my friend from Ecuador asked me.
"I don't know, fall break?"
And we both just laughed.
I was not trying to make fun of anyone, and I am never going to. It was a bitter laugh, the laugh you have to make when you don't want to cry.
Like the Puritan sailing across the ocean, we all came to pursue our dreams. The puritans were after the spiritual purification of their church, and I am after the freedom of allowing myself to fly and sour.
This is now my home the other side of the world.

Learning to Love St. Olaf

Learning to Love St. Olaf

because it has stories

because the Midwest breeze blows across the hill
because the winter gust is cold
and because Oles are better than the knights

because we give rather than ask

because we are international
we sailed from east and west
and across the Pacific

because the air is filled with Malt-O-Meal
my sense melts in my mind
my hunger with my mouth

because we sing Um Ya Ya

because everyone loves the Caff
because we check the P.O three times a day
because the purple dragon smiles in the lib
because the wind chime rings

because the Norwegian folks float
because the Vikings hum
because we are who we are

because home is far away
because it is time

Anne Hutchinson

I have to confess that tonight's reading assignment is the only one that I have truly enjoyed for a long time. I didn't know anything about Anne Hutchinson prior to the reading, and I believe what fascinates me the most is Anne Hutchinson's courage and wisdom to fight for her freedom, and the freedom of all women: the freedom of believing in what you believe and the freedom for women to have their rights. She realized the Puritan injustice among the community and wanted to voice her opinion to improve the situation by developing her own theological ideas and giving sermons. Many people, both men and women, were impressed by her intellectual ability and followed her. Westerkamp states that " (Anne Hutchinson is) the pioneer for civil and religious liberty, crusading against Puritan." I agree that later in her career she did seemed to fight against Puritanism by challenging Winthrop and expressing her belief in direct revelation and communication with God; however she did support Cotton's idea of Puritanism when she moved from England to Massachusetts. I think it was very brave of her to say what she believed in in front of public. We are who we are and we should act the same way as our minds do even though it means challenging the authority.
"In presenting an alternative to Winthrop's society, an alternative that was outside human control, she was offering the freedom from law and structure that revelation gave her." (P12)
She realized the importance of communication personally with God, even the situation is "outside of human control". It is because of this revelation from God, individualism, all people are equal before God and people, especially women, have the right to speak, to vote, and express their mind freely. However, her identity of a woman put her in jeopardy. "In attacking Hutchinson's femaleness Winthrop was attacking her spirituality." This is a very interesting point that is brought up by Westerkamp. In a society that was deeply influenced by man's hierarchy, being a woman was a disadvantage for practicing the freedom of speech, in this case, developing her theological thoughts. What if Anne Hutchinson was a man and everything she had done was still the same. What would have happened?

Of Plymouth Plantation

In the handout of Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, I have read about four stages of the Pilgrims settling in the United States. The description by Bradford of the Pilgrims is very different than Cullen’s Puritans. And of course Pilgrims are very different than Puritans. If the freedom the Puritans are after is considered to be a negative freedom, the freedom of pursuing no boundary of their religion believes, and then the pilgrims’ freedom should be a positive one. They wanted to achieve the kind of reformation that brings them the most self-realization of spiritual awakening. From first arriving to the new land to signing the Mayflower Compact, they stayed loyal to their faith. Freedom appears both explicitly and implicitly in the passage, especially the freedom of worship.

Puritans

I first encountered the vocabulary “Puritans” when I was reading The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Puritans community to me was this indifference clan of cold-blooded people who wanted to purify the whole nation. However Cullen states at the beginning of the chapter that Puritans could be not as bad as we thought despite the fact that they have their notorious reputation. They came here with a dream of living in an ideal world, looking for a fresh start. Whether they had succeed or not, Puritanism is an essential block of our history.

Learning to Love America

The poem starts with no capitalization. It shows a lack of confidence and the struggle of language, which are usually the two challenges new comers face when they come to America. This poem depicts a mix identity: a woman who migrates to the America. America “has no pure product” because people here are all like her, coming from different parts of the world.
because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don’t know
This part really strikes me when I am reading the poem. The son says that he doesn’t know who he is. I think this is a problem among all the immigrants: people’s identities start to fade because of the multicultural background of each individual. I once read an article about the life of a Chinese immigrant in the United States, and she said that when she went back to China, She felt like a foreigner, and when she finally got back to the United States, she again felt like a foreigner. It is hard to find a place where you truly belong. However, America is the only place on earth that emerges everyone all over the world in its generous heart, and with people from different background, we all together build a thriving world.

When it comes together

I feel left out sometimes when my friends are discussing their favorite bands and their favorite childhood TV shows and stories. “I am foreign,” I would respond with a smile, shrugging my shoulders, “never heard of them before.” Then the conversation moves along its original path, with me stopping in the middle of the road, eager to catch up. I would care less about those TV shows, but I can’t stand the fact that I am a mute when people start to talk about democracy, the Constitution, politics, human rights, and in general, the United States. I did some reading and research but realized that a couple nights of reading do not even come close to eighteen years of living here.
The first week of American Conversation class reaffirms my choice of enrolling in this program. I have always believed that the best way to involve in a culture is to become an expert of it, and I think I am traveling towards the right direction. On Monday we talked about FDR’s speech on Four Freedoms and its relations between Rockwell’s posters. I had never thought about freedom until last weekend when I read the speech. I had never felt that my freedom was in jeopardize, or that I ad never really thought about what freedom I did have and what I did not. Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do with no boundaries or limitations. Freedom is a complex concept. It has different meanings for different people. For some, freedom could be the freedom of choosing a spouse. For others, it might be the freedom of getting education. For the rest, freedom stands for speaking their mind freely. There aren’t any rankings of freedom: no one specific freedom is considered to be better than the other. Freedom comes in need of the person who is using it, and everyone should have any freedom no matter his or her nationality, gender, race, and social class; therefore we are creating a greater good of the society. Just like T.T Williams mentioned in The Open Space of Democracy, we should all work together to dissolve of polarization and divergence of the community and figure out how to solve the problems of the environment that currently threatening our democracy. This is definitely a positive freedom: it requires all of our self-determination, self-realization, and an active and logical mind, to achieve this greater goal.

Time of Our life

I am walking inside of a dark tunnel, eyes wide open, searching for little pieces of light that can drag me out of this torturous path. This was how I felt when I had no time to devote to myself to think, speak, or act. The path symbolizes the bondage that traditional ideas have on our mind, and the rays of light stand for the sparkles of personal awakening of realizing what we really want to do. Freedom to me is not the minimum constraint on things we do, but the maximum amount of time we can use to pursue our own values and goals of life, which in my word is the premise of FDR’s four freedoms: the freedom of controlling time. We are all born with equal distribution of hours per day, and how to make use of it depends on not only others but also ourselves. A person with no freedom of controlling his time could be influenced by family, friends, and society, as he dedicates his precious time to blindly follow what other people do. On the other hand, the same person could be influenced by himself. The lack of general education and active thinking put him into a coma that both consciously and unconsciously he no longer reacts to stimuli like new ideas. Thus, the freedom of speech and religion, the freedom from want and fear cannot be practiced without a dynamic mind that knows how to devote and can devote one’s time to achievements.

The American Dream

“Athena is going to college in the United States to fulfill the American dream.” - my parents’ favorite line to say when people asked about where I was going to college. To them, a couple who have never been to college, who have never been out of China, and who believe that gold and money are all over the streets in the United States, the American dream simply means that I am stepping on the land of opportunities. Even though people talk about it all the time, I didn’t know that the “American dream” has another deeper meaning than what it literally means until I read the introduction of the book The American Dream by Jim Cullen. I typed “The American dream” in Google, hoping that I could find some definition and more information on the terminology. After I finished reading Wikipedia, I was confused: What exactly is the American dream? I started to read the introduction, puzzled, but eager to find the answer.

James Truslow Adams states “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man.” I agree on Cullen’s opinion that “better and richer and fuller” has a lot of meaning, and it changes over time, so there isn’t one specific definition. However Cullen does mentions four categories:  the upward mobility, such as economics and social advancement, the quest for equality, home ownership, and personal fulfillment. I can easily relate to the first one. I have to say that one of the reasons my parents sent me to a private college in the United States is that they know with this kind of education, the best education they could find in the world, I will be successful no matter what. Their money is going to be paid off years later when I become a doctor or a scientist. Although the economy has experience some downhill recently, America is still indeed the “land full of gold.” Cullen also made the point that

The term seems like the most lofty as well as the most immediate component of an American identity, a birthright far more meaningful and compelling than terms like “democracy,” “ Constitution,” or even “ the United States.”

We treasure the American dream more than democracy, Constitution, and even the United States because the identity we have is that we do not have an identity. The American dream symbolizes the prosperous variation of different identities.