We can do this.

I’ve  forgotten to be thankful for a few things, and something happened today in my political theory class which jogged my memory.

Well, if I start at the beginning, often  at university, when I’m sticking my hand up to offer responses to value based questions; that most everyone would think me a hopeless idealist.  In first year, back in one of our legal theory classes, looking at the ideas behind justice and this inexplicable ubiquitous sense of what is right that seems common to man, I stuck my hand up- admitted that I was a Christian and suggested a reason. In what was one of the greatest moments of that semester, a Canadian by the name of Dave stuck his hand up and agreed. And there I was, an embarrassed minority as I had been a number of times. But an embarrassed minority of two. Somebody else in the class understood.

A couple of weeks ago in my political theory class, we were discussing again this normative sense of justice and human value that seem to have haunted every political theorist we’ve studied, when Nick, the well spoken gentleman who sits over to the right, stuck his hand up and suggested it was what C.S. Lewis (a marvelous theologian and Christian writer) described “the soul”. I grinned from ear to ear. These two aren’t idealists, they’re not naïve. They are men who can hold their own in class discussions and we’re on the same team. Beautiful.

So. You’ll never guess what happened today. There’s this girl in my class who’s captured my attention a number of times, Elspeth. Mostly because she is the picture of humility, but also because I like her natural, practical style. It was her turn to present material and facilitate discussion in our seminar class this afternoon. She spoke well, if not a little nervously, and when the class had finished its discussion, the tutor did his customary probing and one of the questions addressed to her was “what do you think the ‘Hobbesian’ response to the questions of justice and equality- but without reference to religion- might be”. She cleared her throat and said something to the affect that she didn’t think they could exist separately, qualifying this with her faith in God. She was singularly the most beautiful creature I’d seen all week. Blushing in front of room of self described realist-atheist-evolutionist-rationalist-children-of their-creator-none-the-less, proclaiming a faith in the irrational, the unseen. I don’t know if she saw me, sitting at the back of the room, grinning like a maniac and praising God quietly under my breath but I was there, again, the proud member of a minority of two.

And so now the ‘I can do this’ affirmation I think over in my head when struggling at uni has become ‘we can do this’.
It’s fabulous.

Praise God.