if the soul were contained in a material object, it would need a big box.

  On Friday I'll be flying into Dublin, Ireland.  I put mass at St. Patrick's cathedral on my list of things I want to do, somewhere near the Guinness factory and the Museum of Modern Art.  But when I look at the list, mass sticks out as a question mark.

I think about religion often; or perhaps more accurately, why I am not a devoted member of one. I was raised catholic, but to tell the truth it never really caught on.  I'd go through the motions, learn the prayers, go to Sunday school, but it was never something I wanted to do, never something that made me want to follow Christ with a burning passion.  Sermons never did anything for me, they just came off as a few minutes of rhetoric that I either didn't understand or simply didn't care to. 

So when occasionally the topic of religion comes up, my answer is, "well, uh...I'm kind of catholic?  Well confirmed catholic...but I haven't gone to church in ages."  This answer inevitably leads to a questioning of my innermost thoughts.  What do you believe in?  And sometimes I don't know.

I believe in questioning that which I think I know.  I believe in love.  I believe that a warm hug can't solve everything, but it sure as hell can help.  I believe that music is a vital part of life.  I believe that dreams mean something.  I believe a lot of things, but what do I believe in?

Some people believe in magic.  Some in fate.  Some in divine intelligence.  Some in chance.  Some would argue they have nothing at all to believe in.  But whatever you believe in, whatever you put your faith into becomes an intrinsic piece of your identity.  So then what, do I call my faith, my religion?  A hodgepodge of various thoughts?

I suppose what I believe in is a realm outside our physical world.  I believe that what we call 'reality' isn't the only game in town.  I believe that there's a peace to be found in my unknown, unnamed realm, and living a life of curiosity, acceptance and a touch of adventure can take me there.  So do I believe in God?  Sure, if you want to call it that, a higher power, a transcending presence, whatever, to me thats just semantics.

So maybe I don't go to church.  But I do believe in something, and for me that something can be found in the strangest of places, like a great back-beat, a first kiss, a poem that feels like it was written for you, a best friends consoling words...I could go on, but it doesn't really matter.  But that feeling, that sensation of true consciousness, of blood-pumping life?  That is what I pray to. 

So what do you believe in?

visual pleasantries.

unidentified water-foliage, germany.

coffee...coffee in holland.

dachau concentration camp, germany.

river-surfer in the english garden, munich, germany.

peace angel in munich, germany.

luxembourg city, luxembourg.

the wax dolls playing on the oude market in leuven.

a few friends i met at mt. st. michel in france.

american cemetary in normandy, france.

st. malo, france. also my current desktop background.

eiffel tower, in case you didn't know that.

I've just painted my fingernails, O.P.I.'s 'Malaga Wine," so instead of pecking away awkwardly at the keyboard for too long, I thought I'd share a few photographs.

ethical adventures and wooden shoes

"We are what we are in a process of becoming ourselves,"  or so says Dr. William Desmond, a well acclaimed philosophy scholar who also happens to be the professor of my Introduction to Ethics course.  Now granted, my academic experience here in Leuven has been less than strenuous in terms of hours clocked in; however, i will go with the theory of quality over quantity for this situation, and say I'm learning a thing or two.

            Why did I choose to become a philosophy major?  Well, I took intro to philosophy back in Maryland, enjoyed the class and wanted to have an affair with the professor.  I mean, there was a bit more thought put into my declaration, but I'll boil it down to that.  So luck being upon my shoulders, I wind up choosing a study abroad program which tosses me into a university well known for an exceptional philosophy faculty.  So I sit there and I stare at this man who has written books and explored theories that go so far over my head that they don't even resemble constellations; the understanding of them is something I just have to trust exists, and I think, well perhaps life is working in my favor.

            If I were to write out a list of things that make me happy, being in a classroom with an engaging professor lecturing on a topic I find interesting ranks up there with tiny furry animals and a nice glass of red wine.  I've come to realize that if I could be a student for the rest of my life, if learning could be my chosen profession, I'd choose that path in a heartbeat.  I think that's why I love philosophy - it is the farthest thing from finite.  A study of questions about life that lead to 'answers' which are really just deeper versions of the original question, with about 19 little tangents, exceptions and connections.  Philosophy to me is like an endless web.  I'm here at one corner, I'll go straight, have a fanned out spread of choices of ways to go next, and I'll continue along, probably end up somewhere close to where I started, but it will look different.  I find that the further I explore philosophy, the further I explore myself.  

            Isn't that such a big part of every moment?  Self exploration?  It certainly is for me.  I mean, to be honest, I've never known who the hell I am.  What am I?  Am I what I do - a student, a friend, a writer?  Am I a summation of my actions - playing the guitar, throwing rocks at cars when I was 6, buying a birthday present?  Am I what I love - good music, laughter, coffee, pistachio ice cream?  Am I my emotions - contemplative, happy, stressed, compassionate?  The easy answer is, well duh, a combination of it all.  A veritable heap of qualities and experiences, thoughts and sensations, physical attributes and vocal patterns.  But today I think, if what I am isn’t necessarily these quantifiable or named...things...if what I am is my own motion, by own expanding understanding of my place in the world, well then I’m more ‘myself’ now than ever.

      I always thought it would be cliché to go abroad and have it change your life.  I don’t mean that I didn’t find picking up and moving to another country wasn’t a life change, but I mean I was skeptical of that experience changing your outlook in a drastic matter.  I pictured someone trotting off to Europe and coming back with a more stylish wardrobe, lofty ideals and a nicotine addiction.

Then I went abroad, and within two months, I’m changing.  Add this to the list of things I’ve been wrong about along with the spelling of ‘necessary’ and the pronunciation of the name ‘Hermione’ from Harry Potter.  It’s not so much a radical change in mindset or opinion, but rather a shift to self-discovery rather than self-invention.  This is not a transformation for me – a transformation would imply a firmly established state of self that becomes malleable and is then sculpted into something else.  No, I haven’t been transformed.  I think I’ve just become more aware of my own existence.

The other day I ventured into Holland, specifically the town of Maastricht, with a few friends for the day.  Now in this region, weed is legal – well, sort of, what I mean is I smoked in a coffee shop without fear of arrest, and this is common.  So if you’re skeptical that these thoughts of mine are a result of a plant, I can see where you’re coming from.  But like, here’s what I mean man, you just gotta flow.  But seriously.  I’m finding that the more I focus internally, the clearer I see things externally, and I’ve been surprised to find how much there is inside.  For the first time, I’m becoming myself by exploring who I am.  And if this self-study is life, then there’s a reason to be content – I’ll be a student for the rest of my life.

Revisiting Munich

400 steps.  400 strides, 400 separate displacements of gravel, perhaps more accurately 376 steps and 24 shuffles.  That's what it took for me to get from the gate of Dachau concentration camp to the barracks that still remain standing.  The amount of steps would vary person to person, or day to day, depending on height, footwear or mood, but the distance remains the same - not terribly far.  One can cross the stony courtyard in something like 2 minutes or less.  For me, 400 steps, or 2 minutes between entering the camp and entering the exhibit.  For someone walking this same path sixty years ago, those 400 steps and 2 minute block of time were between freedom and chains.  Humanity and hell.  Morality and depravity.

 When you're in middle school, you read the Diary of Anne Frank.  Maybe you read Night by Elie Wiesel, watch Life is Beautiful or Schindler's list, visit a Holocaust museum or Memorial, listen to testimonies of survivors, or study the political factors that allowed Hitler to rise to power and kindle a fire of genocide and torture.   All of these exposures spark thoughts in your mind about the horrors, bring a heavy weight down on the chest, feelings of sympathy for families, disgust at human nature, nausea from the images of piled bodies or emaciated faces.  But a place - a physical presence at the site of the real events - now that is an emotion all together different. 

Out of body experience is used so often that I hesitate to use it as a descriptor for the feeling of walking along the barbed wire fences where prisoners were shot by SS officers with the ease of a farmer shooting a rodent who has been a pest to his crops, or the chills that went up my spine as I stared at the furnaces in the crematorium where bodies were burnt, souls completely disregarded, or the sharp pain in my stomach when I looked at the remaining personal belongings of inmates including a letter announcing a new birth with a picture of an adorable smiling little girl, a little girl who probably never saw her uncle, or if she did, saw him with scars on his arms, back and in his eyes.  Pain, suffering and regret is palpable just inside the gates at Dachau, and it lingers like a thick fog.  Memorials and signs engraved with statements such as "Never Again" act as soft lights of hope, but still, the fog is dense. 

I visited Dachau this past weekend during my trip to Munich and this was the second time I walked these grounds.  The first time was the summer after my sophomore year of high school, at age 16.  Marcel Proust wrote that, "The real voyage of discovery consists of not seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."  At 20, I saw this landscape with eyes 4 years older, 4 years changed.  Back then, I felt the anguish.  I remember feeling angry, frustrated and confused, and I remember a silent bus ride.  I understood "crimes against humanity," I felt the hopelessness in the eyes of the prisoners in the photos, grasped the idea of hatred and inhumane treatment, pictured the horrible conditions in hygiene, nutrition and health care.  I resented the absence of humanity, asked myself how the hell this could happen, cried for the men women and children reduced to animals and eradicated for false and disturbing ideals.

So what did 4 years change?  I still felt similar waves of emotions, I walked the same paths, read the same panels in the museum.  But what 4 years changed in my vision, or rather what 4 years added to my vision, is responsibility.  I don't feel so separate anymore.  4 years ago I looked at reminders of a disgusting stain on world history, and thanked God it ended.  Yesterday I looked at the words "Never Again," and realized its up to me (and by me I mean us, our generation) to make that reality.  Hatred, abuse of power, torture and brutality didn't end with the liberation of Concentration camps in 1949.  Persecution still exists.  The Geneva convention didn't erase war crimes.  I think about the terrorism alerts that almost kept me from making my visit to Germany, and I see how close we are to the edge.  Dachau serves as a reminder of a hideous past, but what I saw yesterday was a warning of an equally monstrous future.  I suppose what I'm getting at is that my 20 year old eyes aren't just that of an emotional observer, but as an involved citizen of a world in danger of repeating its worst habits.

I'm a college student now, not just a kid.  I had an Ethics class today, and it came to my attention: I'm not just here to learn these things, I'm here to live them.  I'm not here to simply pass a test, I'm here to become an intellectual being.  I'm not just here to learn about history and its problems, I'm here to live in a way that hopefully takes a better path.  So as a 20 year old student, I didn't come to Dachau and see it through a tourist's eyes.  I didn't just take pictures of the past.  Standing behind the camera wasn't that 16 year old, but a 20 year old trying to figure out where she fits in the effort to make sure the landscape doesn't become a portrait of what's to come.