On the Road
What prompts a woman to journey around three continents alone?
For academics the term “sabbatical” is a familiar one; we usually take sabbaticals to allow time for special projects and for quality thinking time.
My own one-semester sabbatical, barely underway, already includes several surprises and unique new friends I can grow with.
My original goals were straightforward: to complete several writing projects and to study Hollywood and Madison Avenue up close; each entity impacts popular culture and religion profoundly. I was curious about how these systems function – how entertainment and advertising product gets developed and marketed.
My deep thinking time was also to be invested in reading and writing about the interface between communication studies and theology – and seeking funds for this effort.
A full plate.
The first surprise was the good advice that sabbaticals should also provide the opportunity to let go off schedules and tasks and to do lists. Abraham Heschel’s book Sabbath helped me understand all this.
O.K. So now I must strike a balance between the desire to “produce” and “write it up” and the need to be quiet so I have something to say.
The second surprise was the discovery that there’s a rich and growing literature about women taking journeys alone. Some too far off places; some to inner landscapes. I remember my past pleasure in Jill Ker Conway’s works The Road From Coorain, True North, and When Memory Speaks. And Carolyn Heilbrun’s wonderful Writing a Woman’s Life. Or Patricia Hampl’s Virgin Time, the Tuscan books of Frances Mayes, or the work of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
This woman’s journey thing kept popping up as people recommended other books: Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach; and Letters from Paris by Janet Flanner.
Apparently, what happens on sabbaticals is you discover projects you didn’t know you had!
My planning involved several unique aspects. I decided to put all my things in storage so I would be “on the road” (and homeless) for seven months. This forced, in advance, an enormous weeding and pitching phase, which I heartily recommend.
Another unique aspect: I planned to spend most of my sabbatical time residing among religious congregations of women – if they would accept me as a paying boarder. This would provide a quiet location for my work. And it would keep my costs manageable since I was the one covering the sabbatical expenses.
This is circulating just as I have completed six weeks living with the Sisters of Notre Dame in Thousand Oaks, California – about 40 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. Residing in their priest’s suite I felt my presence there was groundbreaking.
No laywoman had ever before lived among them at length, becoming totally part of the community – sharing prayer, meals, intimate stories, tears, laughter, and the death of one of the sisters in the infirmary. The religious community and I both felt something very significant was happening.
Perhaps a new model was emerging for how religious congregations, with diminishing numbers of vowed women, could form new alliances with women who will not make permanent vows but who could be valued allies in serving contemporary educational and social service needs. (Yes, this will be “written up”…)
I know I have been transformed by this experience as I now begin to live with a new group of women – the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Brooklyn, New York. In Dublin, my next sabbatical stop, I will reside in their International Center where Catherine McAuley, their famous foundress, lived almost two hundred years ago.
But the academic part is getting done. Interviews in Los Angeles gave me a good handle on the entertainment industry. And advertising interviews will be conducted here. As library cards are obtained, book chapters get developed.
And networking, including family networking, happens. A small family reunion in California included an older brother. Then John died in his sleep only three days after our rich two-day gathering and I was nearby for the family funeral. My New York location, in its first week, fostered family reunions.
God bless sabbaticals and the opportunities they present!