There’s this music in the beginning of that Simon & Garfunkel song, “America”. For some reason, it’s nostalgic and hopeful at the same time. Perfect feeling for a song named after our country.

I haven’t seen all of America, but that song makes me want to. It makes me want to drive through Kansas farmland, find the hidden treasures of North Dakota, and watch the stars in Idaho.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I barely remember America before September 11, 2001. It seems so different from today. The pre-America and the post-America, separated by only a few hours in time.

I have this strange sort of nostalgia for it. The Pre-9/11 America. Maybe it’s because I’m too young to remember the troubles before the ones we have now, or maybe it’s because before then I was a child. But I want it back. I think a lot of us do. There were less things to worry about. There was less to be afraid of.

But along with the nostalgia, I have that hope. Just like that thirty second intro to Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”.

In a few weeks I start my graduate program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where I will specialize in Reporting and Writing. The aspiring writer in me is craving this impending grammatical exorcism. I know that I am fortunate to be in a program that allows me to focus so intently on a lifelong passion of mine: the telling of stories through words. Books like A Cloister Walk, which I have been reading this summer, have taught me about writing’s inherent spirituality. As the start of classes draws near, I am hearing a call.

In Catholic school, I was taught a broad definition for vocation, summarized here in an Online Pocket Catholic Dictionary:

VOCATION, (Noun): A call from God to a distinctive state of life, in which the person can reach holiness. The Second Vatican Council made it plain that there is a “Universal call [vocatio] to holiness in the Church” (Lumen Gentium, 39). (Etym. Latin vocatio, a calling, summoning; from vocare, to call.)

Now this call from God, of which so many Catholics speak, must have been muddled on its way to me, because for years now I have heard a call to be a ponytail-wearing, newspaper-toting, married priest/nun/deacon-writer with several well behaved children. And my unusual conglomeration of passions, according to the church at present, means that I must have been getting mixed messages from above, because in the Catholic Church married women are excluded from serving as priests and as women religious. (Remember that married men may serve as Deacons). Married women are the lone category of adults without the opportunity to serve within the church as men or women religious. They are much-burdened spiritual orphans. I will soon join their ranks.

But I still have my words. We still have our words. And over the past few years, I have been ministered to by writers Lauren Winner, Kathleen Norris, Anne Lamott and Sue Monk Kidd. Some are married, some are mothers. They are doing holy work. That is their vocation.

I am going to study and practice journalism because I care about storytelling, and I want to improve as a writer. But I know that, for me, reporting is more than getting the facts straight. Singer/Songwriter Jack Johnson, in his song, “The News,” asks an intriguing question:

Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die ?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes. . .

Well, tonight I watched NBC Nightly News’ report on three brothers who searched for –and found –the long lost WWII submarine on which their father died. Watch the video and try not to cry. There is holiness in a journalist’s work. There are stories that need to be told. And there are people who are desperate to help and to serve.

I am packing for a camping trip –adventure –tonight and was fortunate enough to come across a poem by Mary Oliver that, especially on the eve of my foray into nature, is worthy of pause. Talk about religion and poetry; Oliver’s work speaks for itself. My prayer is that when the sun goes down and my mind starts racing, imagining what kind of seething creatures lurk behind each rustling bush, I will remember the wonder of this poem.

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The wild child herself, Pocahontas, in the Disney movie bearing her name, asks "Should I choose the smoothest course/ Steady as the beating drum?" (stereotypical pun intended by Disney), when considering her marriage prospects. Or does something wait for her, she asks, "just around the river bend?"

What was it she planned to do with her one wild life? Or we with ours? For me, for now, I will go camping in Washington State's verdant forests. Not because I love camping, but because I hate it. It scares me, and pushes me, and I know I need to go.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is, but say one for me.

I wonder when I walk down the street, do people see me as an outsider? Do people look at me, and think of all the terrible things people who look like me, who speak like my parents, who worship as I worship, have done to this country?

I wouldn’t blame them. September 11, 2001 was not an easy thing to take. The deaths of over 3,000 people was not easy to take, especially when you think it has been done for no reason at all, or when you cannot know what you did or your people did to deserve such a thing. I know, because that is how I felt.

And I look at terrorists, and I question how they could do such a thing. To my people. To my American brothers and sisters. But the difference between me and the other people of this country, the different between my brothers and sisters here and me, is that I can look at America and I can ask them the same question. How they could do so many things to my Muslim brothers and sisters, to my Pakistani brothers and sisters.

The fight between these two ideas, between the ideas of the American democracy and terrorism has really been the war between my two families. Because the innocent people behind those ideas are the people I identify with. The college students of the America and the Afghan refugees who have been driven out of their cities are both my family. They are both my background, both my homes.

And here I am, feeling like a traitor constantly.

There are three weeks left until September 11, 2007. Six years since that day. Have things really gotten better since then? Maybe for you, but not for me.

On Faith asks: What passage or verse in scripture or literature best defines your own faith or beliefs? Why?

“Though as adults we want answers, we will sometimes settle for poetry.” –Kathleen Norris

As a student of religion and an aspiring writer, Norris’ words are a welcome expression of my own faith.

Her short statement, found within her bestselling book The Cloister Walk, is both pragmatic and pacifying. It acknowledges the soul’s longing for certainty, but finds comfort in metaphor. Has insecurity ever been so satisfying?

Today, I found poetry in liturgy. I attended mass this morning at my father’s childhood parish and sat in same pews where I wept at my great grandmother’s wake. The church was filled with babies and teenagers, adult couples and a large group from a nursing home. My grandmother and I, a proud and occasionally pious pair, added to the spectrum.

When, at the prayers of the faithful, we prayed for the members of our military serving far from home, my grandmother looked up at me and squeezed my hand. There is a rhythm to life here, in this church, I thought. There is beauty. There is poetry.

At mass we sang “Here I am, Lord.” I cannot make it through that song without having my throat close up, my nose start to burn, and tears glaze my eyeballs. I wanted to sing! I was too moved to sing. Are there more vulnerable words than “Here I am”?

I believe that religion moves us closer to the divine. But I believe in “a God above God” –that beyond the God that our religions idolize, there exists a God that is. In that way, I see my religion as poetry, as an acceptable way. There is more than simple religion, yes, but this beautiful expression is holy, too.

Isn’t poetry what we are doing at On Faith? Those readers and writers among us use words to express the ineffable, hash out ancient and modern ideas, and share intimate experiences and deep, dogged desires. I find it to be a thrilling, crucial human adventure.

So to all these poets, I offer Rumi:

We search this world for the great untying
of what was wed to us at birth
and gets undone at dying.

We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.
Cursed and unlucky his whole life,
an old man finishes up in a niche
of a ruin, inches from the treasure.

We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.

Over at Christianity Today, senior managing editor Mark Galli wrote ‘On Not Changing the World.’ Galli notes the pitfalls and even un-Christian-ness of the desire to upend a culture. The real Christian, he implies, is the one who performs the service of Christ, for the Father who sees in secret. Galli writes:

I hesitate to cheer for cultural transformation, though not because I like the world just the way it is. Hardly. I read the paper this morning. I hesitate, not because I don't believe that the church impacts the world. It has impacted the world and will continue to do so. I hesitate because I think the goal of transforming our city, our culture, or our world can lead to little good.

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The summer between my sophomore and junior year feels like it should be more chaotic than it is. I feel like I should be running from unpaid internships to low-paying office jobs, traveling back and forth between friends and family on the weekends. It feels like I should be reading more books I’ve been meaning to read, watching more movies I’ve been meaning to watch, and going to a ton of summer concerts in Millennium Park.

In some ways, it has been that summer, that traditional college summer where you think you are taking a break from it all, but in reality you’re still not getting any sleep. If that is traditional anymore, I do not know. Maybe college summers were never supposed to be that way.

At DePaul, we often prided ourselves on being the untraditional university, making students live college life through the city’s eyes, relying on Chicago for their summers and school years. There was always an experience, that fact is something any DePaul student cannot deny, but not that of college, rather of Chicago. We are not the traditional college town, surrounded by corn fields and the Greek system. But then I wonder, what is the traditional college experience? My friend Brittany sent me this article, an essay asking that same question. Asking even more questions, I should say, that have not been asked of the college experience recently.

And I’m left wondering what college life is around the country, what the traditional college student looks like and acts like. And whether or not I fit into the category.

Ever since we met, The Boyfriend has been trying to instill in me a love of nature. I found that attempt sweet and all, but, I insisted, I don't do nature. The closest I wanted to come to the wilderness was drinking a Brazilian nut coffee while reading the Travel section of the newspaper. And even then, I felt positively rugged.

For my part, I have been trying to instill in him a love of blabbering on about theology, attending musicals, and, most importantly, buying me presents. And my strategy has worked: he has purchased me climbing shoes, a sleeping bag (for sleeping outside!) and a quite appropriately named, Gregory 'Diva' pack. You wouldn't believe how many pairs of high heels fit in that bad boy.

I especially love nature when I can read about it in the Modern Love section of the New York Times. Last Summer, Amy Sutherland wrote that she learned to train her husband like a trainer does Shamu by ignoring his bad behavior and praising his good. Absolute genius, my girlfriends and I chimed to one another as we discussed our newfound training strategies. The word 'Shamu' has become a verb in our social circle. We have Shamu-ed our boyfriends, and ladies, we done gooooood.

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This past weekend I attended mass at St. Lawrence Martyr Catholic Church, the childhood parish of The Boyfriend, in Redondo Beach, California. St. Lawrence parish is in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, home of the recent $660 million sex abuse settlement. The recent developments in the case cast a shadow over the service.

But this was not a time for passivity. This is the time to clean house! Yet at first glance, Sunday’s gospel reading seemed like a strange call to squalor:

Luke 10:38-42

Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”

This is not your regular old “love one another” gospel passage. I found Sunday’s reading perplexing, and immediately afterwards asked myself Why does Jesus hate housework? Yes, with one admonishment from the Lord, the entire Martha Stewart home collection could cease to exist. I shuttered even thinking of it. Then realizing that there might be more to this gospel than meets this domestic diva’s ear, I listened in to Rev. Msgr. Paul Dotson, Pastor of St. Lawrence’s, homily.

When Father was a child, he said, there was a parlor in his family’s house; a room only to be used by guests. This room was immaculate, even when the rest of the house was not. It was ready to receive sudden visitors, even if the kitchen sink was overflowing with dishes, the office was brimming with papers, and the laundry room was piled with the stinky, sweat soaked clothing of one pious little boy. Always immaculate, this room was his family’s shining face to the world. Sounds charming.

Then Father’s homily took a left turn. With Jesus, he insisted, we are called not to keep a pristine parlor. Mary sat with Jesus, and made herself available to Him beyond a mere façade of hospitality. While Martha made special arrangements for Jesus –not unlike the special arrangement of attending mass once a week –Mary knew that openness to Jesus could not be compartmentalized. Father implored that we consider the ways that we put God into the parlors in our lives, unwilling to be fundamentally transformed, and open those places up to God. That call seemed scary to Martha. It seems both inspiring and overwhelming to me. The church, I think, still has much to learn.

The homily was clever and clear. And with that, I put that lovely sermon in my mind’s box of wisdom, and continued on with my day. My parlor is decorated with theology books and quilted silk decorative pillows. You can’t get past me, God.