the truth shall make you odd

It's surprising how little we had in common when we first started dating. Jason was a biology major. I was a religion major. He was a freshman. I was a senior. He was from South Carolina and I from North Carolina. By the end of the first month of us dating, he had switched his major (to religion...which I take full credit for, thank you) but I was no longer at Wofford - the one thing that at the time had tied us together.

If you know me, you won't believe that in fact, during those first few weeks, I was the skeptic. Jason is the realist amongst us and I the romantic but at the time, he was the one who gave our relationship a shot.

Fast forward to summer of 2011 and as we prepare to merge 2 sets of furniture, dishes and hobby paraphenelia (mostly Jason's of course), an interesting merger has been our libraries. And I intentionally use the term library. We each come with 4 years of religion major books from Wofford and now a graduate collection as well. And I also have some additions from the library of Carl Frazier. As I unloaded Jason's books in to our office the other day, I started to see some similarities and upon a brief investigation, found this:

Those are two and sometimes three copies of the same books...all of them books on aspects of religion. We also each have copies of Catcher in the Rye and other literary classics And, perhaps my favorite, we each have our own copy of the Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor. This may start to sound like some academic snobbery and some of you might now roll your eyes but noticing this collection of the same books got me to thinking about the conversations that Jason and I have that give such energy to the day-to-day grind convos. I am so grateful that we have similar interests in academia but am even more grateful that we come and go from those conversations with enough open mindedness that we can disagree. Religion can be an incredibly personal topic and debates over truth and Truth can wedge a divide between people. Perhaps it is odd that we talk about these things but one more thing I have learned from Jason: to embrace the label "odd."

Flannery once said that "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." I couldn't agree more.