Our little Andrew is off to college. I guess he’s not little. He’s been looking down at me for a couple of years now. When I hug him, my face gets snuffled into that little pocket between the collarbone and the shoulder, and I have to stand on tiptoe to look into his eyes. So he’s not little, but he is off to college. And he’s in California.
We decided that we would pack all eight Roy members, sleeping bags, a bike, a tent, and everything he would need to live away from home into our squealing van and “try our luck” at the border. Most people thought we were crazy, but we were wrapped in prayer.
Getting into the U.S. was actually the simple part. They asked us why we considered the other five kids as “essential” to getting Andrew where he needed to be. Scott honestly told the guard that the college was holding a family barbecue for siblings, and the kids just wanted to say goodbye to their brother. For some reason it worked. I think that a family like ours, as most large families will understand, can be disarming. People get confused at the sight of us and forget what they’re there to enforce.
So we got across, looked at each other in surprise, and headed south. After almost 30 hours of driving, a night at the Benedictine monastery in Oregon, an afternoon of fish and chips, ice cream, and beaching along the Oregon Coast, tenting at rest stops, and the indulgence of one night in a hotel with a pool and free breakfast, we arrived in Santa Paula, Calif.
Andrew is studying liberal arts at Thomas Aquinas College. He would like to work in the movie industry, producing films. Or maybe as a writer. God only knows where his path will actually end up. But some people ask the question why we would send him to another country for four years, where he won’t even be studying moviemaking. Why not get to the point right away? It’s a fair question, but I think the answer is more than fair. I think it’s beautiful.
Andrew wants to make movies that affect people, that make people think and laugh and change. He wants to follow the Catholic call of changing the world. But to change the world you have to know what it is made up of.
The word liberal means (or should mean) “free.” Liberal Arts is the education of the “free man.” Its purpose is to help the student attain truth, logic, and critical thinking, to recognize error, to be truly free from the slavery of ignorance and animalistic living. They use the “great books” as their curriculum, contemplating what it is to be human, made in the image of God. The great books include writings from some of history’s most controversial philosophers, training the student to detect error, contradiction, illogical conclusions, and the guaranteed consequences of modernism and humanism.
The free man guides his will against the tides of the times, even when it costs him. He will hear the news, the media, the celebrities and talk show hosts, and be able to critically dissect the noise and look for truth within it. When he finds none, he will be neither bullied into pretending it is there nor afraid that he won’t find the truth somewhere else. The carrot of comfort and inclusion will not entice him, and the stick of segregation and inconvenience will not sway his conscience. He will be a person fully alive and free from the slavery of our times: fear, “the most subtle and destructive of all human diseases.”
I guess that is all to say that Andrew has gone to continue learning how to think. He will focus on who he is, rather than what he will be. It is anti-utilitarian, if that makes sense, to learn that you are something more than your work. And I think that is a beautiful answer to the question “Why?”
And so my little one is off to college, to form himself as a man after God’s heart, please Lord. It sounds like a heavy four years ahead for my son. As the college says, the four years there are only the beginning. Andrew may continue on his road to moviemaking. Or maybe he won’t. God only knows. But if he is seeking truth and is a man truly free, then he will be changing the world regardless.
