Derrida and graduation

I was reading Derrida for lit criticism today. He says, if language is a circle, then there must be a center to the circle; an anchor, a center, a point which is not the circle but defines it. But the point is not itself language, if it defines language. And he goes on difficultly about deferring and substitution and whatnot, and how the center of language is thus moveable--it shifts. The center is not the center, and language shape-shifts.

He's quite right. If there is nothing greater than language, then language is a game we play and we might as well enjoy it. Interpretation becomes utter nonsense, and all we can do is play with words, amusing ourselves by moving them around. Happily--blessedly--Derr ida is not actually correct to say nothing is greater than language. God exists, and in Him we live and move and have our being. God reconciled the eternal we want by becoming man like we are: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

So I was thinking of centers and connected it to lands. When I'm in Virginia, my center is a jewel-green campus set between the Blue Ridge mountains and DC. Over spring break, my center was a little red house on the main street of an unpopulous island. Summers and Christmas, my center is in northern New Mexico. It's strange, in a way, to go stay somewhere else; it's the nature of traveling. Suddenly one's horizons look quite different. It doesn't seem so odd, perhaps, to those of you who commute every day, but when I'm at school I am so centered. I am quite capable of never leaving campus except once a week for church. The center is so firm that when it changes, my self has to get used to it.

But at graduation my center will change. I'll probably come back to PHC at some point, but I don't know when and it will never again be my center as it is now. Therefore, it occurred to me that it is a good thing my Ultimate center is in a city not built by hands, but is connected to the unchanging Word. And then it occurred further to me that it is good to have an unchanging center, land-wise, because it is a reminder that the land where our real citizenship is unchanging too. An earthly home is good because it's a shadow or a copy of our eternal Home.