Saint Michael’s Student, Newtown Resident Allen Hubbard,

Lands Article In Prestigious Journal

COLCHESTER, VT. — While examining the life of Christian mystic Teresa of Avila, who lived during the Spanish Inquisition, Saint Michael’s College student Allen Hubbard had ideas about how the darkness of despair can lead through faith into the rare moments that give us joy.

Mr Hubbard, a biology major and journalism minor, is the son of Allen and Nancie Hubbard of Newtown. He graduated from Newtown High School in 2008, and is currently a junior at Saint Michael’s College near Burlington. In a course he took on “Christianity Past and Present” taught by Professor Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent, he wrote about the relevance of Teresa of Avila’s autobiography for contemporary discourse on the human and divine.

The article has been accepted for publication in the prestigious Jesuit magazine, America: The National Catholic Weekly.

In his paper Mr Hubbard explained that Teresa wrote about having experiences during which she saw God, experienced being close to God, but also experienced God’s absence — the dark night of the soul. Through this, he said, he understood something about both the rewards and difficulties faith brings to the human condition.

Mr Hubbard focused in his paper on the importance of the “dark night of the soul … not as a religious aspect,” he said, “but as a necessary component of being human and of having faith.” He concluded his paper, he said, quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald, “who said something like, even with faith you have a dark night of the soul — usually at 3 am.”

Mr Hubbard is interested in the inspirational qualities of faith in the dark night, and how that is channeled through art, especially literature. He has gotten very interested in the larger scope of science writing, and mentioned the late author Carl Sagan, “who said that the universe is 95 percent emptiness, but we associate the universe with being full, because that’s what it means to be human.”

Another of Mr Hubbard’s favorite authors is the neurologist Oliver Sacks, who, along with Sagan, have inspired an interest in neurobiology and in the idea of becoming a science writer, as a sideline to being a scientist or doctor. He is considering med school and graduate school in science.

Mr Hubbard is receiving great encouragement and opportunity in biology, as in religious studies. Last summer he carried out a funded biology research project under the direction of Professor Mark Lubkowitz.

“Being on campus trying to isolate a protein transporter all summer,” he said, “gave me a chance also to meet with my religious studies professor and slowly edit the paper.” This semester he is taking a journalism course on nature writing.

Mr Hubbard was a swimmer for the Saint Michael’s College varsity team for his first two years of college. He regularly appears on the college’s Dean’s List.