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'Italy has my heart'

A love for life, language and people compels Amy Lineberg to explore other cultures

Venice, Tuscany, Florence." Amy Lineberg introduces the framed photographs hanging on the walls of her bedroom as if they were dear friends or family. "Italy has my heart," she said. "I've never felt more at home than I felt in Italy."

Miss Lineberg, who works in Upper Sutcliffe as faculty administrative assistant, speaks Italian and spent two weeks in Italy last summer. "Italians are passionate about everything," she said. "They're very intense. They're intense if they love you; they're intense if they hate you."

She described an experience she had while in Tuscany that embodied the Italian persona. While staying in a large manor house for a few days, she visited a small store in the village each morning to get milk and cheese. An old man and his wife ran the store. Every time Miss Lineberg entered the store, the couple greeted her warmly, and the man played love songs on his accordion. As he played, he talked about which canal in Venice each song originated from.

"To me, that's seizing each moment and living it out," she said. "He didn't just let us walk into his store and leave, he had to give us free cappuccino and cheese and buy us things and sing us love songs. I love that. I think that's who I am."

Miss Lineberg began developing a passion for life and a love for learning when she was young. Her parents chose to homeschool her and her two younger brothers because they believed their chidren would better succeed in a homeschooling environment.

Miss Lineberg pursued academics out of a natural love for learning. "I'm self-motivated in a lot of ways," she said. As a student, she looked for holes in her education and sought to fill them. "At one point, I thought I wasn't getting enough African-American history, so I started reading Malcolm X," she said. "I think I supplemented my parents' education more than they expected."

One of Miss Lineberg's greatest learning experiences as a homeschooler was a two-month road trip her family took across the United States, stopping in 33 states. She was 13 at the time, and she and her brothers had been studying for the trip for two years and saving their money for five.

"I had written reports on every state we were going to, and [my family] had done all this research. We got in this van and drove across the country, staying with people, visiting places and seeing things," she said.

Miss Lineberg said the trip opened her eyes to the differences of people who live in other regions. "When you go to places you haven't been before, you start to see things differently. If you give yourself time to think, you can come back a different person. I sure did," she said.

Early college education was another opportunity homeschooling provided for Miss Lineberg. She began taking linguistics classes at the University of Oregon at the age of 13. She excelled in linguistics and began spending her summers participating with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a program that trains missionaries to translate the Bible. Miss Lineberg was involved in the program for 10 years, first as a student and later as a facilitator and teaching assistant.

After graduating from high school at age 16, Miss Lineberg continued pursuing her love of language, earning a degree in linguistics from the University of Oregon in 1995. Before earning her degree, she took a break from the University and rounded out her education with two years of community college and three semesters at Multnomah Bible College.

Developing her own identity apart from her family was a difficulty Miss Lineberg faced after leaving the close-knit environment of homeschooling. "As a homeschooler, it can be more difficult to identify yourself outside of the family unit. I grew up in a specific culture, and sometimes when I make a decision outside that culture to do what I think I'm supposed to do, my roots pull me back," she said.

Miss Lineberg, who grew up in a church modeled after the Plymouth Brethren denomination, made one of those decisions in Feb. 1997, when she converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. She said, "I had moments where I thought, 'Oh my word, can I do this?'"

She was initially drawn to the Orthodox Church by elements she believed had been missing in her previous Christian experience: the emphases on reverence, freedom of worship and community.

Miss Lineberg said the church's emphasis on art, with its beautiful icons, also attracted her. "I grew up in a church where there's no decoration of any kind except for a statement written in wood," she said. "I crave exemplifying Christianity in art. That's something that matters to me."

She quit attending the church one year later after experiencing growing concerns about the church's doctrine and practices. "I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to be concerned," she said. "I missed the emphasis on my personal relationship with God."

Miss Lineberg said she won't return to Orthodoxy. "It's like coming home after being overseas," she said. "It's so different I couldn't just slip back into it; it would be a big deal."

Reflecting back on the experience, she said, "I had a lot of people telling me I was making a big mistake. Sometimes in life when we do something that isn't overtly labeled 'sin' by Scripture, we have to realize that God is able to use whatever occurs for His glory. I have to trust that. Sometimes I feel like a year ago I woke up after being asleep for a year because I'm so different now."

Miss Lineberg, who took the position of MBC faculty administrative assistant last summer, believes her job is to help faculty and students feel connected. "My job is to help students and help faculty, and I like the idea of bringing those people together," she said. "I want to make it comfortable for students to come to upper Sutcliffe. I want them to feel like they know someone there."

One of the ways Miss Lineberg fosters this bond is by employing a variety of accents. "Ello, ow are you?" she quips in a cockney accent to a passing student. "If I get to know you, I'll develop some kind of little nickname, joke or voice," she said. "It helps people to have something familiar -- a connection."

Miss Lineberg is accomplishing her goal of making students feel comfortable, according to English professor Christine van Belle, a friend of Miss Lineberg's. "There are always people hanging around her desk," she said. "I think students enjoy her; they feel welcomed by her." Ms. van Belle also described Miss Lineberg as "bubbly and profusely warm" toward everyone. "It's kind of hard not to get entangled with Amy if you know her because she tells you what she thinks about things and she's excited about her opinion," Ms. van Belle said.

Ms. van Belle said she admires Miss Lineberg's intelligence. "She has a critical mind," she said. "Often we have very different reactions to the movies we see, but she can break down the components of a film and talk about each of those specifically.'"

Miss Lineberg said that viewing films and reading books often leads to further research because she becomes intrigued. "If I hear about a good book, I'll read the book. But I won't just read the book. I'll be thinking about the book, I'll research things that have to do with the book and I'll ask other people what they think of the book," she said.

Miss Lineberg reads four or five books a month, usually working on more than one at a time. Theology, philosophy and "weighty novels" are among her favorite types of literature. She often writes reports about the books she reads. Miss Lineberg, who also likes to journal, said she keeps the reports short. "For years I tortured myself by forcing myself to fill whole pages," she said. "That just didn't work for me."

She now journals in a four-inch by four-inch spiral notebook. A quick examination of its pages reveals little snatches of writing scrawled randomly throughout -- a question here, a quotation there. "When I have a question about something, I write it down," she said.

Miss Lineberg organized the scrapbook that details her summer in Europe in a similar way, pasting train tickets, brochures and postcards on the pages accompanied by short descriptions. The souvenirs that didn't fit in the book adorn Miss Lineberg's bedroom.

Miss Lineberg loves to talk about her travels: the monastery in England where the monks and nuns inspired her with their focus, the cathedral of Notre Dame that impacted her with its darkness and shrouded statues, and London where she saved the princess's dog after it escaped from Kensington Palace.

Miss Lineberg said her travels have helped her gain a deeper understanding of home. "All my life I've wanted to go. Since I was very young, I've wanted to live in foreign cultures; I've wanted to be foreign," she said. "But the more I go, the more I realize where home is and what it means to be home.

"I function very well traveling. I like change, I love to adapt and I love language and people. But I like having a place to come back to."

Miss Lineberg said she is uncertain of what the future holds for her. "I don't know what God's going to do with me," she said. "I would love to know. I sure wouldn't argue if he sent me to a people who don't speak my language."

Although she plans to return to her beloved Italy some day, for now, Miss Lineberg is content to be serving at Multnomah. "I love Multnomah for the same reasons I love to travel -- there's change every day, new people all the time and I'm in a place of learning. It's a complete blessing."