This morning someone at church asked me if I had lived in the area all my life and I said, yes, as matter of fact, I grew up on the other side of the expressway from this church. I said that not only did I remember when People's Church was built, I remembered when there was "nothing" west of the freeway, even when there was no freeway at all! And that is going back some.
The freeway I am talking about is a north-south freeway which was built in the early 1960's. I remember watching them build it. I grew up east of the freeway; the church is on the west side. The reason this is significant is that for most of my life, my focus was east, towards the city. There was practically nothing west of the freeway, and so we seldom went on the other side, unless it was to go to Lake Michigan. Just farms and cornfields.
Now my life has changed and I find myself living west of the freeway, doing my shopping west of the freeway, and going to church west of the freeway. I seldom venture across it. I'd never really thought about it until this morning's conversation. "You should write about it," my friend said. What East of the Freeway means and West of the Freeway means, Because they are two different worlds. I lived one life East of the Freeway and I live another West of the Freeway. Of course it is not as nicely divided as all that, life never is, but it is a useful metaphor.
East of the Freeway, life was black and white. There were good guys and bad guys. Saved and sinners. It was white, conventional, Neurotypical middle class. There was normal and there was weird (which was anyone who didn't fit the mold). It was all spelled out how you were to think about and even treat others who didn't fit the mold. It was accepted that everyone had a "place" in life, where men, white men, were on top and everyone else took their place below.
When I moved West of the Freeway I started encountering challenges to my East of the Freeway thinking. I don't want to imply that there was something about the freeway itself that caused this or that the worlds were so starkly divided. I am using this physical freeway to mean something more. Because when I moved west of the Freeway I moved out of the cocoon that was my parents' house. I started encountering things they or my teachers never anticipated. I tried to reconcile these things with what I had been taught about life East of the Freeway and failed.
Today after church I had a long discussion with a young man (a 16-year-old) who considers himself mildly Aspergers and genderqueer, Neither of these concepts existed East of the Freeway. Well, they did, but I don't think you need to know what they were called. The point is, this young man, who has so much to sort out yet as to what he wants and where he is going, and I have more in common than one might suppose. And I don't mean just the Aspergers. I even told him that I felt more free talking to him than I do some people my age! That there was nothing off-limits. Our conversation ranged from Aspergers' to artificial intelligence, to sexuality and the nature of human beings. This is not the kind of person I would have gone out of my way to associate with on the East Side of the Freeway. But how much more richer my experience has been than if I had stayed East of the Freeway!
The freeway I am talking about is a north-south freeway which was built in the early 1960's. I remember watching them build it. I grew up east of the freeway; the church is on the west side. The reason this is significant is that for most of my life, my focus was east, towards the city. There was practically nothing west of the freeway, and so we seldom went on the other side, unless it was to go to Lake Michigan. Just farms and cornfields.
Now my life has changed and I find myself living west of the freeway, doing my shopping west of the freeway, and going to church west of the freeway. I seldom venture across it. I'd never really thought about it until this morning's conversation. "You should write about it," my friend said. What East of the Freeway means and West of the Freeway means, Because they are two different worlds. I lived one life East of the Freeway and I live another West of the Freeway. Of course it is not as nicely divided as all that, life never is, but it is a useful metaphor.
East of the Freeway, life was black and white. There were good guys and bad guys. Saved and sinners. It was white, conventional, Neurotypical middle class. There was normal and there was weird (which was anyone who didn't fit the mold). It was all spelled out how you were to think about and even treat others who didn't fit the mold. It was accepted that everyone had a "place" in life, where men, white men, were on top and everyone else took their place below.
When I moved West of the Freeway I started encountering challenges to my East of the Freeway thinking. I don't want to imply that there was something about the freeway itself that caused this or that the worlds were so starkly divided. I am using this physical freeway to mean something more. Because when I moved west of the Freeway I moved out of the cocoon that was my parents' house. I started encountering things they or my teachers never anticipated. I tried to reconcile these things with what I had been taught about life East of the Freeway and failed.
Today after church I had a long discussion with a young man (a 16-year-old) who considers himself mildly Aspergers and genderqueer, Neither of these concepts existed East of the Freeway. Well, they did, but I don't think you need to know what they were called. The point is, this young man, who has so much to sort out yet as to what he wants and where he is going, and I have more in common than one might suppose. And I don't mean just the Aspergers. I even told him that I felt more free talking to him than I do some people my age! That there was nothing off-limits. Our conversation ranged from Aspergers' to artificial intelligence, to sexuality and the nature of human beings. This is not the kind of person I would have gone out of my way to associate with on the East Side of the Freeway. But how much more richer my experience has been than if I had stayed East of the Freeway!
