Robert Frost's poem on the "Road Less Traveled" has been quoted so often it has become a cliche. Yet when I look over my life I see how much truth there is in that poem. Except that I didn't choose to take the road less traveled, it just happened.
I've been away from Aspies Central for awhile, because my interests are taking me in another direction. After not painting for over three decades, I have taken up the brush again and am making up for lost time. This time I am in a group of fellow artists who can mentor me and help me market my works. You see, that is the thing that is not often talked about when talking about the creative process. What does one do with the output? I don't know any artists and very few writers who say, oh, I don't care if others see it or read it, I just do it for myself. Ok, there are a lot of people who journal and don't intend others to see their words, but for the most part, if you are a creative person, if you have that drive to create, you are not making things or writing things so that they can be kept in a closet or a drawer. If that is all you want to do, keep things in a drawer or closet, and let no one see them, that is a bit like masturbating. It might feel good at the time, but in the end, it's a waste of time and talent. Why bother? And I guess that's why I stopped painting for so long.
Anyway, the other day I ran into my former pastor's wife, and she asked me what I had been doing and I told her that I had just finished a play and now was working on my art--and also, doing a little trailer-park activism on the side. That's another story. Let's just say that the new management made a mistake when it decided it could push around certain people because of their disability and age and poverty and those people are starting to come out of their apathy and fight back. So I am sort of a spokesperson for that group. I'm not sure where it will lead but we do have some important people's attention. What has she been doing? Oh, she has been homeschooling her children.
Then she asked me if I was going to church anywhere and I told her. She was concerned because she heard they don't teach from the Bible but use other sources as well. I said that was true. Are you comfortable with that, she asked? Yes, I said, very comfortable. Then I said, I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't come across as offensive, but I find that this is a church that treats me as an adult, that respects my ability to reason and make decisions, rather than telling me what to think and believe and do. And I didn't find that in her husband's church, much as l liked the people. There was much more I wanted to say but I left it at that.
How do you say, I am sorry, but I have come to realize there is no place for someone like me in a church like yours? How can I get you to understand that while your life so far has followed the ideal template for a Christian woman's life, my life has not, and never will? Even though it was never openly said that a woman should not seek a career outside her home and family, it was said indirectly by example by the way many of the wives of church leaders were homeschooling their children. When you have a sermon promoting Quiverfull ideas even though the movement's name was never mentioned, what does that say to the women and girls of the congregation? I think back to the Muslim woman I met in class who asked me why don't more American women study engineering? What would she think of the Quiverfull philosophy? Isn't that even more restricting than wearing a headcovering?
I am the person I am today because I do not and never have had a wedding band placed on my finger. She is the person she is because she has had that placed on hers. We follow two very different paths. I didn't choose mine; it was more of a matter of "this didn't happen." But because it didn't happen, I've had to take a very different view of life. I've had to become more independent, more resourceful--and yes, more of a feminist. I have worth of myself, not because I share someone's name or have given birth. I am, also, old enough to be this young woman's mother, and her children are young enough to be my grandchildren, and I know it is also a cliche, but age does give you perspectives youth does not have. Her story is not over yet as neither is mine. But if you had told me when I was her age that I would leave Catholicism, that I would leave Christianity, and become a Unitarian-Universalist, I would have said that you were smoking crack or high on LSD or something. Yet here I am.
I've been away from Aspies Central for awhile, because my interests are taking me in another direction. After not painting for over three decades, I have taken up the brush again and am making up for lost time. This time I am in a group of fellow artists who can mentor me and help me market my works. You see, that is the thing that is not often talked about when talking about the creative process. What does one do with the output? I don't know any artists and very few writers who say, oh, I don't care if others see it or read it, I just do it for myself. Ok, there are a lot of people who journal and don't intend others to see their words, but for the most part, if you are a creative person, if you have that drive to create, you are not making things or writing things so that they can be kept in a closet or a drawer. If that is all you want to do, keep things in a drawer or closet, and let no one see them, that is a bit like masturbating. It might feel good at the time, but in the end, it's a waste of time and talent. Why bother? And I guess that's why I stopped painting for so long.
Anyway, the other day I ran into my former pastor's wife, and she asked me what I had been doing and I told her that I had just finished a play and now was working on my art--and also, doing a little trailer-park activism on the side. That's another story. Let's just say that the new management made a mistake when it decided it could push around certain people because of their disability and age and poverty and those people are starting to come out of their apathy and fight back. So I am sort of a spokesperson for that group. I'm not sure where it will lead but we do have some important people's attention. What has she been doing? Oh, she has been homeschooling her children.
Then she asked me if I was going to church anywhere and I told her. She was concerned because she heard they don't teach from the Bible but use other sources as well. I said that was true. Are you comfortable with that, she asked? Yes, I said, very comfortable. Then I said, I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't come across as offensive, but I find that this is a church that treats me as an adult, that respects my ability to reason and make decisions, rather than telling me what to think and believe and do. And I didn't find that in her husband's church, much as l liked the people. There was much more I wanted to say but I left it at that.
How do you say, I am sorry, but I have come to realize there is no place for someone like me in a church like yours? How can I get you to understand that while your life so far has followed the ideal template for a Christian woman's life, my life has not, and never will? Even though it was never openly said that a woman should not seek a career outside her home and family, it was said indirectly by example by the way many of the wives of church leaders were homeschooling their children. When you have a sermon promoting Quiverfull ideas even though the movement's name was never mentioned, what does that say to the women and girls of the congregation? I think back to the Muslim woman I met in class who asked me why don't more American women study engineering? What would she think of the Quiverfull philosophy? Isn't that even more restricting than wearing a headcovering?
I am the person I am today because I do not and never have had a wedding band placed on my finger. She is the person she is because she has had that placed on hers. We follow two very different paths. I didn't choose mine; it was more of a matter of "this didn't happen." But because it didn't happen, I've had to take a very different view of life. I've had to become more independent, more resourceful--and yes, more of a feminist. I have worth of myself, not because I share someone's name or have given birth. I am, also, old enough to be this young woman's mother, and her children are young enough to be my grandchildren, and I know it is also a cliche, but age does give you perspectives youth does not have. Her story is not over yet as neither is mine. But if you had told me when I was her age that I would leave Catholicism, that I would leave Christianity, and become a Unitarian-Universalist, I would have said that you were smoking crack or high on LSD or something. Yet here I am.
