Who am I? Still trying to figure things out
Who am I? Still trying to figure things out
While watching Women Talking I had so many thoughts, I began to take notes. One) I was reminded of Corita Kent who left her religious community after 32 years and Two) myself, who left a religious community after nearly 40 years.
I entered Jesus People as a single recent college grad, four years later I married and two years later became a mother. I also was a driven worker. I worked at Cornerstone Magazine and with the Cornerstone Festival doing advertising and PR. I networked with local and national media trying to generate stories about the festival which at its peak attracted over 20,000 people. I was used to doing TV and radio interviews and also setting up interviews for the festival director and press conferences with the bands. We also started up a book publishing arm called Cornerstone Press, which at its peak put out about 4 titles a year.
In 2007 my daughter graduated high school and began trying to figure out who she was, if she’d stay in community as some of her classmates or go to school or work outside community? We were not a closed society as was the community in the film, also our community members were not as sheltered as the rural members depicted as we lived in the heart of Chicago in a neighborhood called Uptown, which was quickly gentrifying. By now we operated a homeless shelter down the street, which served about 500 people a day providing housing, food, clothing, and other services.
Through my roles of wife and mother, editor at Cornerstone Press, author (I’d had 2 books published by this time), member of a 300 plus-member community in Uptown, Chicago—I had so many identities. So many things defined who I was—and slowly those things eroded, faded, took back seat. Namely being a mom. Grace eventually decided for college and got accepted at The New School in New York City. She graduated from there in 2013. Then my marriage failed.
I won’t go into detail about that. My heart was broken.
Even the community in some ways declined. We shrunk from a peak of 360-some to about 120. Our businesses consolidated and the majority of workers were hired. All the reasons for my season, as it were, became moot. Then the pandemic hit.
But, even before Covid, I began to question not so much Christianity, but the attitudes and public discourse of many of my fellow Evangelicals. I no longer considered myself an Evangelical, and I hardly wanted to declare myself a Christian as it brought up so much negative baggage. This wasn’t religious persecution as much as rightful questioning of the hypocrisy coming out of the Church. Everything was political. I found myself wondering where was the Peace, One Way, the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, caring for the least of these?
In Women Talking their faith and lifestyle had obviously taken a darker turn. The women were presented as voiceless, subservient to the men in the community. They still believed in God and were afraid of not entering heaven, but the overriding fear and safety for themselves and their children was paramount. They HAD to get away.
And this brought up so many questions.
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