Fighting

Reposted from mariedippenaar.tumblr.com

I woke up from a dream this morning with the realization that I’m no longer really religious by most people's standards and no longer the person I had to be a year ago just to get by. I’m disappointed to remember how conservative I was, despite being on of the most liberal people I knew. Reading through my senior project on "Civil Discourse about Controversy in Christian Community" is nauseating. That school, the school I loved so much, pressured me into doing such a censored, diluted project. I want to say I was ready for something so much more substantial, but I guess that project gave me good closure, even if it was mostly treading water.

That project let me fight for just the tiniest bit of breathing room I never seemed to find there, and that fighting taught me humility I never would’ve had otherwise. I’m glad to have had my expectations lowered to such a degree, to have been made so thankful for access to a simple conversation, that the whole world now seems that much more beautiful.

I have a strange, naïve way of going about change. I like to feel confrontational even when I’m not, and though I don’t like being offensive. I’ve been gladly writing for nonexistent audiences for years, and I’m willing to look stupid in front of peers relatively frequently if I’m convicted of something.

Even if I’m fairly embarrassed by my senior project in many ways, now, I’m proud of what it was then: 1) the only thing that would’ve been able to resolve and vent my frustration with the closed-mindedness of that culture that I was powerless to speak out against, and 2) the first baby-step in officially telling the administration it needed to get its act together.

I know TBCS didn’t listen, didn’t read, and never considered changing anything despite constantly hearing from me the exact type of feedback they so actively encouraged. But I’m thankful that I was able to get it out of my system. It feels like I went down fighting.