Recent Musings:
My personal statement.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Seeing as I was recently admitted to graduate school, I wanted to share the personal statement I wrote and submitted for entry. I was amazed, as I always am when I start to write, what came out - how strong and emotional and heartfelt my thoughts were. It's almost an out-of-body experience when I write material like this because the words seem to come from somewhere other than me and my knowing, like a channeling of wisdom or enlightenment or godliness or something. Anyway, it's a bit longer than usual entries, but please enjoy.
PART 3. Discuss a contemporary social issue of concern to you.
A contemporary social issue of concern to me, or an issue that I face as a part of my daily society, are the issues of women and religion; both issues are an integral part of my life and present consequences that I struggle with in each decision I make. Clearly, since women and religion are both vast issues, my social concern is that of women within religion. Within religion, women are taught to believe that they have roles they must fit into, that they must live particularly constrained lives that will define them as godly and must not think upon things when their husbands can give them perfectly concise answers. As a spiritual and God-believing woman myself, I become perplexed when I try to follow such limited patterns and have spent much time trying to break apart these stereotypes while still existing within my womanhood and my spiritual belief.
I have learned, with women and their place in religion being tightly interwoven, that emotional and psychological abuse toward women for the sake of upholding religious teachings is easily justified within religious circles. I don't like this, I don't agree with this and I strive to help relieve women of these pressures because I understand them so readily myself. I recently read an article by Dr. Susan Nelson at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in which she boldly argued that for women to hide behind religion or a husband and ignore their right to life and to self is actually a sin, the sin of hiding. I was amazed as I read her article because what she stated is what I have been voicing within my life and my beliefs. Not only do I believe that religion and a belief in a savior frees humankind to explore and embrace their humanity, I also believe that without defining themselves within their humanity, women are lessening the importance of who they are within this world.
I believe that women can and should live as fully as they were created to, especially within the realm of belief. If a woman is required to turn to a husband for a justification of her thoughts, spiritual or otherwise; if a woman believes that bearing child after child will make her existence more worthy in God's eyes; if a woman disbelieves her capabilities for excelling in a career outside of motherhood, then this woman is limiting herself and may be blinded to the possibilities that God and life have presented to her. Since I am a woman who believes in the freeing teachings of Christ, I struggle with embracing the freedoms and dispelling the learned restraints on a daily basis.
I believe women can learn to be independent and spiritual and worthy and still be saved, in this life and eternally. Unfortunately, this belief is not widely accepted and as a result religion often shackles more than it frees and is more misunderstood than understood. Therefore, the means for change in this mindset are difficult – they require strong, bold and confident women to step forward and embrace their lives and their beliefs as their own. Women, religious women especially, are usually taught to be just the opposite – dependent and meek and uncertain – and to move them forward into a position of positive change is an enthusiastic and exhilarating challenge, one that I personally have worked on for many years and have tried to share with as many religious and non-religious women as I could.
Although my passions lie close to the areas which greatly affect me, the social concerns of women within religion can be pigeon-holed under the greater social concerns of inequality and injustice. Whether these inequalities and injustices are done to women or men, I do not feel that this behavior is acceptable for a society. I doubt there will be a time within the existence of humankind in which everyone and everything will reach a utopian point of equality and justice. Humankind, while immensely able to improve and better itself, can only do so much before it will become tired and fails; I believe the potential of humankind is always present, but so is the fatigue and the doubt. The social concern of taking the inequality done toward others, done toward yourself, done toward or by the church or the government or places of higher education, churns incessantly; it is my hope to take these injustices and inequalities inside the nature of humankind and push it all toward the best and fullest potential, accepting fatigue and doubt and failure as a ubiquitous part of that process.
I suppose, then, from my social concern of women within religion to the inequalities and injustices within society, the grander scope of social issues is society and the people that compose society. The myriad of people and their inner workings is endless - people who hurt; people who trap themselves in destructive patterns; people who abuse; people who don't believe that there is a way to experience their lives as fully they can; people who don't know that change is possible or people who don't know how to make a change. Society is people, many persons working together, and each person in society makes up the whole. Imagine if each person could identify and know him or her self, their wants, their hurts, their flaws, their goals and their hopes, the work of the society would be diminished because each member of society would have taken responsibility for itself. Perhaps my vision is utopist in its ideals, but the effort of working toward that goal in conjunction with other members of society would most likely be a tireless aspiration for me.
My social concerns swell and expand outwards from myself; I've concerned myself with personal matters that affect me but gradually connect me with other larger social concerns. The issues that affect my life, the things that affect anyone's life, are never isolated from the rest of society – these issues permeate society, one subject at a time, because we, as the individuals, are what make society function. From the very essence of our being to the social inequalities to women within religion, I cannot avoid the fact that my problem is my neighbor's problem and their problem, mine.