Living in Color
by SusanOne of my favorite comic strips is Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes episode in which Calvin’s dad carefully explains how the world used to exist in black and white, but was flooded with color sometime in the 1930’s.
Do you recall experiencing such a watershed moment in which the after of your life was completely different from the before in at least one significant aspect?
A Significant Moment
I remember the exact day I became a feminist, and before you start getting all excited or huffy about that, you’d better ask me to define the term, because most people don’t know what it means. I didn’t either, but I do now. Yep, a watershed moment that impacted who I am today.
A Trivial Moment
Or how about a more trivial example? Just yesterday, I was complaining to Lewis about how some Web page banners have terrible word breaks in their titles. Sorry, it’s just the editor instinct in me. He could have told me to just GET OVER IT, but instead he kindly introduced me to a basic skill that I guess everyone else in the world already knows, and which I now use several times each day: On my Mac, I can raise or lower the resolution of a Web page by clicking Command-plus or Command-minus. You can, too! And I’ve also discovered that technique works in a variety of other desktop windows, too. My windows behavior will never be the same.
The Most Important Moment
I also remember the night I gave my life over to Jesus. Wow, a hard decision. I had spent months, years, privately wondering what he was really all about, weighing the pros and cons of casting my lot in with him, wishing to be done with the deal, agonizing over the procedure (water baptism in front of witnesses), pondering why it had to be done that way, twisting and turning and crazing over the whole thing. But then there was that night. And they sang that song — I’m sure you’ve heard Just As I Am, too — and almost at the end of the umpteenth verse, I gave up and turned myself in. My most important watershed moment, the moment that painted my world and my life with a depth of meaning that had escaped me before.
Here’s the funny thing: the colors that washed over my formerly gray perspective were initially rather faint pastels. However, at the time, they seemed almost overwhelmingly gorgeous — you know, like putting on a new pair of glasses and walking out of the optometrist’s office telling everyone, “Hey, this tree has leaves on it! And there are birds on that phone line! Who let these sidewalks get so cracked?” But over time, and with experience, the colors of my worldview have deepened, first the blue when I felt some peace, some relief from all the fretting earlier. Then the red as I began comprehending more fully who Jesus was and is to me. And the green is getting stronger every day that I realize what damage we — I! — am wreaking on this garden of Earth, and what I can do to minimize it.
A Question of Pushing the Envelope
When you live in a black and white world, it’s all you know, so you don’t miss the color. And when your world is pastel, it’s easy to be satisfied with the splendid difference it makes. But I want jewel tones to glow through every aspect of my life. Is there a way to push beyond satisfaction and status quo to the best God has to offer? (Click picture for last paragraph.)
Tags: before and after, new glasses, paradigm shift, perspective
January 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am
There’s a lot going on in this post that I would like to comment on.
I’ll limit myself to one - how can a person be a feminist and a Christian?
How can one be a male chauvinist, an activist…any …ist and still be a Christian?
Shouldn’t the fact that we are Christians be the lens through which we view the world as you pointed out at the end of your post?
January 5th, 2008 at 11:27 am
You’ll notice that I say my decision to follow Christ is THE most significant event, and therefore the primary lens through which I view my life.
Even if I wanted to confine my vision to one lens, one “perspective,” God didn’t make me that way, and who am I to argue with him? Here are a few of the lenses through which I see the world:
parent, child, teacher, American, voter, reader, writer, quilter, traveler, singer, etc. Feminist is just one of the lenses, but in practical terms it impacts how I raise my kids, my word choices, how I decorate my home, who I vote for, and so on.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I understand parent, child, teacher…. but I’ll be the first to ask you: How *do* you define feminist? It must be important, since it holds some sway over all those other important items.
And by the way, does being a Christian impact those same things?
P.S. Thanks for the props on changing font size with Command + and -. I’m a “keyboard shortcut” kind of guy, and that’s one of my faves.
January 5th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
In this blog, I’m talking specifically about watershed moments. My shift to embracing feminism was such a moment. That doesn’t mean that my feminist perspective is more important to me than my parent/child/teacher perspectives. How could it be? Being a Christian also, and even more forcefully, impacts the way I decorate, read, talk, listen, vote, etc. However, I didn’t talk about holding the parent/child/teacher perspectives in my blog because I grew into them gradually over much of my life. Even parenting, for example, was a gradual thing, which started with playing dolls as a child, continued when I started babysitting, took a leap forward when we bought beagle puppy, and revved up again when I had my first child, continued with my very different second child, and so on.
BTW, I don’t go around telling people I’m a feminist. I don’t even like that label because of all the weird ideas people heap onto it and the conclusions they draw about me thereafter. However, for you I will explain.
My views didn’t start here, but when J Wilson referred to Galatians 3:26-28 in a camp class we were co-teaching, I was astounded to hear this eloquent and fundamental statement of equality: “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (TNIV).
Feminism is the simple stance, as expressed in the 19th century, that men and women are equal in value, and this scripture echoes that. BTW, Jesus was a practicing feminist. That is, he acted in ways that are consistent with the statement in Galatians. The way he treated women was radical for his time. He didn’t cut them any slack, but he didn’t ignore them or patronize them, either.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Hey, isn’t anybody going to comment on the picture? If you click on it, it takes you to a page with more words…
January 6th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
If believing Paul was right in Galatians makes you a feminist, then I’m a feminist too.
But for me the understanding/knowledge that women are equal to men in value and in the eyes of God wasn’t a lightning bolt or even a significant moment. In fact, it was kind of a letdown.
That’s only because I thought women were more valuable than men and therefore to be respected, honored, cared for and generally looked up to. Actually I still think that, so maybe I’m not a feminist. And maybe I’m wrong. I do know some women who don’t want to be more valuable, they want to be equal.
But back to Galatians for a moment. I believe Paul is saying that we are all equal at the foot of the cross. I don’t believe he is saying we have the same physiology, the same psychology, or even the same roles to play in life.
But back to living in color. I applaud you for having your mind open and available to those important and incredible moments. Too many of us are still “living in black and white” and believe we know the rules, thank you very much, and don’t need to hear anything new and therefore we don’t.
May we all live in color every day!
January 6th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
It’s not that I don’t want to be considered more valuable, but I don’t think that attitude is good for me. It can be dangerous for a woman to be put on a pedestal. If she’s too high, can she be reached? And if she falls, it’s a long way down.
I realize that this idea of being of equal value can be hard to measure. Society continues to struggle with how much to pay women versus men, for example. In this world, such equality is still more of a conceptual goal than a practical reality, with men being valued in some instances and women in others. For example, it used to be that women were more valued than men as caretakers, and were more typically awarded custody of children in divorce court. But God assures us that, at the foot of the cross, our equality is assured as an absolute reality.
Equality of value is completely different from sameness. A pure feminist stance does not make any claim about the sameness of gender-based anatomy or intellect. Yeah, I know people do it, but that’s not feminism. As for roles, that’s trickier. That argument goes like this: if men and women are of equal value, then they should be allowed to grow to their full (God-given) potential, whatever might be, and play out the roles they are gifted in or find necessary to thrive or survive.
I’m glad we’re not all the same because that would be much less colorful.