Last year was a year of powerful women. My network of feminine was loud and strong and full of driving energy. We were exploring our feminism through the firm knowledge that we could do it alone, together out of love and want but not necessarily out of necessity. It was a year of independence and autonomy and needing no one. We celebrated the women who spoke out, who held their heads high, who accomplished the large. We were validating and we were loving, but mostly we were strong. This year is a year of powerful women, too. But this is a softer power, one that celebrates the nurturing sides of the feminine. This year is about a mother and her new child, about the embrace between a girl and her grandmother in Moana, about grace and unconditional love. The fire has not gone out, but it is simply a warm, life-giving one now, not one that rages and destroys. This fire is about flowers and holding hands and quiet tears. It is about long nights discussing the intricacies of our deepest desires, about seeking the most good. It is about Rachel Hunt Steenblik’s Mother’s Milk, and seeking a connection with our Heavenly Mother. It is about finding the divine feminine in each of us, about embracing and unlocking our purest energies of love and acceptance and sisterhood. It is still brave and it is still strong, but it is also gentle.
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I'm a sucker for a good metaphor. When I was in early high school, I was surrounded by the kind of people who read simply for pleasure. They were, as the writer of my twelfth-grade English textbook would say, escapist readers. They propagated the idea that we shouldn't shred books down to their individual parts to find deeper meaning. The curtains are blue; the curtains are blue. Their crowning sentiment was that books say what they mean, and no more. And while I would still argue that my twelfth-grade English textbook writer was a pretentious prick, I'm quite proud that I've moved on from that crowd. Because although maybe when an author says that the curtains are blue they say that simply because why not blue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with also deciding that the blue means something to you. Because, as YA-giant John Green so often says, books belong to their readers. And this reader wants to think about things. She wants to take the world for more than just face value, she wants to dig deep and pull people apart into their component pieces and try to figure out what makes them tick. She is so deeply unsatisfied with so many people's answer to the question of "why?" because people never pull the truth out from inside them, explain the whole background and every bit of reason to it. They just go with the easy, even if they believe it's the hard. She's been told that science explains the how and religion the why, but "By relegating the things we fear and don’t understand to religion, and the things we understand and control to science, we rob science of its artistry and religion of its mutability." On Friday I went to a conference at Utah Valley University co-hosted by BYU's Wheatley Institution and UVU's Center for the Study of Ethics. I found out about it about a week and half ago and, as I told my mother, "I saw “PEACEBUILDING” with a picture of a butterfly and knew I would freaking walk there if I had to." I didn't have to. I asked the magical world of Facebook for a ride and successfully obtained a good one. Maybe "obtained" isn't the word. Anyway. The remainder of this post will be adapted from my letter home this week. (So, Mom, Dad, Marian... don't read this yet. Your version is better anyway.) So, the conference! It was so good. We were there for a total of five speakers, and a discussion/Q&A session for two of them. Each speaker was better than the last. I took notes (in pink ink, of course). I managed to streamline (most) everything into a few key points:
I go to college at a university owned by my church. Naturally, the university is pretty conservative. It may come as a surprise to anyone who was in my AP Comparative Government class that my top choice school is a conservative one, but it's the truth. Of course, the political leanings of the students was not the primary factor in my decision, but that's beside the point. The point is that my Hillary Clinton poster and the Hillary logo in the window of my friends' dorm are generally looked down upon, and most of my peers would sooner vote for Trump than for Hillary. Of course, when they find out which candidate I selected on my absentee ballot, they always question it. I rarely answer, mostly because I'm not prepared to get into a fight. The truth is that I'm not particularly vocally articulate, and so I prefer to put my thoughts into writing. So, to anyone who has ever asked (or wanted to ask): This is for you.
I'm pretty sure you've all figured out by now that I'm a college student. If you haven't figured that out (and even if you have), here's the rundown: I'm in my first semester at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, currently studying Civil Engineering. Now, BYU is a Mormon school. And because of that, students here take almost enough religion credits to get a minor in it at pretty much any other school. One of the classes I'm in this semester is called Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon. For this class, I have to pick a Book of Mormon scripture each week for three weeks, and work on the principle taught in it. Another thing you've probably figured out by now is that I have trouble thinking a thing through if I don't write it down. And so, to help me figure out what I'm supposed to work on and how I'm supposed to do it, I'm going to write it down. And you're getting the opportunity to be along for the ride. So that's the set up.
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I'm Audrey, a college student and existential rambler.
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February 2021
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