Lydia Williams

What a stimulating discussion! Thank you for your response, Barbara.

The impact of sculpture of any kind didn't really hit me until I saw it in person. I didn't hold as much appreciation for Rodin's "The Kiss," for example, until I saw it up close in London. Those pictures looked promising, though! I think it's interesting, too, that there was an entire ballerina culture to depict. Sometime when I'm in DC I'll have to check that museum out. As for admiring the buildings more than anything in them, I know just what you mean! The High Museum here in Atlanta is often itself the highlight of visiting it.

Very well elucidated, Barbara! Avid belief in something without the willingness to question it or distinguish oneself from it is the basis of a cult mentality. It reminds me that in small, close-knit congregations, where there are church activities 4-5 times a week, where the children are told to have only Christian friends, where everything is censored and everyone agrees, where the outside world becomes the "other" and non-Christians become things called "sinners" or "damned," this quote rings strikingly true: Since I, too, believe I have the claim on Truth, it's important to distinguish how alike and unlike my ways of thinking are from those I disagree with. Examining my commonality with the world is not my favorite passtime, and it's probably not yours either, I realize, yet it is important for me to understand how I am like you, even if (and perhaps especially if) I hate you. Distinguishing myself from others while recognizing what we all have in common has allowed me to see people first as people, then as ideologies, which is important in my development as a thinking individual, and it's important in my profession. Every semester, I tell my students to be comfortable in a state of "finding out"; that is, to be at ease not knowing all the answers and to be willing to learn. I try to emphasize that they are more than their backgrounds and ages and hobgoblin of cultural contexts. I want them to question as much as they can handle and I also emphasize, for any of them who may have a cult mentality, that they are more than their strongest belief. I tell them to take a step back from what I term their "ideology machines"--the kind of mentality that filters the entire world through the same machine to get the same answers every time, no surprises: "I'm a Latina so I don't like this..." or, "I'm a Latina so I DO like this..."; "I'm a Christian so I don't like that..." or "I'm a Christian so I DO like that...." I usually mention vegetarianism in the place of Christianity (hoping they'll insert Christianity on their own--hoping they'll challenge themselves, in other words, and not see me as the devil), but I do try to mention an ethnicity since so many of my students think in terms of their ethnicity. "This does NOT mean that there is no truth," I tell those who may be getting squirmy. "This does NOT mean you should have no convictions," I say. What it does mean, however, is that the world is perhaps bigger than they have imagined it, and that there is room for nuance and paradox and wonder and even disagreement in whatever they believe. There is room for each of them to be an individual--that's what I'm trying to get at. It may seem like I'm encouraging plurality but remember that I'm fighting a lot: college campuses have a special ability to encourage group mentality while acting like or even believing that they are promoting independent free-thinking. It's important for my students to feel comfortable FEELING alone and alike others at the same time--balancing the two. I have trouble with that even as an adult.

When I was 14 and was accepted into a Jr. Company ballet, I loved Degas. After a few months in the company dancing three hours a day with my fellow ballerinas and splitting an apple for a snack, it became glaringly apparent to us that those Degas ballerinas were HIDEOUSLY OBESE! Ho-hum: such is the predictable nature of the body-image-confused young teen. Happily, now I love Degas. I think my favorite, though, remains Monet. When I was even younger and taking ART lessons, I used to have my mom drive me every weekend to the St. Louis Art Museum so I could look at the Monet paintings. I believe one of the first books I ever bought was a tiny Monet book. I loved the way he used color, but most of all, I loved the way he dared to paint differently, and in my mind, his paintings were even more vibrantly beautiful than photographs or more realistic paintings of the same locations. It may sound simple, but since I, too, felt different as a child--different from my friends and different from my family--I took solace in Monet's difference. If he could be himself so beautifully, maybe I could be myself, however different, beautifully as well.

Thanks, Kat and Michael, for the welcome. Glad to be here for the ride.