Today I paid for my cap and gown. Seventy dollars?!?! I'm bewildered. The only thing extravagant at the Commencement Extravaganza was the cost of my cap and gown. It better make me look fabulous. Do you know that I have never walked? In high school I was already showing horses, trying to qualify for Nationals when I missed my high school graduation. I was newly married, poor, already working and taking Interior Design classes at night in Vegas when I missed my college graduation. I will miss TWU. The campus is pretty and I love the ethnic diversity there. It mixes up my whitebread world. University libraries and bookstores make me feel the Spirit. Can I say that? It is here that I learned so much about the past, about myself, about how I really don't know much at all. The one thing I have learned from my Masters degree is not to rely on just one book, one person, one ideology, or one agenda for wisdom. A holistic perspective comes from learning from dissimilarity, multiple realities, looking from the top down AND the bottom up. I have learned that how people see God and themselves is intricately connected. I have learned that the only fair way to judge someone is on their heart. I have learned that all women do not all have the same needs, that we are varied, multi-faceted, capable of the whole range of human behavior, and individual. How will we use what we have to offer? Will we spend our time trying to create others in our own image? Excluding those who are different? Or will we help God with the work and the glory of allowing each individual to shine as bright as possible? A community of whole persons, free to contribute the way they know best--maybe that's a little like the ever-elusive Zion we are supposed to build. Enough blabber, my kids are calling me to help them put their sheets on the beds. Earth to Heather.
