Ellen Perleberg – Unfundamentalist

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I rather spontaneously—or perhaps, I’d like to think, by the work of the Holy Spirit—got on a night bus and went to church. I arrived at St. Mark’s Cathedral to a contemplative Eucharist in their beautiful chapel. It was soft and lovely and quiet.

I love the quiet. I sought it out when I came to college in Seattle, living in “the big city” for the first time this fall, more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people everywhere. I looked for and found spaces where we pray in quiet to hear our own God answer. And now I have come to a season in which we encourage each other to come into the quiet and the rest and peace it brings.

But I noticed something else in the quiet that evening. Perhaps because I had just returned from a trip back home, I realized that my quiet does not belong to me. It belongs to my sister. My twelve-year-old sister has severe developmental delays and serious sensory processing issues. Anything and everything is liable to be too bright, too loud, too much for her, and so I grew up with the quiet. With subtitles on muted TV screens, with an empathetic dread of ceiling fans, with a constant, chiding shhh.

My quiet is active. My quiet encompasses all the work it takes to make the world safe for my sister. My quiet is an act of love. My quiet was enforced for years, and my quiet puts her needs first.

My quiet is heartbreaking. Quiet is unanswered questions and the words she can’t say.… [Read more…] about When Quiet Means Work: A Reflection for Families, Caregivers, and Those Who Are Still Loving

I’m a high school senior from a small town in Central Washington. Since I was thirteen years old, I’ve known exactly what I want to do “when I grew up”: I want to become a professor of linguistics at a major research university. I want to research and write papers and teach. Because I have had this answer ready for so long, people started to ask me what I want to specialize in. I’d say that I wasn’t sure, but perhaps an indigenous language family in Central America, because I already spoke Spanish and had studied the culture and politics of the region. Then it struck me: what has made me who I am does not have to be what I become.

This was a shocking, liberating idea for me. It seemed so obvious, since I was going to college to learn new things and have new experiences, but it also seemed contrary to everything I had learned. Suddenly, this simple idea permeated every aspect of my life. It became a mantra, a lifeline: what has made me who I am does not have to be what I become.

My Spanish teacher, a woman I admire very much as a teacher, a Christian, and a friend, graduated from the high school where she now teaches, attended the local community college, and then transferred to the state university forty-five minutes away.

What has made me who I am does not have to be what I become.

My mother has spent her life fighting the bureaucracy of special education for my little sister. She stays home because my sister needs someone to be her… [Read more…] about What Has Made Me Who I Am Does Not Have to Be What I Become