Speaking Engagements

Filed Under being creative, events, gender, uu culture

I finally checked my mail today and found a letter informing me that my proposal for the 26th Annual Lewis & Clark Gender Studies Symposium had been accepted. I wonder if they accept all proposals because the acceptance letter came very quickly. I presented there once before, in 2004, with other students from a class at Marylhurst University. In that case, my professor had submitted the proposal so it was a slightly foreign process to me this time around.

I had to look it up, but the name of the panel session from 2004 was Writing Our Other(ness): Memoir as Response to Intersections of Race and Gender in African-American Autobiography! I’m always amused at how academics have such long explanations for what they’re talking about; that one is no exception, and yet it really was a good description of what our papers were about. My piece was called The Title Goes Right Here, because I really didn’t know what to call it at the time the proposal went in. I meant to change it later but forgot, and that’s how it was printed up.

The title of the piece I’m going to write for this upcoming Symposium is The Only Sane One in the House, and it’s a personal essay about how my grandmother, my mother and I have each come to find our “voices” within our families and respective communities.

It will be interesting to check in mid-December to see who I am grouped with for the moderated panel discussion. The major speakers for the Symposium this year are very exciting and I’m looking forward to attending as much of the conference as possible.

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I’m scheduled to present a sermon at a UU church in Seattle this January, and have been bouncing around ideas for some time now. This is very hard. I’ve never written a sermon before, and have no interest in being a minister. What’s more, this is a congregation I don’t know. What do I even have to say to these, particular people? I agreed to do this because it frightened me, and I wanted to do more things that induced fear in me. Now I’m not afraid of being awful or offending anyone - but of being irrelevant. Fortunately, I have a contact from there so I can probably work with him to get a better sense of the congregation’s sensibilities.

All of that was to say that I want to write something about voices for that event, too. What does it mean to come to something with your whole heart, for example? How can we stop being afraid? How do we derive our own truths and speak them? I’m not a wise person, or very learned, so I hope I don’t come off as telling people what to do. The Sunday I will be delivering this topic is during the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, so it goes without saying that he will be part of the sermon. This whole issue of speaking up, and holding yourself responsible for living in accordance with your beliefs is at the forefront of my mind these days. Well, we shall see.

Comments

2 Responses to “Speaking Engagements”

PeaceBang on November 20th, 2006 6:59 pm

I think you have the beautiful beginnings of a sermon right there.
Congratulations on your paper and your preaching engagement!!
Will Shetterly on November 22nd, 2006 9:23 am

In addition to what Peacebang said, you’re worried about the right things, which is half the challenge. You’ll do fine!

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