Religion and Perspective

-

     While reading The Clan of One-Breasted Women, I encountered a quote that changed my perspective on the common but tragic event of death.

    Williams described her experience with watching women from her family die of cancer in a perspective that I could never imagine.

 "In the end, I witnessed their last peaceful breaths, becoming a midwife to the rebirth of their souls."

    Throughout my life, although I've never been through the same experiences as Williams, I have never thought of death as a "rebirth" of any kind. The way I anticipate most of us would describe death is by saying "we lost someone" which is why Williams perspective shocked me. 

The entire line is written from a perspective that was foreign to me. Being a witness of death is described as being a “midwife”, someone who witnesses birth. 

    This line really captivated me. It makes the pain and suffering that the women in her family felt seem "heroic" as William would describe it. The experience that her family has been through is unimaginable, yet for Williams to be able to word it to sound almost spiritual was interesting. Having included “rebirth” and “souls”, it became easier to see how influenced Williams was by her religion. Maybe this was why my perspective differed so much from Williams. Even Williams grandmother's perspective on surgery felt unique to me. "It is one of the most spiritual experiences you will ever encounter". 

    Having been through surgery myself, even though it wasn't anything like surgery related to cancer, my experience with surgery was scary. To find that someone else described it as having "the arms of god around me" was unusual. I grew up hearing and seeing others pray that a surgery went well, while Williams heard about how it was spiritual. Our different experiences growing up with religion impacted how we perceived certain events, which in Williams case could have a negative effect on the perceiver.

 

     

 


Comments

  1. Catie KrebsFebruary 13, 2022 at 3:12 PM

    Hi Shambhavi! I found your blog post intriguing this week. Although I have never experienced a surgery, I liked how you could relate to Williams piece and it spoke to you in a special way. Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. EvaFebruary 13, 2022 at 8:03 PM

    Your take on these lines is wonderful. It didn't hit me nearly as hard, and I'm so glad I could see the beauty in the line that you did, especially when related to your own experience with surgery. But I agree - when I got my own surgery, I really didn't relate it to anything spiritual, either. I digress, though; I also love how you picked apart the words "rebirth" and "souls" and related them to the spiritual theme that was a part of the essay. Once more, great work!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's in a Name?

-
Image
     With this being the first 12 AP blog, I think introducing myself and talking about the origins of my name would be a better way to start the school year.      So the name Shambhavi (Shum-ba-vee). Having a unique name already distinguishes me from others. My name usually isn't something that people are able to pronounce correctly the first time. Instead, I'll get a few mispronounced versions of my name before the right pronunciation.      As a child, my appreciation for my name was much lower than it is now. I wasn't used to being the only unique name in between other Toms, Sallys, and Jims. In third grade, I chose to go by SGS which is my initials rather than my full name, which I wasn't able to continue for more than a week because of my teacher. Growing up my parents told me how my name was chosen, but the weight and significance of the name took longer for me to understand.      Shambhavi: the name of a Hindu goddess and the feminine version of Shambhu. Whenev
Read more

Diving Into the Wreck

-
     Defining and finding meaning line by line of any written piece has never been my strong suit, but with the poem my group chose for the poetry panel project, I find that it's necessary to understand every line in the poem since each line holds a valuable meaning that develops the underlying message of the poem. We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.      The stanza above is the final stanza in the poem Diving into the Wreck . During my first read of the poem, I found myself confused with what the poem was trying to say, at first glance the poem was really just about the speaker going on a dive to explore a wreck that she witnesses. Now since this is the poem from my group's poetry panel project I won't give out any spoilers, but I do want to mention that I admire how each and every word from Rich's poem carries weight to it.      Cathy Park
Read more

This I Have Learned

-
Image
           Walking into the classroom 12 AP room, everyone was new to me. I ended up sitting at the same pod as Cecelia and Alex (Sonnet joined us a little later), these were people that I had never spoken to before.       Now, since in AP Lit we had to almost always have pod discussions, the four of us, considering the fact that at least three of us are introverts, had a hard time making conversation at first. Those first few days of awkward silence and stagnant conversation is a memory that will always stay with me because since then, I've learned how to communicate my thoughts and ideas more freely with my pod always supporting me (plus Lily:) ).     Throughout high school, if there is something that I have learned and consistently tried to improve upon, then it has to be taking every opportunity I can get rather than letting some slip past me. I have always been finding myself letting good opportunities get away because I haven't been proactive about taking action on them.
Read more