A ROOM OF OUR OWN

Follette, Isabel B. La

A ROOM OF OUR OWN By Isabel B. La Follette THE MADISON Council of Church Women has asked me to speak to them on "Christian Democracy in the World Today." I find myself meditating along these...

...This sounds unexciting and prosaic, but it is no easy assign-nent...
...The boy, you remember, aimed ;o be a hero, "the most powerful man in my neighborhood without iify trouble or exercise...
...With women particularly, whose historical function it has been to bring Forth and nourish living things, our challenge is even greater in hese death-dealing times...
...In normal times we seldom question the importance of these things, but in war-time we find ourselves restless, questioning whether we are really doing our part...
...How many of us slide along from day to day avoiding the mpleasant, assuring ourselves that when the real test comes we'll neet it...
...lourage Is Built By Use We all know from experience that courage, like muscle, is |uilt by use...
...For one, can't you make yourself a resolution that you will J>eak up and do your part when you see the opportunity...
...When we hear of the heroism of women in war-torn Europe, our tendency is to overlook or depreciate our challenge here at home...
...Today, is minute, you can fight the intolerance that war hysteria always reeds...
...We cannot leglect them, or check them in the parcel room until the war is >ver and expect to pick them up again where we left them...
...Our forefathers fled a State Church to found a nation where one of our proudest possessions is the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own consciences...
...In a time like the present, these small examples of personal ourage are apt to seem insignificant against the background of tar...
...And so today our religious ideals take the form of various sects and philosophies and social "causes," which those of us who aim to be practicing idealists believe make up the American way of life...
...iThey Are Our Daily Trust And yet as we really think the matter through, we cannot escape the conclusion that these values can only survive by our keeping them alive and vigorous...
...They are our daily trust...
...With our hearts torn over a suffering world, we are so con-cious of our own limitations that we underestimate what our ourage means to others...
...And is it slow going...
...fVork For Values We Want Preserved Applying our subject, "Christian democracy in the world to ay," may I make a plea for the tangible, the visible demonstration f our ideals ? With the approach of the Christmas season with its raditional dedication to the thought of others and to the good tfe, let us women consciously work for the values" we want preserved—the eternal values, we hope...
...Can't we have faith in others, and resolve to do our bit to icourage that divine spark which makes life worth living...
...This is a fine, comfortable idea, like William Saroyan's lero in the "Fifty Yard Dash...
...I' * * * Attempt To Live Our Ideals In Europe I was continually impressed with the interest and curiosity of women there as to the activities of American women "We think you are so wonderful, the way you bring up your children, keep your homes, and still have time and strength to do things outside the home"—how many times that statement started a long series of questions about our way of life...
...My own feeling is that we women are apt to underestimate our part in this American way of life...
...For thoughtful women, our daily activities are a continual attempt to live our ideals...
...As we try to "get it home" to our children, the cour-geous individual is developed by the conquering of day to day Jests, most of which are never noticed by others but which bit by |it build our character...
...Did you ever notice hat a friend will express appreciation over some comparatively mall effort, while we have to go through most of the difficult Jests along...
...On the day of the race, all his meditation md will-to-win did not produce the desired victory which depended in work...
...I find myself meditating along these lines: Although we Americans cannot truthfully say that we have yet achieved Christian Democracy, we are an overwhelmingly Christian country...
...Whether cooking the evening meal, patching a pair of corduroys, lengthening an outgrown skirt, attending the PTA, the Red Cross, a church circle, we are trying to contribute to the goodness and beauty of life...
...In this period of destruction, t us work on the creative values within our own control...
...Yet, after all, our way of life is made Up of the daily routine of millions of Americans—the early morning breakfast on the farm or in the city, the getting off of children to school, the daily chores of cooking, housework, mending, as well as the responsibilities which the average American woman accepts as her duty to the community...

Vol. 5 • December 1941 • No. 49


 
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