#PROFESSOR ALISON DOWNIE HOW TO#
#PROFESSOR ALISON DOWNIE MOVIE#
#PROFESSOR ALISON DOWNIE PROFESSIONAL#

In the classroom or while writing an article, I know how to keep myself safe. Yet I keep myself safe by operating only out of my intellect, employing analysis and critique in the third person. Student feedback tells me my Religious Studies classes are safe spaces.

#PROFESSOR ALISON DOWNIE PROFESSIONAL#

In a classroom, in my professional life, I’m perhaps hyper-vigilant in preventing potentially shaming exchanges. Unless I muster the courage to confront those who shame others by dogmatic commands and proclamations of certainty, masked as religious virtue, I’ll never know. How I wish I had had the courage to pull to the curb, leave my fury in the car, and explain how the command to smile affected me. Thankfully, I was too shy and socially awkward to “witness” or “evangelize,” but I was trained to believe I was neglecting my duty, since, of course, our religious group had the answers that all others needed. I could have been one of them in my evangelical twenties. I imagine that they meant no harm and were probably encouraged into and praised by older members of their group for this enthusiastic “witness”. I imagine that they understood their signs to be godly evangelization, friendly invitations to their church service, or, at the least, innocuous advertisement. Rage boiled within me for miles and miles, churning over the shame these young people tossed around in an insular, and therefore, arrogant obliviousness. And who are you to tell me I should? Who are you to imply that if I do not smile, I somehow don’t measure up to your understanding of what faith or salvation is?” Though I drove on in steely silence, I wanted to slam on the brakes, storm into that cluster of shiny happy young people and throw down a Molotov cocktail of sudden death, mental illness, tragedy, and suffering of all kinds into their church street party: “NO! I will NOT smile because it’s Sunday. I felt slapped in the face, stunned, and then. I glanced their way, wondering if I would recognize a student from one of my classes.Ī young man I did not recognize leaned toward the curb as I passed, aiming his poster at me. They appeared to be mostly young, and I imagined they were probably students at the university where I teach. On this day, a group of enthusiastic church goers gathered on the sidewalk, advertising the service about to begin with handmade posters.

#PROFESSOR ALISON DOWNIE MOVIE#

It rents space on the main street, in an old movie theater. On this particular Sunday, I happened to drive past a non-denominational church in the small college town where I live. When he is doing poorly, my own tendency to depression means that being present as best I can, even for just a few hours, to his deep suffering may utterly deplete me for the rest of the day or several days following. I usually enjoy our weekly visits, during which we sit at a coffee shop or do an errand. Now 27, he dropped out of college after one semester, has never held a job for more than a month, and has been hospitalized three times for psychiatric care. At this time, disabled by mental illness, he lives in an AA recovery house, surviving on Supplemental Security Income of $740.00/month and SNAP food allotments. I carried this family in my heart as I drove to my weekly Sunday visit with one of my adult sons, who lives about 75 miles from me. Though I had been out of touch with my grad school friend for some years, I felt deeply for her loss, her unexpected plunge into single parenting, the way her life and the lives of her children would forever be shaped by this grievous tragedy. On a recent Friday, I learned that the 43 year old husband of someone I went to graduate school with, parent of four young children, died suddenly.

Professor alison downie