catapult magazine

Conversation: “Changing Minds”

by The *cino Community

Editor’s Note:  This installment is hopefully the first of many that will directly invite catapult readers to join the conversation about the issue topic.  I invite you to join in with your comments below.  If you have a longer response to the current issue that you’d like to submit for consideration as an article, please feel free to send it my way by the Tuesday after the issue is published.

To help get the conversation started, one time my mind changed was when I read George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara.  I was in a place of existential crisis.  Having immersed in the work of Dorothy Day and her example of total voluntary poverty, I had convinced myself intellectually that was the only way to live my life fully for Christ.  Even “living simply” was not an option-only complete surrender of all possessions to live among the poor as one of poor.  However, my heart was not feeling the pull toward that calling.  Major Barbara opened up a world of possibility for work among those who are spiritually starving, mired in complacency, consumerism, the luxury of despair (as I myself tended to be).  I suppose being in an uncomfortable state of crisis made me open to change, as well as being in a college environment of constant learning and evaluation.  I would also say that being able to make my own connections through stories across disciplines and apply them directly to future choices made me more receptive to change.  I still struggle with whether this change of mind was genuine or whether it was convenient-or a combination of both.

Over to you for your stories…

-k. vg-r 

• What film, book, lecture, etc. stands out in your story as something that changed your mind? 
• What about the situation or state of mind made change possible?