A Religion of One's Own, by Thomas Moore

In college, I don't remember reading Virginia Woolf's book, A Room of One's Own.  What I do remember of it is summed up in the title and the one famous line--that every woman writer should have money and a room of her own.

Whoa!  Whaaat???  Run that by me again? 

This may or may not have happened, but it's the way I remember it: All of us in that sleepy summer classroom at St. Mary's University heard those words and reached for our cigarettes and lit up together, as if on cue, as if to inhale the words!  Lighters clicked around the room. The room filled up with smoke.  Something in our minds shattered that day.

It wasn't the "writer" part that struck me as so radical in the late Sixties; it was the "woman" part: that a woman should have money (which I didn't ) and a "room" of her own (which, already married at 18, I didn't).  I took it literally--as was my style of taking things in those days--and began to fantasize about what a room of my own might look like, should I ever have one.  Money--well, I'd get to that later maybe.

Since I had so early aligned myself with another person "til death did us part," I was already on a shared road.  I was a passenger in a car someone else was driving.  But a seed was planted in my imagination, one that would be dormant for a long time, then would grow like Jack's Beanstalk.

Last week, I checked out a new book by Thomas Moore (author of Care of the Soul)--A Religion of One's Own. Here's the epigraph of the first chapter: "Every manifestation of the sacred is important: every rite, every myth, every belief or divine figure." (Mircea Eliade).

I'm only a few pages in, but I'm intrigued enough to turn this blog space into a conversation with the book as I read it.  I'd love to hear what you think--should you care to ride along with me, or beside me in your own car, or by foot or by train.

I'm starting to sound like Dr. Suess, and it's five in the morning, so I'll stop right here for now.