Fencing Bear at Prayer

All those people out there are just as afraid of you as you are of them .  Unless they are saints, which means that they have been able to let go of their fear because they don't need it anymore.  That's what it means to say, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."  Fear is what blocks you from being able to see other human beings for what they are--not enemies, but frightened children, all worried about what the other kids are going to think.  (Hat tip to my sister for helping me see this more clearly.) You're not crazy if you think that some of the kids, particularly the boys, are making faces at you and then denying it meant anything when you " overreact ."  Maybe they meant to get at you, maybe they were just being kids themselves, unable to sit with their own feelings long enough to understand why they said what they did.  But the ugly face was really an ugly face, the cutting remark was really a cutting remark, the emotional manipulation (or...

I always thought I needed one, but now I realize, I don't. I thought I needed you to support me, listen to me, help me, comfort me when I was down, but now I realize, I don't. Not like I need sunshine or sleep or food. Not like I need to spend a certain amount of time every week on my work.  And my blog. Not like I need exercise or time spent in meditation or prayer. Not like I need to go to church on Sundays. Not like I need to know that, however bad it gets in my head, I can sit with it . Did you want me to need you?  Or did you simply enjoy the feeling of being needed without having to respond? It's okay, I'm a big girl now. The falcon has taken wing .

Becoming the person you want me to be because I don't care anymore what you think.

All my life, I have believed that it was wrong to try to do something that you couldn't do easily at first (a.k.a. "had talent for"). All my life, I have believed that it was wrong to say what I really thought or, worse, "put myself forward." All my life, I have believed that the world was a dangerous place filled with people you couldn't trust and events you must be prepared for lest you fail or die. All my life, I have believed that to have something nice I would need to deserve it, that is, behave in a certain way, otherwise it would be wrong to have or expect good things. All my life, I have believed that other people know better than I do how I should behave. All my life, I have believed that it was my fault if I felt awkward or uncomfortable about doing something other people thought I should. All my life, I have believed that it was wrong to feel anything other than happy. All my life, I have believed that the reasons I had difficulty be...

My worth is dependent upon what you think of me. My beauty is dependent upon how you see me. My success is dependent upon whether you are impressed. My importance is dependent upon your ability to appreciate my work. My happiness is dependent upon whether you smile at me. My joy is dependent upon your ability to congratulate me. My boundaries are set where you decide.

I need to say this carefully so that there is no misunderstanding. Objectively speaking, I am Christian. A Christian, yes, but more importantly, Christian. That is, subjectively speaking, I see the world, reality, what have you from a particular perspective which, objectively, others have identified as "Christian" but which for me is simply the truth. The truth being, that I, like all other human beings, am a child of God, created in His image and likeness, a creature of body and soul, created good and yet fallen and, therefore, in need of salvation. Which means, I realized yesterday talking to a new friend who is a Baha’i and whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Iran when she was a child, that I, like she, am not particularly anxious about being or not being an American, other than that living in the United States gives me political freedom to see myself and everyone else in the world as a child of God without risking criminalization or exile, at least, politica...

Yep, that did it .  I'm sick.  I'm trying to figure out whether this is simply a case of noticing the apparent coincidences (every so often I get sick after reading a set of applications, but then I read lots of applications, so maybe there isn't a link) or, in fact, a clear case of cause and effect: I read applications, I get sick.  But I am.  Fever last night of 101.3.  Aches, sore throat, cough, inability to focus.  Not entirely clear now how I am going to write this paper I've been asked to give.  Perhaps my body is trying to tell me something about what kind of paper I should plan to give.  I want it to be clever and philosophical, but it's more likely to end up a kind of show-and-tell.  I suppose there's nothing particularly wrong with show-and-tell, but it isn't terribly Foucauldian.  And this is a rather Foucauldian crowd.  At least I'm assuming it is, I could be entirely wrong. Do I have a self that I want to talk about?...

"I consider the common account of the sense of emptiness in the modern world to be a faulty diagnosis. If there is in fact an emptiness peculiar to our age it is not because of 'the death of God' in the non-Lutheran sense in which that phrase is usually understood. It is not because an ebbing away of faith before the advance of science has impoverished modern experience. "Assuming that there is indeed a modern malaise, one contributing factor might be the exclusion of the felt life of the mind from the accounts of reality proposed by the oddly authoritative and deeply influential parascientific literature that has long associated itself with intellectual progress, and the exclusion of felt life from the varieties of thought and art that reflect the influence of these accounts [e.g. most recently, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett]. "To some extent even theology has embraced impoverishment, often under the name of secularism, in order t...