Sunday May 3

Jim and I have started going to the local Episcopal Church. I have been longing for a spiritual community. After having a Buddhist practice for almost 20 years, now feels like the time for me to go back to my own Spiritual culture, to take what I have learned in Buddhism and return to Christianity, the religion of my family. It's hard to expalin. But that is what we are doing. We enjoy the adult education discussions at St John's. They are often lively interchanges but seldom heated. Today however there was one moment, a short time actually, when I felt intimidated by another member of the group. He was driving questions at me one after another, forcefully. He's a large man and very self-assured. My experience of this was that I shut down. I couldn't think. Was intimidation his goal or just a well-worn unconscious pattern of winning his arguments? I can't say. Rather than look at this man, I think it would be fine to look at myself. Why did his verbal grilling cause me to shut down?

This has happened, of course, a number of times in the past. The first instance that comes to mind was when I was a Sophomore in college. With a combination of fear, dread and disbelief, I had just declared pre-med as my major. I was the only female pre-med student at my small Lutheran college. I felt like a fraud - that any moment I could be exposed as not smart enough for the path I had so boldly chosen. Afterall my parents were both working class people who hadn't even finished grade school. Who did I think I was?

One day in an auditorium lecture hall, the old, hard-nosed chemistry professor, Dr. Swenson, locked onto me for some unknown reason. Over and over he pounded questions at me. Not the usual analytical chemistry question - these were specific for me, one of the only females in the class and the only woman pre-med major. He walked over directly in front of my chair and loudly demanded: "What is the chemical compound of baking powder? What is the reaction of baking powder and water? When you are baking in the kitchen, Miss Beauregard, are you just a lady or are you a chemist?", he shouted. I sat speechless - unable to think - wanting only to run out of that room and over to the elementary education classes where I probably belonged. That was in 1965, almost 45 years ago. But this morning when Frank grilled me on my anti-racism statements, I was again back in that college auditorium seat, ready to run. So what goes on for me here? I didn't want to clam up. Others took up the discussion recognizing that I needed help. That was fine.

But for my own growth and maybe for some other women as well, I'd like to look at this. What happens and how can I change my response to be more empowering? I can do what I have done most of my life from the time I changed my pre-med major to education. I can avoid people and situations where I will be challenged. I can stick with my own kind, so to speak, and avoid discussions with old cowboys like Frank, or any other forceful person who disagrees with me. But now at this ripe old age of 63, I'd like to get past that, to be able to discuss important issues with strong-minded people who see things another way.

In this case Frank was pounding out questions, "Have you ever had your home broken into or been mugged or lived with a whole group of people who are different from you?" He didn't simply ask these questions, he was like an intense prosecuting at tourney. I felt like his real words were "You stupid, pious, ignorant, woman!" I see myself as good, kind, intelligent and informed. This inner picture of myself was being forcefully questioned. It wasn't me that was being threatened, of course, but my "idea" of me. How can I get past this holding tight to my idea of me - so tight that I get frozen when someone challenges this idea?

The answer that comes readily is silence. Not silence in the discussion but daily intentional silence in my life - a time for sitting in the Presence of God. In silence the "idea" of me slips away, or at least all the edges blur. I wonder if in prayer and meditation I can get comfortable with my nakedness (selflessness), or if in the words and after the example of Christ, I can "lay down my life in order to save it". I trust there will be more opportunities to see how I'm doing with this. Perhaps when unfairly attacked I can maintain my balance realizing that the True me is safe from all attack and the ideas I have of who I am may be attacked but that isn't really who I am anyway. One would hope.