I have come across a wonderful Christian philosopher/spiritual director.  That slash-spiritual director part is pretty important.  That means he's intelligible, quite quite forward and easy to understand.  His name is Anthony De Mello.  And he has a number of books, some of which are out of print, but I am currently reading Awareness.  I am only on page twelve, and am quite impressed.

In other news, yes I have read Henri Nouwen.  And it is like you said he thinks and writes a lot like I do.  I read The Wounded Healer last week.  He gives a rather nice perspective of ministry in a modern world in that book.  His modern world is 1972, but most of it is still very relevant.

Nouwen has a very elegant style in his writing.  De Mello has a very frank style.  Nouwen contemplative.  De Mello practical.  Two very different minds.  Two very great minds.

I have social anxiety issues.

I have serious social anxiety issues.

They aren't very new.  But I haven't done very much to curb them.  I am only just now realizing how much I have let them take over my life.  I am only just now realizing that this is indeed what my issues are.   It is social anxiety.

My senior thesis.  It was optional, granted.  It would have taken a lot of time and dedication, writing a work of fiction of my choice.   And I gave myself the time to dedicate to it.  Why did I not finish?  I told myself it was because I didn't know how to get my ideas on paper.  But that's not true.  It was because I was afraid.  Afraid of standing up in front of that committee and talking about my work.

I know this because I decided I would switch to poetry.  I have more than enough poems to fill a portfolio.  I can round up a committee with expertise in poetry, and have the thesis complete, and graduate cum laude.  But that same sickly, immobilizing feeling is coming over me.  I'm not an incapable writer.  I'm not an incapable person.  I am just illogically afraid of that committee.

And there are other things that I have been afraid of.  Other interactions with people.  Feeding people at the homeless shelter.  I could cook all morning long at our church kitchens, but I could not bring myself to go interact with people at the homeless shelter.  Dating someone.  A year ago last Fall there was someone who was being honestly quite forward with me, simply because she had to.  I even kinda had a thing for her, and we probably would have had a good bit of fun together.  But I couldn't go on a date with her.  I simply couldn't.  She invited me over for movies.  I couldn't.  (I did have a prior engagement, a retreat to go to, but I let the ball drop.)

It is no use trying to change the past, but I sure need to learn from it.

I don't need to consign myself to a cubicle in Atlanta or Albuquerque processing other people's futures simply because I know I can handle a job as an admissions analyst to a university.  I don't need to choose a career because it puts a computer screen between me and most human interaction.

I need to live my life.  And the first step I have to doing that is by finishing this thesis.  Confronting that committee.  I will let the second step come.  I don't need to know that tonight.  But I do not need to let this sickly feeling get in the way.

It will be hard, but I will be praying.  It will still be hard, but it will be worth doing.

Darn it.   I found a quote that piqued my philosophical fancy.  But I'm not thinking too coherently right now.

"There are only two ways to tell the complete truth: anonymously and post-humously."  - J. Sowell

It was on one of those little blog ads that pop up on the side of your little news feed page.

It's a nice quote, though.  I wonder if it came out of his journal after he died.  Or maybe in a note he left in a lock box.  haha.

But seriously it voices that thing I mentioned before.  That feeling in modern society that we must be private individuals.  Almost to the point that we have to be private to be individuals.  Our truths must remain private.  It's that feeling that leads us to set up anonymous blog sites so we can stop living under the pressure of all these lies and ideas we have built up around ourselves.  Lies which we obviously know are not true, and ideas... ideas we may just want to try on for size. 

But for some reason there is a fear of exposing the entire truth.  The truth that we are just trying Buddhism or vegetarianism and not necessarily professing to it.

... Is it a fear?  Or is it more... not wanting to have to explain.  Is it having a deep and complex discernment that you can't really explain succinctly, not having the time or the intimacy to share with everyone.  Maybe it's easier to give them an idea: "I'm thinking about going to the seminary."

That's certainly more acceptable than, "I'm single, and I kind of like that at the moment.  I happen to be rather religious and think celibacy would be a good idea for me for a while, see if I'm up for it forever.  I probably would rather enjoy all the theological discussions and biblical analysis at the seminary, so it is definitely a possibility that will stay in my head.  But I don't really feel particularly called anywhere at the moment.  I just want to stay single for a bit, and have my ears open if the call happens to be coming."

Talking about the seminary is much easier and simpler, and it gets the generic point across.  But then everybody is wondering when you'll actually go to the seminary.  Where you'll go.  What order you'll go with.  They ask you about that more frequently than they had asked you if you had a girlfriend.  And what are you supposed to think when a girl, a mere acquaintance, stops you on the sidewalk to say that she would support your decision to go to the seminary? 

Well, in any case, I don't believe J. Sowell is correct.  I think he is funny, and he testifies to a modern actuality.  But modern actualities do not translate into intrinsic realities.

Our half-truths and insincere professions produce at least as many hairy situations as they avoid, in my experience.  It's a wonder we still persist in giving them.