A Compendium of Bits & Pieces about Anxiety

A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I would consider writing some about my experience with anxiety, and I said yes, but I haven't done it yet. And then I remembered that I have in fact done it, in the past. Here are a couple of links to posts at an old dead blog of mine:

On Mental Illness

From the Crazy Days

I will add that I had an untreated anxiety disorder from early childhood until I was in my late 20s, when we stumbled upon it while doing couples therapy. Until then, I thought pretty much everybody was as crazy as I was, though that's not strictly true: I did try to get help. In middle school, I asked my parents to take me to a psychiatrist and they refused; in college, I asked them to help me get therapy and they refused. When I was in graduate school the first time (at Rutgers, in the late 80s), I did get therapy for awhile and it helped some. But it was a revelation to me to find out that most people did not live in constant fear, or with the constant sense that everyone was watching and judging them. An even bigger revelation to consider that I might become one of those other people.

Interestingly, things really fell apart for awhile after I first recognized my anxiety disorder--as I said in one of the links up there, it was like all my dysfunctional coping mechanisms fell away long before I had new, functional ones to replace them. It was a bad, bad time.

Regular generic talk therapy helped in the sense that I came to have a pretty good understanding of what anxiety was, and what mix of temperament and upbringing had constructed mine. But the anxiety itself didn't really improve. Either my doctor or my therapist (I don't remember now) suggested I try cognitive-behavioral therapy, and seeing a good cognitive-behavioral therapist got me over the hump literally in a manner of weeks; I also saw a psychiatrist and used medication for awhile, which was such a life-saver that I kicked myself for resisting it for so long.

Being a person who is recovered from anxiety doesn't mean I don't have anxiety; I'll always be an anxious-ish person with a racing brain. Recovery means I don't have anxiety that interferes with my life, that I have very good coping mechanisms, that I recognize the early signs that a bad patch might be coming and know how to get help quickly. For me, one early sign is what I call "morbid fantasies," these images that jump into my mind of, say, one of my children crumpled, severely wounded, at the foot of a play structure at the playground, or of someone walking out of the water carrying my child's limp, drowned body. I know how to stop a morbid fantasy before it turns into a full-blown inner brain-movie, but if I start having them regularly, something needs to be attended to.

Sometimes I think things are pretty bad, and then I read that second link and I remember that I spent the first 25, 30 years of my life simply dominated by my anxiety. I remember being paralyzed over what to wear to my department orientation at Rutgers because of how people might judge me, good or bad, depending on the choice I made (my therapist at the time: "Su, a little hint here: nobody is paying that much attention to you." This was surprisingly helpful). I remember bursting into tears on a bus at the University of Michigan because I overheard someone I didn't know in a seat near me mention a friend of hers whose gpa was better than mine. I remember 1000 times not trying something because the fear of failing at it was stronger than the hope of success. I remember many times when my revving brain led to overly-dramatic behavior; sometimes I think I ought to make a list of people who were my friends and lovers before I was 26 or 27 and write them all letters of apology for the ways my insecurity strained our relationships (Carol, Jim, and Bill from freshman year at Oakland: this especially applies to you). Likewise my students from the first 3 years or so I was teaching, when my anxiety was so bad that it was much too common for me not to make it to class at all.

I hardly believe it myself, it's been so long since things have been that bad. I am lucky David stuck with me through the falling-completely-apart-and-recovering period, though I'm pretty sure he thinks it was worth it. It is such ancient history now.

Three more things:

Awhile ago, somebody asked at Ask.Metafilter.com, "What does it feel like to have anxiety?" The answers are worth reading (mine is in there, the same as one of the links above.)

One of my children has anxiety. It is a great balm to me to see how much better he is doing than I was at that age. I did recently have a conversation with my old therapist about how to know whether he needs treatment, and she gave me a great rule of thumb for figuring it out: if his anxiety keeps him from doing things he wants to do, or affects his relationships. So far, so good. But I've been applying CBT stuff I know to him: for instance, even though he is afraid of elevators and parking garages, I get him into elevators and parking garages pretty regularly. Avoiding a thing you're afraid of just reinforces the fear.

The other day, I found this as a saved draft for the blog, a fragment that never really got enough to a point that it was worth posting. But it is also a little picture of anxiety, so I'll share it here:

When we were in the middle of our custody dispute with Yehva's birthfather, I would sometimes have days when I could not stop thinking about what it would be like to lose her. My brain would just keep playing the movie of There Goes Yehva, and its blockbuster sequel, Life Without Yehva. I have an anxious mind and an active imagination, and they could put together a three-reel tear-jerker for me on a moment's notice. I know a thousand ways to distract, quiet, and re-direct my mind when it gets like that. And if that wasn't enough, these little pills my doctor gave me were supposed to be like pouring oil on the water, they were supposed to settle the waves.

Mostly, it all worked. But sometimes--usually just after I'd had a phone conversation with our lawyer and her voice had reminded me that all of this actually was happening to us in the real world--nothing was enough. I had to watch the movies, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

But I couldn't just watch the movies. I had Yehva's diapers to change, and Eric's toast to cut neatly into triangles, and Carl's endless questions to answer, and the dishes to wash, and the parrots to feed. So some days, I watched the movies and they were so sad that tears just flowed quietly down my cheeks the whole time, tears for my present fears and my future grief. I could give a bath, grill a cheese sandwich, clean a toilet, pour juice--all with the tears just coming down as if they were a thing my body just had to do right then, like breathing.

I have a little flair for the dramatic.

David was not subject to this sort of thing. He has a constitutional tendency to be content with things the way they are, and a quiet optimism. His brain doesn't show him crazy movies all day long; it says things like, "life is good," and "everything is going to work out OK," and "nothing to worry about," and "my, my, my, that's just fine, isn't it?"

I am grateful for David's phlegmatic brain, because two people like me going through a thing like that together would have just flown to pieces.

I can't remember why I started telling this story.

I said in one of the old blog posts I linked above that one of the great gifts of my life is that I respond very well to therapy. Short of not having an anxiety disorder at all, which would have been better, that's true. I know people, I have people in my life right now, who are treatment-resistant, and it's so hard to watch them be stuck in that place of pain and to see their brains convince them over and over that none of the steps that their friends or their therapists suggest to them will do any good, so why bother trying? My therapist told me once, "I like working with you...when I suggest you try something, you always come back the next week and tell me you tried it." Well, sure. That's what I'm paying her for, right? I wish nobody I loved had mental problems or mood disorders, but, barring that, I wish they could all be as susceptible to treatment as I have been.

I also cannot recommend cognitive-behavioral therapy enough. Maybe it's not for everybody, but sorting out my own temperament and brain chemicals and all the things my mom said to me when I was 14 and the way my dad did thus-and-such was very interesting, to be sure, but it didn't fix me. Seeing a therapist who just really did not much care about my relationship with my mother but who would send me home with a to-do list and who taught me all kinds of good ways to stop my revving brain and re-direct anxious thoughts is what did it for me. Maybe I needed the other piece first, or in addition, maybe CBT wouldn't have helped without it. But I do not think I would ever have recovered without CBT.

Oh, finally, the book I found most helpful (though you have to be careful reading books about anxiety, as it's possible they'll just give you other things to be anxious about. Thanks to this book, my anxiety improved. But I also briefly developed a fear of driving on freeways, and had one panic attack, after reading about them in this book. So, handle with care, and perhaps only under the supervision of a trained professional): The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook.

That's it for now. Some bits and pieces. I do wish I could reach every person living with untreated anxiety and show them a glimpse of what is possible. That someday you could be so recovered that you can hardly remember what life used to be like.

Dad and Nephew overheard

My dad and my nephew, who is 14, came to clean my gutters today, bless their hearts. Yehva and I went out to watch them, and I overheard this conversation:

Garrett: This is so matted, I can just pull it down and pull the next bit out...I'll be able to get halfway behind that tree without moving the ladder.

Dad: Do you want a broomstick? Sometimes it's easier to get that stuff with a broomstick.

Garrett: No, this is OK.

Dad: I can get you a broomstick.

Garrett: I'm doing fine.

Dad: Here's a stick.

Garrett, to me: Grandpa always keeps asking me stuff after I've already said no. Like, I'll be having eggs and he'll ask if I want toast, and I say no, and he's like, have some toast, toast is good with eggs, and I'll say no thanks, I don't need any toast, and he'll be like, Here, I made you some toast.

Dad: I'm just trying to teach you to do things right!

Garrett: There's a right way to eat eggs?

Dad, vehemently: Ya gotta have toast with eggs!

Garrett: I don't think there's a rule book...

Me, scoffing: You've been a Penn for 14 years and you don't know about the thousand-page rule book of Gary Penn? I'm astonished!

Dad: Oh, ha ha ha.

Me, to Garrett: We love him a lot, but he hasn't changed in 50 years.

"Ho, my merry men! Come quickly!"

I've been reading the Howard Pyle Robin Hood to Eric at bedtime the last few nights, from the same now-slightly-musty copy I had as a child. A 1946 edition, it was probably from the same box of my mom's childhood books that made me anachronistically fond of the classic Christian children's series The Sugar Creek Gang, especially We Killed A Bear and whichever book it is where Circus gets bit by the black widow spider and finds Jesus.

Reading a particular favorite to your child feels risky. The book was written in the 1880s--what if he can't follow the language? What if he can, but he just doesn't like it? Can our relationship survive his indifference to a book I've loved for 35 years?

So far, so good, but reading aloud I stumble sometimes over passages like this, and I do wonder if Eric gets the jokes:

"Halloa! Art thou deaf, man? Good friend, say I!"

"And who art thou dost so boldly check a fair song?" quoth the Tinker, stopping in his singing. "Halloa, thine own self, whether thou be good friend or no. But let me tell thee, thou stout fellow, gin thou be a good friend it were well for us both; but gin thou be no good friend it were ill for thee."

"Then let us be good friends," quoth jolly Robin, "for ill would it be to be ill, and ill like I thine oaken staff full well to make it but well, so friends let us be."

"Ay, marry, then let us be," said the Tinker. "But, good youth, thy tongue runneth so nimbly that my poor and heavy wits can but ill follow it, so talk more plainly, I pray, for I am a plain man, forsooth."

"And whence comest thou, my lusty blade?" quoth Robin.

"I come from Banbury," answered the Tinker.

"Alas!" quoth Robin, "I hear there is sad news this merry morn."

"Ha! Is it indeed so?" cried the Tinker eagerly. "Prythee tell it speedily, for I am a tinker by trade, as thou seest, and as I am in my trade I am greedy for news, even as a priest is greedy for farthings."

"Well then," quoth Robin, "list thou and I will tell, but bear thyself up bravely, for the news is sad, I wot. Thus it is: I hear that two tinkers are in the stocks for drinking ale and beer!"

"Now a murrain seize thee and thy news, thou scurvy dog," quoth the Tinker, "for thou speakest but ill of good men. But sad news it is indeed, gin there be two stout fellows in the stocks."

"Nay," said Robin, "thou hast missed the mark and dost but weep for the wrong sow. The sadness of the news lieth in that there be but two in the stocks, for the others do roam the country at large."

"Now by the pewter platter of Saint Dunstan," cried the Tinker, "I have a good part of a mind to baste they hide for thine ill jest. But gin men be put in the stocks for drinking ale and beer, I trow thou wouldst not lose thy part."

Loud laughed Robin and cried: "Now well taken, Tinker, well taken! Why, thy wits are like beer, and do froth up most when they grow sour!"

Eric seems to listen happily, and I think tonight he did enjoy the story of Robin going to the shooting match in disguise to win the golden arrow from the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Pyle's Robin Hood will always be my touchstone Robin: unnaturally gifted with the bow; always merry, yet touched by tragedy from the moment he let anger and pride drive him to kill, first, a King's deer, and then the King's forester who had taunted him to commit that crime. I like other tellings--earlier this year I read Robin McKinley's Outlaws of Sherwood, and I liked her version well enough. It had a strong Marian, wrote Robin across the grain by making him an indifferent archer who had to be pushed into outlawry by Marian and another friend, and addressed questions like, "How do you have threescore and ten stout yeomen wandering the forest without creating paths the King's foresters can easily follow, and what did they do with their garbage and poop?"

But McKinley's book, and others like it, are best appreciated, I think, in contrast to the more classic Robin we get from Howard Pyle. You need to be well-versed in the legend to be able to enjoy playing around with it. Or so it seems to me. I don't know if Pyle created the version we're all so familiar with, that underlies everything from the 1938 Errol Flynn movie to the 1973 animated Disney version, but he certainly exemplifies it: Robin as the jolly, clever trickster in green who always triumphs.

I loved Robin Hood as a child, and I still do. Robin keeps inviting people to join his band, and this is what he tells them:

Say, good fellow, wilt thou join my merry men all? Three suits of Lincoln green shalt thou have a year, besides forty marks in fee; thou shalt share all with us and lead a right merry life in the greenwood; for cares have we not and misfortune cometh not upon us within the sweet shades of Sherwood, where we shoot the dun deer, and feed upon venison and sweet oaten cakes, and curds and honey. Wilt thou come with me?

What a sales pitch! Is it any wonder they always say yes? I certainly would.

Norcroft Women's Writing Retreat to close

Many years ago, I spent a month in Lutsen, Minnesota, at Norcroft, a writing retreat for women founded by Joan Drury. Drury is a novelist and publisher who wanted to support other women writers, and her retreat was wonderfully egalitarian in its vision: it was free to everybody, and you didn't have to be published to go there. Places were assigned by lottery among everyone who applied; I think I got a spot the second year I tried for one.

The retreat itself was wonderful. There was a main lodge, a roomy house overlooking Lake Superior, where four writers in residence had bedrooms, and four writing sheds (I loved mine and still dream of having something like it again someday). If you got a bedroom overlooking the lake, your writing shed was in the woods, and if your bedroom overlooked the woods, your shed had a lake view. I had a lovely, roomy bedroom overlooking the lake.

A caretaker did the housework and bought groceries; you could put anything you wanted on a list in the kitchen, and it would appear in the fridge. Writers did their own cooking. Because writers had to share space during the day, silence was observed until 5 p.m. every day so as to keep the writers from falling into socializing instead of working. The caretaker also made sure there was always a fire laid in the fireplace, so you could have one whenever you wanted (and, this being the north shore of Lake Superior, you often did, even in July).

My four weeks there was a productive, peaceful time. I was either writing, reading, walking, or riding my bike to a nearby resort where I could use a public phone to call David. It was a gift I do indeed thank Joan Drury for.

However... friends who had been there warned me that Drury was a difficult person. She owned a home next door to the retreat, and they told me that if she was staying there, she would usually come for dinner at least once a week, and at these dinners she expected to be fawned over. Each one of them had a story of being insulted or offended in conversation with Drury. "Whatever you do," my friends said, "just don't have dinner with Joan."

For the first three weeks I was there, Drury wasn't. But the final week she was, and one night she did indeed come for dinner. I was mindful of my friends' warnings, but I was too curious not to attend the dinner.

As with so many things in life, I really should have listened to my friends. In the course of dinner, Drury told me that one project I was working on was of no interest to anyone and completely unpublishable, and that another project, which I had been most productive with during my stay, had been a waste of time that squandered the opportunity she had given me.

One of the the other writers who arrived that week was from Minneapolis, where Drury lived, and was a friend of hers. A semi-famous ex-girlfriend of mine had been involved with this writer's lover while on sabbatical in Minneapolis a couple of years earlier; this writer considered my ex to have "stolen" her lover and she had stopped talking to me once we had stumbled upon the connection in a getting-to-know-you conversation. Apparently she talked to Drury about it, because it amused Drury, during the dinner, to reveal my former relationship in an insulting way calculated to get a laugh at my expense.

Which is when I got up and went to my writing shed.

I don't know if Drury was universally nasty or if she picked a scapegoat at every meal, and I was just unlucky. Some of my friends thought she picked on women who weren't deferential or fawningly grateful enough; I don't really know, I only met her the once, and once was enough. The other three writers in residence at the time seemed to like her well enough, and stayed up late laughing and drinking with her in the living room of the lodge.

I just took a break, wanting to find something from the letters I wrote while I was there, and got sucked in. It's fascinating in a painful way; I was so early in my recovery from an anxiety disorder and it's all out there on the page, these long daily letters I wrote to (very patient) friends, full of crazy ups and downs. Nothing I'd really want to excerpt here. On the other hand, I had forgotten the good camaraderie I had with the other writers there; I always see myself alone in my memory but the letters reveal we were quite a social bunch. Also, I smuggled a hamster into my writing shed with me, and fed the local chipmunks her pellets and seed mix. They used to come and stare at me through my screen door if I hadn't put any out on the stoop, and there were several I knew by sight.

Anyway, I read this morning that the retreat is closing. While I don't share the article's enthusiasm for Joan Drury (if I have a "fairy godmother," I do so very much hope it's not her), on balance I think this is the passing of a good thing. I'm sorry it won't still be there for other women; I don't know of any other writing retreat that is both free and open to writers at all levels, and Drury is to be honored for that.

Social Class, Female Solidarity, and the Child Welfare System

In the Baltimore Law Review, Chris Gottlieb, a lawyer who represents parents who have been accused of abuse or neglect, talks about the child welfare system, the rights of parents, and why women with privilege should feel more solidarity with those whose parental rights are challenged.

(Adapted, shorter, non-pdf version in the New York Times here.)

I'm only about halfway through and am already kind of goggle-eyed at the analysis she's making and what she has to say about the child welfare system. Some quotes:

In advising my clients, I frequently tell them that the single most important factor in whether they will be able to keep their children (keep their children!) is how well they get along with the caseworker. You've seen the pictures of the burnt and beaten children who have suffered at the hands of abusive parents, some ending up dead. Those are the children whose stories motivated our child welfare system and continue to fuel efforts to be more protective of children. Yet, as almost anyone working in the field will tell you, those instances of severe abuse, which garner all the attention in the media, are unrepresentative of the cases that clog the system.

Most children in foster care simply are not there because of child abuse. In most cases abuse is never even alleged. Neglect is the charge and neglect is broadly construed. It entails everything from having a dirty or run-down house, to refusing special education or recommended psychotropic medications, to corporal punishment, to smoking marijuana. In other words, neglect includes many things that reasonable people have very different ideas about. Indeed, it includes many behaviors that my yuppie friends and I engage in without threat of government intervention. (pp. 378-9)

And this:

But these cases are often viewed by the caseworkers and judges not as being about material, economic problems, but as being about parenting ability. The parent who "chose" to leave her ten-year-old alone while she went to work is deemed to have such bad parenting judgment that she may not be trusted to keep her child safe under any circumstances. Of course, a mother who leaves a child home because otherwise she will lose her job and means of supporting that child was choosing between two bad options. She may have made the wrong decision (though, of course, this is one of the many parenting questions on which contradictory views are held), but she may be an excellent parent. She certainly is a parent who could be given better options. Similarly, the mother who "chooses" to let her child live in sub-standard housing may not be taking every step another parent would to address the situation, but that doesn't mean she's unworthy to be a parent (whatever "worthy to be a parent" might mean.) It surely does not mean her children must be better off without her.

Acting as if these cases are about parental judgment is dangerous and ultimately bad for the kids involved. None of us would pass the test of always exercising the best possible judgment when parenting. It's just that some of us have luxuries that mean our bad choices don't have to be between two really bad options (and our choices, whether good or bad, are far less likely to be seen by government officials). (p. 381)

And this:

The point is not that rich, white kids are never abused, and certainly not that we should be less concerned about the poor and minority children who are. The point is that, just as when there is any severe discrepancy in how rich and poor or black and white are treated, we should question what is underlying the disparity. Clearly, we are far more willing to allow government officials to judge the parenting of poor and minority parents. We have allowed, indeed encouraged, government officials to be judgmental of certain--but only certain--parents. With respect to these disadvantaged groups, rather than limiting intrusion into family life to the relatively rare extreme cases of parental behavior that are truly beyond the pale, we have invited the government to engage in an endless game of "What is wrong with that mother?" As any mother knows, this is a game no mother can win. (p. 382)

And this:

Even when mistakes are caught and unnecessary separations ended, those children can never again have what we like to believe is the birthright of all children: a feeling of security that their parents will always be there for them, that their parents have some power to control an otherwise scary world. We take that away when we act as though parents are so great a threat to their children that it should be easy for government workers to come between them. (p. 385)

It's very much worth a read.

You Can Tell I'm Feeling Better When I Sing

When I've been through a bad patch, it's always a sign of recovery when I catch myself singing as I go about my work. I don't notice when I stop singing, but I always notice when I start again. Some songs I've caught myself singing in the last few days:

Queen Anne's Lace, Del McCoury Band ("She could never place me in her mind, to me the years have not been kind. She'd never see the boy she knew in the man I've grown to be. From her station and her place, she'd never recognize my face; I have fallen like a windblown leaf from her memory. For she's traded all her pain for bright lights and chilled champagne, and I'm sure her new-found friends all think they know just where she's been. Yes, they think they know her well; Oh, the stories I could tell! She's as fine as Queen Anne's Lace, but I knew her when." Give it a listen!)

All This Beauty, The Weepies

The Weakness in Me, Joan Armatrading

Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose, Dwight Yoakam

142 Stratfield, from The Sacred Harp, 1991 ed (just the alto part!)

What We Look For, and What We Get

Kirk Cowell over at A Soul in Training is looking for a new church to attend, and while he is explicitly Christian in a way I'm not, and most Quakers I know aren't (even the Christocentric ones, I think), his thinking about what he and his family need from a church resonates with me. I've been musing off and on in recent months about how people come to Quakerism, and what they look for once they're there.

I know some people in my meeting come and stay because they find support and recognition for their political activism, a community that sees that work as important and spirit-led. Some come, I think, because we're a group of nice, welcoming people. Although some people in our meeting have known each other for twenty years or more, we're not insular. I think we do a pretty good job of making newcomers feel welcome but not overwhelmed. We can be accepting in good ways--one single mom who started attending a few years ago told me she appreciated the lack of judgment about her status as a single mom and about the way she dressed, after spending some time at a church where she felt scrutinized.

Some of us come to Quakerism because we're not comfortable with liturgical worship, or because we've been hurt by the Christian churches of our upbringing. This was my path; I wasn't raised in a church, but as a young radical lesbian feminist with vague spiritual yearnings, I couldn't see myself listening to a sermon about God the Father or singing hymns about Jesus. I tried joining some of the local lesbians in their pagan celebrations, but it didn't seem to me that anybody there really believed in what they were doing (I could have been wrong about this). And I wasn't comfortable with the Native American Lite spirituality of many white lesbians. So I tried the local Quaker meeting, and liked it well enough to stay.

The thing is, we come there for all kinds of different reasons. This can create tensions--as at a recent Meeting for Business I've talked about before, in which I had been seriously thinking, "If we approve this wording about what it means to be a Quaker, I'm going home and writing my letter withdrawing my membership," only a few minutes before a very beloved Friend said something like, "When we do this kind of word-smithing, I think we're getting awfully close to defining a creed, and I have to tell you if we start spending very much time on this kind of thing, I'm out of here." Despite the distress I was feeling, I couldn't help grinning inwardly and thinking of Mr. Bennett telling Elizabeth, "An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do." I think people in the meeting that day would be aghast to think they'd come to the brink of losing one or the other of us.

But I think overall we--my meeting, at least--do a pretty good job of being together in all our unlikely unity. I have a mystical relationship with a personal God I know experimentally, and Paul is an avowed atheist, but not only does the meeting want (and need?) both of us there, but Paul and I really care for and about each other. It seems to me that we bump up against our differences as we go about our Quakering--half the meeting loves so-and-so's vocal ministry, and the other half wishes he'd shut up already; one person needs to name God and another is pained to hear the word--but when we take time, in retreats or in business meeting, to listen to each other, we do it well, and it unites us.

What was my point?

Oh, I was going to say that we come to Quakerism for a reason. We're looking for a place where we will be comfortable and accepted, or where some of our questions can be answered. Does anybody walk through the door hoping to have all her most treasured beliefs challenged, to be transformed by faith, to be converted? Somehow I doubt it. And yet, to me, that's the best part of being a person of faith (also the scariest): the completely unexpected things that can happen to you when you let yourself be open. I joke that I am a person of faith today because when people told me that Quaker worship was a bunch of people sitting around waiting on God, I naively believed them, and after I waited long enough, God started showing up. And the thing is, once God shows up, crazy unexpected things start happening. Your whole like can change.

The balance seems tricky to me: we don't want to frighten people off, but if we think our purpose is to make them comfortable, we're never going to do God's work or help them find their piece of it. And yet, if we're honest with people, we would have to tell them that they're taking big risks by trying to listen to God, even if they don't call what they're listening for by that name. Mary Karr, author of The Liars Club and Lit, converted to Catholicism right in the middle of the pedophile priest scandal. She totally gets why people think she's a complete moron, and yet her conversion felt inevitable to her, and it was central to helping her become sober--conversion saved her life. But it also wrecked her life. Does anybody come to meeting for worship hoping to have their life wrecked? Should we warn them?

I went looking for a Flannery O'Connor quote I remember from 20 years ago, something about most people coming to church by means the church does not allow, and I couldn't find it. I found this one, though: "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."

I preached in worship on Sunday (I just can't say "offered vocal ministry" right now, sorry) on the subject of conversion. At least, I think that's what I was trying to talk about, with God's help. I was hoping, I think, to encourage people to be open to the way their faith and their practice can change them, though I also ended up talking about why people resist that. Why I do, even after having been through it before. It's because your faith and your practice can change you in ways that seem intolerable from where you're sitting now.

When I first came to Quaker meeting, I came to "Quaker meeting." It was years before I could say "worship," or anything else that sounded religious. Now I have an affinity for the religious aspect of our society (I am the one who, if I didn't rein myself in, would be prissily correcting people who talk about "The Society of Friends" instead of The Religious Society of Friends) and even for religious language from outside our tradition: convicted, preach, grace, mitzvah. And yet, having gotten comfortable here, I don't really want to be changed any more. It's not that I have thrown down all the walls and am ready to follow God wherever God leads; it's more like I moved the walls. This far, and no farther.

I talk about me here, and I talked about me some in worship on Sunday, not only because I like to talk about me but because I want people to know that when I invite them to be open not only to the comfort that Spirit and spiritual community provide but also to the ways that Spirit and their spiritual community can change them, push them in uncomfortable ways, I am not speaking as someone who has solved this problem for herself. It's more like I'm looking for company in a prickly and frightening place.

I am woefully ignorant about the Bible (I recently asked my friend Julie, a Lutheran pastor, to clarify for me: Peter and Simon Peter: one person, or two? Julie is very patient). But in the few bits I do know, it seems like Jesus is always asking people to give up all they have to follow him. And nobody can blame the ones who answer, "You have got to be kidding me," and go back to their vineyards and mansions and piles of gold coins. And even the ones who say yes sometimes get what seem like paltry returns. There are a couple of people in my meeting who can speak eloquently on the subject of following a leading right into a brick wall at 60 miles an hour.

Hmm, I don't think Ministry & Outreach is going to be asking me to write the new outreach pamphlet anytime soon. All this talk about life-wrecking. But there you have it. You come into a silent room for a little peace and quiet, with maybe some coffee after with nice people who seem to like you. And then a bomb goes off.