Pitch Wars Bio

Pitch Wars is an amazing, fun, (and sometimes anxiety fraught) writing contest run by Brenda Drake. But it is more than a contest; it is a community--for both the mentee hopefulls and the mentors.

Mentors post a blog to help mentees make their submission choice. Some mentees do as well. (Mentee Blog Hop)

Here is mine:

I read and write kidlit from PBs to YA. I used to read and write grownup stuff, but not so much now--'though my pub credits are all for grownups. Wanna peek at the most grownup of my grownup pubs? I could never write like that now. Not that I want to. Ugh!

My Pitch Wars sub leans magical realism, but some might call it realistic fantasy. If you've read The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill, mine wanders nearby, 'though a bit more on the mr side.

The "magic" is pretty close to my experience with nature beings. In that sense it is completely realistic, but most modern Americans deny nature beings exist making the same things fantastical.

My inspiration was wondering what happens to the kid after her brief magical adventure is over. All she has is memory and practices that she desperately hopes will bring direct communion, but that never quite work. That is also entirely realistic.

If you like my pages or my query, I need to share credit with the fantastic Scribophile Ubergroup managed by the incomparable Jerry Quinn, also the Ubergroup members who gave me such great critiques on both.

Sankofa Bone

Enough about my sub, what about me?

I far, far prefer editing to writing a first draft. Editing is like carving, shearing away the dross until the emerging form sings. I've carved both wood and stone, but mostly wood.

I'd love a mentor who is a fearless cutter of unnecessary words (and paragraphs and sections).

Do that for me and I will work my butt off for you.

Some other facts of which I am inordinately proud:


I've lived in 5 countries on 4 continents, 3 and 3 before I hit puberty, also 6 states including Alaska.


I was kicked out of a monastery. You already knew that if you read the header on my blog, but I am very, very proud of it.

Moon Over Jon Oriental

I loved Chicago as a natural environment: the orange-red brick cliffs, the wind tunnels, and the great majesty of the lake shore, also living in a white-minority neighborhood.

I don't miss the petroleum-fume-laden air.


Gifs confuse me.


via GIPHY

Sweet Honey

My first animal companion was Daddy Rat. I was three. 

Honey is my present animal companion.

Between Daddy Rat and Honey have been Lady (a dog), numerous mice, George (a terrapin that I smuggled into England from Nigeria when I went to boarding school), and Aijde (a cat).


My family also shared Dab Dab (a duiker), Aku (a West African grey parrot), and Sir Robin (an ex-champion race horse).


I dropped out of high school. While working on a kibbutz, I discovered how woefully ignorant I was, and since the only efficient way to get an education was college, I went--all the way to a PhD in a useless-for-getting-a-job field. After, I abandoned science for education.

Creative writing was my PhD survival strategy. 

Fav reads are far to numerous to list. Here are some recent ones:

TALL TALES by Karen Day. If you like Sharon Creech and haven't read Karen Day, you must.

THE JUMBIES by Tracey Baptiste

THE SINISTER SWEETNESS OF SPLENDID ACADEMY by Nikki Loftin (although, really, anything by Nikki Loftin)

TIGER RISING by Kate DiCamillo

THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate

SPIRIT’S KEY by Edith Cohn  

BIGGER THAN A BREAD BOX by Laurel Snyder

BESWITCHED by Kate Saunders (a modern transport-into-the past story like Penelope Farmer's CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES that I loved growing up)

THE GREEN GLASS SEA by Ellen Klages

CURSE OF THE THIRTEENTH FEY by Jane Yolen 

WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebbeca Stead

ELEVEN by Patricia Reilly Giff

SUN AND MOON, ICE AND SNOW by Jessica Day George

And I am in love with Junie B Jones if for no other reason than the way Barbara Park writes emotional cues.

Rilke and Unemployment

I didn't get another job I wanted. If someone had taken all my greatest passions and all my skills, then designed a matching position, this one would have been it.

But no. I knew within two days of the interview, when they hadn't yet called my references.

I've made job application my priority for a long time now. Years. Yet, nada. Okay, that's an exaggeration. I have three part-time jobs, but even together, they aren't enough to live on. So...

The last time this happened was when I gave up on getting a research job in my science. I'd been on the job market for three years without an offer, although that wasn't a reflection on me. There were maybe five openings a year in the United States and 200 plus decent candidates. The average PhD spent ten years post-degree before landing a permanent job. I was actually doing better than most having had several interviews.

But it felt like I was running head-first into a brick wall expecting it to vanish. I'd slam my head, fall to the ground, then get up and do it again. Over and over and over. After three years, my bruised brain and butt had had it.

As soon as I turned away from research, I got every job I ever applied for. It seemed that the universe had other ideas for me than to use my degrees in the obvious way.

So is the universe sending me a message, now?

The only other direction available would be to put all my job search energy into writing and marketing my writing.

Big risk. Very scary.

So I think about Rilke who wrote in Letters to a Young Poet that writers need to decide if they must write to live. If yes, then they should stop whining about the difficulties and "build [their] life in accordance with this necessity."

I made a decision fifteen years ago to put my creative voice first - even if it meant giving up a tenure-track professor position. But somehow, I kept reneging on that commitment.

Perhaps, the universe has decided not to give me a choice.

Which leaves me to explore the difficulties.

Ps.97: Fire marches out in front and burns up all resistance.

My interpretation from the NIV, Vulgate in English, the Ancient Root Transliteration Bible, Masoretic Text, JPS 1917, & Young’s Literal 

More on Fear & Gratitude

There are lots of external reasons I might be having trouble finding a job - not least, Wisconsin's continued employment hemorrhage under Scott Walker that keeps us mired in the worst of the recession while other states begin recovery. And the one thing a writer must do to be published (or produced) is write & submit & write & submit & write & submit - letting the rejections wisp away like so much morning mist under the rising summer sun. So to greet job-seeking failure and play-submission failure with gratitude, as I talked about in my last post, does not mean I should stop applying for jobs or stop writing & submitting.

It is primarily a directive to release fear, be open to what is as it comes, and not to internalize social "failure" as a comment on the nature of the universe or my place in it.

Hard enough even without all the good reasons to fear. Such as being on the edge of not covering my bills. Or aging painfully in a country where, despite oodles of wealth, the only workers allowed access to good health care are fully employed professionals, politicians, and soldiers.

Still, fear is of no use. My conditions won't change if I greet them with fear. Worse, fear eats my creative energy while insisting I should quit.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" is one of the more useful Jesus sayings. Great teachers from other traditions similarly say to let go of fear. Forget insurance. Forget living your life in order to amass enough fortune to protect you through old age.

There is no guarantee, here, that bad things won't happen to you if you do not fear. It is not a magic prayer bullet that can bring you money & cars & a hunky guy or curvacious gal. Your health may crash. Your home may burn. Your loved one may die. You may be exhausted day after day by the struggle to get just enough to go on. However it happens, you will experience loss and will need to morn. But moving through loss and grief without fear is one way to get on the road to the greatest good - directly perceiving the delicious, brilliant, flowing energy in which we swim and of which we are all made.

Whatever my pains and difficulties, on that road the only things that make any sense are joy and gratitude.

* * * * * * * *

Fear and Gratitude

Say we really, really want something and work very, very hard to get it and... fail. If our first response was, "Thank you. I didn't realize that thing I wanted was bad for me" how would the world be different?

That's what fills my thoughts as I ponder months of job application and play submission with no success in either department.

I lost my present house twice before finally getting it - once when it was listed as a short sale & once in the bidding after the foreclosure. But I WANTED it. So I kept going back - pushing, pushing, pushing. And then, the first buyer of the foreclosure fell through & it was offered to me.

"Yay!" I thought, "Look what dogged persistence (+ some earth energy manipulation) can do."

Now I think someone or something or the general synchronicity energy of the universe was trying to get a message to me, "This is not your house." I refused to listen and so here I am struggling along in an unduly difficult house.

Unemployment or massive underemployment (as is my case) can be miserable. Not to mention lack of access to medical care in the medically medieval United State. The future looms fearful. Time gets lost in a numb parade of unmarked days. Sense of self drifts into strange space. If only I could get up every day and do work wanted by someone who was willing to give me a paycheck for it!

But what if I just don't realize that, for reasons incomprehensible from my little, earthly, human point of view, this is bad for me?

Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.

*******

Writing Again - Yeah!

I don't normally post daily life stuff, but want to let my few loyal fans know why I've posted even less lately.

I AM WRITING. Yes, I have stumbled free of the lifeless writing desert in which I wandered for the last few years - with a vengeance! Alleluia.

My life took a delightful 180 last fall when I was cast in a local production by a new theatre company. (Preview and pics of rehearsal). Two weeks into rehearsals, I began writing plays.

My plays are all character driven - starting with a few people in an opening scene or situation. I have no idea who these people are, what their story is about, the turning points, the larger message, etc. My only job is to record what the characters say and do... And then edit the thing into a producible play. I've finished four one acts that vary in length from 7 minutes to 1 hour, and have a longer play in the initial stages.

I've never written character-driven stuff before. It is fun. Way fun. More alluring than reading, yet with none of the grunge feeling of addiction. Now I get what other writers mean when they say, "I can't wait to get started and find out what my characters are going to do today."

Writing has never been this self-generating and irresistible. It seems I have stumbled on my "writing medium" - which feels a little odd after writing seriously in other formats for over 20 years. Not that I won't continue with creative non-fiction, etc. (I still intend to find an outlet for the memoir of my monastic sojourn), but WOW.

This is also interesting in that I was kicked out of the monastery 5 years ago last November. In classic grief healing mode, perhaps I am finally ready to center my life elsewhere.

Peace all,

* * * * *

Addiction in an April Blizzard

I love April blizzards.

Everything is in a rush toward summer: the grass greening, bulbs shooting up, the air softening. Then suddenly: a pause. Just for a moment. As soon as the snow stops falling, it melts, and the rush to summer is back on.

Yet, a pause…

Like the pause at the top and bottom of each breath. Breathe in. Pause. Breathe out. Pause. (If you’ve never paid enough attention to your breath to experience the pause, try it.)

For a moment the rush of breath is still. In that moment, there is nothing to do. Nothing to get. Nothing to release. Only rest. Only openness.

Only surrender.

“Take pause.” That’s what my friend says, the one who is holding my hand as I climb up from my reading/internet/video addiction. She says, “Take pause, and just notice" - The first and second tools of recovery.

This friend knows from addiction.

I first told her about mine last September. I said I knew it was destroying me, and I wanted to tell someone. But I had absolutely no intention of giving it up and didn’t want to hear anything about that.

She said, "You don’t have to start by giving anything up. Just pay attention. What does it feel like when you first move toward using? What is going on around you? What messages are you telling yourself? What does it feel like when you are using: in the beginning, and then as your lack of control becomes apparent? How do you feel afterwards? What messages do you tell yourself?”

“You don’t have to do anything else right now,” she added, “Just notice.”

After six months of noticing - and a horrendous two-week, 24/7, reading binge - I was finally ready to quit.

Then my friend offered tool #2. When I felt that desire to use, even if I’d already decided to go for it, just pause for a moment.

Just pause.

Even for the briefest of moments, put off acting on the desire. And continue to notice.

That helped. It really helped.

A Sunday morning blizzard in April: time to take pause. And notice.

* * * * * *

Acedia, the Writer’s Demon

When the eight “demons” of the early desert monks mutated into medieval Europe’s seven deadly sins, acedia (the “noonday demon") was folded into sloth. 

A mistake. 

Acedia deserves special recognition. It is so uniquely active, especially in the lives of writers. Besides, it can hardly be called "sloth" since, more often than not, it demands a deal of activity. 

Evagrius said this about acedia (based on the translation from the Praktikos by Luke Dysinger). Just substitute “writer” for “monk,” “desk/computer” for cell, and “book” for “way of life.”

Acedia is the most burdensome of demons…First, it makes the day appear to be fifty hours long. Then, it makes the monk look out his window, forcing him to bound out of his cell to …look round in all directions in case any of the brethren is there. [Note: the desert monks were not isolated. Twenty or thirty might live in caves within a few feet of each other. Which is why there was a lot of instruction about visiting, mean gossip, and other social distractions.]

trns: “If I don’t walk the dog she’ll never leave me alone. *Walks the dog* Okay, now I’m energized to write. I’ll just get the laundry in before I sit down. *Does the laundry. Also vacuums.* Okay, really ready to write, now. While the computer revs up, I’ll make some coffee…*Cleans the kitchen before making coffee.* Oh. It’s 5:00. Time to make dinner.”

It makes him hate his way of life. It makes him think there is no charity left among the brethren; no one is going to come and visit him. If anyone has upset the monk recently, the demon throws this in too. It makes him desire other places where he can practice an easier, more convenient craft.

trns: “The writing life sucks. And I’m no good at it. Surely I can be equally creative doing something where I’d make some money. Like an actual job, for f's sake, something useful, not the navel-gazing, self indulgence of thinking I am a writer… Especially since this book is going nowhere fast.”

It adds remembrance of the monk’s previous way of life, and suggests that he still has a long time to live, raising up a vision of how burdensome his life is.

trns: “If only I had a regular job with a guaranteed paycheck. I'd have respect, a house, health insurance, and a retirement plan. Waah!!! The writing life is too hard. My stomach hurts. I'm so sick of hitting up my folks for funds to keep going."

To be a writer is to be on intimate terms with this demon.

So I just applied for a full time, nicely paid job as administrator for the youth arts program where I've taught classes off and on for years..

Letting the noonday demon eat my soul or a sensible move in a rough economy? 

If I'm offered the job, I guess I'll have to discern which.

Note: Evagrius was a proponent of Origenism. He wrote extensively on the passions – their vice side and their virtue side (yes, each vice, turned around, is a virtue). His writings were declared anathema in the mid-500s, along with Origen's, when their theology - that included reincarnation and universalism - was declared a heresy. Yet Evagrius' teachings on monasticism infiltrated - and greatly influenced - the Western church through the writings of an ex-follower, Cassian.

* * * * * * * *

Rilke, Art & Running Away

All my adult life I’ve been terrified of something Rilke said in Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke tells the young man to discover if he must write or die. If yes, stop whining about the difficulties and “build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.” If not, great. Forget writing, and go off to do something else.

I knew Rilke was right. I also knew I had to create to live. But my main response was “No, no, no, no, NO!”

Living for creativity took too much letting go and trusting (what I now call) God in every moment. It was far easier to find excuses for an easier, more socially acceptable way of life.

Only in the end, that doesn’t work. Believe me. I’ve tried.

I first “found my medium” carving a stone as a young woman of 21. When I carved, I lost all sense of my separate self, and all sense of time, sinking into an ecstatic state that lasted seven or eight hours. As an undergrad student, my stone was in the basement studio of a large building. I kept my tools on the fourth floor. I thought needing to consciously decide to up there to get my tools might keep me from inadvertently falling into carving. It never worked. If I simply walked past the building (foolishly/knowingly - "surely I can go that way without stopping. I'm exhausted. I want to get home."), I’d wake up eight hours later, too tired to lift the hammer and absolutely starving.

Which was exhilarating… It was also clearly addictive, out of my control, and terrifying.

My carving was very “successful,” but I left art for science after finishing the one stone. At the time, it felt like going into a wider world in order to know more, not like running away. But I had to wonder if I was hiding fear of artistic life under nice-feeling justifications.

My overt fear was poverty, but I’d also internalized the anti-art phobia of American culture. Artists were lazy and self-indulgent, and art was a “luxury” that wasted resources better used for other purposes, especially taking care of those in need.

I’d argue that all humans share the desire to create. So art-making couldn’t just be greed, pride or laziness. I’d argue that it took real humility to acknowledge the gifts I’d been given and take responsibility for them by building my life accordingly. Denying my talent was the height of arrogance, not to mention cowardly.

None of those arguments stopped me from dancing off to look for something more respectable and comfortable each time I’d resolved to live a creative/inspiration centered life.

In my mid-forties, I again made creative work my central business. This was going okay, despite the same old struggles, when my heart burst open with the call to monastic community, as I’ve already described. At the time I wondered, was this monastic call a way to fulfill my creative responsibilities? Perhaps in the financial security of monastic community, I’d finally free myself from fear.

Unfortunately the two calls were not compatible, at least in the monastery I entered. So here I am one more time, out in the big, scary world, struggling to live a creative call.

&@#*!Z%*! that Rilke!

* * * * *

In The Demons’ House

In The Demons’ House

To experience a "demon house," you don't need some just-bought, never-gonna-fix-‘er-upper, much less one inhabited by spooky, little girls. Nah. For demon encounters of the spiritual kind, the most ordinary and uneventful of houses will do.

Most of my life, I had the romantic notion that desert hermits ran to stark, marginal environments for the quiet. Only it turns out peace and quiet were the exact opposite of what Syncletica, Evagrius and the other early Christian hermits sought in the desert. Nope. What they wanted was a fight. An all-out, no-holds-bared, knock-down, drag-out battle with demons. They went to the desert because that was where the demons lived.

In fact, the story goes that St. Antony renounced comfort, sex and family by moving into an abandoned desert fort. Once there, his demon desires for these were so strong they literally beat him unconscious.

You want to fight demons with no way to run and hide? Move into the demons’ house. And you don't need a desert. They are more than happy to face you anywhere you choose.

sigh.

My creative energy was fueled by the narrowly-focused, pared-down life of the monastery. Before, it had been like a leaping, playful fire: lots of form and color, but no intensity. After a year of monastic confinement, it had the white-hot brilliance of a hurricane lamp.

Forced out of the cloister, I didn't know if I could maintain that creative fire. And I didn't know if I had the courage to live wholly from my spiritual center - without the financial security offered by community life.

Yet, I resisted the desire to immediately jump into a decent-paying, middle class job – the kind I'd had for most of my post-graduate life. It had taken entering a monastery for me to find the courage to shuck all that in the first place. I didn’t want to immediately load myself up again.

Because I can use a job and house to generate unlimited excuses not to write.

It was in making this choice that I found I had moved into the demons’ house. I do some freelance work - consulting and teaching - but dedicate my time & energy to writing. So by and large, I can’t say, “Of course I will write, but after I get this report done or that pile of papers marked because they are due tomorrow.”

With no externally imposed musts and shoulds, I have no cover story to disguise immobilizing habits, destructive thought-patterns and addictive, emotional fogs - and no insurance against the fear of financial failure. Instead, in each day’s effort to write, I must marshal my spiritual forces and struggle with these, my demons, raw and undiluted.

Strange. I have never lacked food, shelter or a comfortable bed. I even have a car and a dog. My environment is about as far from “inhospitable desert” as one can get. Yet here my demons are and here I am, in their house, facing them every day without protection.

Writers Block. Arrrrggggh!

In my recent struggles with writer's block, I’ve occasionally thought of blogging about it - while lying in bed unable to get up. So when Shelby Meyerhoff of Looking For Faith pointed me to a post about it on Facilitating Paradox, I thought, “Now’s the time.” … Either that or leave an annoyingly long comment on the other blog.

When I was 30 years younger, I smugly (and often) declared, "Inspiration comes to those who work" - 'cause I found that if I went in the studio (sculpture) every day, I never ran out of ideas. In fact I always had more ideas crowding my brain than I could possibly carry out. But if I sat around waiting for the days I felt inspired before working, my creative energy dried up.

Would I have eventually hit artist's block if I hadn't switched first to science and then to writing? Don't know. (BTW, I eventually went back to sculpture - though it's up and down. Some years I let myself have 4-8 hours a day at it. Some years only a few hours a week - which is not enough to fire any kind of inspiration).

However, I've been in bad writer's block (on my monasticism book) since mid-summer. I still have lots of ideas yammering in my head, I just can't seem to drag the words out at the keyboard. When I try, it feels like a slog through waist deep mud... frozen mud. Neck deep.

So I guess my youthful insight still holds... I don't work and I don't feel that inspired energy pulling me forward... and it is so exhausting otherwise - like pushing a freight train from behind.

But I still have ideas... And get inspired about work other than what I am *supposed* to be doing.

Which is where blogging came in.

The thing is, when writing my book was first blocked last summer, my blog took off. I may not have been writing what I supposed to write, but it still felt like work. And it was really good to connect with others via the blogosphere.

(O.K., here is another, irrelevant, personal tidbit. I started computing in the days of card punching. Yes, I punched cards. Then fed JCL to a mainframe in the days before personal computers. In fact, I wrote my Master's thesis using JCL on a mainframe (80 characters to a line, etc.). I liked the mainframe/terminal set-up because of the community feel - whether at a terminal in a large, buzzing computer room, or in my own department - a university department was very proud if it had it's own terminal to the mainframe in some closet-sized room. I disliked personal computers - they were entirely disconnected then. So I have savored various reconnections - first email, then internet newsgroups, now blogs.)

Then a few weeks ago ALL writing was blocked. No blog. No book.

I still had ideas - lying in bed or walking the dog. Only the keyboard felt like it was wired to give off bad shocks. I couldn't touch it.

My blocks are almost all emotional and about bringing my words into being, and myself into public scrutiny. Last summer I signed with a well-known agent and my book (proposal) went on the market... and my book writing dried up (baring what turned out to be a few abortive restarts). Not at all coincidentally, the blog died when I said I put out those women's voices posts.

(Is this a kind of problem women have more than men, do you think? Or is this a gender-neutral dysfunction?)

Anyway... Emotional work ensued.

Blocks dissolved (at least partially, and for now).

My blog is back, and my book writing is (a little more tentatively) taking off again.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh....

Voiceless

I said I’d post on spiritual women’s voices to help people who want to undo their bias for citing men’s voices. I put out one post and had two others almost ready to go. Then my blog went silent for over three weeks.

What happened?

I had a long-running virus left me too exhausted to do anything but what was absolutely necessary. Only something in that explanation doesn’t ring true. I also entered a slump over my book not selling. I have a good agent who I like a lot, but I thought this was a much more marketable book than it now looks like, and I got VERY discouraged… Yet that isn’t the whole of it either.

Not being heard is my #1 childhood and personality issue. That it is still a big issue for me was made painfully apparent when I literally lost my voice.

A week ago last Thursday I woke up and… NO SOUND! At first it seemed kind of comical - although very bad timing as I teach preschool music classes on Thursday. I figured I could get by with act-out CD songs, using printed signs and getting a parent to read the storybook. The parents were very tolerant and we got through it.

However by Day Three nothing was comical. In fact, I was swamped by rage – a five-year-old’s, kick-em, hit-em, scream and cry, unbearable frustration rage. When I let myself be present to it (during a long insomniac episode at 3:00 a.m.), grief welled up.

In my family everyone talks over everyone else. Everyone minds each other’s business – loudly – whether those others are present or not. Everyone insists that they ALREADY KNOW and so take opposing opinions very badly. An example: driving to my sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner, we argued for 30 minutes over whether some birds we passed were ducks or geese. Thirty minutes. Ducks or geese. Yikes.

And everyone is constantly shouting, “Just listen! Why won’t you listen? Just shut up and listen to me!”

I spoke little through elementary school, and in my 17th year stopped speaking altogether. (I dropped out of high school so there were no teachers to notice.) If no one could hear me, why bother with talk? I was in my thirties before I learned to speak freely.

Voicelessness. My family issue.

Yet I’ve always craved silence and I loved the monastic silence.

In his Rule, Benedict says to prefer silence and even “refrain from saying the good things.” There is really something in that. Often I ached to speak to “fix” someone – which made me superior and the “fix-ee” inferior. Or I ached to speak to put salve on those old experiences of silencing - shouting, “I am here. See me,” like an urban youth tagging subway trains.

So what if it felt like I was being silenced - like I'd been thrust back into my childhood? I wanted to know how to tell when talk was “necessary, true and kind,” as a Buddhist teacher said of “right speech.” Maybe being forced into silence would be a way to learn. Besides, I longed to rest in the sense of God filling me, being already so completely known and heard, I could listen openhearted without a need to speak. Then the difference between being forced to be silent or choosing silence would melt away (I thought).

But my monastic experience, and my recent voicelessness, points to a problem with that program. In At the Root of This Longing Carol Lee Flinders talks about four major spiritual practices that are also the very tools of patriarchal repression. One of these is silence. This leaves women (and other repressed groups) with a strange and terrible conundrum. How can we get spiritual growth from practices that our cultures have used to destroy our souls?

We need silence to hear the voice of our inner being. But how do we nurture silence without falling into repressive silencing?

Voicelessness. It’s been an interesting three weeks.

A Dichotomy of Extremes: Obedience to Self or Community

“Remember, people are essentially good beings looking for safety to be who they are,” a friend sent in her 2006 Christmas message.

An important question for spiritual communities, and spiritual seekers, is this: where is the balance between group needs and individual inspiration? Can a healthy monastic community grow individual gifts - even though some will go against the plans of superiors, long-held group practices or a community’s stated mission? On the other side: can individuals be obedient to internal, divine inspiration and yet bow to the needs of a community?

My monastic experience raised this question in spades.

I entered community desperate to discover, and live as, who I truly was - a basic part of humility. That meant accepting my whole self: good, bad and indifferent. And that meant facing shameful parts of myself. I thought community would hold up an uncompromising mirror to show my deep flaws AND my wondrous divinity. Yet offer the support and loving acceptance of others engaged in the same work.

As I read Benedict, this seemed to be the main purpose of monasteries. Maybe other modern communities had this goal. Mine didn’t. For one thing, the old sisters were bound up in a superiority that derailed everything else.

They seemed to exemplify a flaw that Syncletica warned vehemently about. “Through pride [the Enemy] attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline. …The soul imagines that it has grasped matters that are incomprehensible to the majority and that it is superior in [spiritual practices]. He seduces it to forget all its sins… He steals from its mind the memory of its mistakes… He deludes this person with positions of command and high office… with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, then, the soul perishes and is destroyed, smitten with a wound [pride] that is hard to heal.”

Of course I did my part with an excess of doubts, angry muttering in my head, and a fearful protectiveness when asked to forgo personally inspired, creative work.

The sisters said my negative thoughts were the resistance of an ego that refused to die. Submitting despite myself would lead to freedom.

They could also have quoted Syncletica: “Another evil precedes [pride in spiritual discipline]: disobedience… By means of the opposing virtue of obedience, it is possible to cleanse the festering cancer of the soul, for obedience, Scripture says, is better than sacrifice. (1 Sam 15:22).”

There was the rub. The Spirit in my heart demanded artistic obedience. Wasn’t it denying God to put a human authority above this? Or was I undermining my desire to be emptied by grasping after a personal need?

By the end of my first year, it felt like a knife was twisting in my guts. Breathing was hard and I rarely slept. Each morning I rose frantic to escape. But during morning meditation and prayer, joy would bubble up and I’d see amazing good in the place. If chanting had that effect in a year, I wanted to know what would happen after decades. So each day I committed to stay.

I just didn’t know. Did the pain come from old ego habits refusing to let go? Then persistence would bring me through. But if it was caused by going against my spirit, I didn’t belong, no matter how illuminated I felt in prayer.

I was in the midst of this struggle when the sisters kicked me out.

This monastery let in few new women. All had an intense call. All struggled to meet the old sisters' demands. Yet almost all were kicked out. We had different personalities and the reasons given varied widely.

Now I believe we were dumped because we brought too much SELF - too much individual gift. We just couldn't lose ourselves under the personalities, behavioral norms and control of the old sisters while staying true to the person our souls demanded we be.

This points to an interesting dichotomy of extremes. In most western monastic communities throughout history, group identity vastly overwhelmed individual identity. The point was to dissolve your self in group norms and habits. American Benedictine communities like mine grew up in the 1940s and 50s when hordes of teenage girls were strongly molded into group behavior by authoritarian, punitive methods.

Meanwhile, the rest of American culture moved toward extremes of individuality.

Neither extreme seems particularly healthy for individuals - spiritually or psychologically. And neither extreme seems healthy for communities.

We all are seeking safety to be ourselves. Warped by loss or fear of loss, as well as the sense of needing to please to deserve love, many people have no idea who they really are. And few have hope of a community that wants only to provide the safety for each to find out.

Could a new kind of monastery fulfill this desperate need?