Saturday, July 5th, 1997

Dear God,

I sit here at this computer at a loss for what to do now.  I feel fat, I
feel lazy, I feel unwanted, I feel useless.  I feel that the new job I
started this week is really a nightmare for me, and want to run
screaming from it; but feel that maybe there are lessons there for me,
if I but have the wit to stick it out.  There are others who have
suggested that as well; and it may be that I will be able to call upon
or develop gifts that can be really helpful to my new boss Carolyn
Mathews or some of the others around there.

I knew Carolyn's Mom, who just passed away in May.  Gertrude Marshall
was a great woman, of enormous heart, a very giving and kindly and
fairly patient woman.  She was one of the most grandmotherly ladies I
have ever known, and this frail woman up until her last months of life
spent a lot of time doing prison ministry in the Alternatives to
Violence Program (AVP Workshop) that they hold in prisons for the
prisoners.  Teaching men that they can indeed find other ways to be
other than violent, teaching them about the "transforming power:" the
power identified by the circle I still have in a white folder which
bears my papers from the last November AVP workshop.

A few weeks ago I got an invitation from one of the ladies who also
works with the AVP program to attend one of the community workshops this
summer.  I would like to do so, and intend (now that I think of it) to
answer her kindly letter to me.  What the heck -- I may even check out
your Friends church, a church which may hold a promise of being to me
something more holy than the United Methodist church I have been
struggling with for the past few years.

Let me go answer her thingy...  will be back.  Darn ... guess I will have
to start Linux, then come back here.  Oh well.  BRB.

-----
LATER

Well.  Now am back, courtesy of Linux.  Gosh there is a lot here to
Linux.  Am now using the JED editor.  I just finished watching a
program about spying, an action thriller TV program, with the man who
plays "Q" on Star Trek acting as a crazed psychiatrist or something.
The news is now on on the TV (on channel 13) and Star Trek will be
coming on in just a little while.

For about 20-30 minutes or more, I talked to Rita Spilken of the AVP
workshops.  This is "Radiant Rita" who lives in Springfield, MO, for
now.  She is working on becoming Dr. Rita Spilken, in clinical
psychology, and it has been hard on her.  Bless her heart.

This afternoon, I had been feeling really restless and lonely.  I feel
like I don't know what is going on ... and tried to call a number of
different friends.  To no avail.  Until I tried calling Rita in Spring-
field.  She was there for me ... and it felt so natural and wonderful
for her to talk with me.  She calls me friend.  It feels so good to have
such a warm personality to call "friend." It very much makes up for the
lack I felt from my many attempts at friendship with Virginia W.  Poor
Virginia is simply not equipped to appreciate my gifts ... and I was not
equipped to demonstrate the kind of things she needed so she could feel
comfortable with me.  You know, God?  Sure you know!  It just feels so
bad ... but I can hold with me the regret of a friendship that really
never was much of one (though it felt like a decent kind of friendship
some of the time -- nothing earth-shaking, but ok and comfortable for
me).  

My work with Carolyn Mathews came to a head on Friday, when I chose to
work on Independence Day.  It was by far the most difficult day -- for
I was the only employee there.  I don't think I would like to be in the
situation of being the only one there again.  Think I'll leave it at that.
But I wonder, God.  What could be your purpose for my being placed there
at this time?  Why was I called to be part of her team?  Is there some-
thing I can do to be of benefit to her or her staff very much or even
her son?  I know there are some unusual situations there -- where are
situations ever usual?  Everybody carries around with themselves their
own pains, their own prejudices, and joys and loves and acceptances.
God, you seem to have seen fit to let me be a good listener -- and if
that is what you require of me, listening with patience and love, then
I thank you for giving me all the gifts I need to do it with aplomb and
equanimity.  We all need good loving listeners, and something tells me
that I can be yet another pair of ears there, if I can but keep calm
and keep my sense of humor about me ... and not be fazed or faked out
by any of the office politics.  All Carolyn requires is for me to be
myself ... and I think that is what Rita advised me about this evening.
I need to be myself ... and perhaps I can learn to change to be an 
even better self:  a better listener, a better responder to people,
a more-aware person of many things going on around me, in an environ-
ment that can be as loving as I choose to make myself be to the others
there.

But I'm scared, Lord.  I am really scared.  I am afraid to let myself
free ... and I am afraid of my judgments or judgmentalism.  I feel that
Carolyn was really concerned ... but more for her own feelings than for
mine ... but still, in her own way, concerned for mine.  Perhaps while
I learn to be less self-centered, others there can learn so too, and I
can be some kind of teacher.  With your help, if it is your will ...
and I can learn once again how to be responsible, with Your help, God.

I am coming to think that Carolyn is really a wonderful person who would
never really want to hurt a fly.  Yes, I find her frustrating some
times. Who doesn't?  Who doesn't find me to be frustrating?  Really, I
think that work at Carolyn's office can be a lot of fun, if I do not let
the unstructuredness of the environment there get to me.  Just gotta be
loose. And keep smiling, as Rita says.  "You've got a wonderful smile,"
says Rita.  What a nice thing to say!

For some reason that phrase, "What a nice thing to say!" is reminding
me of Kendra who I knew at the Wesley Student Foundation, who was for
a time my accompanist.  A lovely young woman -- I hope she is doing
well.  She's a tall woman who found a shorter man who they were to
end up marrying one another.  I hope the two of them are happy.  I
can hardly remember them -- ah, now his countenance comes back to
my mind.  She said that once on a Friday afternoon when we got to-
gether for a practice for my voice lesson at the Wesley Student Foun-
dation.  It was really a fairly happy semester, and I was delighted
to have her as an accompanist, even though I didn't hardly practice
my voice lessons ... sigh.  And I told her that Friday something like
"Your wonderful playing makes me want to sing."  That's when she said
that.  I tried to be as likeable to her as I could be ... even though
I knew she was already taken, it couldn't hurt to have her like me.

I think Kendra and her fiancee both decided not to like me anymore after
she got wind of my defection from being the accompanist to the W.O.W.
production the following year, '93-'94, when I couldn't stand being part
of Wesley anymore because of ... certain reasons.  Actually, I think 
most of the folks in Wesley didn't much like me any more after that
walkout... although I did warn them that I might not be available
after a certain point in the semester.  There was one who seemed to
still want to be my friend, maybe two.  One I utterly rejected when
she laid so much on me that I couldn't stand it and I got frustrated
and angry with her, so she walked away in tears.  ("Good riddance"
I felt then).  Then the other, who was to go into animal medicine
who had a wonderful sense of humor and a ready laugh ... who I liked
a lot and might have wanted to date ... if I weren't afraid of her.

I always seem to find excuses to be afraid of girls I like.  And so I
always can find reasons not to invite them out on a date or invite them
into my heart ... or find ways of sabotaging what things they offer to
me so that they will get put off and not want me any more. If I like a
girl ... there is something inside of me that inevitably will find a way
to scare her away, make her feel bad, belittle her, or something ... so
that if there were any potentialities for intimate sharings, they
quickly disappear like water down the bathtub drain.  I feel like I have
blown more opportunities than I can count on both hands of things I've
done somehow to shy away from Relationship or to ensure that others shy
away from that with me.  When females start showing interest, I run
scared.  Who knows?  My mental breakdown at Central Methodist College in
1981 may have been caused in part by my terror/excitement at being
"found out" by Mary Brummit ... her seeming to like me and to be quite
deviously flirting with me, riveting my attention to her every time I
saw her with her huge smile and other things she did to capture my
attention.  What a dream-come-true there was there!  how terrified I
must have been!  And I keep running scared every time some woman
evidences interest to this day.  Such attractions cause me to lose more
control than I want to lose.  I hate it when that happens, and it makes
me very upset with myself when it does.  I usually end up getting quite
depressed when that happens, because, in part, I do not follow through
with my natural instincts which would have me satisfy my sexual urges.
My loving urges.  And I am so so so afraid that one I would be attracted
to would hurt me grievously.

I hurt myself about Mary Brummit -- ending up going crazy with grief
about the misunderstandings of the Zeta Tau chapter of Alpha Phi Omega,
and possibly also going crazy wanting to be with her, wanting to get
close to her... wanting to have her and me enjoying one another's
physical company in some wonderous ways.  I hurt myself about another
crush, Melissa Rogers -- but perhaps she hurt me some to.  Then I had
driven myself quite crazy enough during the crush I had on Virginia
Wayman a few years ago... putting her on a pedestal, and then her
finding the pedestal to be quite comfy, thank you, and not wanting to
come down from that damn pedestal to deal with this "mere mortal" during
that time a few years ago.  Various little minor crushes here and there
since then.

And now this job with Carolyn Mathews -- too many women there ... where
it seems to me that I have the capacity to be more "well-liked" there
than I would like to be.  Is it merely my ego?  Or what?  What I want
to be very careful of is avoiding sexual harassment or anything like it.
I also wish to avoid office politics as much as possible, realizing now
the impossibility of avoiding it, because with Carolyn's continual
dabbling and driving of every little thing, the whole thing becomes
continual office politics and struggles.  And, perhaps that is okay.
It will teach me how to relate to people, real people, because I will
be forced to relate almost all of the time.

Argh.  I am confused.  I most emphatically do NOT want to be chased by
anyone at this time.  Or so I tell myself.  And then, I also have been
praying to you, God, for some kind of love relationship.  What am I
supposed to want, God?  Something where it is safe for me to pursue some
kind of relating to the perfect woman?  Something where the relating is
rather started by a woman who is more aggresive than I would otherwise
choose to be?  One thing I know for sure: It must never, NEVER, EVER be
any kind of relating with the boss in any kind of intimate way -- such
power relationships are fraught with potential abuses, and it would be
in any case most unethical, for her as well as for me.

That's where the informality of this home office has me stymied.  Talking,
sharing, openness is encouraged there.  The potential to share otherwise
intimate things may present itself.  I don't feel good placing myself
in a setting where that potential is there if there is no discipline in
place as to how such information might be used.  Overmuch relaxed ...
and I may find myself saying things I may later regret.  I much prefer
to be formal, that the setting be done in a businesslike manner, so
that such complexities are far less likely to happen.

Friday was a horrible day in some ways ... in how I got my feelings
hurt overmuch.  With your help, God, Friday July 4th will never happen
again ... and I will feel safe to be there, and safe to be me.  I know
my ethics, and I know them to be as impeccable as I know how to make
them be.  I try to be scrupulously honest in all my dealings, as I was
trained to be in Boy Scouts.  With your help, God, we will be able to
state my case on Monday.

Perhaps I should give Lorraine a call tomorrow to offer her a ride to
Carolyn's office.  She might appreciate that.

Thanks, God, for listening to my ramblings and my prayers.

				Your servant, Ihope,
				David