—collin
First days at the SPU residency are not what I feared. It’s not hectic. The staff and students are not perfectionistic or punitive. Not intimidating. Not that I had any rational reason for feeling I might find that.
Before arriving I sent off an e-mail to my mentor: I’m feeling quite nervous about coming.
Don’t worry, he replied.
Not much help.
All newbies (us three) and returnees (those who stopped out and are returning) met with their mentors today. When my mentor, Bret Lott, asked, How’s it going, I told him, Great. My anxiety is dissipating.
Why? He asked.
Reality.
I didn’t add the concrete details that have been changing me, like the way people smile a lot, introduce themselves and listen so attentively. And with so many students trying to complete their assigned poetry readings, I know I’m not going to get in trouble for not understanding all the vocabulary of John Donne or every single line. And professors smile and laugh and talk like normal people, with perhaps the exception of Greg Wolfe, the Director. He does smile and laugh, but his speech is exceptional. He’s eloquent, comes up with original metaphors just when explaining how the program works, and his range of diction is impressive. His vocabulary range exceeds anyone I’ve personally met.
Hearing Greg talk for an hour and half today removed the he’s-going-to-be-mean fear.
Here’s the irrationality. I’d heard and seen Greg at the two sessions I’ve spent at the Glen Artists Conference. When I see a big man towering over me, hear him say things like, “I’m the time Nazi,” and speak in a low, strong voice, speak without notes with much wit and beauty, I feel afraid. The combination of verbal and physical power is overwhelming. I feel like a small child who might get rebuked, shamed or spanked by her parents.
I’ve been telling myself what Pastor Joanie told me once, “Stop putting your projections on me.” I’ve been asking God to help me stop projecting my internal parental/teacher images on them—my perceptions, true or false, of the way authority figures interacted with me as a child. I want to become adult—to not see new situations through the lenses of the internal child.
Today I can see that Greg is a humble, gracious and forthright teddy-bear, and that I'm not so strange and dumb to feel scared.
What changed my perception? What took me from isolation to community? Reading my poems at an open-mike helped (a kind of confession about my internal struggles and groping towards faith and forgiveness), but also interacting personally with Greg. At the end of his long introduction to the MFA program, I said, “It helps to hear you talk. I don’t feel scared anymore.”
His assistant, Dyana, turned to him. “See what I said is true. They are scared of you.”
I guess I’m not the only one.
I’ve been turning to God lots with many uncomfortable questions and fears. In moments like this he is answering, saying You are not alone in your vulnerability.
I’m coming home. Here will be family.
Jesus talks about projections when he tells us that if our eye is clear that we’ll be able to see clearly. My own unconscious beliefs of not being good enough or of people being stern and demanding have held me back so much and created such fear of new situations.
Through times of prayer with my counselor some of my inner workings are being cleaned and moved around. Jesus is giving me new eyes to see. But the living it out still requires taking risks – like coming here – choosing to act in faith although my feelings are yelling otherwise.
Chesterton said, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be; anything other than that is sin.”
I think I’ve found my race.
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