can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone
else and don't fully understand myself but that are
nonetheless compelling."
And yet, even with this level of motivation, my doubts
multiplied. One clay I walked from Pendle Hill through the
woods to a nearby college campus, out for a simple stroll
but carrying my anxiety with me. On some forgotten whim,
I went into the college's main administration building.
There, in the foyer, hung several stern portraits of past
presidents of that institution. One of them was the same man
who, as president of another institution, had come out to
Berkeley to recruit me for his board of trustees-a man who,
in nay imagination, was now staring down at me with a
deeply disapproving look on his face: "What do you think
you're up to? Why are you wasting your tithe? Get back on
track before it is too late!"
I ran from that building back into the woods and wept for
a long time. Perhaps this moment precipitated the descent
into darkness that has been so central to my vocational
journey, a descent that hit bottom in the struggle with
clinical depression that I will write about later in this book.
But whether that is the case or not, the moment was large
with things I needed to learn-and could learn only by going
into the dark.
In that moment, all the false bravado about why I had left
academic life collapsed around me, and I was left with
nothing more than the reality of my own fear. I had insisted,