stimuli that trigger my knee-jerk response. Having done just
that for over a decade now, my pathology no longer
troubles me: I have no one to blame but myself for whatever
the trouble may be and am compelled to devote my energies
to the work I am called to do!
Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and
vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we
make on people and situations-projections that serve mainly
to mask our fears about ourselves-and acknowledge and
embrace our own liabilities and limits.
Once I came to terms with my fears, I was able to look
back and trace an unconscious pattern. For years, I had been
moving away from large institutions like Berkeley and
Georgetown to small places like Pendle Hill, places of less
status and visibility on the map of social reality. But I
moved like a crab, sideways, too fearful to look head-on at
the fact that I was taking myself from the center to the
fringes of institutional lifeand ultimately to a place where all
that was left was to move outside of institutions altogether.
I rationalized my movement with the notion that small
institutions are more moral than large ones. But that is
patently untrue-both about what was animating me and
about institutions! In fact, I was animated by a soul, a "true
self," that knew me better than my ego did, knew that I
needed to work outside of institutional crosscurrents and
constraints.
This is not an indictment of institutions; it is a statement of