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I survived Art and Soul and even made a couple of paintings I like, though I guess the point of the whole thing was, for me, as much a chance to spend time with the best friend I left in Texas, the one who is really artistic… is that the carry-over from the polarizing effects of being one of two sisters growing up, the universe divided between us, the differences always in much higher relief than the rather overwhelming similarities? Sometimes this friendship and my relationship with my sister take on dream-like confusion, I respond to one as if she were the other… So my sister was the social one, and I never was, my friend is artistic, more ambitious, the one who gets attention when the two of us go out.

Art and Soul was also, I guess, a chance to throw myself into a situation at the edge of comfort, rooms full of strangers four days in a row (and less than a week after doing the Bahá’í women’s retreat in southern Oregon that I jumped into not knowing if I’d know a single person there). And I don’t know if I present as a full-on introvert, I do go out and consciously make eye contact when I meet someone new, try to remember to ask good questions and smile, but it is never natural or easy, and close to impossible when I am exhausted or emotionally depleted. Still, a reluctance to throw myself into new and unknown situations perversely becomes my reason for jumping in and trying, getting what practice I can, because I don’t want to be shaped by introversion. What blows me away is how the fear of rejection and exclusion flares up out of nowhere.

I have been probing that feeling a bit the last couple of weeks, pondering how it must be hard-wired in, to some degree: we are pack animals, and the acceptance of others feels like safety, is profoundly reassuring. So I am trying, even to accept the impulse without being ruled by it.

Some of the probing goes over into my understanding of Bahá’í issues too: the very virtues emphasized in the Bahá’i writings (as with the other major world religions) seem as much social as spiritual, generosity, kindness, courtesy, justice, which makes sense in light of the principle that the purpose of religion is the uniting of humanity. It also means not getting to withdraw into some sort of anchorage when other human beings seem like the biggest obstacles to a spiritual life.