Spiritual Exercise

     I've been thinking about the process of  dialoguing with a younger self as a spiritual exercise. A friend who is a psychiatrist talks about opening up various files in the brain. My paper file from the 60's is starting to deteriorate; the aging process is probably doing the same thing with my brain file. Before time's passing takes its toll, I want to study nature/nurture with myself  as chief specimen. I also want to look back at my spiritual path to understand where God might be leading me.

     I don't think I kept any diaries in the 60's, at least I haven't found any among the papers and books that surfaced as we sorted things after my mother's death. But these classnotes do start to create a kind of simulacrum. So far, there are few signs of activities, ideas, or even the craziness associated with the 60's to be found, even in margin jottings or doodling. Instead, what emerges is a serious, very hard-working young woman on a scholarship, trying to absorb as much as possible from all the new ideas and life styles she is experiencing and feeling like a poor relation invited to a major dinner party. My first college room-mate had shoes to match every outfit. My suite-mates went skiing on breaks. They gave me a pair of winter gloves (which I still have) as a Christmas present. What is so touching as I think back on this is their effort to show charity without making the recipient feel poor.


    But I'm getting off the subject now --  the 18-year-old I'm trying to channel. There is an undercurrent of sadness, even hopelessness, running through my notes. Were the professors signalling these emotions? The readings? Perhaps it was the zeitgeist. We were in a period marked by war, assassinations, and the threat of annihilation -- if not by nuclear exchange with the USSR, then by over-population. Women's liberation made some of us feel uncertain about self-images and personal values we had once held. The death of God had been proclaimed. 

    I did not know any hippies my freshman year. OWU students seemed more interested in sorority-fraternity life, dressing well, even steak night in dorm cafeterias. But surely ideas were starting to take root from the excellent education we were getting. I met my first hippie in 1967 when she came through the dorm asking for donations to buy a bus ticket for Washington D.C. where an anti-war demonstration was scheduled. Her appearance certainly made an impression. I was sympathetic, but my background made it hard to support her position on the war. I had  high-school classmates who were serving in Viet Nam, and I felt, however faulty the reasoning, that protesting the war in such a public way would hurt their morale. And as for the way the young woman was dressed -- well, I was still hoping for a time when I could buy decent clothes and not feel so out-of-place.