Good friends, good times

Great friends are a great thing.  After an extended evening of fun with Steph, Jer, and Kris, I am again reminded that a year and a half doesn't seem like enough time before I leave here.   Although there's no guarantee that I'll have to leave here at all--let's all keep our fingers crossed for Bay Area internships!

In other news, I've found myself slightly shaken in the aftermath of an uncomfortable, unsafe situation that unfolded at church two weeks ago.  It was handled and addressed beautifully by the leadership and administration at my church, but I'm unsettled by what I learned about myself in the process.  I'm frightened that, when I feel threatened or unsafe, I have a "deer in the headlights" response, and do not actively defend myself the way I should.  I don't like that I freeze when I should walk, or run, away.  It's unnerving.  Especially because I consider myself to be a confident, forthright person in most other areas of my life--I'm definitely not known by my friends, family, or colleagues as being a wilting violet.  I feel confident most of the time, self-assured pretty much all of the time, but in those situations when my self-assured, offensive reaction matters in a very real way--I freeze.  I hope I can change this.

I'm reminded of Barthian theology at this point, and find it more than slightly comical that I could probably stand to learn a thing or two from his archetypal sinful human being--the one who stands up in "prideful self-assurance" to be their own judge, and demand that their needs, however they perceive them, be met.  I knew Barth wasn't perfect before, but this really hits it home.  He tells us an awful lot about why humanity is depraved and desperately in need of reconciliation we can never affect on our own, but nowhere in his theology does he address how a woman, who's been victimized before, should stand up for herself when she finds herself being victimized again.  Nowhere in his theology does he tell the immobilized that they have every right to move away from what hurts and threatens them.  I have a lot of love for Barth, more so than many of my colleagues, but find it highly regrettable how he never addresses victimization.

So it goes without saying that I am one huge theology nerd--but such is life these days.