Mark's Web Site: A quiet place with just a bit of pretension.

I was watching "Coach Carter" last week. There is an incredible recitation by one of the players of a piece by Marianne Williamson from Return to Love. He said, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us." As some of you know, I have been considering my realationship to power ever since the RSCC asked me to. At first glance, I thought the issue was how I responded to the power of others. But in fact, the issue is how I respond to my own power. It has been so for most of my life, I realize. I tend to defer to the ideas and ways of others because they spoke with more conviction than I felt.

I sat in with a group of men last night who meet weekly in Roxbury. They tell their stories and reflect on the power in their lives. It is a mixed group of professionals, craftsmen, students. Some are ex-cons, some have past addictions, some have been clean their whole lives. Each spoke with energy and passion about where they are right now and how this group helps them to keep focused on their lives. I've been attending men's groups for over 13 years. I've sat in a circle with probably 100 different men. I have never in that time witnessed the kind of passion that was expressed by each of those men last night. I thought to myself on the drive home, "I want some of that!"

What is it about power that so frightens me? I'm thinking that it's a fear that I won't be able to control it. That it'll take me someplace that I'm not prepared to go. That it will express itself in a way that is destructive, or hurtful, or wrong. I don't trust myself to let that power loose on the world. Or is it that I don't trust it to take care of me? That the power, once let go, will take me along and I won't be able to direct it. Or it will ask of me something I won't want to give. That it will express itself in a way that is constructive, or nurturing, or right?

My reluctance to let go is from a feeling that I don't want to be taken for a ride by my own power. But then, why am I willing to be taken for a ride by someone else's?