Merry Christmas. We had our Christmas "be-in" last night. I think I've had enough of these social be-ins. As you might recall, I walked out of the Thanksgiving one because it was too social for me to maintain my practice.

I had actually planned to offer a song to the community last night, "Solsbury Hill", but it was not to be. Regarding my monastic path, everyone has been entreating me to express myself from the heart, and that was going to be it. Earlier this week, I submitted my second letter to the community expressing where I was in my monastic considerations, and I included the lyrics of Solsbury Hill, but without the background information about that song, I think the description in the song of someone making a life-changing decision was probably lost. And I doubt anyone here would know that song was written about Peter Gabriel's decision to leave Genesis to pursue a solo career and pay more attention to his family. So I was planning to introduce the song describing the path of my decision using key words and images from the lyrics to make the connection (not necessarily literal, direct connections, but more of an imprint or just a sense of the connection), and then go into the song without referring to the second letter, which in retrospect wasn't very good.

What had happened between submitting the second letter and last night's be-in was that I told my parents that I was considering becoming a monk, and they responded with dispassionate support. Basically they had no problem with it, and not that they have any say in my decisions, but it felt like a door opening to move forward.

In the end, through a series of possibly cosmically cruel, satiric debacles, whereby I almost made it to the stage twice to offer the song, I didn't. There were a few voices in my support to do the song, but in the end the MC's and other voices got their way to move on. I won't be putting myself through anything like that again, considering my considerable performance anxiety and the amount of energy and strain it takes to seriously consider performing solo in front of a crowd.

It was anti-climatic. No big pronouncement was made or suggested akin to what I was feeling, and the community is none the wiser as days count down to their leaving for Vietnam, and they are only left with my lackluster second letter which I'm sure they noted does not directly request aspirancy. My money will run out while they're in Vietnam and I'll have to leave anyway, so I'm considering my options otherwise. I'd only be able to come back after requesting and being accepted as an aspirant after they come back from Vietnam.

I won't go back to New Jersey to visit the 'rents. I offered to, but they said it wasn't necessary and instead they've been pushing for me to go travel in Taiwan. That, btw, is totally random and not worth commenting on, except that if I'm stuck running out of money and not feeling enthusiastically welcome in New Jersey, and they and my uncle in Taiwan are willing to foot the bill and put me up, I don't see why I wouldn't go. My guess is that they're hoping I'll run into a nice Taiwanese girl to fall in love with and settle down. It would be chuckle-worthy if it wasn't so idiotic.