You know what's really great about my blog? If you want to view it, you have to agree that you're ok with possibly objectionable content. Ok, so, yeah, if you're reading my blog, you know this, because you had to agree to it. Did it excite you that you may soon be privy to the more torrid side of my life? Yeah, me, too. It's cool. But there'll be none of that today.

So, weird week.

I don't tend to hang out in self-pity about being single. I love being single, traveling alone, eating out in restaurants by myself (almost all the time), no one to check in with about plans, the freedom. It's so good. And yet, over the last few days, a sadness about being single has settled over me.

At the sight of a couple making out, my first thought was a melancholic, "How nice that oblivion of new love must be," followed quickly by damnation: "What self-absorbed, disrespectful, privileged assholes. If they were a gay couple, there's no way they'd feel able to do this. And, what kind of a person enjoys subjecting others to such overt sexuality?" Yes, I'm an expert in self-righteousness, but it was that first thought, which is not usually my first thought, about the beautiful ignorance of fresh love that rattled me.

Last night, after plopping down in a seat next to my reporter friend, Jim, at a lecture he was covering, I see his boyfriends' smiling face from his laptop desktop, and the envious sentiment steals into my head: "I wish I had a boyfriend's face glimmering at me form my laptop." Again, not the expected fort thought, which on a normal day would have been, "Wow, Brian looks fabulous in that picture!" (You really did!)

Hearing tonight that a secret admirer left a pot of spring flowers on Myriam's doorstep this morning, pulled my heart in a million painful directions of jealousy.

I do not want to resent or condemn the love others are experiencing. That is not the kind of person I am. And yet.

And what I try to avoid is the all too familiar litany of questions -- Why not me? Why does no one want to love me? Why will no one make the effort? When will love come? What am I doing wrong? -- which can all be answered with this slicing conclusion: I am not meant to be loved. I am not worth loving. Saying this all seems so trite, so cliched, so Freudian and typical and not unique. Same story, different blog, right?

Playing on iTunes right now is my Gospel mix. All ye heavy laden, come! All ye heavy laden, come! I will give you rest. This musical backdrop of upliftment, of spiritual affirmation, of healing and joy is a blatant challenge to the veracity of what I am writing about.

I cannot know that I am cosmically and spiritually companioned, intricately part of some wonderful divinity AND feel deprived of love. It's just not reality. I cannot look over the arc of my life and ignore the fact that love flows blessedly and endlessly into it from friends and family. I cannot, as Rickie Byars Beckwith sings now in her richly cavernous voice, "let the love wash over" me if I resent it in all it's expressions. So, I hang my sadness on this hook and hand it over to Her: The love I seek is seeking me. May I be blessed with an open, pure heart, and clear eyes, so that when our paths converge, I may recognize him immediately.

Tonight, in my church class, everything felt trite, contrived, and fake. The opening activities felt rote and disconnected. That question I scrawled across a sheet of paper in my very first church class 18 months ago rose up and perched on my shoulder, whispering it's presence: Why am I (capitalized, bold, and underlined) here? I don't pray or meditate regularly, I struggle to do PTPs on time and with depth, I haven't updated my service log since Fall, I don't volunteer for much outside of choir, I don't enjoy or connect much with the reading we do in the classes about New Thought. I haven't prayed with someone else in weeks, and make little effort to make time for that in my life. I still dislike praying out loud much of the time. What, exactly, is my intent in being part of this class? I know a part of it is that I love the people in my group fiercely, and I cannot imagine my life without them. But, I also want to have a deep and profound spiritual experience of life. And it's been hard for me to have this consistently and "do" the rest of my life.

But what I do know is this: it's my intent to be consistent in my spirituality, to make choices in line with the integrity that runs strong in me. It's my intent to be an instrument for love, healing, and joy to enter the world. This is who I am. This is where I stand.