How Not to be Afraid: On Fear and Loving Our Neighbors and the World

When I opened How Not to be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, by Gareth Higgins, founder and editor of The Porch (“a slow conversation about beautiful and difficult things”) I expected to discover ways to not be afraid of tornadoes or flagged biopsy findings or pink slips or out-of-control worldwide pandemics. I thought the book would deliver ways to circumvent the pounding heart or racing mind on sleepless nights. But that wasn’t exactly the book Higgins wrote.

Higgins didn’t write to describe ways to combat fear but rather to describe living in a way that is bigger than fear, a way so full of love and care for this often oh-so-scary but rich and beautiful world, that fear is dwarfed. Here’s how to take your eyes off the fear that holds you and instead open them outward, Higgins is saying on these pages.

Early in the book I was attracted to what Higgins wrote about the stories we tell ourselves:

“Stories of connection, courage, creativity, and the common good are more true but less frequently told. Given that the brain more easily recalls shocks than wisdom and notices spectacular more easily than gradual change, these better stories need to be spoken more often with more imagination. That doesn’t always mean they need to be longer. Love your neighbor as yourself is a very short story indeed, but it may contain the secret of how all life can experience its own abundance.”

As I kept turning the pages, I realized more and more that Higgins is calling his readers to attend not only to the stories we tell ourselves but to the stories each of us are helping to write for our neighbors and the world.

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Related posts:

• Practicing Walking With A Broken Arm

• On Hope and Fear in Birthing Hope

• What To Think About Today

Try This On: We Are Not the Cloud, We Are the Sky

In Finding Livelihood, I quoted a couple sentences from Willa Cather's Death of the Archbishop about the sky above Santa Fe: “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”

I thought of Cather's words recently and the glory and beauty that is the sky when reading a new book by Richard Carter, The City Is My Monastery: A Contemporary Rule of Life. In his book, using both poetry and short essay, Carter writes about ways of being with God and with others in community: with silence, with service, with scripture, with sacrament, with sharing, with Sabbath, and staying with.

A section that Carter wrote about the sky keeps resonating with me and—in a strange way, given that it's about the sky—is grounding. In his chapter on silence, here’s what he writes on page 22:

“Remember the image of clouds in the sky. The clouds come; the clouds pass; we are not the cloud; we are the sky. Sometimes the cloud feels so dark that it needs to shed its load. And so the cloud pours out its rain. This is like the grief within us that must be shed. The tears and sorrow dispersing the weight of the cloud. Remember we are not the cloud nor the rain. We hold this within; we let it go; the cloud dissolves; we are the sky.”

I love that. We are not the cloud; we are the sky.

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[Photo: a late-afternoon late-winter sky]

A Duty to Share, to Sing it Out

I want to add one more short post about the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. May's book is filled with story and wisdom about getting through the winters, literal or figurative, in our lives. Her writing fuels courage and resilience, it ignites compassion not only for others but for ourselves. Her writing is generous. She shares what she's learned. I didn't want to let the book go before copying out one more paragraph from the book, words in which she encourages we who have made it through winter to help others do the same.

"It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now, and a duty to share it. We, who have wintered, have learned some things. We sing it out like birds. We let our voices fill the air."

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Wintering: listening for a robin's song

Every winter my good intentions and plans for things I will do seem to disintegrate at the beginning of December. I turn off my alarm in the morning and sleep longer. Goals I thought I could meet get revised. About the end of February, though, I begin to re-energize. I’ve blamed this pattern on holiday-related exhaustion or winter colds, but in the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, author Katherine May has opened my eyes to the fact that in winter, we are supposed to rest more. We are supposed to retreat. There need be no blame. There need be no apology.

I’m writing this during a ten-day polar vortex with an outside temperature the last few mornings in the vicinity of minus 20 degrees. (Please don’t skip over that “minus.”) Importantly, though, May opens up her definition of winter to more than the months of December through March, extending the definition to cover any season of difficulty. The middle of July may be a January for you, dear reader. And of course, this year of Covid has been one long winter.

There are many sections in the book that I’m tempted to copy out for you here, but I’ll choose just one. It’s a section of hope. Hope as delivered by a robin.

“Other birds call in the winter, too, but these are often defensive notes, aimed at warding off predators. Robins, however, engage in full, complex song during the coldest months, when it’s far too early to consider breeding. One ornithologist found that robins will sing as soon as the days begin to get longer, provided they have energy to spare. A well-fed robin—one who has laid on sufficient fat to survive the lean winter months and has found a reliable source of nutrition to top up his reserves—will sing well in advance of the time that he expects females to act on his display. In evolutionary biology, this is known as costly signalling, a gesture that advertises superior strength and vitality, yet by its very nature is potentially dangerous to the creature. A robin sings in winter because he can, and he wants the world—or at least the female robins—to know it. But he is also in practice for happier times.”

Costly signalling. Practicing.

I could have copied out any of the many beautiful sections I underlined in my copy of the book, any of the many deeply encouraging passages, any of the many kind and wise sentences and paragraphs that assure readers that winter is cyclical, that winters pass, that we get better at wintering, that we get better at finding its joy and beauty, but I chose this one about the robin, because each of us can listen at a window for a robin to come and start singing. Each of us can practice our song for times with more light.

Tonight the polar air here in Minnesota will begin to go back where it belongs. Tomorrow, when my alarm goes off the temperature will still be in the negative double digits but will rise above zero for the first time in a string of days. I will stand at my back door and listen for a robin’s song.

On taking a journey

I read River Jordan's The Ancient Way: Discoveries on the Path of Celtic Christianity before the holidays. It's made me think about what it is to boldly pursue a vision for a pilgrimage as well as to choose to trust people while on that journey. It's made me think about how the longing for the journey, the planning for it, the returning from it, and the weaving of the experience of it into your ongoing life are as much part of the journey as are the days between the packing and unpacking of your bags. For River Jordan, this journey was a pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland, the birthplace of Celtic Christianity, but Jordan's writing invites you to take what she learned and think about it in terms of ordinary life. To be touched by a vision of something that's yours to do and then to seek to do it, without knowing how it will play out in your life.

”I learned that following that sense of direction that came from a place deep in my soul was sometimes the surest way to find myself right where I belonged. As I traveled the path, God showed me that, like Columba and the monks of Iona, the point was for me to live the faith, to walk it out. To embrace the path and the doing of it and at all times to walk with the understanding that I was to be a blessing to those I met as I went. To be a living epistle.”

Peace of the blue variety

At the start of Advent, my sister gave me a book, A Weary World: Reflections for a Blue Christmas by Kathy Escobar. I don't remember when I first learned the term "Blue Christmas," apart from when Elvis used it in a song long ago, but last year my church held a Blue Christmas service on the night of the winter solstice for those of us whose holiday spirit was dampened by any aspect of grief or loneliness or fear or depression or [fill in the blank for anything apart from the traditional spirit of Ho-Ho-Ho]. It was a beautiful service, one with meaning that has stayed with me. Little did we know then what would be coming in 2020 on a personal and corporate level. I'm glad now that I have had this book with me for these four weeks.

In one of the readings for this week, Escobar offers words on peace. Peace in blue times is worth gold. I remember many years ago, in the days and weeks after losing a baby halfway through a pregnancy, the words of peace from Jesus in the book of John are what got me through, minute by minute. I would repeat over and over again to myself, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives." While a part of me questions why I should include that sad little story here now during Advent, I'll let it stand because so many of us have had one loss or another in recent months, and a word of the peace of Christ, an outcome of Advent and all that followed, is never more relevant than in such times.

Here are some of Escobar's words about peace. Maybe if you are having a Blue Christmas, you will find them helpful. Even if you're not having a holiday of any sort of blue, I hope that you will still find this encouragement toward peace to be a helpful and worthwhile read:

"For me, one of the most compelling images of peace in chaos is a tree in a winter storm—harsh and cold winds whipping through, yet still rooted; battered, bruised, its branches starkly stripped of leaves but somehow still standing, planted into the earth, gathering an unexplainable strength from the Source. Surviving, enduring, living despite it all.

Peace doesn't mean our circumstances will change.

Peace doesn't mean our hearts are completely still and settled.

Peace doesn't mean we don't still weep or wail or feel afraid.

Peace means that in the middle of the storm we can be strengthened by God, by something bigger than us, by the comfort and presence of the Holy Spirit, the Prince of Peace—and that we can be rooted, grounded, and tethered in the midst of chaos."

Throw kindness around like confetti

A group of friends—some old, some new—gathered on Zoom last week to discuss a book we'd all just read, Waging Peace: One Soldier’s Story of Putting Love First by Diana Oestreich. The book is a soldier's memoir about Oestreich's journey toward putting love first, in all circumstances. An Iraqi "enemy" modeled for her this way of being in the world and it changed everything for Oestreich. Many years later and no longer in army fatigues, she continues to live to love others, even to be the first to love, even when it costs. My friends and I were drawn to the challenge her life suggested to us.
 

"As a family, we decided to blackmail ourselves to love first. This meant that the usual strings we attached to who we showed up for—like agreement, sharing the same faith, politics, or being friends—would no longer apply. Choosing to love first meant everyone would be in our jurisdiction now. No one would be outside of our yes....

We decided that we would be the first to love, every single time, because love never fails. We were going to throw kindness around like confetti, to love like it was growing on trees, without need to determine if the person in front of us deserved it or not. This was our family's battle cry. Committing ahead of time to show up with people meant our decision was already made. We stopped talking about what peace might mean and started being peace. We did it because peace isn't the absence of conflict; it's showing up in the middle of it."

I particularly love this line: "We were going to throw kindness around like confetti." Without even needing to give any thought to a grand plan of loving every person, this sentence makes the barrier to entry to such a life of love toward others attainable.

Throw kindness around like confetti.