Overcoming Fear

Bishop Charleston on Overcoming Fear with Joy, Humor and Being with Friends and Children

"I have an assignment for you this weekend: don't be afraid. Wait, before you roll your eyes, hear me out. I am not talking about some greeting card spirituality, where you just put on a happy face and pretend nothing bad is happening around you. I am talking about taking some time over the next three days to seriously confront fear in your life and feel its power over you diminish. How?

 Like most spiritual healing, it seems deceptively simple. First, find a quiet moment when you won't be disturbed. Then, sit upright in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, open your hands, and breathe in and out with an awareness of each breath. Sit quietly. Don't pray at this time. Open your heart to the Spirit and experience the presence of a sacred spirit in your life. Abide in it. Let it permeate your whole body, as if you were being bathed in light.

Join me in doing this for ten minutes at least once a day over the next three days. Join me in the fight against fear: become a receiver of light."—Bishop Steven Charleston's Facebook Page.

Bishop Charleston writes often about fear. He remembers how fear loomed over us like a suffocating cloud during the pandemic and now during political unrest. Fear has a smell, an odor, a way of speaking, a walk, a glance, a posture. Fear lies, getting "bottomless" Pinocchio's Factchecks from The Washington Post.

 Fear wakes us up in the night. Fear keeps us from saying our prayers because we do whatever we can to confront and overcome it. We can try to hide it, avoid it, or put it in the closet of our mind and body, but it sneaks through a keyhole when we are not looking.

Fear comes without invitation. It is a bully, pushing its way through the happiness of our days to stand front and center, shouting with an outside voice so we cannot hear the preciousness of our days. Fear also knows how to whisper so softly we do not recognize its presence.

cousins

Charleston gives fear one more attribute I was not aware of. He says fear is a coward that shrinks like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz when water is poured on her when fear hears joy and laughter. Bishop Charleston says, "Laughter is to fear what garlic is to a vampire. It chases away fear by revealing the depth of life, its vibrancy, and the numerous possibilities that make our worst fears seem unlikely. Humor and hope drain worry and anxiety of all their power, leaving them sulking in a corner while joy walks in through the front door."

So, Bishop Charleston tells us to think of the funniest thing we have experienced when fear sneaks in. My experience is that laughter often comes from something humorous that I have read in a story, seen in a movie or television series, or experienced in my own life.

 As I remember playing with my children and grandchildren when they were small, I came upon another answer. Being with children is an automatic laughter-inducing event. We couldn't be with them during the pandemic or after they went away to school, but we could have videos, FaceTime, and even Zoom calls with them. Just the sound of their voice can make a difference. Children make us do funny things, like sitting on the floor, creating silly faces, or speaking an ancient language. If this is not possible, surround yourself with friends who bring laughter to your life or spend time outdoors in the sunshine.

tiger and pooh

Of course, there are so many other ways to deal with fear, but for today, we will try this one until fear is reduced to a manageable level.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Gibran: On Children, The Steady Bow

Gibran: On Children, steady Bow, Smorgasbord

50th wedding anniversary

“Your children are not your children.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

  — Khalil Gibran, “On Children” in The Prophet (1923).

Gibran’s poem may be some of the best advice about relating to our children. Parents are to be the steady or stable “bow.” Our children do not belong to us. They are the most treasured guests we will ever have in our home.

Another piece of wisdom came from a counselor, Phyllis Raney, who led a parenting class at our church. She told us our job was to provide the best smorgasbord of possibilities of experiences for our children to sample. What they choose, however, is up to them. We are to be the best possible providers of opportunities for them to experience, but we cannot control their decisions about what they choose.

We have three children, and as parents, we had busy lives as physicians at a children’s hospital. We wondered how to give quality individual time to each of our children. At the birth of our second child, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth, gave me a book, Promises to Peter (Word Books, 1974), by Charlie Shedd. We read about taking each child out to dinner one night a week in it. We let the child choose the restaurant, within reason. So, one night a week, usually Monday, was “date night” with one of our children. It was a gift to focus on letting that child tell their story without distractions, and to let them know how much we loved them.

We also attended many medical meetings yearly and tried to take one child with us, hoping to spend quality time one-on-one. These trips were one more offering on the smorgasbord.

Our children are older now, with their own children. It is easier to be the steady bow.

The steady bow image has now also become an image of our relationship with God. First, we learned about it as we tried to raise our children. Now, it is teaching us more about how God cares for us. The smorgasbord has become a symbol of the numerous ways God provides for us. We learn more about this One who loves both “the arrows and the stable bow.”

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Gould: Kindness

Gould: Kindness

“Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoticed and invisible as the ‘ordinary’ efforts of a vast majority.”—Stephen Jay Gould in The New York Times (9/26/2001).

A longtime friend, Dr. Steve Thomason, Dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, sent out this nearly twenty-five-year-old Gould quote some time ago for all of us to consider. Humans seem unable to avoid being dualistic, viewing life as a well-balanced struggle between good and evil. It is difficult to avoid thinking about how evil, failure, and missing the mark have greater power and strength over us in our lives.

We received all “As” except for one “B” on our report card. We agonize, and all we can remember is the “B.” We recall only the one line we missed in our class play, while discounting the brilliant lines we remembered. We obsess over rejection letters, rather than celebrating our college acceptance or recent job promotion. Most physicians think daily about their missed diagnoses and forget the thousands they made correctly. We forgot to visit our friend the week or day before she died, but in our grief, we discount all the hundreds of other visits we made during her illness. 

The morning, noon, evening, and late-night news can seem overwhelming when we hear about all the human tragedies, deaths, and violence. Perhaps there is one last thirty-second segment about someone’s kindness on a good day.

Gould, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science, contends that the forces in the world are not evenly divided and that reality is overwhelmingly composed of kindness, not evil. Gould believes the problem is that these acts of kindness are so small that they go unnoticed. On the other hand, evil and failure stop us in our tracks, immediately capture our attention, and blind us with their bright, glaring presence.

How can we put on a new pair of glasses and start seeing the world differently? That is the pathway to even more apparent acts of kindness. It starts with a small, simple step called gratitude. I have many friends who survive unbelievable tragedies by making and reciting a gratitude list each day, most often at night before they go to sleep. I have spiritual friends who even send me their daily gratitude lists. Through their actions, they encourage me to do the same.

Gould is challenging us to remember the kind acts we often overlook, especially when we feel overwhelmed by some evil act and begin to believe that darkness has overtaken our world.

When I think of kindness, I remember our friend Reed, who died much too soon but left behind so many acts of kindness that continue to live on in this world.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/