“Choosing Fear or Choosing Life”

Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
February 6, 2005

Chalice Lighting:  “I give thanks unto you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Book of Common Prayer

In his inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the now the famous quote “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  This sermon attempts to unpack our relationship to fear, its gifts and its challenge in our lives. 

Fear is something we all experience, and rather regularly I think.  When afraid we may feel like curling up into a little ball, or we may feel like crying.  We may act defensively, or arrogantly, or become super active or restless.  We may go into our fighting mode or we may surrender.  Fear and our response to it, our ability to recognize it as it begins to flood through us, has much to do with how we relate to ourselves, our family members and to the wider community and world.  Because it affects our relationship to all that is, our management of our fears is a vital part of our spiritual growth. 

Fear is a natural part of our human lives, it comes with the territory!  The answer to fears, is not to hope we can avoid fears, but to learn how to go right into them, acknowledging them, learning how to go through them and beyond them. 

And contrary to Roosevelt’s quote, fear can serve us well.   There is a limbic fear that causes us to react quickly and immediately when physical danger suddenly occurs.  I still remember a time when I was in my twenties;  I was walking to a new job one day, taking an unaccustomed route, when all of a sudden I heard a ruckus coming towards me, a rrrrrrr, and in a split second a big snarly dog leaps into the air at me, …and hits a chain fence between us BANG!.  My oh my that was scary.  Thank God the fence was strong!  The next day as I walked by I thought, ok, I know that dog is there, but so is the fence so I don’t have to be scared, when just then here he comes roaring towards me again and I am afraid again.  Though I know I’m safe, the primordial mechanisms in my brain still react, sounding an alarm, danger, danger!  calling for my defensive action.

Another less positive reason for fear in our lives is that we are being manipulated all the time to be afraid—to worry about robbers, and germs, and cancer, and cell phone waves, and false doctors and fake vaccines, and being cheated at the meat counter or given the wrong medicines.  Our local and national media has figured out that the adage that will make them money is “If it bleeds, it leads.”  Meaning, if a story has to do with attacks, accidents, holdups, or natural disasters—threatening things out of our control, the station’s newscasts will lead off with the story, to get higher ratings and thus sell higher priced ads.  We have a fascination with these stories, probably also related to our primordial fear of physical danger.  The result is that we get a skewed view of what is really happening out in our community.  Every night these stories are told and retold.  The repetition of similar stories gives us the gut feeling that it may well happen to us and that the world is mostly unsafe.    

Barry Glassner has written a book entitled Culture of Fear in which he presents this same theory and the data to back it up.   His adage is “there is no danger so small that it can’t be magnified into a national nightmare.”  He quotes the hyped programs TV stations advertise, such as “Don’t miss Dateline tonight or YOU could be the next victim!”  One example of skewed reporting is murder rates.  Between 1990 and 1998 murder rates went down by 20%, while the news stories about murders (not counting those on O. J. Simpson) went up by 600%. 

And Barbara Walters exclaimed on ABC’s “20/20” “It can happen in a flash.  Fire breaks out on the operating table.  The patient is surrounded by flames.”  She goes on to say that this problem occurs “more often than you think.” Even though the data reported later in the program showed that your chances of having that happen to you are one in 270,000 surgeries each year.  By interviewing someone who experienced such a trauma, the logical data, which should have quieted our fears, is trumped by the emotional appeal of the victim. 

One of the dynamics of the media manipulation is that they play upon whatever seems to be our culture’s particular moral questions, clouding the truth.  Mary Douglas Leakey, the famous anthropologist has written about this.  Minor, or infrequent dangers get selected and blown up.  Example:  One person molesting another of the same gender will get hours of media play, and will be followed by proposals to further restrict the civil rights of gay and lesbian people, while thousands of heterosexual molestations and rapes, being so common, get little media play and certainly no proposals to ban heterosexuals from being able to raise children.  Our country then is able to remain in denial, fearing same-gender people as molesters, and naively expecting heterosexual people to be safe. 

Of course it is not just the media that is frightening us, but also our government and its use of the media.  With conservative control of our nation’s media growing with the continuing consolidation of ownership of television, newspaper and radio stations (a subject of an earlier sermon of mine), our nation is easily whipped into a national irrational state of fear, readying us to support a war, a war whose true purposes are shrouded from our view.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed “In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.”

All these examples speak to how fear can rob us of joy, how fear can make us leery of the world, how fear can put our rational thinking into a straightjacket, wrapped so tightly that logic becomes muffled or dies.

But fear is also more personal.  Fear can invade us in the form of being afraid that we can’t handle the demands of living—coming as a feeling of inadequacy.  I know, for I come from a family that earned black belts in this kind of fear.  As I was growing up I learned that life wasn’t fair, and that I’d better work hard to protect myself.    When my father questioned why a teacher gave me an A- instead of an A I learned that I was supposed to be better than I was.  I wasn’t good enough.  Fear drove me in seeking good grades and higher education, and subsequently a good and, lucky for me, secure job.  In some sense, then fear served me well. 

I still hear messages from family members about all the things to be fearful of.  There is a sense of always needing to stay on guard.  As I am driving down the road with my family I’ll hear the message, “Are the doors locked?”  Or in my home, a visiting relative will ask me if they shouldn’t lock the front door.  Oh, and another one, “don’t buy a convertible, you’ll get killed in a roll-over.”

A large part of my spiritual life over the years has been to loosen that black belt of fear, to expect that life will be more safe than not, allowing me, when I’m home, to sometimes leave the door to my house unlocked …and my heart open.   

We all have woundings from our childhoods.  I don’t resent mine.  My parents loved me, and I was well cared for. 

But fear of inadequacy still grips me.  I think the MOST afraid that I have been in the last decade was the day I was to go before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee—6 years ago--that’s the committee that decides whether a person will become a Unitarian Universalist minister.  After four years of school, one year of internship, psychological testing, several special UU study topics, and a hospital chaplaincy, it would all come down to a 40 minute interview.   There I am, sitting in a little seating area on the first floor of the Unitarian Universalist headquarters building in Boston.  I’m anticipating what it will be like.  I will have eight to ten people greeting me, listening to me preach for ten minutes, and then, they would all fire questions at me about anything they wish.  About theology, about my personal life, about evil, about any of some 30 required books, about UU history, about my psychological tests.  Tiny little detail questions I hope and pray my memory has recorded, and big picture questions that I hope my logic and intuition can wrap themselves around in some articulate ways.   

I’m there early.  I watch the candidate seeing the Committee just before me go upstairs.   About thirty minutes later she comes downstairs, sobbing.  “Oh my God” my visceral body says!  Danger!  Danger!  What happened to her?  Watch out!.  This is not a friendly place!  My stomach is churning.  My heart is racing.  My composure is kept, but inside I am frightened to death.  Just then I hear a voice—“Peg?”  “yes” I say, looking up.  “We are ready for you!” 

Now it is my turn.  I go upstairs, greet the Committee members with a handshake and a smile.   I take my place at the podium, and deliver my sermon.  I’m thinking, so far so good.  Then they start asking questions.  I answer each one carefully and thoughtfully.   While I was able to answer all their questions, I wasn’t much fun for them.  Some candidates make them laugh.  They have a good time, sometimes.  I was serious.  I think it was the carefulness of my answers that they wondered about.  They approved me for ministry, for sure, but I didn’t get an A.  They wondered why I was so reserved.  It didn’t match what my references said about me.    I know why. I was really scared.  That’s what I do when I get scared.  I get really really careful.

After my interview they asked me to write to them about my reservedness.  I did.  I told them about the sobbing candidate, and about how I shifted into my fear of not being good enought.  They thanked me for the essay and the feedback, and copied it for the whole committee.   They said it would help them make some changes. 

But in my heart I knew this was not about them and their flunking a candidate before my very eyes.  This was about me and my taking responsibility for my own fears, and I was left to reflect further on my reactions and how I could better manage my fears.  My first step was to see my spiritual counselor, to get help to look at them.  My less than perfect interview, would be a gift leading to becoming more aware of how fear plays a role in my life.  

That is the first step, I believe, with any of our natural human emotions that trouble us, to simply look at them.  Naturally we often want to do just the opposite, to turn away, because it can be painful to look.   But as we look at each of them, as we study them closely, we gain insight that will make these negative emotions more transparent.  This is not to say they will never reappear.  My feelings that I am not good enough, will reappear all my life.  I’ll always be looking to raise that A – to an A.  But each time this experience comes to me, the feeling that I am not quite good enough, I can begin to recognize it as an old acquaintance, one which I can get continually better at greeting.  Sometimes now I greet her with a laugh.  But that has taken some time. 

So one of the tricks with fears is to recognize them as they begin to appear.  You can recognize them as you get to know where in your body fear strikes you.  As the Hindu wisdom literature called Upanishads teach us:  “What you cannot know in your body you can know nowhere else.” Do you feel it in your throat? in your chest? your gut? your groin?  These are the energy chakras that react to fear.  Do your hands get shaky and sweat?  Does your heart race?  When you recognize your distinct physical responses to fear, before you have said something you wish you hadn’t, before you have gone into your physical fight mode, before you have run from the room literally, or figuratively as I did when I became reserved, then you can begin to look at your fear and say “Hello fear, I know you, I’ve lived through you before” and such recognition robs fear of much of its energy and control over you.  

So far this morning I’ve talked about our natural fears for our physical safety, our fears that are the result of manipulation by media and our culture, and fears that stay with us from childhood. 

There is another kind of fear I think we often have, the fear that says at some level, I don’t know who I am, what my life is for, or if my life really matters.  This is an existential fear.  It’s a fear of who we are.  I think we periodically wonder about this as we go through different stages of our lives, and as we get older.

I would offer an antidote to this kind of fear in the form of  a two-fold covenant for you to make with yourself. 

The first part of the covenantis REALLY THE GOOD NEWS OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM! to remember that as a human being you are a good, whole person, just as you are—the Universalists were mavericks when they proclaimed that God was too good to damn humans, and the Unitarians were mavericks when they proclaimed humans are too good to be damned!  YOU WERE NOT BORN WITH MORTAL SINS ON YOUR SOUL.  YOU WERE BORN GOOD.  and mysteriously, within the unique goodness that is you, is flowing a divine life force that has been passed on to you by the generations of people that have gone before, and it is this common life energy that connects you with all that has been and all that is a part of this amazing living and breathing earth; you are a being of worth and dignity that is connected with other life, and that seeks fuller expression, breath and freedom.   Martha Graham speaks about this in these words which Julie Forest shared with some of us recently. 

There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open… whether you choose to take an art class, keep a journal, record your dreams, dance your story or live each day from your own creative source. Above all else, keep the channel open.

So the first part of the covenant is to remember this connected flowing vital goodness about your unique self. 

The second part of the covenant is to let the goodness of your life shine, in whatever form and in whatever phase of life that you are in, by letting your life represent something that is greater than you yourself alone. 

We do this by dedicating ourselves to something we believe in.  What is it for you that you want your life to speak to?  Seek inside of you to find what most energizes you at this place of your life.  Is it your family?  Is it being kind to people wherever you go?  Is it dedicating yourself to a particular person, or organization?  Is it the challenge of living a non-judgmental attitude towards others, affording everyone respect and understanding?  Is it supporting the current civil rights efforts?  Is it something about working to preserve the environment?  Is it working towards eradicating war and promoting peace? 

German mystic Meister Eckhart gives us this advice “Become aware of what is in you.  Announce it, pronounce it, produce it and give birth to it.”  This is about translating your ideals into actions to declare what you have faith in.  It is about finding ways to build a bridge between your principles and your actions, between the ideal and the earthly effort. 

We lose our existential fear when we know we have something to contribute.  Taking action dilutes our fear.  When we dedicate our lives to something, something bigger and beyond ourselves, a principle or a cause, or a person, we gain perspective.  Things that used to frighten us become much less important from a higher perspective.  By so doing, we are in touch with the holy—a sense that we are an integral part of something bigger—which we are. 

And so the covenant is to remember your unique goodness and to let it shine through your dedication to something that is larger than yourself.

I think this all comes together in the image of the Shambhala warrior.  Shambhala is named after a legendary Himalayan kingdom where prosperity and happiness reign.  Shambhala teachings point to the potential for enlightened conduct that exists within each of us—the good within each of us.  And that in this world, we can find a good and meaningful human life that will also serve others.  The Shambhala warrior is the one who can look at his or her fears, but not stay immobilized there.  The Shambhala warrior goes beyond them, is not afraid of who she is, the ultimately bravery, because she knows she has a mission to go out into the world doing good, spreading kindness.  By connecting so in the world, we know we have worth, we know we have dignity, we know our life has meaning, and thereby we choose life, not fear.

May we resist the fear that manipulation of economic, media and political forces prey upon us. May we befriend and learn from our natural human fears.  And let us know that we each have a destiny to do the good we choose, by embodying our goodness --letting our lives represent something larger than ourselves,   knowing that we need not fear whether we matter.  We do.  In little ways, and in large ways.

May it be so.

Amen

References for this sermon:

Barry Glassner  The Culture of Fear, 1999
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,  Face Your Fear, Living With Courage in an Age of Caution, 2004.
Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala:  The Sacred Path of the Warrior