(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Instead of opening us up, allowing us to explore our capacity for devotion in the presence of something larger and wiser than ourselves, fear is seen as something that shrinks us, harms us, and renders us incapable of acting on our own behalf.I wonder if some fears are meant to be gotten over. And others are meant to be gotten into.
- Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace
It's worth nothing that most fear is a response to some unknown. I suppose that even if I knew exactly what the creature looked like who lived under my bed, and if I knew precisely the hour in the night at which he was scheduled to crawl out and do me in, what's most frightening is that I don't really know what it's like to be eaten or just how long it might take. While I'm fairly convinced that the experience will be generally unpleasant, most of it remains a mystery. And that's scary.
This kind of fear must be the shrinking, harmful form that Kathleen Norris writes about. If we happen to be religious and are describing the 'fear of God' mentioned in the Bible we'll probably argue that this is some other kind of fear. But I wonder.
It's tempting to simplify things by calling the fear of God something like 'awe' and the fear of everything else something like 'horror'. This feels more precise. Two different words to distinguish between two different experiences. But what fascinates me most is the breadth of response that an encounter with the unknown can elicit in my self.
I understand both the opening up and the closing down that fear can work on us. And let me propose that these are not two polar opposites. In the face of death I find both responses present in myself when confronted with this great mystery. Part of me shrinks away in a debilitating self protection. But something opens up as well. Something opens up about the ordinary mystery that there is anything but the silence of death. Through the bleary eyed fog that accompanies a funeral wake the world takes on a surreality. How strangely wonderful that people paddle canoes and paint windows and drink coffee and kiss grandmothers.
I think the encounter with God is meant to be a similar - and related, perhaps - sort of complex experience. One in which we can't always sift out the abject horror at the unknown from a very human fascination with that same mystery.
The grace in my mixed up responses to mystery is that it relieves me of the need to explain mystery away. My work in life is to cultivate a life giving, expansive response to the great unknowns we live with and before. My work is to let the mystery of God do its broadening work on my life.
On Sunday we read the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus' face shone like the sun, and when a voice spoke from the cloud that enveloped the mountain, Peter and James and John fell down in fear. They lay on the ground until Jesus said, "Get up and do not be afraid."
Maybe the "get up" is the most important part. Jesus didn't say that they really didn't experience a mystery beyond words. He didn't make it more comprehensible. He just said, "Get up." There is a way of living in relationship with the great mystery that is God without minimizing the wonder or shrinking away. Such religion might just be worth the trouble.
Annie Dillard once wrote,
"The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, making up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."
I like that. Maybe Jesus wasn't telling those disciples to get over their fear, but to get into it. Maybe what he really said to them was, "Get up. And put on your crash helmets."
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“Some fears are meant to be gotten over and others are meant to be gotten into.”
I had dinner tonight at a friends house. He and I just started the age defying task of launching Facebook pages. He took my picture and got it posted on my page. This brings up all kinds of fear for me. I think this is in the category of a fear to be gotten over. It's a fear of the generation gap. At the ripe age of x+7, keeping up with all things new seems impossible and yet so necessary. I used to think that “old” people, trying to do the things young people do, looked silly. And now here I am! That's me!
When I started back to school, at the ripe old age of x+4, I was not sure I could do it. I had a real fear of failure. I was afraid I wouldn't fit in. That's another fear that I have had to get over. It has helped to remember that when I am overwhelmed, I can rely on a higher power. The prophet Isaiah reminds me that “God says, 'I have put my words in your mouth.'” (Is. 51:16) It certainly seems like that is how I have survived these past few years.
As for the fears that are meant to be gotten into, I love the Annie Dillard image of crash helmets and life preservers at church. One of the things I enjoy about our liturgy at Christ Church, is the order and predictability of it. It is soothing and comforting. Even as we listen to the Gospel reading about the transfigured Jesus in a shining robe, and the disciples over come with fear and falling on the ground, I feel safe. This is one of the many places in scripture where Jesus or an angel says “Fear not.” Maybe the reason God has not revealed God's self to me in that way, is because I would think I had gone insane, and needed psychiatric help.
In religion class last semester we watched a film that I think was called “People of the Holy Ghost.” It was a grainy black and white documentary from the early '60s. In a tiny white frame church in rural West Virginia, it is hot. People are fanning, and there is guitar playing and really twangy singing. There is loud preaching in a thick mountain dialect. Then out come the wooden boxes. The boxes are opened to reveal rattlesnakes. One by one the parishioners dance with the venomous snakes. The 45 minute pandemonium culminates with the main preacher being bitten by a snake. As his hand swells, he proclaims in a loud voice, “Whether we live or whether die, it is in Christ Jesus!” I felt like I need Annie Dillard's crash helmets and life preservers just to watch the film.
It is good to be reminded that some of my fears, like going to school or starting a new computer adventure, are meant to be gotten over. I also would do well to remember that the healthy fear of what God can do in my life, hopefully without the need for rattlesnakes or crash helmets, is meant to be gotten into. And it helps to remember the verses of scripture that say “Fear not.”
“Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name. You are mine.” (Is. 43:1)
Trey - I'm with you on going back to school at a "ripe old age." It was startling to realize that the fresh-out-of-college graduate students did not think I looked just like them! Agreed, it was a fear to be gotten into. -Ardelle
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