A CONVERSATION ON FEAR
A Dialog Sermon
30 April 2006
James Ishmael Ford

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There are only two feelings: Love and fear. There are only two languages: Love and fear. There are only two activities: Love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear.
Michael Leunig in A Common Prayer

Today, let’s talk about fear. I’ll start with an exploration of what fear seems to be for us as individuals. Then I’ll apply the same analysis to how fear seems to appear within society, in particular how it seems to me to affect the body politic of our nation today, now, right now. Then, let’s talk. If there were ever a ready subject for congregational reflection a consideration of fear sure seems to be it. Okay?

I understand fear. One good if not important but perhaps accessible example is how that sensation of fear cut right through me on Tuesday last, when I learned plans for today’s lay-led service had collapsed - over the very weekend I was scheduled to lead a meditation retreat that already had over twenty-five people registered to attend. Or, for one more example: after I set aside most of Saturday at the retreat to pull out my laptop computer and work on my sermon only to return home this morning and not be able to connect to my printer. Let me tell you the delicious taste of fear rolled around in my mouth, acid-like, for way too long. Thanks, however, to a last minute call from Jan and a quick tutorial on how to use my “travel drive” birthday gift, we have the talk printed out. And here it is. But, let me tell you, fear was uncomfortably intimate for me for quite a while this morning.

This is hardly the only time I’ve felt fear in great or lesser degree. In fact I rely regularly on fear to write my sermons. At the beginning of the week you can’t get me to think about Sunday. Way too far off. Monday - the same, also Tuesday. Wednesday I usually begin to get a bit of a twitch, and start noodling around the web reading this or that on the subject I promised to address. Thursday I’m usually anxious enough that I might come down with a cold the next day or something like that, and generally I begin to write random sentences down. And no, however it may seem in the pews; that’s not the end of my sermon prep.

Friday I sit at the computer for hours, fretting and typing, although admittedly rarely coming up with anything I’d want to introduce to my parents. Saturday, however, I’m good and anxious. I actually feel beads of sweat. I’m afraid. At that time, as focused as can be, I sit down, dredge up whatever might be useful from the previous two days and rework it into the sermon. I also always wake up very early Sunday morning with another whiff of fear smoldering in my nostrils; for me the smell is brimstone. I sit down at the computer to wash through the whole thing one more time, and if I got up early enough, two more times.

I think the traditional saying for this is how there’s nothing quite like knowing you’re to be hung in a fortnight to clear the mind. So, from my personal experience it seems to me there are genuine uses for fear. The word fear comes from the Old English; it’s one of our cherished “four-letter words.” It appears at least in its origins to mean “danger” or “sudden calamity.” The American Heritage Dictionary unpacks this by suggesting fear is “(a) feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger.”

What I find most important is how fear is something completely natural. It’s like the sensation of pain that helps us to keep our hands away from fire. Fear is a biological reaction to certain sets of stimuli, a sign of danger, and a shifting of our energy into some semblance of “fight or flight.” Of course there are lots of degrees in fear, some more healthy than others; ranging from that nagging sense, “oh boy, it’s time to get to it,” up to worry, perhaps from there to fright, then dread, terror and to top this sampling, horror. All fit more or less under the general rubric “fear.”

We should note fear can even be fun. I think of Halloween or an hour or so in a darkened theater where I actually pay money to feel moments of fear. Of course fear isn’t always benign, a kick to get a task done, or a cheap thrill. For all of us some of the time and for a few of us all the time, fear is something big. Here it can be debilitating. Among its most unhealthy forms is paranoia, where the rush of fear doesn’t wear off, where danger or calamity seems to lurk in every situation, potentially in every encounter.

Of course as they say just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t, nonetheless, out to get you. Sometimes this pervasive unshakable sense of imminent danger is true. Probably the most universal fear for us human beings is fear of death. Here’s a truism for us. As I’m unaware of anyone alive older than a hundred years and a decade or so - I suspect thinking we’re going to die is a reasonable bet. But sometimes this inescapable fact that we’re going to die becomes a thought we can’t shake. Instead of a general truth that becomes necessary to deal with in the fullness of time it becomes an obsession, a night terror, focusing everything about our lives into this one harsh fact. A head’s up on this. I’m going to talk politics in a bit, and I’ll come back to this sometimes debilitating obsession with one harsh fact at that time.

But even at a lower grade burn, other inescapable calamities such as illness and hurt, for much of the globe, hunger, all generate terrible fears. Among those that haunt many of us, one can fear not having enough money set aside for their, let’s be more intimate here, for our old age. And more: One can reasonably expect endless changes in life, and with that many many discomforts. People fear those changes. I don’t see any way to think fearing such convolutions of our lives unreasonable. These are the dangers we must face. And that little burst of adrenaline which accompanies our sense of fear pushes us to address those dangers. This is just as it should be. At least that’s what I think.

How we do this is the deal. But even this needs to be looked at. Our tolerance for those dangers we must face is different for each of us. Some of us are born timid. Others are more aggressive. The spectrum that might be thought of as healthy is pretty wide. After all in different situations the more timid or the more aggressive might in fact have the right strategy. We simply need to be open here. But, and this is really important: there is also going too much in either direction.

For instance there is being too obsessed with possible danger. It can be unhealthy to be unwilling to take chances. Every day we face hundreds of choices with unknown consequences. To let this fact freeze us because some of those unforeseeable consequences are dangerous is to narrow our lives in very unhappy ways. And at the other end there is recklessly courting danger. For instance there are adrenaline junkies. I suspect anyone of us who reads a suspense novel fits that bill, if at the very slightest edge. Some of us, however, move on toward things like extreme sports. At some point one can talk of being addicted to fear. Of course where that line is, is hard to call. Is it jumping out of an airplane to sky dive? Is it mountain climbing? The danger signal probably is found in the answer to the question “do you need ever more thrilling experiences? At some point the words “death wish” needs to be thrown into the conversation.

Okay, I hope I’ve established that fear is natural. It also has a healthful range. Too little willingness to be with fear is emotionally stilting while romancing it can kill you. One of the best summaries of what this can mean, of the middle way of healthful engagement, of facing fear and living an engaged life that I’ve found was set out by Forrest Church, senior minister of All Soul’s Unitarian congregation in New York City.

Forrest observed, “In ethics, the golden mean for correct behavior falls equidistant between extremes, the right amount of any given quality (is) perceived as ethically superior to too little or too much. Generosity, for instance, is the golden mean between miserliness and profligacy. Aristotle introduced the golden mean to Western philosophy twenty-five hundred years ago.” This perspective has guided many seeking wisdom down to this very day.

Forrest goes on to address the subject at hand. “Weighing fear according to this ideal, the preferred alternative to (fear) is not fearlessness but prudence (the half-way point between the two). The word prudence today (too often only, itself) suggests fear, but originally it signified "right thinking," (a wise, or harmonious perspective.) Far from being a drab virtue (as it has too often come to be thought of), prudence invites us to be bold, not timid, as long as we aren’t foolish.” I believe this is important, really important. I think this is wisdom. I think actively engaged this prudence is the path of wisdom.

Now I feel a deep need to throw politics into the mix. Remember, I wanted to explore fear within individuals and in societies. We don’t live exclusively private lives – we are so completely wrapped up within one another, private virtue is almost meaningless – what’s important is always about how we relate to one another. Significantly, when I was doing that web research which I alluded to as my normal sermon writing discipline; among other things I googled three search terms all bunched together: “sermon” “Unitarian” and “fear.” Most of what popped up, and there were bunches, were sermons on Terrorism. We live in an era, a time and a place where fear of terrorism has become pervasive.

I’m very concerned about this. Now I need to admit I think we have much to fear. There are actually people that want to hurt us, you and me. If not by name, certainly by category: they, real people out there, want to hurt us, to kill us simply because we’re Americans. I also believe there are people in our larger lives, some politicians, others purveyors of various forms of entertainment and information; all of whom have a vested interest in magnifying that fear, fanning fires.

When times are hard it’s easy to be driven by fear. But we are challenged by our faith to question all this. I believe this is much of what we’re about in this room, here, today – that challenge to question authority, to seek deeper wisdom. Ours is a faith that questions. If we’re really up to it, ours is a faith that questions deeply. So, I hope we can find our way through and not to simply be consumed in the flames of fear. We’re now being asked to tolerate a lot of things most of us would have called intolerable only a few years ago. Here’s what I fear. People are acquiescing, I suggest, because of unbridled and not well thought through communal fear.

We’re currently being told by the highest officials of our nation there is no need to understand those people who hate us and want to hurt us; they’re just terrorists, just evil, just trying to destroy what is good. We should, we’re being told, have one response to this evil: kill them. This, I suggest, is fear run rampant. This is fight or flight at the level of nations.

Our government is barely hiding the pervasive use of torture by our own or by our surrogates. We are allowing forms of invasion of personal privacy that at least to me seem vastly beyond what is actually useful. I’m not an expert; still, I’m sure there are many aspects of the so-called Patriot Act that are needed. We need prudence at dangerous times. But there’s more going on here. The national reaction really seems to me to be over the top. And over the top at this level is a very dangerous thing. It’s not just that one omnibus of laws called the Patriot Act. We’re also frequently unquestioningly accepting assertions of an imperial presidency to my mind squatting over the other, all too willing it seems, branches of government. We’re accepting a tyranny in order to deal with fear. To be specific: we’re accepting indefinite imprisonment of people without trial by evoking words like war and terror as some kind of mantra that justifies shaking the very foundations of our republic. Talk about destroying the village to save it.

How do we healthfully face our fears? Where do we find prudence? How do we face fear in a reasonable and healthy way? The rubber hits the road in some very specific ways with these questions. How do we accept sometimes harsh necessities, how do we not turn from what must be done, but without capitulating to those who would let fear destroy what it is we stand for as a nation: individual rights, human dignity, freedom of thought?

Well, I hope that’s an adequate setup. Speaking of freedom, what are your thoughts?

Congregational Reflections

Thank you. Now as we draw our time together to a close let me tell you a brief story. Once upon a time there was a village. It was a pretty good village. The people in it were more or less like people everywhere. Some were good, others, maybe not so good. There were generous folk and there were sharp dealers. There were rich and poor, old and young. You know - a real place with real people.

Then, one day, someone at the edge of the village saw a giant lumbering toward them. I mean a giant. Not a tall person. He was maybe a hundred feet tall, and worse, was swinging a giant club that had giant nails sticking out all over it. This was obviously not a friendly giant. The community was panicked. People hastily packed a few possessions and began to flee in the opposite direction from the oncoming giant.

Everyone, that is, except a little girl and a little boy, sister and brother. They saw the giant, and they wanted to know more. They’d read about such fabulous creatures in story books, how these beings could be terrible, but also so different and intriguing; and now they had a chance to see what was real for themselves. When everyone else was lost in terror they wanted to know more.

So, they started walking toward the giant.

And something strange happened. The closer they got to him, the smaller he seemed to be. With every step they made toward him, he appeared to shrink. And it was true. When they finally met the giant on a small hill a ways from the village, he was now only eighteen inches tall. “Hello,” said the girl. “Hello, “said the boy. The giant glared at them, taking a swing with his club at a passing fly. “What’s your name?” asked the girl.

The giant looked up at her and said, “Fear.”

Amen.