Tag Archives: anxiety

MONDAY OF EASTER II

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Diognetus 3

April 29, 2019

JOHN 20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Yesterday we faced our fear.  Today we face our peace.  Facing peace is not much easier than poking our head from under the covers when something goes bump in the night.

What is peace if it is not, “not fear?”  In Greek the word means, “peace of mind; quietness or rest.”  This is not too far from “not fear,” and very acceptable to Ego.  Peace of mind for Ego is everything under control, including people, all living things and inanimate object.  Then, and only then, can Ego take a breather (but only for a minute).

Hebrew peace is, similar, but different in crucial way.  Not defined in the negative, peace, points toward wholeness, complete, but not perfection.  This is peace as progressive maturing integrity. The is the sort of peace that sees the lights of the highway patrol, glancing at our speed, relaxed as the officer speeds toward another motorist.  This peace is a matter of intentional discipline; inebriated recklessness is not our practice. It doesn’t mean that our speed is always spot on as we drive because 90 mph is appropriate if a passenger is bleeding out.

I do not wish you “not fear,” I bid you peace.

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John

Holy Monday

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April 15, 2019

JOHN 12   Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Wayne Forte

3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” 9 When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, 11 since it was on account of him that many of the Jews

The corporate ego of the priesthood was by then murderously enraged.  Nothing will provoke such behavior from the, “so-called,” righteous than someone with an idea that contradicts everything the ruling righteous stood on.  That is why the disorienting contradicting parables got Jesus killed.  I can testify that we “professional Christians” are particularly susceptible to a virulent, fatal strain of the We-Plague.

While all of us have an ego shadow, any group’s collective “we” is as unforgiving of another’s “I” as a flock of ravens pecking to death one of their own, born albino. It didn’t seem to cross the minds of that crowd to stop and reflect on Lazarus’ inching out in his mummy wrapping as a miracle!  Rather, they saw him as an unfortunate symptom of a deadly threat.  Getting Lazarus back in the ground was job one!

Beloved, righteousness fueled by rage is all ways a fatal mutation.  The epidemic is all around us.  For the first time in almost sixty-five years, I actually pray for”…the Republic for which it stands.”  How then, do we live in the face of such fear fueled hatred?

anointingjesuswithnard-arcabas

First we face our own fearful anxiety.  We consciously contract our ego, thus growing ourselves up and calming ourselves down.  Becoming the Gospel, daring to say I in the face of the terrified we is what Jesus would do if he were here.  He did it the first time and he left us (as his body) to do it in ours.

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John Sewell

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Abbot Typhon

Abbot Typhron

The Age of Innocence

The Radical Living Middle

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 A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism.

Alan Watts – Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.

I became an Anglican almost four decades ago because of the tradition’s high tolerance for ambiguity.  To my dismay, even Anglicans, when confronted with the paralyzing anxiety of our time, have polarized.

8310~Protect-Me-Jesus-Posters

The left has become political ideology.  The siren of our present time,  whispers that all boundaries are evil.  Openness is the cry of our time.  What my progressive relatives fail to see is the distinction between barrier and boundary.  It is the difference between a castle wall and the membrane of a single cell.  The cell wall, if I remember from ancient junior high science,  is a semi-permeable membrane.  Substance flow in and out as may be.  The cell wall is there not to keep “stuff” out so much as to promote the integrity of the organism!

The family on the right have descended into mindless fundamentalism.  Now mind you,  it is more sophisticated  than your garden variety, but it is mindless nevertheless. Rabbi Friedman used to warn us not mistake mental activity for thinking. There is a longing for the golden age of purity (a time that likely never existed).  In this Episcopal Church my right wing brethren have withdrawn into sanctuaries of purity in the geography of certainty.   The castle wall around the body ecclesiastical is a barrier to further contamination and thinking.

Both extremes have something to say. Both extremes say it.  Nobody hears the useful ideas because the noise is too great. Closing our eyes, while sticking our fingers in our ears and singing “our old familiar fight song” may take us to our happy place; there is, unfortunately, no joy in the morning when we awaken from our hang over after a night drinking from the fire hose of pernicious rhetoric

I refuse to give up tolerance for ambiguity.  The truth is discovered by pulling the extremes toward the middle and living in the tension of the competing forces.  Fr. Hubbell, Chaplain at University of Kentucky in the 1970s said,

Linda S. Fitz Gibbon_Turn the Other Cheek

Turn the Other Cheek – Linda S. Fitz Gibbon

Trying to stand in the middle of the road is a good place to be run over.

I admit looking in the mirror at the tire prints on my soul from time to time.  But in all truth,  I do not know where else to stand.

In hope, in spite of the facts.

©John W. Sewell

Perfect Fear Casts Out Love (& Common Sense).

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Jesus assured his followers that, “perfect love casts out fear.” The outcry against Syrian refugees brings to mind, “perfect fear casts out common sense as well as love.”

Living things instinctively view the “different” as potential threat. While, mistrust is in many cases warranted, human beings, at our best, are not merely instinctual, but seek by responding to, as Abraham Lincoln once said, the angels of our better natures form a community worthy of our place in creation.

Such union is always in jeopardy, as anxiety tempts us to regress, operating solely by instinctual, automatic unthinking, response. The challenges of this present time require thoughtful reflection which instinct cannot do. Since 9/11, terror is personal and local. Anxiety is paralyzing and never far from us. There are many things to fear. What we must do is not become our fear!

Syrians refugees now ask for entrance and solace among us. Though we are a nation of immigrants, fear of strangers, motivated by agendas that do us no credit, tempt us again. We are told that the wicked might slip in

painting by Anna Shukeylo

among the refugees. That is likely, however, clear thinking advises us that rejecting these in need arms our enemy more than protects us. These are the very people who have paid the most to these killers. Let us embrace them as the friends they can be. They are not our enemies.

In this Thanksgiving week, let us hold fast the values that raise us above instinct, while employing thoughtful vigilance in guarding all we hold dear. We are better defended by thoughtful response than fearful reactivity.

In hope, in spite of the facts.

©John W. Sewell
Rector, Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee

What did we learn at Thanksgiving that will get us Through Christmas?

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holydays

The Holy Days are coming, those occasions that by the rhythm of once a year but all our lives mark the seasons of living.  We live in a country that has the double whammy of Thanksgiving followed a month later by Christmas. We have double helpings of feasting and double visits from family. One raises our cholesterol and the other our anxiety. 

gI_SFPBookCover3Da.jpg I have learned that while the Holy Days are Holy they are not always happy.  In fact I am convinced, particularly this time of year,  that only orphans think that having a family would solve all their problems, the rest of us know better.  How to survive the Holy Days?  I suggest that you might want to read (or go back and read) Screamfree Parenting. “Ah,” you say, “It’s not my children that are the problem.”  To which I say, “Take out the word parent and put in living.”

Screamfree is a way of thinking that focuses on our own functioning rather than the functioning of others.  To prepare for the Holy Days, we might ask ourselves some of the following questions. On Thanksgiving and Christmas when families gather:

 Who will experience the most anxiety and who the least?

  • What amount of “space” is between me and the family? Am I stuck or cut-off?
  • How much energy is spent on the  “issues” of being together?
  • How do you stay “loose” in the family so that you can risk being an adult?
  • How can I plan ahead so that I know what I will do/be when the family member begins doing what he/she “always does.”
  • How can I define myself, sometimes by keeping my mouth shut?
  • How can I focus on the reasons that I love my family even while being with them?
  • Can I go into “research mode” and seek to learn from my family, resisting the temptation to give advice and fix them?

The country is anxious, states, cities, neighborhoods are anxious. How to do non-anxious-presencedeal with this anxiety during the most anxious time of the year?  As my teacher, Ed Friedman, used to say that, “consistency is only possible when we Focus on our own functioning.  Breathing in and breathing out is a good focus when anxiety rises. Getting more oxygen aids thinking and breathing may be the only thing that we can control. Stick to the facts not what we think they meant by the words they spoke. If things get more than we can take find an excuse to take a walk or visit a sick friend and then come back later. If you are out of town, hotel rooms are neutral.

Now I will see if I can take my own advice.  In addition to the national and religious holy days we also have the annual parish meeting on this coming Sunday, December 8th.  Please come and join us as we take council in this annual gathering of the parish. 

Let’s focus on the things that matter so that we are not distracted and miss them.

Peace, John+

Level One or Level Two?

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I am fascinated by the discovery of the atomic slime in Savannah. It reads like bad science fiction and yet there is a lesson of hope for us in it. There are two sorts of conditions: level one — so toxic that nothing can survive and level two where the response of the organism makes a profound difference.

All too often we mistake level two for level one assuming that our response makes no difference when in fact our functioning makes the difference in the outcome. High anxiety results in our overlooking possibilities that may make all the difference.

mcgyvercompleteseriesdvdboxsetDo you remember the old TV show MacGyver? In every episode, the hero, MacGyver would find himself in some situation that appeared to be a level I situation. But he takes a hairpin, the contents of his fountain pen and some aluminum foil and escape. His response to the situation made all the difference. Most situations we encounter in life are level II. But all too often we go around mistaking level II for level I circumstances. Our response is crucial. We must dig deep into our faith and find the resources that conquer fear. As our Lord said, “Perfect love casts out fear.” And as Christians we believe that the worst things that can happen to us are never the last things.

For Jesus has overcome the world.