Day 11: Fight back against fear

Blogging during Lent has the strange consequence of slightly increasing my time on social media. I don't have a TV and don't watch the news, but I tend to take the temperature of what's happening on the news by what I see in social media. And this Lent... there's been a lot of freaking out.

Election and CoronaVirus.

Actually, mostly COVID.

Something has to be pretty powerful to override politics on facebook during an election year, but COVID seems be be dominating --both in article shares and memes (which have gotten pretty funny.)

One particular meme that has captured my thoughts lists all the things we've "thought would kill us all" starting with Y2K and listing major societal freak-outs every year until now. 20 solid years of mass hysteria.

What I've been meditating on is why people are afraid and what that fear looks like.

Since the dawn of time, people have been afraid -- superstitious, overwhelmed, hysterical. Our response to fear has changed -- we've switched from reaching out to help from God and our community to stockpiling our own provisions and doing what we can to take control.

In some ways our response to fear as a society has improved. Many of the antiquated responses to an outbreak of disease or famine such as self-flogging, starting witch hunts or other sacrifices to the sun god were not particularly healthy. A lack of education and pragmatism to understanding the causes of such unfortunate events created additional hardship and tragedy among people who already suffered. And... in some cases...worsened the original plague.

So, we've gotten smarter. We organized as a society to understand and prepare for catastrophic events -- weather, fires, disease outbreaks, violence, etc. Countless professionals receive specialized training that most never use. Data collection systems are in place and monitored -- even as much of the time --all is well. We analyze trends. We predict the future. And... we prevent a lot of disasters. We have building codes, emergency responders, vaccines, evacuation plans and safety equipment that have in combination prevented countless deaths. The world as a whole has gotten a lot safer.

But in our ever vigilant state we've gone a bit over-board. We have more control over the world. And yet, we can't control it. We can prepare for weather and disease and other bad things but we cannot put ourselves in a bubble. People still die. Everyone still dies.

In our physical preparedness, we, as a society, have not put in the same level of building emotional resilience. There has been a decline in many activities that build the muscles of spiritual growth. Honestly, it's easy to see why. In isolation, none of these activities seem particularly high priority to "achieving things in life" Church is boring. There's a lot of old people there. Same with family gatherings... and community barb-a-ques... and libraries. There's just a whole lot of sitting around and not doing much anything useful.

Except there is.

Community puts other in front of self. And that flies in the face of our individual American value. But in community, everyone belongs. Everyone is part of something bigger. Everyone shares the highs and lows of life and has support when life get hard. We watch older people grow old and die. We learn from them. And when our time comes to face old-age, health issues and death, we are more prepared. We've learned from the grace of our elders and we march through those challenges with people who love, support and value us at our sides.

We watch babies be born and grow up and we teach them and look out for them. We pass on what we know and help them find thier place in the world. And it gives us and them deep meaning and something solid to stand on when life gets uncertain.

And.. in communities of faith...we share a belief in a God that is bigger than our lives. That there are promises that go beyond death and that there is more to life than what we earn or what we do or how famous we are. And through the rhythms of community we find courage to lean in and trust those promises and as we die to ourselves we are born into a deeper life defined by faith and hope beyond words.

The antedote to fear is love.
And the antedote to mass freakout is community.

It feels hard to want to fight for something that feels so old-fashioned and unimpressive as church potlucks but the world really needs it right now. There are a lot of people who are genuinely afraid without much of a safety net to turn to.