Do Not Fret – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
In the portion of Psalm 37 appointed for today’s liturgy, one verb appears several times: “fret.” “Do not fret yourself.” Fretting, which is jealous, angry teeth grinding when we see evil doers, the unscrupulous, the insidiously clever people getting ahead. In just a few verses, the psalmist repeats this mantra three times: “Do not fret yourself.” “Do not fret yourself.” “Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.”[i] Which is easier said than done when we see in the news every day how good things happen to bad people.
We need good peripheral vision. On the one hand, we need to keep in touch with history and see, in the long view, how the playing field eventually levels. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”[ii] Quite. Remembering how justice will eventually thunder forth can help us claim hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right, if not in this lifetime, then in the life to come.
With our peripheral vision, we also need to live in the present and to look ahead, claiming our own agency for God’s will to be done on earth as it shall be in heaven. What is our vocation, what is our calling to be and to do amidst somuch that is wrong? To quote again Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”[iii]
The psalmist gives us an elixir for living fully alive in a troubled world:
- “Do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” The risk, of course, is our becoming the very thing we hate and envy. Detach. “Do not fret yourself.” And then,
- Live in hope. In the fullness of time, things will come round right. And then,
- Seize the moment. Claim our own agency to make for right in what is within our own reach and power, especially on behalf of the powerless and voiceless in God’s creation: people, birds, animals, the sky and sea, mountains and plains. To make for right, what is within our own power.
But do not fret.
[i] Psalm 37:1, 8, 9.
[ii] Martin Luther King, Jr., originally quoted in a 1958 article printed in “The Gospel Messenger” periodical.
[iii] Martin Luther King, Jr., from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an open letter written on April 16, 1963.
Thank you for this, Brother. I have been fretting, a result of my need to control outcomes of things and people over which I have no control. But with God’s help, and my reliance on God’s justice and mercy, today I will seek to release it all into Bigger hands than mine. Time for me to memorize Psalm 37 in its entirety. I am grateful for the daily wisdom from SSJE. You all address our human concerns with grace and serenity with the Scriptures.
Br. Curtis: I’m going to print this meditation, post it on the bulletin board in our kitchen, and require that my wife and I read it every day. Thank you a course correction we both need to hear.
Very sane, salient and sufficient words to go on with.. Thank you Curtis. Thank God we have you.
Joy is believing that the world is worth loving
Curtis,
After all these years, I can’t imagine it likely that you remember me. Though I am a failed contemplative, I recall, not daily but often, comments you made to me in our too few conversations that made my life better.
I’m traveling just now (at the moment having FISH for lunch in Stockholm, no surprise there). I read your words today and am simply writing to say thanks.
Buddy
Mr Stallings – Perhaps you are not a failed contemplative but a different kind of contemplative. one who is called to contemplate different things. (please forgive that this is, of course, me writing to myself)