Posts Tagged ‘Anxiety’
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.
Anxiety: opening up to God
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The first time I had a panic attack it felt like I was having the worst case of heartburn imaginable while simultaneously trying to breathe through a tiny straw. I was sitting at my desk in my dorm room during my junior year of college. I remember it was a beautiful fall day, and I had the window open. I was struggling to finish a paper when suddenly it all hit me.
My memory of that first panic attack is blurry, but I remember coming out of it laying on my bed looking out the window. I just kept begging myself to breathe deeper and deeper. My hand was on my chest, feeling my heart pounding away.
I have had a long, winding journey with anxiety. I’m in a much more stable place in my life now, but I still need to work on my anxiety on a daily basis. It is something I normally do not like to talk about, but in my last five years as a monk, I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of people I’ve talked to who have experiences with anxiety. I do believe we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic, and it does not help us to stay silent about our experiences. I do hope what I say can be of benefit to someone.
I do believe we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic, and it does not help us to stay silent about our experiences.
Overlightened by Good News – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Don’t worry, each of these sermons is only five minutes long. You won’t be here all day. There will be plenty of time for the garden party.
One of my favorite parts of today’s Gospel passage is how it is overshadowed by good news. Overshadowed is probably not the right word, so I’ll make one up, maybe overlightened would be better.
The good news of Jesus’ resurrection overlightens the bad news of how this Gospel passage starts. That morning started really dimly. The only thing the Beloved Disciple knew that morning was that Jesus was dead and his body was missing.
So he ran. The Beloved Disciple ran, but he did not run away. He did the opposite. He ran to the tomb.
I always try to imagine how the Beloved Disciple’s felt during that run to the tomb. At some point in life, we all get acquainted with that feeling of anxiety and excitement swirling together. That feeling that makes your leg wobble, but you keep moving because sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.
The race to the tomb was an act of desperation, an act of faith, and an act of life. We all have our own race to the tomb. More importantly, we all have our own race to the resurrection. Our own jagged journey to the realization that life continues after death. This is not it. This thing of ours keeps going after we die.
Can you imagine the joy the Beloved Disciple must have felt when he realized what had happened? The good news that Jesus had in fact risen. The Beloved Disciple realized not only what had happened, but what Jesus’ resurrection implied. We too will rise again.
Until we get there, we too have lives to live. Lives mixed with action and contemplation. Lives full of running and realization. The good news is that we know the good news. We have time. We have time and more than a lifetime to figure it all out. What we cannot get done now, we will get done on the other side of this life.
Of course this does not mean we get to be lazy. The Christian life is a demanding life. It’s a life that demands meaning, and for us to make that meaning with God, ourselves, and one another. We must do this every day of our lives and beyond.
A Way Out of the Cul-de-Sac – Br. Curtis Almquist
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“Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit…” I can still remember stumbling across this Gospel passage when I was a young boy. Yikes. It nearly frightened me to death. For several years of my young life I lived in a kind terror that I would accidentally blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and go straight to hell. It’s not that I would do this intentionally. But that was the problem. I was afraid I might goof up and blaspheme by mistake – kind of like if I were to accidentally step on a crack and break my mother’s back, or walk under a ladder, or say or do something which everyone knew was jinxed.
As it turns out, I was not alone. Since the 3rd century, church luminaries have written at great length what Jesus meant about this unforgivable “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” From the earliest times up to the present, there is no agreement in the church – from east to west – on what Jesus meant.
John Wesley, the 18th century Church of England pastor and theologian, thought that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” would be the conclusion that Jesus Christ exercised his miracles by the power of the devil.[i] Wesley asks, rhetorically, “Have you ever been guilty of this, calling good evil and evil good?” He answers his own question: “No, of course you have not.” So, he said, there’s nothing to be afraid of here.
Tom Wright, the contemporary English New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop, says that if we were to call Jesus’ undeniably good work “evil,” we end up in a moral cul-de-sac without any turning room. “Once you declare that the spring of fresh water is in fact polluted, you will never drink from it.” You are stuck, you will dry up. Bishop Wright adds that “the one sure thing about [Jesus’] saying is that if someone is anxious about having committed the [unpardonable] sin against the Holy Spirit, their anxiety is a clear sign that they have not.”[ii]
[i] John Wesley (1703-1791), Church of England clergyman, theologian, evangelist, and brother to Charles Wesley.
[ii] Luke for Everyone, by Tom Wright (SPCK, 2001), pp. 149-150. Nicholas Thomas “Tom” Wright is an English New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop (Durham, 2003-2010), and a prolific author.
Show Mercy – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Jesus visits his dear friends Martha and Mary in their home. Martha is upset that Mary sits listening rather than helping her with the work as host. Some hear this as about work versus prayer or balancing action and contemplation. Paul Borgman points to parallel structure. This story is right after the lawyer who tries to test Jesus by asking “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and “wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus ‘Then who is my neighbor?’”[i] The lawyer and Martha are both anxious and trying to justify themselves.[ii] I am doing what is right, am I not? I know and follow the law. I am upholding our virtue of hospitality. “Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”
Jesus replies to the lawyer with a story of a man robbed and left for dead. A priest and a Levite both pass him by, but a despised Samaritan stops to cares for him. Which one was a neighbor? The one who shows mercy. Jesus says: “Go, and do likewise.”[iii]Jesus replies to Martha. “You are worried and distracted by many things. … Mary has chosen the better part.” What does it mean to inherit eternal life? Listen to God’s Word like Mary, and do it like the Samaritan.[iv]
How are you relating to Jesus? Like the lawyer and Martha, where are you anxious? How are trying to justify yourself? What good is getting in the way?
Jesus shows mercy to one who tried to test him and to Martha. Jesus also comes to us as a friend, into our homes, knowing our hearts, listening with compassion, and redirecting us on the way to life. Read More
Choosing Simplicity – Br. Keith Nelson
Matthew 6:24-34
The life to which Jesus calls us is essentially simple. In what does that simple life consist? The simple life – the life of the kingdom – consists in the abundant awareness that everything we receive is a gift that we did not earn or purchase; in the recognition that life itself is the first of all gifts; in the trust that our basic needs will be met; in the generosity that allows us to be the means by which God meets the needs of others; and in the capacity to surrender our inevitable craving for what we do not need.
Worrying is one behavior that leads to increased complexity of life, the labyrinthine complexity of misdirected anxiety. But this particular admonition not to worry is made more specific by a very clear statement: You cannot serve God and wealth. The incapacity to surrender our craving for what we do not need results in service to the wrong Master. And the tiny links in the chain with which that Master binds his unsuspecting devotees are worries. Restless hope of acquisition on the one hand, and undue fear for the security of what we have acquired on the other, results in a zig-zag of interior energy moving in the wrong direction: away from God.
As men who live under vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, we have committed ourselves to “striving first for the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” in a radical way. On an external level, this particular version of the Christian vocation entails much letting go and doing without: of spouse, children, a household of our own, and a significant measure of individual autonomy, to name only the most significant sacrifices. But as we know very well, these things comprise only the outermost concentric circle in a life of progressive dispossession for the sake of the kingdom. We discover whole hordes of interior possessions, guarded tooth and nail by dragons who feed on our thoughts. In short, we are tempted to worry all over again – perhaps even to justify our worry spiritually. Read More
Listening for Jesus – Br. James Koester
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Acts 2: 42 – 47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2: 19 – 25
John 10: 1 – 10
Finally the phone call came, and I went down to the post office to pick up my parcel. On this particular day the woman ahead of me in the line was picking up her package of bees. I’d seen them as I came into the post office. They were sitting, by themselves, on the loading dock. The postal workers won’t let them inside the building. They don’t like having to deliver bees, but the postal regulations require them to do so. My package on the other hand was sitting in the corner, near the counter. I knew it was mine because I could hear the goslings inside, honking away.
As incredible as it seems my four goslings had hatched on a Monday. They had been sexed, packed and shipped from Oklahoma before the end of that day, and there I was, picking them up in West Newbury on Wednesday. They came in a box about the size of a clementine orange box with a bit of straw and a heat pad. I put them in the car and drove them home, talking to them the whole way. When I got them home, I carefully opened the box and picked them up one at a time as I gave them something to drink. Having done that I was able to install them in their goose coop. Read More
Waiting in Advent – Br. Curtis Almquist
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The name for this season in the Church year, “Advent,” derives from the Latin, adventus, which means arrival: the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ, whom we as Christians know as Jesus. Meanwhile, as we anticipate this arrival, we wait. If we were to open the Gospel accounts according to Matthew and Luke, we discover a great many people waiting for the Messiah, the Christ. Mary is waiting. Joseph is waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Symeon and Anna are waiting. Most everyone, it seems, is waiting. They’re waiting for an arrival. There are also shepherds who are waiting. There are some sages from the east – wisemen – who are waiting. The threatened government of Herod the Tetrarch is waiting, rather anxiously. The only persons who are not waiting are in Bethlehem, the keepers of an inn. And there’s no room in the inn. They’re all full up. It is nigh unto impossible to wait if you are full up, because waiting takes space; to be able to wait requires an emptiness. And that’s a problem. I think it’s problematic for many of us who live in North America. Read More