Spiritual F -Words
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
November 6, 2016
I don’t know about you but I can’t wait for this year’s election to be over. In recent weeks I’ve seen multiple stories about people across the political spectrum experiencing hight levels of election related stress. And indeed, as the final days of this most disturbing and ugly campaign season draw to a close and our nation decides, for better or worse, who will be the next president, two words come to mind, both F - words; spiritual F- words, that is.
The first is that nasty four-letter word familiar to us all: FEAR. We live in a world consumed by fear. Fear is big business in our culture.
Just turn on the television, the radio or go online and within moments you will find yourself with more than enough to fill your day with fear:
Dire political analysis if either candidate wins;
News of more shootings or terror attacks;
Intimidating clowns; rising consumer costs; medications whose side effects sound far worse than any condition they treat, and soon to arrive in December, the annual alleged war on Christmas! (I have to admit I don’t panic about that one too much).
But seriously, everyday we are encouraged to feast on fear. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s nothing new. Fear has been with us since the dawn of time. The very word fear is used in the Bible over four hundred-fifty times and that does not include derivatives of the word. Fear is a part of life; you know that, I know that, so what’s the big deal, right?
Well it is a big deal, actually.
In his book, Freedom From Fear, Forrest Church (the late Unitarian Universalist minister and author) identifies five types of fear:
Fright (which is instructive and helps protect us from physical harm). Worry (a product of our worst imagining).
Guilt (caused by a troubled conscience).
Insecurity (prompted by feelings of inadequacy).
and Dread (which arises out of life’s uncertainty).
This morning I want to talk about three of these types of fear: worry, insecurity, and dread and how another spiritual F- word can help loosen their grip on life.
Worry is characterized by an exaggerated concern over things that may or may not happen. Excessive worrying is like an asthma attack, shrinking one’s capacity to breath. Indeed, the word worry comes from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning strangle or choke. When we worry we tend to imagine the worst possible outcome of any given situation.
Worry loves to create monsters, the more horrific, the better, anything to stop us from catching our breath and… some perspective. Worry encourages us to visit the past and predict the future, its goal it to keep us out of the present at all costs.
Worry always takes us to places we don’t want to go. For many years, worry often took me to, well Canada. Let me explain. Years ago I used to watch and read any news item I could find concerning gay rights. As with any civil rights struggle there are ups and downs. With worry my constant companion, I tended to focus on the downs. Each time I read about some new Draconian law that would hurt me and my gay brothers and sisters my mind would begin playing the What if ? game. You know the game, What if this happens? Or that? Or… or… and suddenly this will be the worst place on the planet to live. I have to move to Canada ASAP.
Insecurity is most often manifest as self-consciousness and feelings of inadequacy. It feeds on our narcissistic tendencies. When gripped with this type of fear we tend to go through life concerned with how we appear to the world as if we are under a giant magnifying glass where our every flaw (real or imagined) is visible. Insecurity is usually self-focused. It feeds on self-doubt and negative self-images.
Insecurity also engages us in a game of comparing ourselves to others. It blinds us to the gifts we have and fills us with desire, even envy. Insecurity, like worry, can be a crippling fear. I’ve shared in past sermons that when I began to sense a calling to ministry, I panicked. I was greatly confused; troubled even, so I went to talk to my minister. I told her I sensed a calling to ministry but that it had to be a mistake because I’m afraid to speak in public. Why would I be called to something I’m so incapable of doing?, I asked her.
Dread, according to Forrest Church is “generated by life’s fundamental uncertainty”. Dread is often a reaction to situations where we are made keenly aware of our own mortality. Common when waiting for a medical diagnosis or facing death, dread can arise whenever we are forced to acknowledge our humanity including our finitude.
Many years ago one of my best friend’s father died after a long and difficult illness. I remember thinking to myself back when his health began its slow, yet dramatic decline, How can he… how can anyone continue day after day just waiting for the end?
Collectively these fears can and do rob people of the life their heart begs them to live. Fear prevents people from following their dreams… from changing careers. It prevents people from ending harmful relationships or moving on after a loss. Fear fills the mind with endless self-doubts, a bad case of the What ifs? FEAR says don’t bother. FEAR says you’re not good enough or… it’s just not worth it.
Aware of our tendency to embrace fear, Jesus, in the passage from Luke, challenges us saying, “… can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” But if we know that worry, insecurity, and dread drain our physical and spiritual lives how is it that many of us latch on to it so easily?
One reason is that we react to fear the way it wants us to.
My husband is an antiques dealer and we handle many expensive and fragile objects every day. Sometimes customers will see an object and comment, “It’s too beautiful…or expensive… to use, I’d be afraid it might break.”
Fear tells us the same thing about life. Fear says we might break or we might cause another to break so it’s best we don’t use our life for what it was intended. Instead, we mummify our life in bubble wrap and hide it away in a sturdy, safe box, minimizing the risk of living fully. Fear tells us the risk of living a fuller, deeper life is greater than any possible reward. Fear asks that we sacrifice life for an ultimately unattainable, security.
I think fear asks too much.
This is where the other F- word comes in. That word is FAITH. Now, don’t confuse faith with belief, religious or otherwise. As the writer Edith Hamilton says, “Belief is passive. Faith is active”. Genuine faith is a motivator and comes from deep within us. In her book, Faith, Sharon Salzberg writes, “Faith is not a commodity that we either have or don’t have – it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.”
Salzberg devotes an entire chapter in her book on faith to fear. She says, “When fear dominates, our sense of possibility collapses.” Indeed, fear blinds us to opportunities and squelches dreams. It replaces the brightly colored palette of our imagination with a can of gray paint. In his teaching on faith in Luke, Jesus reminds us that there is more to life than food and clothing. Rather than chastise us, he invites us to discover a deeper reality. To do that we need faith --not in a particular religious doctrine-- but one that stems from, as Salzberg puts it, “our own deepest experience.”
When Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these…” he is saying WAKE UP!…LOOK AROUND YOU! Pointing out transitory nature of our existence, Jesus calls us to live in the present, to recognize the beauty and abundance in the world of which we are a part. Jesus is calling us to LIVE on a different spiritual plane.
Theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith called faith, “…a capacity to live at more than a mundane level; to see, to feel, to act in terms of, a transcendent dimension.” You might say it asks us to live with a sense of mission and purpose. This is the essence of faith, saying YES to our deeper life. Faith enables us to say yes to this life. But let me warn you… unlike fear, faith goes against the grain of conventional wisdom.
Faith wants us to move out of our comfort zone. Fear feeds on our human desire for certainty. Faith offers no certainty, only possibilities. In other words, faith says let go whereas fear says hold on tight.
Faith is expansive, opening our minds and hearts to the bounty of life. It prepares us for the way of love, compassion, and gratitude not by giving us any guarantees but by allowing us to move forward despite uncertainty. Faith gives us a sense of perspective; it rebukes the excuses that hold us back and enables us to the see light even in the darkest moments of life.
Fear about anti-gay legislation once distorted my perception and told me, “Move to Canada Craig.” Faith said, “Get a grip. Stand up, risk living your truth. Do something that might actually be useful.”
Fear told me that the calling to ministry I sensed must be a mistake because I’m afraid to speak in public, Faith said, “Guess what? It’s not just about you!” Fear said, “What if I’m no good at it?” Faith asked, “How will you know unless you try?”
I learned at the funeral of my friend’s dad that each time his dad received another bit of bad news about his deteriorating condition he would respond by acknowledging his limited control over the situation and then continue on doing what he was able to do. Instead of fading into the shadows, his faith in the depth and meaning of his life allowed him to find and LIVE in the light of the present.
Fear tries to trap us in the past or future. Remember the line in Wendell Berry’s poem, “I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief?”
Faith helps stem that insidious forethought of grief and centers us in the present. It’s not that faith asks that we blindly or naively leave the future to chance; instead faith prepares us, as Sharon Salzberg says, “to relax into this vast space of not knowing”. This is what I hear when Wendell Berry, writes “I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” When Jesus says, “Consider the ravens… Consider the lilies…”. Or as a parallel saying the Koran states, “How many animals do not carry their own food! God feeds them and you. He hears, knows all things.”
Faith liberates us. It frees us to surrender, in trust, not defeat, to the reality of life’s mystery as it unfolds in each moment. Faith is about shifting our view of the world. It challenges us to question what we tell ourselves and what others have told us about our lives and invites us explore the risks and rewards of life.
Faith may begin small… like a droplet of water. As we learn to “trust our own deepest experience”, that droplet over time becomes like an ocean where we are able to dilute our fears in the great vastness. Fear will still come but its power will be greatly diminished.
Journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote, “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” The next time you sense fear rising within you STOP! Notice what is happening in your mind. LISTEN to the conversation that it generates, then... Consider the lilies…rest in the grace of the world… and begin to live.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
November 6, 2016
I don’t know about you but I can’t wait for this year’s election to be over. In recent weeks I’ve seen multiple stories about people across the political spectrum experiencing hight levels of election related stress. And indeed, as the final days of this most disturbing and ugly campaign season draw to a close and our nation decides, for better or worse, who will be the next president, two words come to mind, both F - words; spiritual F- words, that is.
The first is that nasty four-letter word familiar to us all: FEAR. We live in a world consumed by fear. Fear is big business in our culture.
Just turn on the television, the radio or go online and within moments you will find yourself with more than enough to fill your day with fear:
Dire political analysis if either candidate wins;
News of more shootings or terror attacks;
Intimidating clowns; rising consumer costs; medications whose side effects sound far worse than any condition they treat, and soon to arrive in December, the annual alleged war on Christmas! (I have to admit I don’t panic about that one too much).
But seriously, everyday we are encouraged to feast on fear. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s nothing new. Fear has been with us since the dawn of time. The very word fear is used in the Bible over four hundred-fifty times and that does not include derivatives of the word. Fear is a part of life; you know that, I know that, so what’s the big deal, right?
Well it is a big deal, actually.
In his book, Freedom From Fear, Forrest Church (the late Unitarian Universalist minister and author) identifies five types of fear:
Fright (which is instructive and helps protect us from physical harm). Worry (a product of our worst imagining).
Guilt (caused by a troubled conscience).
Insecurity (prompted by feelings of inadequacy).
and Dread (which arises out of life’s uncertainty).
This morning I want to talk about three of these types of fear: worry, insecurity, and dread and how another spiritual F- word can help loosen their grip on life.
Worry is characterized by an exaggerated concern over things that may or may not happen. Excessive worrying is like an asthma attack, shrinking one’s capacity to breath. Indeed, the word worry comes from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning strangle or choke. When we worry we tend to imagine the worst possible outcome of any given situation.
Worry loves to create monsters, the more horrific, the better, anything to stop us from catching our breath and… some perspective. Worry encourages us to visit the past and predict the future, its goal it to keep us out of the present at all costs.
Worry always takes us to places we don’t want to go. For many years, worry often took me to, well Canada. Let me explain. Years ago I used to watch and read any news item I could find concerning gay rights. As with any civil rights struggle there are ups and downs. With worry my constant companion, I tended to focus on the downs. Each time I read about some new Draconian law that would hurt me and my gay brothers and sisters my mind would begin playing the What if ? game. You know the game, What if this happens? Or that? Or… or… and suddenly this will be the worst place on the planet to live. I have to move to Canada ASAP.
Insecurity is most often manifest as self-consciousness and feelings of inadequacy. It feeds on our narcissistic tendencies. When gripped with this type of fear we tend to go through life concerned with how we appear to the world as if we are under a giant magnifying glass where our every flaw (real or imagined) is visible. Insecurity is usually self-focused. It feeds on self-doubt and negative self-images.
Insecurity also engages us in a game of comparing ourselves to others. It blinds us to the gifts we have and fills us with desire, even envy. Insecurity, like worry, can be a crippling fear. I’ve shared in past sermons that when I began to sense a calling to ministry, I panicked. I was greatly confused; troubled even, so I went to talk to my minister. I told her I sensed a calling to ministry but that it had to be a mistake because I’m afraid to speak in public. Why would I be called to something I’m so incapable of doing?, I asked her.
Dread, according to Forrest Church is “generated by life’s fundamental uncertainty”. Dread is often a reaction to situations where we are made keenly aware of our own mortality. Common when waiting for a medical diagnosis or facing death, dread can arise whenever we are forced to acknowledge our humanity including our finitude.
Many years ago one of my best friend’s father died after a long and difficult illness. I remember thinking to myself back when his health began its slow, yet dramatic decline, How can he… how can anyone continue day after day just waiting for the end?
Collectively these fears can and do rob people of the life their heart begs them to live. Fear prevents people from following their dreams… from changing careers. It prevents people from ending harmful relationships or moving on after a loss. Fear fills the mind with endless self-doubts, a bad case of the What ifs? FEAR says don’t bother. FEAR says you’re not good enough or… it’s just not worth it.
Aware of our tendency to embrace fear, Jesus, in the passage from Luke, challenges us saying, “… can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” But if we know that worry, insecurity, and dread drain our physical and spiritual lives how is it that many of us latch on to it so easily?
One reason is that we react to fear the way it wants us to.
My husband is an antiques dealer and we handle many expensive and fragile objects every day. Sometimes customers will see an object and comment, “It’s too beautiful…or expensive… to use, I’d be afraid it might break.”
Fear tells us the same thing about life. Fear says we might break or we might cause another to break so it’s best we don’t use our life for what it was intended. Instead, we mummify our life in bubble wrap and hide it away in a sturdy, safe box, minimizing the risk of living fully. Fear tells us the risk of living a fuller, deeper life is greater than any possible reward. Fear asks that we sacrifice life for an ultimately unattainable, security.
I think fear asks too much.
This is where the other F- word comes in. That word is FAITH. Now, don’t confuse faith with belief, religious or otherwise. As the writer Edith Hamilton says, “Belief is passive. Faith is active”. Genuine faith is a motivator and comes from deep within us. In her book, Faith, Sharon Salzberg writes, “Faith is not a commodity that we either have or don’t have – it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.”
Salzberg devotes an entire chapter in her book on faith to fear. She says, “When fear dominates, our sense of possibility collapses.” Indeed, fear blinds us to opportunities and squelches dreams. It replaces the brightly colored palette of our imagination with a can of gray paint. In his teaching on faith in Luke, Jesus reminds us that there is more to life than food and clothing. Rather than chastise us, he invites us to discover a deeper reality. To do that we need faith --not in a particular religious doctrine-- but one that stems from, as Salzberg puts it, “our own deepest experience.”
When Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these…” he is saying WAKE UP!…LOOK AROUND YOU! Pointing out transitory nature of our existence, Jesus calls us to live in the present, to recognize the beauty and abundance in the world of which we are a part. Jesus is calling us to LIVE on a different spiritual plane.
Theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith called faith, “…a capacity to live at more than a mundane level; to see, to feel, to act in terms of, a transcendent dimension.” You might say it asks us to live with a sense of mission and purpose. This is the essence of faith, saying YES to our deeper life. Faith enables us to say yes to this life. But let me warn you… unlike fear, faith goes against the grain of conventional wisdom.
Faith wants us to move out of our comfort zone. Fear feeds on our human desire for certainty. Faith offers no certainty, only possibilities. In other words, faith says let go whereas fear says hold on tight.
Faith is expansive, opening our minds and hearts to the bounty of life. It prepares us for the way of love, compassion, and gratitude not by giving us any guarantees but by allowing us to move forward despite uncertainty. Faith gives us a sense of perspective; it rebukes the excuses that hold us back and enables us to the see light even in the darkest moments of life.
Fear about anti-gay legislation once distorted my perception and told me, “Move to Canada Craig.” Faith said, “Get a grip. Stand up, risk living your truth. Do something that might actually be useful.”
Fear told me that the calling to ministry I sensed must be a mistake because I’m afraid to speak in public, Faith said, “Guess what? It’s not just about you!” Fear said, “What if I’m no good at it?” Faith asked, “How will you know unless you try?”
I learned at the funeral of my friend’s dad that each time his dad received another bit of bad news about his deteriorating condition he would respond by acknowledging his limited control over the situation and then continue on doing what he was able to do. Instead of fading into the shadows, his faith in the depth and meaning of his life allowed him to find and LIVE in the light of the present.
Fear tries to trap us in the past or future. Remember the line in Wendell Berry’s poem, “I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief?”
Faith helps stem that insidious forethought of grief and centers us in the present. It’s not that faith asks that we blindly or naively leave the future to chance; instead faith prepares us, as Sharon Salzberg says, “to relax into this vast space of not knowing”. This is what I hear when Wendell Berry, writes “I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” When Jesus says, “Consider the ravens… Consider the lilies…”. Or as a parallel saying the Koran states, “How many animals do not carry their own food! God feeds them and you. He hears, knows all things.”
Faith liberates us. It frees us to surrender, in trust, not defeat, to the reality of life’s mystery as it unfolds in each moment. Faith is about shifting our view of the world. It challenges us to question what we tell ourselves and what others have told us about our lives and invites us explore the risks and rewards of life.
Faith may begin small… like a droplet of water. As we learn to “trust our own deepest experience”, that droplet over time becomes like an ocean where we are able to dilute our fears in the great vastness. Fear will still come but its power will be greatly diminished.
Journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote, “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” The next time you sense fear rising within you STOP! Notice what is happening in your mind. LISTEN to the conversation that it generates, then... Consider the lilies…rest in the grace of the world… and begin to live.
Amen and Blessed Be
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