Fear. Isn’t it crazy how much this energy saturates our news, politics, beliefs, and relationships, thus shaping and guiding us? In 1992 I remember being frightened Clinton would wreck our nation. At an airport in the Middle East in 2003 I was scared terrorists would kill me. I recall being so terrified of being single and “unloved”, I was 100% willing to remain forever in an okay romance. Whether it’s economics, vaccines, being with difference, or ______, doesn’t it seem like fear has seized the wheel of our lives? Honoring that in true survival situations fear is needed to keep us alive, I’ve found the vast majority of the time fear is a terrible driver. I’ve made it a practice of tuning out anyone from any side who preaches (often subtly) fear, as all it does (in my experience) is divide us and crash our lives! Truly, nearly 100% of the time fear has done little but hurt me and others.
It’s like culture “tries” to brainwash us to drink and fill ourselves from the cup of fear. I don’t think it’s a coincidence the most repeated phrase from God/angels to humans in the Bible is “fear not.” In thinking of Christianity’s beautiful practice of communion—wherein all are invited to eat and drink to remember and “ingest” the Christ—it occurred to me:Communion is a call to switch from swallowing from the cup of fear, to imbibing from the Cup of Love.
Fear brings us into our flight, fight, freeze, or feint response. So, of course the culture of fear surrounding us does nothing but divide and polarize our relationships! Know what I mean? While fear is the energy of survival; Love is a totally different ballgame, it’s flourishing, it’s the energy we were born to embody. As it says in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
Fear is in the air. Love is all around. Which spirit will you and I breathe? In her song “Lens”, Alanis Morissette points out how good people fight and divide over convictions, opinions, etc. As she notes, though, this fear-driven oppositional spirit “does not feel like love”. Like Alanis, “I’d like to know what we’d see through the lens of love.”How about you?
Hugs & Love,
Lang
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