Mass Thoughts
In mass, both in the readings and in one of the songs (Michael Joncas' "On Eagles Wings"), the following passage resonated especially deeply with me today:
He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
For me, both the passage and the song speak to me about a failure I so often have. This failure is in my grave difficulty in working to let go of my fear. The passage and especially the song using this passage so strongly speak to me about my need to let go of my fear.
Even though I *try* to keep a strong facade, with a brave face in most of my day-to-day interactions at work and even at home..... as I am supposed to be the "strong" husband, parent, sibling, worker, helper, etc..... truth-be-told.... inside me... deep in my soul.... I am a very fearful, very scared individual. Fear of loss, fear of illness, fear of eventual death, fear of loss of loved ones, fear of being destitute, fear of disease... all of these fears and many more swirl in my mind more than I would like.
The passage and the song speak to me of the focus I should have. I should be able to ignore my fear or work to bypass my fear with the understanding that all will be as it is intended to be.
PipeTobacco
4 Comments:
Thank you for sharing with such honesty. I think you connect with a chord in many of us. All as it is intended to be-indeed!
The universe appears to be around 13.77 billion years old. You felt no fear for its first 13.7699999 years.
Someday you will die, and while you may feel either joy or sorrow, you won't feel fear for the next however-many-billions of years, or even in some manner of existence outside of time.
So, why feel fear for ~100 years of life? We human beings seem to be wired with a "fight or flight" response. We have a chance of overcoming fear when we fight it, but it seems to persist when we flee from it.
Many years ago, I took a time management class that taught me an important principle that has served me especially well. When faced with difficult and distasteful tasks, the natural human response seems to be to avoid the distasteful and to throw ourselves into the difficult. Unfortunately, when we do this, our fear of the distasteful hangs over us and makes the difficult even more difficult. The best response, then, is to do the distasteful as soon as possible, which will dissipate our fear. Meanwhile, we should not rush into a difficult task before we have examined it closely and broken it down into much-less-difficult component parts.
So, what do you fear the most? Break down your fears and ask: What fear is at the base, underlying your other fears? If you can't find one that you're sure is your "deepest" fear, find one that's plenty deep. The secret is not to "let go" of that fear, nor to "ignore" or "bypass" it, but rather to confront it. Once you do so, the remaining fears will seem less fearsome, and you can more readily tackle them one by one.
I know we all have fear. For many reason. One I would like to bring up is the one that protect us.
I empathise as I struggle with fear myself. And with the guilt that I must not be a good Christian if I can't hand it over to God and trust him. A vicious circle.
Medication helps keep my fear under control - and I believe God gave us doctors and science and medicine to help us.
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