There’s something, something, inside of me
Screaming, let me live out loud
Let me live, let me live
Let me live out loud.
Afraid to be strong
And too strong to be afraid
Is anybody near me?
Does anybody feel me?
Let me live out loud (Let me live out loud)[1]
Let me live out loud.
Last month, on the first anniversary of President Biden’s Inauguration, the poet Amanda Gorman wrote an essay in the New York Times[2] where she talked about the experience of writing that poem that would make her famous. What she shared a year later was that she almost declined at the last minute to offer that poem at all.
Why? Because, she says, she was terrified. Terrified on any number of levels. Fear of failing. Fear of catching Covid (young adults weren’t eligible to be vaccinated at the time). Fear for her physical safety—her friends and family were telling her she was crazy for doing it. She writes how, in those days following the insurrection on the capitol being highly visible was a very dangerous thing, especially, Gorman notes, “if you’re black and outspoken and have no Secret Service”.
Gorman writes that the night before she had to make her decision was the longest night of her life. And how in that night she got clear that she would to be the inaugural poet. She writes how she came to believe how terror is a force far greater than despair. How being afraid is a part of life. How, as she says, if you’re not afraid you’re not paying attention. How the thing we most have to fear is having no fear itself.
She said, finally, that fear is ultimately a sign of what and of whom we love.
Now for Gorman we know how the story turned out. We know she did deliver her poem. We know that her life would forever be changed. We know that she offered a poem that was a balm to many of us fearing and grieving for ourselves and for our country. We know that her poem—and her presence—were a blessing on that January day.
She says that in the end she didn’t really have a choice. She could not let fear overcome her need to do what she had to do.
Her words again: “If you’re alive, you’re afraid. If you’re not afraid, then you’re not paying attention. The only thing we have to fear is having no fear itself — having no feeling on behalf of whom and what we’ve lost, whom and what we love.”
Most of us in our lives may not face a decision on the scale of whether we should deliver a poem at a presidential inauguration or not. No, the decision facing young Amanda Gorman was pretty extraordinary. And, that said, the experience of fear is universal. I expect we have all had times when we have been asked to step out of our comfort zones and to be do something we were afraid of. And I expect there are many endings to our stories. How fear did propel us forward—or not. How fear and the choices we have made have kept us feeling safe and secure—or not. In fact, that is something we face just about every day, I expect. Fear is very much a part of life and our relationship with that fear can be pretty complex as well.
To be alive is to experience fear. Creatures large and small experience it. When we feel threatened, physically or emotionally, it is how our bodies let us know. Those fight or flight moments may stay with us long after we have forgotten the more immediate details of any given situation.
Fear is a primary emotion processed in the amygdala, a part of the brain that detects threats and that triggers that fight or flight response in us. Those responses are hard wired. They can take us back to our very survival on the earth.
But that fear response can also be also maladapted to modern life. Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School who also writes for the Atlantic magazine, cites the example of a friend with a large Twitter following who once told him that he felt his chest tighten every day as he clicked on the social media app on his phone. His amygdala was alerting him that dangerous threats lay ahead, and he was getting a dose of adrenaline and cortisol in response—even though nothing was likely going to harm him.[3]
According to Brooks, we have a natural modulator of the hyperactive amygdala: the neuropeptide oxytocin, which has sometimes been called the “love molecule.” Oxytocin is often produced in the brain in response to eye contact and touch, especially between loved ones. The feeling it creates is intensely pleasurable; indeed, life would be unbearable without it. There is evidence that an oxytocin deficit is one reason for the increase in depression during the Covid pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing. We need others in order to survive.
Oxytocin has also been found to reduce anxiety and stress by inhibiting the response of the amygdala to outside stimuli. In other words, if we have loving contact with others, the outside may seem less scary and less threatening to us.
This may point to a scientific basis for a passage in scripture, where Saint John tells us that “there is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Or as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Through Love, one has no fear.”
I don’t have to tell you that there are plenty of things to fear in our lives these days. There’s fear of death and illness, especially in a time of pandemic. There’s fear for our safety, for sure. There’s fear of war and violence. There may be fear for our economic security. And we know there is a very real fear for our future and for our children’s future, for the very survival of our planet, of life as we know it. No, there is plenty to fear all around us. And many of those are fears we should be paying attention to.
And we live in a culture that can seem to feed on those fears. For example, we are encouraged in response all too often to see those who are different from us—or who we perceive as different from us—to be what we should fear.
And that fear can have a way of feeding on itself. When we are feeling afraid of things around us, a natural response is to try to shut ourselves off, to isolate. In these times of Covid I find myself looking around and seeing us in our little individual bubbles. After all these months I still note when is see someone alone in their car driving with a mask on. Or what is now the reality of experiencing others in virtual boxes on zoom, with the boxes shifting around as people come and go from those virtual rooms. Seeing people in person asks for a kind of reset of reality.
I don’t think this isolation is news to any of us. A report from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration has declared a “loneliness epidemic,” specifically citing “living alone, being unmarried … no participation in social groups, fewer friends, and strained relationships” in our culture.[4] And that and other studies are from before the Covid epidemic. And Covid has only exacerbated those trends. In particular for people living alone or for our young people who have experienced so much more social isolation and disruption.
And our political culture also feeds of fear. It has come to make more divisions between us and our neighbors as well as people in our own families. With more isolation has come more frustration and more anger.
Arthur Brooks says the math here is easy. More isolation plus more hostility equals less love; less love equals more fear. To reduce fear, we need to bring more love into our lives. Brooks has some suggestions for how we might do that. He suggests the following, starting with some things that may be relatively easy and advancing in difficulty from there. Here is what he would advise:
1. Confess your fear to someone you trust. Keeping it inside likely only makes it worse.
2. Make your love overt. Today, tell someone you love them. Now, not someone you would normally say that to, but rather to someone you’d be less likely to say it to. Now that may be easier for some than for others. It may take some courage. And maybe it begins with a compliment or a kind word. But try it.
3. Take a risk. Confess your love or admiration for someone who doesn’t know that you have these feelings. Again, this may be in the form of smaller steps. If you want, blame Covid: Say the lockdown has made you do things you normally wouldn’t do.
And finally what may be the most difficult of all…
4. Love your enemies. In our times this may not be easy but may be a step in the direction of healing our world. Maybe it begins with holding back and not being so quick to judge—or maybe just trying it for a week. Maybe it begins by noticing in our own inner landscape what it means to judge a little less. Maybe to fear a little less. But try to start somewhere.[5]
Now this advice may run counter to a lot of what our current culture would tell us to do these days. All too often the signals we get are in the opposite direction.
But maybe we have also come to learn some of the things that don’t work. Those things that in the end may only compound our sense of fear. We learn all too often what in the end can leave us feeling isolated and afraid.
Now this is where we should remember that fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe especially these times we are in ask us to pay attention to our fears. To not let them take over, but to help us move though into a place of awareness and wholeness. The Buddhist writer Pema Chodron says that fear is the natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. That as we strip away our denial and constructions of reality, we can come to a place of understanding and clarity. That our fear can help us to open ourselves to the truth we know.
Our spiritual theme this month is witness. How is it we are asked to bear witness to our lives and to the lives of those around us? How is it we are asked to bear witness to the creation itself and to our place in it?
It begins with showing up. It begins with being present to those fears. It begins with the courage to ask and to name what we are seeing. It begins by asking what love might be asking of us in response to whose fears.
Last week in his sermon, Rev. Bill reminded us that that call in these days may come in a call to be present with the complexities of life. With all that there is to hold and how easy fixes are not all that likely to work. How we are asked sometimes to live in that uneasy place between fear and love. How living with integrity means holding a lot sometimes. How the answers, too, may take some time to know—and to live.
And that is where the love part comes in, I think. To remind ourselves that no matter what we face to don’t face it alone. That even when the impulse is to isolate and to fear, there is something greater that calls us to together. We are asked to show up on the side of love.
“Real love is always difficult,” said the poet Rilke, “because it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in (them)self, to become a world, to become a world in (them)self for the sake of another; it is a great, demanding claim on us, something that chooses us and calls us to vast distances.”
There are many distances we are asked to journey in these times. There are many things that would have us be fearful. Our charge is to pay attention to what that fear may be telling us.
Words again of adrienne marree brown[6]:
so i breathe in
noticing the gift i too often take for granted
not knowing how many breaths i have left
i want to spend them
being
love
Amen.
Prayer: Great spirit of life, call us each day, in each moment, to the work of love. We need it. Those around us need it. Our hurting world needs it. Remind us of the power of fear in our lives and help us to use that fear in the service of something greater, in the service on that love. Help us to show up. And in that showing up, remind us that we never journey alone. That the ancestors are with us, that you spirit, are with us. Hold us, guide us, challenge us. Call us as love shows us how. Amen.
Benediction
In our living, in our being, even in our fearing, may we answer the call of love.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS-kw98skeE
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/opinion/amanda-gorman-poem-inauguration.html
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/how-fight-fear-love/614227/
[4] https://www.hrsa.gov/enews/past-issues/2019/january-17/loneliness-epidemic
[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/how-fight-fear-love/614227/
[6] https://adriennemareebrown.net/2021/07/27/this-is-the-only-moment-species-love-poetry/
Topics: Witness