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Reflection Archive

Some of you might remember the job I did before I came to you was as a therapist for OSF.

I had been in ministry for a number of years prior, but it didn’t take long to get reacclimated to the reasons people seek therapeutic services.

You might not be surprised to learn that the top two reasons people see therapists are depression and anxiety.  And of those two, anxiety is the most prevalent.

Social scientists say that the rate of anxiety in our country skyrocketed after 9-11.  Then mass shootings became commonplace and a global pandemic occurred.

We’ve never been quite the same since.  These kinds of occurrences generate anxiety in the masses, which has magnification effect on our vulnerability.

And that’s on national and international scales.  Can you imagine what it’s like being an individual living in, say, Gaza?

I personally don’t know anyone who’s lived under the uncertainty of those types of conditions.  My daughter Madi, however, knows more about it than I’d like.

It was six years ago tomorrow…July 22, 2018.  Madi had just graduated from high school in Toronto, and the summer was full of excitement for her and her friends, most of whom were college-bound and relishing the beginnings of a new chapter in their young lives.

One such friend and fellow graduate, Reese, was enjoying some drinks on an outdoor patio of a popular busy street filled with restaurants and shops called the Danforth.

I specifically remember leaving a hospital after visiting someone that evening, and coming up to this usually lively street, only to find it completely blocked off, and brimming with a thousand flashing lights.

I was more curious than anything.  It was Canada 6 years ago; mass shootings were not a part of the culture.  So, my internal response wasn’t impending dread like it would be here and now.

It should’ve been.  While I was with a hospital patient three blocks away, a gunman had opened fire on the Danforth, wounding 13 people and killing two…  a ten year-old girl and Madi’s friend Reese.

So, yes, Madi had had a heavy cloak of uncertainty laid across her psyche at the tender age of 18.

Not long after that, when Madi was departing for a short road trip, I hugged her goodbye, and said, “Be safe.”

I’ll never forget her stepping back and looking me straight in the eye as she repeated the word “Safe.”

Then she said, “That used to be on my agenda. But now, not so much, because we may not be safe.”  Then she added matter-of-factly, “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

What was memorable about it is that she wasn’t being dramatic, it didn’t seem to come from a place of fear, but instead, oddly, she seemed to exude clarity.

I sensed grounded-ness in her energy, that somehow she wasn’t allowing herself to be held down by the trauma that had befallen her.

Although it would take me many months to better understand this, Madi was, in her own way, attempting overcome a tendency that many of us have, which is to expect that our lives will be safe and secure, known and invulnerable.

Most of us just naturally assume that invulnerability – not being vulnerable, but instead having certainty – is a desirable state. But is it?

We don’t often stop to consider some of unintended consequences of remaining in safety zones.

Have you ever considered that the triplets of safety, security, and certainty can be barrier-creators?

I hadn’t.  It took digging a little deeper to appreciate that burrowing-in efforts to secure oneself /one’s ideals can be isolating, alienating, and result in self-absorption instead of other-feeling.

The image of a mole comes to mind.  They’re around, they’re accounted for.  But they are certainly isolated, and often alienating.

And ironically, our desire to nurture ‘the triplets’ only serves to ratchet-up the very anxiety we’re hoping to avoid.

Would it help us deal with all the uncertainties that feel rampant these days if we could get our head around the fact that our need for certainty might actually be holding us down?

To illustrate how we fit into this, let’s go with the imagery down-ness… burrowing/digging, versus up-ness/exposure, with things like trees.

Part of a tree is underground with the moles, of course.  Without being rooted trees wouldn’t exist. But the purpose of the roots is to support the exposed above-ground part of the tree.  And exposed they are.

We know this all too well after this past week’s wind storms.  Significant damage was done to many of our beautiful, exposed, reaching-for-the-skies trees.

Trees are like people of faith.  We all claim to be reachers-for-the-skies, choosing to expose ourselves, which means exposure to the elements of life, which can feel harsh.

Yes, these days can at times feel very windy, can’t they?  High winds do not engender a sense of security.

But, in choosing to be a person of faith, I’ve chosen exposure, even to the hard stuff.  Even to wind that I can’t control.

The morning after the wind storm I took the dogs out walking, specifically to assess the damage of a tree in a park by our house.

It’s a sizable tree, taking the arm-spans of two adults to go around its trunk.

I wanted to see how it fared because I had wondered about how solid its core was.

Sure enough, we found it laid out on the ground, jaggedly severed all the way through a couple of feet above the ground.

It had been unable to withstand to the strength of the wind because it was largely hollow inside, despite looking relatively healthy on the outside.

We here at NCC, we’re a grove of trees.  We have our own particular look, varying some from other types of trees.

We’ve chosen to be trees, not moles; it comes with the spiritual-seeking territory.

But being a tree doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy to withstand windy times, and these are windy times.

You might then say, “OK, I’m a tree, not a mole, and I have to be solid internally or else I might get blown over, or at least be bending more than is comfortable.

But how do I solidify my core?  How in these chaotic times to I fortify myself?  Yes, I am a person of faith, but that doesn’t magically take away my concerns about the times in which we are living.”

There’s nothing wrong with having feelings, concerns, leanings.  We’d be robots if we didn’t.

It’s the diminishment of our peace, when the sugar sap that runs through our tree veins is draining out… that’s the issue.

To address the question of fortifying ourselves, let’s go to another aspect of nature’s up-ness, otherwise known as a mountain.

In this case it’s going to be Maslow’s mountain.

In your psych classes from yesteryear, does anyone remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

It’s a bottom-heavy triangle, with the biggest, most base level of focus in our lives being our physiological needs for food, shelter, clothing.

Next is safety, security…health, job, money

Then things get interesting, at least it does for us folks of faith.

The next higher level, becoming ever smaller in size but more elevated in functioning, is the crossover point, a threshold into something deeper.

It’s about love and belonging to one’s group…like being a tree in a grove.

It involves trust and acceptance.

As we continue to climb the mountain, the next level is self-esteem.  Here you are in your own skin.   You know who you are, you know what you stand for, you aren’t fighting a strong inferiority complex, because you know of your self-worth.

And because of this core solidness that fosters inner grounded-ness, you have the ability to be open to shifting circumstances, to windiness, without being blown over.

It doesn’t mean you love the wind, but there’s pliability to move through it.

And that pliability also allows you to have room for others, especially different others.

The last stage is called self-actualization.  I like to think of it as the Jesus stage.  It’s the summit stage.

When you’re operating in this mode you are being the person you were created to be.  The true self has actually arrived.

Rigidity is gone because you’ve moved past the white-knuckled phase of holding tight and seeking security.

The cycle of disappointment-turned-dismay-turned-disgust with the other guy gives way to curiosity, openness, creativity.

“I can’t freaking believe what my neighbor just said!” is replaced with

“I can’t wait to connect with my neighbor to better understand, because I know there’s more there than meets the eye.”

Yes, we’re talking about loving thy neighbor.

There’s an understanding that it’s more dismaying to be separated from our neighbor than it is to have differences with them.

Would you agree that your perspective becomes much broader the higher up on this mountain you go?

These questions, my friends, are well worth asking, because confronting our entrenched fear of vulnerability has a ton to do these days with political and social issues, for sure.

But this is also foundational to our faith…especially for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

“Secure your safety!” was decidedly not what Jesus embodied.

I know that it’s still challenging, despite hearing scriptural readings such as the one we heard earlier that assures us of God’s protective presence.

That’s why we heard the second reading as well, which talks about affection, patience, fostering quietness…all potent fertilizers for inner core to fight off the hollow feelings that can at times run rampant.

And the last three lines of that reading are particularly potent for me:

There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

This reminds me of something I heard recently that has strangely had a pervasive calming effect on me in these less-than-serene times.

It was very perspective-building, and since then I feel like I may be a step or two higher up the hill.

The person – I forget if it was on TV or in person (one forgets the details but remembers how it made you feel), was simple and brief.

It was about the landscape of history and its ebbs and flows.

It allowed me to appreciate the bigger picture, to lift my face a little higher out of the present-day weeds.

Did this render me passive, or inclined to, say, not vote?  Does it render me silly putty with issues that deeply impact our world?  Of course not.

While I am ever awake and engaged, and yes, even concerned in these times of uncertainty when the stakes seem so high, my equilibrium is intact.

The next wind storm that comes will very likely find me standing the next morning, perhaps with my leaves a little mussed, but standing.  And seeking.

Let us end with a prayer:

May I be a tree, a tree that leans into the Light.  May I be rooted, grounded and made solid by the Sacredness that exists in my life.  When the winds of life blow, may I then bend, sustaining and remaining strong and upright, a picture of quiet majesty in my own right, given the Light, your Light in which I bathe. Amen.

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