Fear

Maybe you should have been more afraid, mouse, at least more cautious. To successfully raid one trap, doesn't mean you can do the same with the bigger and snappier one next. Your protruding eyeballs, one cloudy white, as I threw your stiff little body away, were probably the result of your neck being snapped, but they certainly gave you a look of cross-eyed shocked surprise.

You had reasons. Not so the yappy dog of my neighbor. No matter how kind we are to it, moving deliberately, speaking with slow, low words, offering treats, it still response to our presence with furious barkings and lunges. The animal is an exasperation and embarrassment to its owners. As a second hand dog, it perhaps had experiences that once warranted this response, but it hasn't learned new ones since.

Marylynne Robinson remarked recently on the recent respectability of fear, that it alone is sufficient justification for decisive, even lethal, response. Indeed it is a product to be sold like fish. On the other hand, there's the vast popular literature encouraging us to overcome our phobias of, say, public speaking, by acknowledging the uncomfortable and compelling feeling, and controlling it by managing one's breath and one's imagination and so on.

I remember once being afraid of airplane take-offs, but was mildly surprised on my recent trip to Scotland by how innocuous seemed the throwing of a massive object, me aboard, into the air. If, however, halfway across, we'd heard an ominous 'This is the captain speaking...' I would certainly feel incipient panic. The challenge would be not to not feel the fear but not let it provoke me ior paralyze me into doing something unhelpful or nothing at all.(I've experienced the latter reaction while rock climbing.) And what about what we may not dread sufficiently such as slow-mo dangers like climate change?

Are you afraid of us, God-in-love? Should we be of you? Rather we're afraid for each other because we do love each other, want the best for each other, and understand that risk or loss are not make-believe. However, through my relationship with you, I'm changing the way I deal with fear.

For one thing, I'm coming to understand that face to face with something alarming, a 'you' response is better than an 'I/it' one. I saw this on the train the other day when, jostled by some girls, I mentally rehearsed some snarky lines, until I actually looked at them, saw them chatting, and felt what had risen in me melt away. No danger there, of course, but if, in other circumstances, we can encounter an assailant as 'you' rather than, say, a demon, we might open to options other than bullets. The overwhelming and terrifying alien entity may become open to negotiation, even interesting.

Indeed, while fear tends to polarize our options, and limit them to now or never shoot or die, the complexity of this world and your presence in it make it a fount of opportunities we do not know, may not even suspect, that can and often do deflect the march to inexorable doom and finesse the dilemma we find ourselves in.

Still the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 still all lost their lives--as will we all one day. Yet their courage has a quality of lastingness that is secure until the world to come. Our achievements even as we live but certainly after we die are in the public domain and subject to the vicissitudes thereof, but that which we desire and dare of hospitality, friendship and exploration is more significant than death itself.

Or so I think as I sit here in my tight book-lined workroom on Thanksgiving morning with the prospects of good food and good company ahead. I don't feel even a flicker of anxiety at this moment, but I know even small changes in circumstance can let fear in the door. Ahead of time, I can't say how well I will manage. But you, God-in-love, offer a way to live, a place to be, that obviates fear. This is what I want and mean to have.