First Parish Bedford UU

“Falling Into the Unknown”
A Sermon by the Rev. Megan Lynes
delivered at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts, Unitarian Universalist
on September 27, 2009


Let’s face it, we’re all afraid of something.  I recently found an official looking list of phobias that printed out to be ten pages long.  Some of them were ones I’ve heard of, arachnophobia, claustrophobia, homophobia.  But you wouldn’t believe some of the others on there! 

Okay, just in the A section - I’ll start with some common ones:
Altophobia- Fear of heights
Achluophobia- Fear of darkness
Agliophobia- Fear of pain
Aichmophobia- Fear of needles or pointed objects
Atelophobia- Fear of imperfection
Asthenophobia- Fear of fainting or weakness
Angrophobia - Fear of anger or of becoming angry

And still in the A’s, some less common ones:
Apeirophobia- Fear of infinity
Anuptaphobia- Fear of staying single
Anthrophobia - Fear of flowers
Aulophobia- Fear of flutes
Automatonophobia- Fear of ventriloquist's dummies
Alektorophobia- Fear of chickens
Alliumphobia- Fear of garlic
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth

If we made it up to the H section, you’d find that there’s actually a phobia called homilophobia, and perhaps you’ve guessed it, that’s a fear of homilies or sermons.  Yes, I sometimes have that particular phobia.  I hope you won’t have it once I’m done today.

I’ve also brought the whole long list with me in case later on you’re curious to see what official titles exist for some of the weird little fears you thought only you have. 

It’s true, some of our fears are irrational, inherited, or just plain impractical.  But some of them are actually helpful too.  At the most basic instinctual level, fear is essentially a positive mechanism, an ingenious natural design we use to help keep us safe.  Humans are biologically programmed for self-preservation.  At the core of our deepest fears is almost always the fear of survival.  We learn about what threatens from the people around us and our own experiences, and in general, we try to stay away from those threats.  Now a fear of flowers or flutes, I don’t understand too much, but I myself am deeply afraid of the ocean.

Don’t get me wrong, the ocean is the place I go to when I want to be flooded by peace.  In early mornings, I love to sit on the soft sand and watch the hope of all ages arising like the sun.  In the heat of the day, I love the salty air and the music of the gulls.  At night I imagine the whales far beneath the surface, slumbering side by side, embraced by darkness above, around, and below.  But I am also terrified of what I cannot control. 

Once at about ten years old, my younger sister and I were swimming off the coast of Plum Island, an hour or two from here.  One moment we were standing up to our midriff in the water, and then next we’d been swept out to sea.  A powerful undercurrent was tugging my most favorite person in the whole world farther and farther from where I could reach her.  All I could see were the high waves crashing over her, and from time to time, I could make out her enormous eyes begging for me.  It was too loud to hear her pleas for help, and somehow my mom and the lifeguards on the shore remained unaware of our plight.  A powerful drain beneath us was sucking us in.  Staying afloat seemed barely possible but I took one look at her tiny arms thrashing and knew that though I was no swimmer, I was the nearest person to her and the only shot she had. 

Human beings aren’t born consciously knowing how to die and we’re terrified of dying because we don’t understand it.  There’s really no way to understand death I don’t think, unless you have a belief system that tells you what to expect about life after death, or perhaps you live with chronic illness that causes you to ponder your own mortality on a regular basis, or you’ve been around someone who models getting ready to die.  I heard that somewhere in the world there are “deathing coaches” the same way there are “birthing coaches.”  Here in the U.S it is often the nurses, hospice workers, and hospital chaplains who play these roles in medical settings, but there are so many others who do this work too.  Shamans, spouses, children or animals even – sentient beings who, ready or not, are willing to walk through the valley of the shadow of death beside a loved one, and when it is time, allow them, or help them, to go. 

If you think about it, dying is really a very normal thing to do.  We live for however long we have, and each moment is precious, an eternity of lifetimes live in every breath.  And dying is a natural part of the life cycle, however it happens.  We exist and then we cease.  We were born to live and then die.  And that’s ok.

However, as a ten year old, you could not have convinced me of that.  I knew I was born to laugh and swim, fight and love, wrestle with the essence of existence and win.  I was born to live, and so was my sister, and nothing but death itself was going to snatch her from me. 

With the waves crashing over our heads, I could barely see her, but after an eternity of terror, I reached her at last.  I stretched out my hand and she grabbed hold.  And somehow, miraculously, thrashing and splashing, kicking and spitting, we fought our way together back onto dry land.  How did we do it?  I don’t know. 

I certainly don’t think it was bravery.  Bravery happens when you are conscious of your fear and you move into the heart of it with awareness.  That’s a very important thing for all of us to do, over and over, for ourselves and for other people, all our lives long.  It doesn’t have to put us at risk either, it just takes deciding not to let our fears inhibit or control how we think and act.  “Do one thing each day that scares you,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.  That’s a good motto.  The fate of the world can be altered by the actions of a few very brave visionaries and leaders.  We can be a part of that.

But I don’t think that day in the sea I was consciously facing a fear, I think my own self preservation instinct was trumped by aligning myself with a feeling more powerful than fear.  I believe Love is by far the most powerful feeling that humans possess.  I would argue that this is the core instinct that parents have for their children – you know it when you’ve experienced it, and I bet most of us have, that you’d do anything in the world, even risk dying for the one most worthy of your love. 

For all of us, parents or not, there are plenty of opportunities for that kind of love and healthy fear to work its magic, guiding us this way and that, alerting us to danger and aligning us with what is good and right in the world.

 Thom Rutledge, Embracing Fear and Finding the Courage to Live Your Life 

Whether we are face to face with a life threatening experience or we are choosing to experience something new and daunting, our fears are often telling us something important about who we are and how we can grow as human beings.  To quote Eleanor Roosevelt again: “We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day (Her daily newspaper article, PBS, April 1st, 1939. 
We are always more powerful than we let ourselves believe.  Part of our power as human beings is to identify what scares us and makes us small so that we can sit with this fear, sort through it, and then move beyond it.  Rather than letting life happen to us, we can find ways to challenge ourselves and practice facing our fears, then take what we’ve learned and understood about ourselves and use these tools in the service of our vision.

In my 20’s, (and in case you’re wondering, I’m 32 now,) I worked at an outdoor education sleep-away camp in New Hampshire.  There, I was in charge of the ropes course.  Our job was to set up safe ways for climbers to get 40 feet up into the trees, and try to walk across thin rope bridges or balance across timbers attached to swinging cables.  The belayer is the person on the ground who is attached to and helping control the ropes that loop up and over a pully system that attaches to a climber’s harness.  If you have seen pictures of professional mountain climbing or ever been to a rock gym, the set up is similar, except this adventure course is in the trees.  I learned recently that many fifth graders in the town of Bedford get to take part in rope course adventures like this!  Wonderful! 


Sometimes the physical challenges were designed so that it actually wasn’t possible for a single person to complete one of the activities alone.  Two people had to gear up, team up, psych up, try something, mess up, cheer up, and eventually climb over and around and through and GET UP to the top! 


It has been one of the biggest highlights of my life to be a part of the team on the ground teaching and coaching and cheering for the tiny quaking kid standing far above us at the start of a course. 


“I can’t do it!”  We hear her say.  Those are the most common words.  “I can’t.  Really, I’m too scared.  Get me down, I give up, I can’t do it.  Seriously.”  I think we all have those sad scared defeated voices within us.  But time and again, from behind me, all her team mates would start in, firm and strong.  “You can!  You can do this!  It’s all you!  You totally can do it!!!  Just try one step at a time.  See that flat part of the log?  Try there.  Just don’t look down.  You got this, you can do it!!” 


And we’d wait.  Sometimes a painfully long time, so long our necks would cramp up, and yet, this we knew - that the moment of walking right up to a seemingly impossible physical challenge and moving through the fear was one of the most important experiences each of those kids would have in their entire teenage years.  Sometimes we’d tell the kid at the top that she didn’t need to wait for her knees to stop shaking, she could go anyway.  We’d watch each teetering step as she inched across the tightrope, grabbing onto the hanging rope loops, swaying wildly, but not falling, trembling and sometimes weeping with exhilaration and fear, but still moving steadily forward through to the very end. 


I cannot explain the bursting feeling I still have in my chest when I think of all the teens I’ve seen return back to solid ground and fall trembling into the arms of their bunk mates.  Even the toughest biggest young men who seemed afraid of nothing on the ground would get up into the trees and begin to sweat.  Time and again, faced with only themselves in the way of their journey, they’d allow themselves to show the fear racing through their body, and ask for help. 


It was crazy how good it felt to watch the loudest and meanest teen become the one suddenly in need of support and love.  In a world made right, that’s what every bully should receive, I believe.  That teen would later be sitting around the campfire and he’d become the first person to truly open up about the day’s events.  He’d tell the story of his success, saying; “I didn’t know I needed people, I’m used to doing everything by myself.  I even thought I’d be the one who was the best at it, but I was frozen stiff up there.  I couldn’t move until they started cheering for me.  I was able to do the whole thing because of them being with me.  I really needed them.  I couldn’t have done it alone.” 


I remember too, how the youngest girl who should have been too little to reach that one last swinging rope – but was absolutely determined not to let our doubt get in her way, took one improbably fateful leap - and caught hold!  Yes!!  Watching each of those kids taught me that you can walk right up to something terrifying and shake all the way through and in the end it doesn’t matter that you were afraid, you still did it!  It taught me that you can teach yourself to set simple small goals and keep on trying, one step at a time.  It taught me that the language you use to talk to and encourage yourself does make all the difference, and that you can decide to acknowledge fear but not let it take away your power.  And of course, I learned the importance of having a team that cheers for you. 


One blind boy who failed three times at crossing a rope bridge, eventually rounded up his whole swimming class to cheer for him.  They had seen him pass his swim test and he needed to be surrounded by people who believed that despite the odds, he could do what he set out to do.  To his delight, and ours, he did it on his fourth try.


It’s ok to be afraid of the unknown.  It’s ok to bring others along for the journey.  And it’s ok to stand at the edge of the ocean and not dive in. 


For the past three years, I’ve been working as a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s hospital.  Each day I met people who were going through terrifying life experiences and I admit some days I could barely make it out of their rooms and back to the staff room fast enough.  I loved listening to people, being a compassionate presence, hearing people’s stories, but I admit that when babies died or someone’s bone marrow transplant didn’t take, I would feel an overwhelming rush of sadness and fear.  Why do we all die in the end?  Why does death come often and sometimes far too soon? 

In my own life, I’ve met many people who have figured out, how to let go of fear, in order to truly live, and truly die well.  I haven’t conquered this fear yet.  So I watch and I learn.

Mary, a patient on the oncology floor, had been had been there for nearly a month when I met her.  I entered her room donned in gloves, a hospital gown, and a face mask to protect her from my germs, (not the other way around.)  What I noticed first was her stripy pink hat.  It clung to her head in a way that told me not a strand of hair remained beneath, and it was tipped a little to one side, as if asking a question.  Mary, it turned out was fond of asking questions.  Good hard questions.  When we met one another, she studied me intently, as though looking over her imaginary glasses.  “And who,” she said, “are you?”  It wasn’t the kind of question one answers with a name. 


Over the course of a few months, I spent many afternoons visiting with Mary, listening to her talk about the cranes that nest beside the lake near her home in Maine, reading aloud to her from her anthology of Walt Whitman or just sitting there quietly beside her.  Often we held hands.  One afternoon the sun shone just right through a crystal hanging in Mary’s window creating a thousand rainbows all over her stark white room.  “Today,” she told me, “is a good day.  I’m not going to wait any more for a good day.  I can just choose it.  It’s happening right now!”  Her hairless eyebrows were raised, and a rainbow danced over her forehead, like the idea that had just passed through her mind. 


As the weeks went on Mary grew weaker, but her spirit grew stronger.  Often as I’d pass her room in the hall I’d see another patient emerging from her room looking relaxed and happy, an unusual sight on the oncology floor.  People flocked to her.  Once I came in and to my surprise found Mary’s eighty five year old husband asleep in the chair next to her bed.  His head was resting on her lap.  He’d driven fourteen hours straight from northern Maine to see her.  Mary’s grin was bigger than I’d ever seen it.  She was stroking his head gently.  “We’ve had all afternoon together.  I’m enjoying every minute of this day.” 


A week or so later as she struggled to get a straw towards her mouth, she asked me “Megan, if you had only a month to live, what would you do with your time?”  I swallowed - as if my swallow would help her with her own.  “I think I’d be afraid,” I said, aware of my terribly inadequate answer.  The irony of this question was making me squirm.  At last her straw made it to her lips.  “Yes.” Mary said, “and that would be ok.”  There was a pause in which we looked at one another.  I expected her to say more, but instead she reached for a small book on her bedside table.  From the pages she pulled out a tattered bit of paper.  On it was a poem written by the Sufi poet, Rumi.


Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.

 Rumi quoted in Unseen Rain, Quatrains of Rumi translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks
I looked at Mary, whose tired old body, though filled with disease, was not crumpled or hunched.  Instead, with every slow motion her fingers trailed joy, and her eyes now heavy with sleep, still danced as she spoke.  “Don’t let your fear get you,” she whispered.  “Be very alive.”

I think of Mary in her stark white room, slowly coming to realize that she would most likely never see her beloved cranes again.  There would be no more afternoons by the lake in northern Maine, sitting on the porch with her husband.  And yet, I remember too her joy at the single afternoon she spent with him while he dozed by her side, the way the rainbows shimmered over and over the bedspread for hours as the sun went slowly down.  Being in that moment was all that mattered to her.  She was not happy to be leaving, but she was not trembling in fear either.  Perhaps she had already finished thrashing through her ocean waves.

The Dalai Lama once said: "In turbulent times, the best protection is peace of mind.”  When we learn what our painful emotions have to teach, we are graced with the gifts of peace, courage, and gratitude for life itself.  We grow in compassion for ourselves and others.  And compassion is the strongest force for good, the best antidote to fear, and the power we most need in this wounded age.

There is a vitality in us, the spark of a bonfire, actually — that cannot be extinguished by any fear.  Something in us, an urge toward wholeness, a passion for evolving, makes us go on, start over, not give up, not give in.  That withered torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. 

Next time you visit the ocean, I invite you stand on the shore and watch the waves.  You don’t have to dive into this ocean to know its power, to taste the saltiness of teeming life itself, to feel the deep peace of the sleeping whales beneath the surface.  To be present to all that we fear is to gaze into the unknown, and honor the uncertainty alive within.  The withered torn place your fear has opened up inside you is a tender place.  An honest place.  A place of beauty.  A place of truth. 

The deep peace of the ocean awaits us all.