Not To Worry, But How?

“I WORRIED”, BY MARY OLIVER

I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow,
will the rivers flow in the right direction,
will the earth turn as it was taught,

and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing,

even the sparrows can do it and I am,well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up.

And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Mary Oliver. Swan – Poems and Prose, 2010 Beacon Press

...Mary Oliver had such a beautiful and yet practical way of speaking to the heart of the matter...I love her simple and practical theology...She was a gifted blessing...

Having said that there is something that I must admit to. I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I am worried. I am worried about many things, the usual things. I;m worried about the world we live in and how we treat it and one another. I'm worried about the people I love.I'm worried about Poppy's creaking hind quarters, she is 10 now and I'm worried about my ability to minister to the people I serve. I'm also worried about the aging process too.

 I read an article the other day that suggested that “walking slowly is a sign of aging fast”, or so the headline read. That walking at a plodding pace at 45 may be a warning sign of dementia and early death. The study by Duke University found that people who walk at a slower pace are more likely to look older too. It suggested that tests carried out at this age and at as young as three years old could suggest who amongst us were at a higher risk of accelerated brain-aging and other diseases and that as a result treatment could be given earlier to treat such things. So a bit of good news there then.

So I’m a little worried. I’ve been a slow walker all my life. In fact I was a very late walker as a child. As my mum loves to say I could talk long before I could walk. I was born with a birth defect that caused my late development, and other physical problems too. This is why I’ve always been a plodder, I’m not someone who dashes around from one place to the next. By the way it is not only walking that I was a late developer in; I’ve been a late developer all of my life, in every sense.

Now if truth be told I’m not really worried, well not about my slow walking at least. Not that I’m dismissing the research, it’s just that I know I look after myself fairly well these days, so I’m not going to live in fear of brain degeneration due to my stiff gate. I’m also aware that you have to be careful with regard to such research. Every week we hear of one item of research or another suggesting that something or other will kill us and quickly. It seems that everything is bad for us these days, and we have worry about everything. As “Lard” sang in the “The Power of Lard”, “avoid everything, avoid everything, avoid everything.” The suggestion being that everything is bad for you.

I suspect that if anything is going to shorten our lives it is probably constant worry and anxiety. If it doesn’t shorten the length of our lives it will certainly make them miserable. It is no way to live. So I’m not going to worry about my plodding on through life.

Worry can be deeply crippling and life reducing. Now of course we should not dismiss the challenge of life and live like some kind of delusional Pollyanna, but to live in and through worry destroys any joy in life. I remember a few years ago speaking with Rev Jill McCallister who was visiting from the US. She told me how she worried about her congregants; she worried how she could help them with their crippling anxiety about life. She described them as people of privilege and yet they were still ruled by worry. I have the same concerns about the folk I serve as well as well as friends and family. I wonder how much of our energy is spent worrying about the people in our lives? Is this the best use of our limited resources? Surely it would better to put our energy into something more constructive.

I spend a lot of my time listening to people. They tell me of their worries and often end their time sharing with the classic line “Oh not to worry”, which of course is precisely what they are doing. That said I know that by sharing our worries they do somehow occupy less of our head space.

The thing about worry is that, as Mark Twain observed, most of the things that we worry about never happen. And yet as we go through our day the worry machine is there chugging away in our minds stopping us experiencing this life we have been given. How many of us worry so much about being on time that we ruin every journey we take. This is one of mine by the way, especially on the Washway Road. How many of us worry about the weather when going on holiday. How many of us spend our days worrying about how we look, what people think of us, will the world come to an end, the political situation of the day. Our children and what their lives will be like and a myriad of other possible troubles.

Now please don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting none of these are real, of course they are. Surely though wouldn’t it be better dealing with the things that trouble us as best we can rather than wasting our days worrying about every little thing.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we waste so much energy on worry? Why are we so afraid of things going wrong? Why do we believe that we can stop such things happening, that we can somehow control life? Well we can’t. Things will go wrong. And do you know what that aint always a bad thing.

Even the most gifted of us can be plagued by worry. You hear stories of great artist who are constantly beset with by it. I recently saw the film “Judy”, a biopic depicting the last years of Judy Garland’s life. It seems she suffered greatly from stage fright and was consumed by worry about so many things. There was a scene early in the film when she attends a party with her daughter Liza Minnelli who was just beginning to hit great heights in her own career. Judy asks her daughter if she suffered from fear singing in front of these great audiences. It seems she did not, much to Judy’s surprise. For Judy was utterly plagued by it.

Not that worry is wholly bad, it has its place. We have the capacity to worry for good reason. As we anticipate that something bad could happen, the discomfort of worry spurs us to avoid that unfortunate something or at least mitigate against it. No doubt it is something that has evolved in humanity to guard against danger and to prepare for troubles ahead etc. Such as storing food for winter. The problem is though that we go too far with this and become paralysed by worry.

It would seem that the key is where we focus our attention. Worry and concern can help us to do so in positive ways. Likewise, it can paralyse us too, as our attention becomes purely focused on the worry and not what we can do about it. The problem is not so much the worry and concern, but what we focus our attention on and how it leads us to act. For what we focus our attention on really matters.

Throughout the Gospel accounts Jesus is often portrayed as being concerned with what the people he is with focus their attention on. When he said “consider the lilies” he was turning their attention on the lilies, to experience them. Likewise when he said “the kingdom on heaven is at hand,” he was pinpointing the exact location of where attention ought to be in order to enter the kingdom. And when he said “fear not, judge not, love one another.” He was suggesting that the focus ought to move away from images that generate fear and judgement towards ones centered on love. This it would appear is a solution to being dominated by worry. Worry was as troubling 2,000 years ago, just as much as it is today.

The key it would seem is to focus our attention in loving ways in the moment that we find ourselves rather than being paralysed by worries of what might be.

We cannot escape the trouble of life. Life is by its nature a risking business. It does us no good to waste our days worrying about what might go wrong. Instead what we need to do is embrace the risk of life. I’m not saying to go involve ourselves in foolish risking things, no what I mean is that we need to give ourselves away to something useful, something beautiful, something life enhancing. The key is to “risk ourselves for the world…to hazard ourselves for the right thing.” As David Whyte wrote in his essay on “Longing” from his wonderful book “CONSOLATIONS:The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.”

To quote David:

“We are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world. We are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work or for a gift given against all the odds. And in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in the simple willingness to allow ourselves to be happy along the way….”

I just want to repeat the last sentence ‘in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in the simple willingness to allow ourselves to be happy along the way….’

Worry can eat away at any chance to be happy in daily living.

None of us knows what the future holds. There will be joy and there will be troubles ahead for all of us. That said we cannot waste this life worrying about what might be before it ever happens. Rather surely it is better to risk our lives to some greater love, whatever that love might be. It is love of course that leads us to a sense of wholeness and connection with all of life.

So, I am not saying to you, don’t worry. What would be the point of that? Instead what I am saying is turn your worry into concern, be inspired by it and act in this world in loving and more beautiful ways. You never know but by doing so you might just allow yourself to be happy along the way.

So don't worry, be happy...