I have experienced a few other worries over the last few weeks, around Molly, family and friends, all those who I love and care about. This week I have had much to hold in my heart and many people to be concerned about, it is my job afterall. It has also been the funeral of my cousin Cheryl and I have been back and forth to Yorkshire on a couple of occasions. There are other family troubles too. It has been a week of carrying so much, a heavy week and a deeply emotional one, hearbreaking at times. Cheryl’s funeral went as well as such things can, but word it was painful.
Now please do not get me wrong none of this worry had paralysed me. I have been very productive, despite what I have been carrying in my heart. I have also had the joy of Molly and one or two pleasures in my life. I have often stepped out into the world and sung. Unlike Mary Oliver singing is not something I worry about. Here is a bit of Mary on worry.
“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
We all have our worries in life. I am sure that some of you share Mary Oliver’s or perhaps some of your own. Many are deeply concerned about how they might cope through this winter. I know a lot of people are deeply worried, that financially, they will be unable to get by. Many have health worries whether physical, emotional, mental and or spiritual. Many worry that if they become ill, that they will be unable to get the help they need. Such worry can only impact negatively on people’s well-being.
There is no doubt to me that anxiety and depression is on the increase. Things have not returned to “normal” since Covid, if anything people seem to be struggling more now. It is also worth noting that we had these very same problems long before the Pandemic.
Worrying and getting caught up anxiety will not solve any of these problems, in fact it can only make them worse. That said just telling folk not to worry doesn’t help either. All it does is eat away at their well-being further. If we could just stop worrying, I am sure that we all would. Besides it is not feeling worried that is the real problem, it is becoming paralysed by it.
Being paralysed by worry does none of us any good, it 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 you folk 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. I had a long conversation with my brother the other morning, as I was working on Cheryl’s eulogy, he was seeking help with his deep worries. They are not trivial. In sharing with me he gained some strength to continue doing what he can and not become paralysed by fear. While we were speaking Molly was sat on my lap, almost sensing I needed support. She stayed there all the time I wrote Cheryl’s eulogy. It was a bit of a challenge as for most of it her head was resting on one of my hands and thus I had to type one handed. She kept me going though.
Sometimes the most crippling aspect of worry is worrying about what might be, the worst possible scenario, as I did when exploring Google after Molly was sick.
The thing about worry is that, as Mark Twain observed, is that most of the things that we worry about never happen, Molly was fine afterall. 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. We are no different to Mary Oliver in our worries. The problem is not worry of course, it is what we do with our worries.
Now please don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting any of these worries 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.
Not that worry is wholly bad either, 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 risk taking, 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. Surely it is better to risk our lives to some greater love, whatever that love might be. It’s love of course that leads us to a sense of wholeness and connection with all of life.
So, I am not saying to you this morning, 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.
I will end today with a favourite poem by favourite farmer poet Wendell |Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” which offers a solution to being consumed and paralysed by fear. It came to me as I walked around King George V pond the other morning after I had finished writing our Cheryl’s eulogy and before I returned to write this sermon. As I wandered around the pond with Molly safely in her papoose, and as I observed the ducks, the geese and swans,I took in the peace of wild things having turned my worry into useful concern. Yes I shed tears, but I also connected to the life all around and as I rested in the grace of the world and I felt free.
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Below is a video devotion based
on the material in this "blogspot2
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