First Parish Unitarian Universalist“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”
Megan Lynes, Ministerial Intern
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
January 22, 2006
At “Soup’s On” on Friday a bunch of us started talking about Fairy Tales. Fear is a main ingredient in every single story. Snow White nearly dies after biting a poisoned apple. Hansel and Gretel barely escape being cooked in a witch’s oven. Even the poor Ugly Duckling fears being cast from the flock just for being different. I remember as a kid I was particularly upset by the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
- A mother sends her little girl off all alone into the woods where she gets lost.
- A scary trickster wolf pretends to be nice but then ends up eating the girl’s grandmother.
- The fake wolf grandmother bares her pointy teeth snarling “All the better to eat you with, my dear!”
- Some random man in the forest with an axe hears the girl screaming and saves her.
- The grandmother somehow gets cut out of the wolf’s belly with the axe.
- All is set back to normal with only the promise that the world is a bad place out there and little girls should be more careful in the future.
Surely this isn’t the message that parents hope to instill in their children. In fact, this moral was so unpalatable to the Friday Soup crowd that a new one was declared: Young girls should always carry an axe! Great, a whole country of four foot high axe wielding children! But maybe that’s just my fear talking.
Needless to say, the rather passive and unfortunate Little Red Riding Hood represents how many of us feel about fear in our lives. Fear lurks around the bend, waiting to leap out and bare sharp grizzly teeth. We don’t choose to be afraid, we don’t like to be afraid. It makes us feel harried and grizzly ourselves. Yesterday at my parents’ apartment I managed to surprise the cat when I entered a room too quietly for his liking. In a split second he went from a curled peaceful ball to an eighties hairdo, Mohawk and all. His sudden hiss made my own hair rise. Fear is disconcerting. Fear is scary! And yet, fear itself is not a bad thing.
The author and psychotherapist, Thom Rutledge,[1] writes: "Fear is essentially a positive mechanism, an ingenious natural design to keep us safe. And there are plenty of opportunities for that 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."
Rutledge uses the acronym F.E.A.R. to spell out a four-step process for coping with and transforming our relationship with fear. Face, Explore, Accept, Respond. The F stands for Facing the fear. Figure out where your Big Bad Wolf lurks. What are you most afraid of in your life? The E is for Exploring the fear. What has caused you to be this afraid? Is your fear a rational fear? A is for Accepting the fear, which involves listening to what it is telling you. Some fear is helpful, it reminds us to get enough sleep before driving long distances. It reminds us to treasure time with the people we love the most.
Some fear is not helpful. Swimming is simpler if you’re not afraid of drowning. The R stands for Responding to the fear. Here, we are challenged to make conscious, healthy choices about how to deal with our fear. I don’t want to drown, I think I’ll take a swimming lesson some time soon.
Face, Explore, Accept, Respond.
Carl Jung once said "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious," Of course, he wryly added, "This procedure… is disagreeable, and therefore not very popular."
We live in a culture that encourages us to get over, get past, control, manage, and medicate feelings. We’re taught to escape rather than pay attention to fear, and there is a common tendency to turn away from displeasing emotions. We’ve perfected the art of a quick fix. Yet emotions are part of the sacred intuitive mind. They are an essential part of the body’s wisdom, a language that precedes concepts and words. Most of us rarely experience our negative emotions fully and with awareness.
I believe, when we know how to listen to them, the most frightening emotions can be our greatest spiritual teachers. When we choose to face the wolves in our lives, we enter into a dialogue with our truest selves. It’s good to insist on confrontation. Any alternative would be to settle for a smaller life.
This week I spent some time asking different people what they are most afraid of in their lives. With her permission, I’m sharing with you what someone wrote in response to my query. “I’ve given a lot of thought to your question about what I’m most frightened of and have come to realize that my ideas have changed (over the years.) Twenty years ago I used to have a recurring dream about my funeral. I was invisible sitting on the altar of the church where I grew up. My casket floated by itself down the aisle toward the altar. Music played and there was no one there. There was no priest, no family, and no friends, just me. It was very sad. I felt the meaning of the dream was that my life hadn’t meant anything to anyone and I had not made a difference to the world. I guess my fear was dying before I had lived my life as the true me. My best friend died from cancer at 41. She was very angry and could not accept that her life was over. When she did die, her last word was “No”. She told me that she had worked so her husband could go to school and then get his masters. She worked while her son was young and planned to do what she loved when he graduated from high school. She said she felt cheated because there hadn’t been time for her. She was very artistic and a wonderful photographer and had wanted to pursue these interests. She taught me that we always think we have time but there are no guarantees. Because of her, I think of each day as the last day of my life and try to let the people I love know that I love them and do the things that are important to me. I’ve also acquired a personal passion for life and try to show up and be present for whatever comes my way.”
The word "yes" comes to mind. Yes is born of trust and heals fear. “Yes” acknowledges that whatever happens to us is part of our human story and useful on our path. This parishioner has chosen a life path that leads herself and others towards joy.
In the reading, Living Without Fear, Christopher Reeve talked about fearlessness in the face of his own physical deterioration. He’s been a beacon of hope for many people who live with a consciousness of their own mortality on a daily basis. This past summer, working as a chaplain in a hospital, I had the chance to meet people who were, like Reeve, fighting fear with courage and embracing life despite the odds.
Gloria, 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 stripey 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. Gloria, 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 the summer, I spent many afternoons visiting with Gloria, listening to her talk about the cranes that nest near 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 Gloria’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 eyebrows were raised and a rainbow danced over her forehead, like the idea that had just passed through her mind.
As the summer went on Gloria grew weaker, but her spirit grew stronger. Often as I’d pass her room in the hall I’d see someone emerging from her room looking relaxed and happy, an unusual sight on the cancer floor. People flocked to her. Once I came in and to my surprise found Gloria’s eighty year old husband asleep in the chair next to her bed. He’d driven fourteen hours straight from northern Maine to see her. Gloria’s grin was bigger than I’d ever seen it. She was stroking his arm gently. “We’ve had all afternoon together. I’m thriving every single day.”
A week or so later as she struggled to get a straw towards her mouth, she asked me “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 inadequate answer. The irony of this question was making me squirm. At last her straw made it to her lips. “Yes.” Gloria 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 off 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.[2]
How does a body look when riddled by fear? I picture a crumpled prisoner in a cold cell. I picture a child frozen in horror watching the family dog race into the oncoming traffic. I wondered how Gloria kept going - pain and deterioration her ever familiar company. “Keep walking…but don’t move the way fear makes you move,” the poem read. And I looked at Gloria 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.”
Fear is an emotional alarm system that alerts us to act in the interest of life and survival. It asks us to accept our human frailty, and it teaches us humility. When we move beyond our fear of fear, we become more comfortable with vulnerability and thereby expand our capacity for joy.
As an alternative to Face, Explore, Accept, Respond, I’ve heard a meditation master talk about Attending, Befriending, and Surrendering to the emotional flow of fear. I think of Gloria in her stark white room, slowly coming to realize that she would most likely never see her beloved cranes again. 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 danced 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 cowering in fear either.
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 are lost in your deepest fear, take a look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may be painful to stay there and it may be painful to surrender, but it is not the kind of hurt that leaves you alone in the forest.
In the face of fear, staying in the moment is a liberating spiritual practice. “Here I am fear. Take a good look at me. I have my axe. I passed my swimming test. I’ve shown up to greet you and I’m not backing down.”
Face, Explore, Accept, Respond. Attend, Befriend, Surrender.
Facing what you fear most will ask of you to keep walking though there’s no place to get to, to dance with light in a stark white room, to say yes to life and expand your capacity for joy. You can do it. Be very alive.
Amen.
1 Thom Rutledge, Embracing Fear and Finding the Courage to Live Your Life [Back to text]
2 Rumi quoted in Unseen Rain, Quatrains of Rumi translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks [Back to text]