This is the seventh in our
Fall Series
FOLLOW THROUGH
living out
The Sermon On The Mount
******
Given the givens just now,
many of which we'd be
more than happy
to give a heave
but simply cannot,
our sequence here
this week is altered.
Those givens have a lot of us
worried sick, tied up in
restraining knots of worry.
So this week we skip ahead to
Matthew 6:25 -34 and focus on
worry and finding a freeing forth.
******
Written
November 9, 2020
Dear All of Us,
Here in Washington, DC this morning
it is beautiful, clear, colorful - autumn ideal.
Here in Washington, DC this morning
it is frightful, conflicted, dangerous -
dreadfully far from ideal.
The atmosphere is choked
with a pandemic resurgence,
economic jeopardy, culture war,
a presidential transition that is
neither presidential nor transitional,
but is constitutionally threatening,
concerns that the reactions and rhetoric
may result in riot.
Here in Washington, DC
it is Monday morning,
time to start this week's piece on
"spirituality for the street"
and to do so
"frankly speaking."
Is it even worth a try?
So much is flashing at us so fast.
Will all this need to be
revised and rewritten
before posting Thursday morning?
Well, you know what?
I'm not going to worry about it!
Way better, I'm going
to write about being
WORRY FREED
It's critical to note that
there's a vast difference
between being freed from
debilitating worry
and fearlessly facing
the strain of responsible
concern and action.
The two are interlaced.
We darn well better be
concerned and responsive
to the societal issues before us.
We darn well better work
to be freed from worry
that renders us personally, psychically,
socially, spiritually disabled.
The emphasis here today
is on the latter.
Let's see what we can see about
not being worried soul sick
and find ways to be
WORRY FREED
in a most stressful
and worrisome time.
As noted,
the turmoil of the times
sure is tripping up
all sorts of us
in all sorts of
negative ways.
Right at the top of
that pile of peril is
WORRY.
It robs many of
a healthy spiritual freedom,
imprisoning's them,
limiting then,
restraining them
in the grip of fearful worry.
They are anything but
WORRY FREED
So let's face and feel both
the perniciousness of fear and
the power of freedom in Christ.
"It was for freedom
that Christ set us free;
therefore keep standing firm
and do not be subject again
to a yoke of slavery"
Galatians 5:1
Our spiritual freedom and growth
start to set in when we find out
that the facts of life are
way more than about sex.
The real facts of life are that
life is lovely
and
life can be lousy.
We "be" in,
we go and grow
through both.
We don't want to miss the one
worrying about the other.
We deal with both as they come,
not as they might come.
To see this we do well to look at
the lovely and the lousy
as they both played out
for growth and greatness
in the lived experience of
Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus,
Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Martin Luther King, C.S. Lewis
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jung,
my mother and probably yours.
In large part life is like a card game.
We only win if we make the best of
the hand we are dealt.
In life, as in cards,
it all comes down to
how we react.
So we don't play it safe
because that isn't safe.
Rather we savor to growth
through all the love in life -
having a baby,
getting lost in a Monet,
hiking The Appalachian Trail,
good wine with good friends,
reading Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton,
a SoulYes to being mystically
enwrapped in GodLove,
going to a Springsteen concert,
a Dicken's novel,
culinary euphoria dining at
Suzanne McCarthy's table...
We also man up/woman up to
all the "lousies" in life
rather than sitting in the corner,
thump in mouth,
stilled to stupor by worry -
a possible birth defect,
a love that may fall through,
a potential financial bust,
pandemic peril,
career frustrations,
health concerns,
our country coming undone
at the seams...
We live spiritually real and well
when we do so
in a spirit that embraces
with vigor and gusto the lovely,
and damn well refuses
to be wasted by worry
about the lousy
before it shows up.
As the lovely and the lousy
show up we go at each with
matching vigor and gusto.
Worry is a fake out.
It gets us stalled, even stopped,
by fear of what might happen,
but hasn't happened.
It steals positive life energies
and is thus life denying.
It gets us preoccupied
with what is not actual,
what is not here,
paralyzed by possibilities.
In the meantime we sit out,
miss out, on vigorous living,
on deepening and expanding of soul.
Worry is a sucker game of the devil.
Hey, if you're too sophisticated
for the term devil, try
"counter creative vacuum."
Impressed??
When we cave to worry,
we miss the lovely,
lose the verve to wrestle
with the lousy when it does show up.
Yes, we will hurt in life.
But literally for God's sake,
why hurt early and more
than has to be by worrying about it
beforehand?
Worry is diabolical because it derails
the enterprise of growing through
the "lovelies" and the "lousies" of life.
It saps soul.
It wastes, it limits living.
It misdirects attention and energies
from good to good for nothing.
Tell it to go to hell,
right there with the devil,
aka "counter creative vacuum."
The older I get the bolder I get.
To wit, here's more than
is usually shared in a public forum.
I'm eighty, have significant prostate problems,
nasty arthritis neck to hips that is always
uncomfortable and regularly painful,
and an aortic aneurysm.
I refuse to waste time, attention and energy
on what any or all of that
might/may mean some day.
So I take my prostate meds
and don't worry about a maybe metastasis.
I keep on keeping on with a daily walk,
even as there's more and more shuffle to it
and less distance covered lately,
rather than worry about a day when
wheels will be necessary.
I put my whole heart into the glories of life
before me right now rather than worry about
an aortic blow out and a fast transition to Next.
I'm here, not in the nowhere of worry.
Please note the double negative.
We know what that means, right?
Here's an uncomfortable but
hard to miss analogy.
Let's not fall for the disfigurement
of being a Worry Wart.
A face full of warts would keep
a lot of folks indoors
and missing much of life.
Being a Worry Wart disfigures
our soul and how we face life.
It locks us in and living out.
Remember the wisdom that says:
"A coward dies a thousand deaths.
The brave person dies once."
Don't die off from full force living
by worrying a lot about something that
is not in the right now,
may never be so,
and if it is someday we take the hit once,
not a thousand unnecessary and
life stealing times.
I've taken a bunch of words to say this poorly.
In just a few wonderful words
Jesus says it so well:
"Give your entire attention
to what God is doing right now,
and don't get worked up about
what may or may not happen tomorrow.
God will help you deal with
whatever hard things come
when the time comes."
Matthew 6:34
WORRY FREED
sure is!!
John Frank
******
This week we have again been blessed
with another large contingent of visitors
from Portugal. A hearty welcome to you
and all our other first time visitors.
******
"frankly speaking"
spirituality for the street
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******
Here's to our strength and stamina
in a tough and terrible time,
living the "lovelies" and the "lousies,"
WORRY FREED
**************************
