From the Call to Gather: The novelist Doris Betts writes that faith is "not synonymous with certainty...[but] is the decision to keep your eyes open."[1]

Children's Story: Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop, told by the authors.[2]

Reading: "A Contribution to Statistics" by Wislawa Szymborska

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better
--fifty-two,

doubting every step
--nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn't take too long
--as high as forty-nine,

always good
because they can't be otherwise
--four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
--eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
--sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
--forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
--seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
--twenty-something tops,

harmless singly,
savage in crowds
--half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
--better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
--just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
--thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark
--eighty-three

sooner or later,
righteous
--thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
--three,

worthy of compassion
--ninety-nine,

mortal
--a hundred out of a hundred.

Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.[3]

Keep the lights burning, Abbie.[4] Even though you're afraid; even though you're not sure whether your father is okay or whether your mother is okay or whether you'll be okay; even though you aren't sure you can handle the burden you now have, keep the lights burning, Abbie. Keep 'em burning!

The Roops' book speaks to me. I can remember being in situations very much like Abbie's: sandwiched in between fear and what I know I must do in spite of the fear. There was the time I was on a small bus, headed up to Jaffna, the northernmost city in Sri Lanka. Just before boarding the bus, I had said good-bye to the professor leading my study program. I had scrawled on an old boat ticket a few names of people I might be able to contact in Jaffna. Now, as the bus bounced along, I was truly on my own. That was the point: the final three weeks of our study program called for each student to go out on his or her own and conduct an independent study. I had decided I wanted to study rites of passage among the minority Hindu population. There was really only one logical place to conduct this study: Jaffna, the central city in Sri Lanka's Hindu homeland.

I looked at my watch and realized that the five hours it would take my bus to get to Jaffna would put me there after dark. I had no idea where I would stay. I didn't know the language in Jaffna, so finding a place could be tricky. And I soon began to realize just why it wasn't safe for our whole group of students to go to the northern part of Sri Lanka: the Sri Lankan army occupied the area. It was a war zone. Only four months earlier, rebels ambushed and killed thirteen government soldiers. With that ambush and the massive retaliation that followed, the Sri Lankan civil war began--a war that sixteen years later really isn't yet over. Most--maybe all--of the hotels in the area had closed because of the war. Where would I stay?

Out the bus window I started seeing truckload after truckload of heavily armed soldiers. There were checkpoints. Curious about a white person actually traveling in the area, the soldiers all stared at me. And pointed their guns at me as they stared. Am I supposed to smile and wave? I wondered. I'd never had a bunch of guns pointed at me. Is it really smart being an American in a war zone? Why am I doing this? Why did my professor let me do this? I soon found myself in the grip of fear--the kind of fear you feel deep down inside. Other fears started clamoring for attention. Where I am going to stay tonight? How am I going to find the people whose names I had written on the old boat ticket? What am I going to do for three weeks? How am I going to pull off my independent study? Can I get off this bus and turn around? Can I go home now?

Fear comes in so many forms. What I felt on that Sri Lankan bus was mostly what I would call external fear. I felt myself entering an area in which I perceived myself to be in physical danger. This kind of external fear can serve us well: keeping us from swimming out into an undertow or crossing a busy street without looking. It also can keep us from adventures we should undertake. Mixed into my external fear on that bus was fear of the unknown. I was entering an unknown area with extremely vague plans. The three weeks ahead of me were a blank slate. And then I leavened the mixture of external fear and fear of the unknown with a good amount of imagination. Like a child lying awake scared in the dark, my imagination started racing at breakneck speed. I pictured my bus following closely behind a truck of soldiers that is suddenly ambushed by rebels. I pictured becoming a hostage of the rebels, a bag over my head. I pictured myself sleeping on the street for three weeks. The unknown in particular beckons imagination to stoke our fear.

As powerful as my fear became on that bus, that isn't necessarily the most challenging kind of fear. The hardest fear may be internal fear. You know: the kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night and keeps you from falling back asleep. The kind that starts you questioning who you are at the core and what you're doing with your life. The kind that causes a pit in your stomach that just won't seem to go away. I've had plenty of that kind of fear, too. Born an over-achiever with an innate attraction to perfectionism, my most common internal fear is fear of failure. Failure at work, failure at home, general failure as a human being: that's the specter that most often visits me unbidden in the middle of the night. At its most potent, internal fear has the potential to get us more stuck than falling into quicksand. Stuck in a job that isn't good for us, stuck in a role that isn't good for us, stuck in a relationship that isn't good for us; stuck in patterns of behavior that are destructive to us and others over and over and over. Powerful internal fear can be paralyzing. It can come to define us; it can become the central truth in our lives, guiding our every action and every decision.

Fear is as much a part of the human condition today as it's ever been. Our scientific know-how and incredible strides in creating more predictable, comfortable and safe lives haven't gotten rid of our fear. Banish fear here, it pops up somewhere else. The nuclear war drills that terrified many students forty years ago are today replaced by intruder drills. Try as we might to create a safe world, we're not going to get rid of fear. There will always be danger, and danger begets fear. The future for us as individuals and as a species will always at its heart be unknown. There will always be uncertainty. And even if we somehow could make the world perfectly safe and predictable, internal fear would still flourish within each of us. Fear is as basic to human life as hunger and the desire to belong and be loved. Looking at our cousins that comprise the other species of animals, we can see that fear is instinctual. It's part of being an animal. And, as I discovered on that Sri Lankan bus, our human capacity for imagination only sharpens our fear. With that capacity, fear may actually be more potent in us than in any other species.

Like Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, I believe fear itself lies at the root of so many individual and societal problems--just as much today as in 1932 or 1832 or 32. What do we do with our fear? That's one of the basic questions in life. Every religion tries to address the problem. As the Hindu sage Krishnamurti points out, none has solved the problem of fear: "not the gurus, nor the saviours; nor ideals."[5]

So what do we do about fear? For starters, I don't think we can ultimately run away from our fear. Like alcoholism, no matter how hard we try to deny it, it won't just go away. The harder we try to run away, the more it seems to show up, staring us right in the face. At the same time, though, I don't think we can do a John Wayne and simply defeat our fear, either. We cannot through our sheer guts and determination will it out of our lives. We can't escape fear; we can't deny fear; we can't conquer fear.
Rather, the trick is to live with our fear. No religion and no savior are ever going to solve fear. But we can learn to live with fear. Living with our fear begins by looking at it with our eyes wide open. A truly spiritual life always begins by looking at life as it really is. Spiritual paths that do otherwise are frauds. Looked at honestly, there is lots to be afraid of in life: death, suffering, loss, grief, the inevitability and uncertainty of change--these are just a few of the biggies.

I have talked before about the spiritual practice of welcoming. To be complete and whole, we must welcome everything in life: the good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the happy feelings and the fear. I don't mean we need to feel glad about the bad things in life. No, welcoming means to open ourselves to things like pain and loss and fear--things that along with the abundant good are inevitably part of life. Things we can't ultimately escape no matter how desperately we'd like to. The trick is when we bump into our fear, to kind of say "Hi. It's you again."[6] We can do that when our imagination arrives to leaven our fear, too: "Oh, and you've arrived, too, Imagination. I know you and what you can do with my fears." This is what the Buddhists call paying attention.
So step one is being attentive to our fears. What do we do next? I can summarize in two words what we need to do next: faith and hope. We need to cultivate faith and hope in our life. These qualities are what ultimately enable us to live with fear and not get stuck in it. These are what enable us to define ourselves by more than just our fear--even when the fears on the inside and outside come at us fast and furiously.

Faith? Faith in what? How many of you good Unitarian Universalists already jumped in your minds to this question? It's a tough question for many of us. We're uncomfortable with the word faith. For many, it's a word we left behind, thrown out with a childhood religion we have long ago rejected. But I think that to live with--and not be paralyzed by fear--we have to have faith. And we have to have hope. Hope can only take hold when it is grounded in faith.

Faith in what? Faith in something larger than ourselves. Faith in something that helps us know in our bones that somehow, in some way we maybe can't even imagine, fear will not have the last word. Alone, we're too small.

Faith in what? God is a possibility. But not the only one. For me, I might answer this question with the word creation. My faith ultimately is in creation: in the unbelievable, mysterious miracle of life on this obscure planet revolving in an average solar system on the Milky Way's edge. Creation is another word for the interdependent web of all life. "Creation," writes Wayne Muller, "creates life at every revolution; it is incapable of doing otherwise."[7]

When I first read that line by Muller, the great fire that destroyed so much of Yellowstone National Park eleven years ago came to mind. I remember visiting Yellowstone four years after the fire. I was shocked and depressed by the almost total devastation in so much of the park. What a surprise, then, when I returned after another four years. Many of the charred remains of trees had begun to fall. And where many had once stood so majestically, new pines had sprung up. In many other places, meadows full of the most stunning wildflowers I have ever seen had taken over. In the blink of an eye almost, incredible and rich beauty came to life right out of the devastation. When I'm afraid, I think of Yellowstone Park and the unexpected creation that can come in the wake of devastation. Though bad things happen, creation creates life anew every time. It is incapable of doing otherwise. I have a deep faith that this miracle is the very nature of life. This faith is the soil in which my sense of hope is grounded. Faith and hope don't remove my uncertainty or my ignorance about what will happen, but they help me know I will get through it.

There is another form of faith that helps me when I am afraid: my faith that God is with me--even in the times of devastation and pain and loss. God is with me in the only ways I know God: in the guise of other people and the beauty of nature, and within my own heart. When I am afraid, I know I'm not alone. This helps me find the courage to be able to live with fear.

I don't know if the authors intended it--Connie and Peter, you can tell me later--but I think the lights Abbie kept burning are a good symbol for faith and the hope faith gives birth to. When you are afraid, keep the lights of faith and hope burning. In times of darkness and cold, keep the lights burning. Maybe that's the true lesson of Advent and Christmas: in the darkest, coldest time of the year, we keep the lights burning. Even when our worst fears come true--as some of them surely will on occasion--the lights of faith and hope will remind us that we need not be destroyed. Faith and hope will have the final word--if we let them.

In addition to faith and hope, there's one other quality that helps us live with fear: courage. Courage is not letting your fear paralyze you. Courage is doing what you know you must do in spite of your fear. Courage is not always playing it safe. Courage is Abbie keeping those lights lit all through the night. This isn't the flashy kind of courage you win medals for; it's a quieter courage. It's the courage that helped nudge me off that Sri Lankan bus once it arrived in Jaffna.

I have a Hall of Courage that helps bolster my courage when it wanes. Its members include not famous heroes but people I have known in everyday life who showed remarkable courage. People like Fellowship member Judy Pope, who lived with terminal cancer so much longer than anyone expected because she had unfinished business she wanted to complete. People like Harriet Tippett, who just as courageously decided after a short fight with cancer that it wasn't worth the fight. People like my Aunt Marion, who kept on going after she buried two husbands and helped nurse a son recovering from a terrible accident that left him a quadriplegic, all in less than a decade. People like my father, who quit the lucrative family business to become a part-time Jr. High choir director. These are the profiles in courage that keep me going.

There's another children's story that teaches a lot about faith, hope and courage. Written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr, it's called Owl Moon.[8]
 

Late one wintry night--way past my bedtime--Pa and I went out owling. There was no wind. The trees stood still. The moon was so bright it lit up the whole sky and the snow. In the distance a train whistle blew, long and low. A few dogs barked in response. And then it was silent. The only thing we could hear was our feet crunching on the snow.

We walked towards the woods, Pa and I. Sometimes I had to run to keep up with Pa. But I never called out. If you go owling, you have to be quiet. That's what Pa always said. I had waited a long time to go owling.

We reached the edge of the woods. Pa cupped his hands around his mouth and called, "Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whoooooo"--the call of the great horned owl. We waited in the silence. No sound came back. Pa shrugged his shoulders. I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't disappointed: my brothers said that sometimes there's an owl, and sometimes there isn't.

We walked into the woods. The cold started to feel like icicles down my back. But I never complained. When you go owling, you have to make your own heat. And then we walked into a dark part of the words where the shadows seemed to stain the white snow. I was scared. What's behind those trees at this time of the night, I began to wonder. But I kept walking. When you go owling, you have to be brave.

We came to a clearing and Pa again called, "Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whoooooo" We waited in the silence. Just as we were about to move on, way in the distance we heard an owl calling back: "Whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whoooooo." Pa almost smiled. I almost smiled, too.

Pa kept calling, and the owl kept calling back, getting closer and closer. All of a sudden, we saw a silent owl shadow up in the trees. Then the shadow came right to a branch just above us. Pa turned on his flashlight and shined it right on the owl. We stared at each other--for a minute, three minutes, maybe a hundred minutes. Then, the owl's wings started to move and it lifted off the branch, flying off into the darkness. Pa turned off the flashlight. "Time to go home," he said.

As we walked home, I could have talked. But I didn't want to. When you go owling, you don't need words; you don't need warm; you don't need anything but hope. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under an owl moon.

Copyright 1999 by Roger B. Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

[1]Quoted in Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 169.
[2]Peter and Connie Roop, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie (Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 1985).
[3]Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected 1957-1997 (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1998), pp, 263-264.
[4]This is a reference to the children's story Keep the Lights Burning, Abby written and shared by Connie and Peter Roop.
[5]J. Krishnamurti, On Fear (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 2.
[6]I borrowed the style of speaking to one's fear from Jane Redmont in How I Pray, edited by Jim Castelli (New York: Ballantine, 1994), p. 124.
[7]Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest (New York: Bantam, 1999), p. 45.
[8]Jane Yolen, Owl Moon (New York: Scholastic, 1987). What follows is a summary I shared of the story without notes. After the sermon, Fellowship members Cheri Bricco and Paul Reiser sang "Owl Moon" by Bruce O'Brien. This song is recorded on Tom Pease's compact disc "Daddy Starts to Dance!" (Madison: Tomorrow River Music, 1996). Other helpful resources for this sermon included two issues of Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life--Vol. XII(3), May/Jun 1997 and vol. XIV(2), March/April 1999.