Fear: It's Just Information

Rev. Marilyn Sprague joined us from Portland on Sunday, taking us further into August's theme, The Fear and the Furious, with her talk In the Presence of Fear: Letting Love Lead.

Our message song set the tone: Fear Is a Liar. Just because fear is loud and attention-getting doesn't mean it's right. And when it shows up, Rev. Marilyn invited us to get curious.

Our fears get activated for different reasons, but it’s often because we see or experience something troubling: a headline, a difficult phone call, a diagnosis, a financial concern, changes unfolding in the world. And, fear is a trickster. We may not recognize a feeling as fear. It might show up as irritation, defensiveness, blame, withdrawal, suspicion, or a need to control.

Another important data point: Fear doesn't stay contained to one person. It moves through our conversations and into the consciousness we share.

Rev. Marilyn offered three ways we can meet fear differently: as a messenger, as something we can choose to respond to differently, and as an invitation to let love

lead.

Fear Is a Messenger

Fear isn't the final authority. But it does offer information.

When we feel fear, something wants our attention. Maybe something we value feels threatened, or we're feeling vulnerable. Maybe an old wound got nicked, or a long-held belief no longer makes sense. It might be a longing for safety, belonging, stability, or understanding.

In a group, fear may indicate a change to something we value, or we're afraid of losing something important.

So, rather than resisting or constricting around fear, Rev. Marilyn invited us to stay with it and ask: What wants to be revealed? What does it want me to notice?

She mentioned Science of Mind founder Ernest Holmes, who said that fear and faith are the same attitude, just with a different focus. Fear looks at what could go wrong and makes up stories. Faith asks us to trust in divine order, in the love and support already present.

What wants to be revealed?

That doesn't mean ignoring real danger or using positive thinking to talk ourselves out of something hard or scary. Some situations require discernment, courage, boundaries, or inspired action.

This is where spiritual awareness becomes important. It invites us to pause.

Rev. Marilyn talked about slack water – a slack tide, when the tide is neither coming in nor going out. Nature has a pause, she said, and we can do this, too. In the midst of fear, we can pause long enough to ask a good question and see what comes up.

(Note to self: Practice the pause...)

When we treat fear that way, it can guide us rather than stop us.

Fear vs Courage

Fear doesn't stay contained to one person. One anxious conversation over coffee can quickly become a conversation about how the world is falling apart and how awful everything is. Rev. Marilyn described the feeling of leaving that conversation as if you'd been drenched in radioactive chemicals and needed a shower to wash off.

What we bring into a room matters. That's not to say don't show up if you're scared. Just recognize what you're feeling. And maybe ask for help (or sit with a practitioner).

Because fear isn't the only feeling that's contagious. Courage, compassion, and steadfastness are contagious, too.

Rev. Marilyn illustrated this with a story from her ministerial training. At a retreat with hundreds of students, a woman from Ohio was asked to deliver the benediction. She was terrified of speaking in front of a large group, but she was trying a new practice to overcome that fear: opening her heart and mind and trusting that her throat would open so she could speak her truth.

When the dean asked her to deliver the benediction, her response was essentially: I don't know if I can do this. But I say yes.

And she did it.

And by how Rev. Marilyn described it, she not only did it, but knocked it out of that proverbial park. Everyone was moved.

Later, when Rev. Marilyn and a colleague found her outside, they learned just how frightened she'd been. The fear hadn't disappeared; she just showed up and delivered in the face of it.

As a cat person, I love this next part. Around the same time she said yes, she and her husband adopted an abandoned kitten they named Blessing. The kitten made a habit of sitting on her chest and kneading at her throat. Their conclusion: the universe delivered a real-life throat massager.

Courage doesn't require the absence of fear.

Let Love Lead

Love, Rev. Marilyn reminded us, isn't sentiment. It's a quality of consciousness and a harmonizing power.

That doesn't mean we never experience conflict or that difficult people are magically easier to be around, or that everything suddenly harmonizes. It means we can choose love and let it be the harmonizing influence for how we react to fear.

Ernest Holmes puts it another way: there is one life expressing through many lives. One spirit expressing through extraordinary diversity.

• Fear can cause us to forget that connection. Love remembers.

• Fear can cause us to forget our shared humanity. Love remembers.

• Fear can cause us to forget that beneath all our differences there is still one life. Love remembers.

And that gives us a choice about our consciousness. During a brief meditation, Rev. Marilyn invited us to choose one quality of consciousness we wanted to bring into the shared space: steadiness, compassion, curiosity, courage, an openness to wisdom. Then she asked us to feel that quality in our bodies and affirm: I am choosing the presence I bring.

Nothing had to change for us to make that choice. Circumstances could remain uncertain, and conflict may still be present. But the consciousness we choose to embody becomes part of the consciousness we share.

That's the power available to each of us.

Fear may speak. It may be loud. It may demand our attention. But it isn't the final authority.

We can pause. We can get curious about what it wants us to notice. We can choose courage even when fear is still present. And we can remember what fear wants us to forget: our connection, our shared humanity, and the one life moving through all of us.

We can choose to let love lead.

With gratitude,

Laura