DREAD
by Forrest Church
October 19, 2003
Her eyes told me everything. Within the minute it took for her to enter my study, sit down on the couch and arrange the notes she had scribbled to herself on little scraps of paper, the fear her eyes conveyed spoke volumes. I could easily imagine how she procrastinated for days before making the appointment, then almost called to cancel at the last minute and wished that she had. The first thing she confessed to, even before greeting me, was embarrassment. As people in real trouble often do, she apologized for wasting my "precious time on something so trivial." Beyond these telling words, her body language too revealed deep feelings of inadequacy. And also apprehension, perhaps that I might judge her as severely as she judged herself, or let her down somehow. And yet, by the end of that long, fear-packed minute, I began to sense something else–how relieved she was at last to be unburdening herself of a weight she could no longer carry.
I am not a therapist. Rather than listen and work patiently over a protracted period, I tend to meet with people only once or twice, as I did with this young woman. Time being of the essence, we get right down to business. She had come seeking practical advice, and so I tried to offer nuggets of wisdom that she could take home and put right to the test. Because, as it did for her, fear lies at the center of so many of our troubles, much of the advice I offer is aimed at stimulating courage: the courage to act; the courage to love; and, the courage to be.
Judging from my counseling sessions over the past two years, fear’s grip is tightening. It extends across all ranks: children and retirees; couples and individuals; the unemployed and professionals at the peak of their careers and earning potential, flush with health and blessed with wonderful families. Surely 9/11 is responsible for fear’s heightened presence, but other factors are at work as well. An unpredictable economy affects our sense of future security, as does rapid cultural and geo-political change. Fear thrives on uncertainty. With knowledge multiplying faster than wisdom, we live in uncertain times. And fear is contagious–we catch it from each other. Even if we didn’t, it would spring up on its own. To fear is human: it comes with the territory. So, if you find yourself unsettled by your fears, don’t feel alone.
I said that to the fearful young woman sitting across from me—"Don’t feel alone." I also told her she would be all right. If she comes to believe this, she almost surely will be all right. (Her fears had to do with two things: the impending death of her father and–the immediate cause of her finally coming in– an unresolved personal relationship. She was dealing with more prospective loss than she could bear. We spent most of our time together talking about the relationship. I had no idea whether it could be made right, only that she could, as long as she framed her thoughts and directed her actions in a courageous, positive way.) But fear is a persuasive advocate. It does everything possible to turn each of us into the Little Engine that Couldn’t.
This is the fourth of five sermons I shall be preaching on the subject of fear this fall, completing the series with a discussion of fear and public policy a week from next Sunday. I divide fear into five types: fright, worry, guilt, insecurity and dread. This morning I shall be speaking on dread. I may have chosen the wrong morning for this particular fear, or the wrong city. Given that baseball tops the news right now, dread is a topic that might find a more receptive audience in Boston, say, or perhaps Chicago. Despite last night’s speed bump, as often is the case where the Yankees are involved, the sin of pride is more rampant in our midst right now than the curse of dread.
True dread, however, is no laughing matter. Dread is an acute form of anxiety. The two are related in much the same way that the tenor and bass clefs are related in music: anxiety tends to be high-pitched and nervous; dread is somber. When anxiety intensifies into what is popularly known as "anxiety disorder," it can lead to a complete meltdown, like a tiger chasing its tail around a tree until it turns into a pool of butter. Dread draws us down toward the abyss.
Anxiety is the catch-all fear. When life feels out of control, all the little things that flash across our minds seem more ominous than they likely are. Often the best way to cope with anxiety is to move from the big picture to the little picture. Break anxiety down into its constituent parts, and we can get a handle on it, one fear at a time. Dread (not so much anxiety writ large as anxiety writ dark) is more difficult. It takes our entire future—which really does lie beyond our control–and casts a pall over it.
Dread is the epitome of negative thinking. It paints such a bleak picture that any attempt to shine light on the subject seems vain. When everyday anxiety–which we all experience–takes a fatalistic turn, we project our mish-mash of worries, guilt, and insecurity onto the screen of an endless tomorrow.
The specific mental illness most often associated with dread is depression. When we enter the dark world of depression, our defenses become our trap. We cut ourselves off from things that might actually save us. Whatever its trigger, depression takes on a life of its own, in many cases biologically rooted and therefore susceptible to the right medication or otherwise treatable through psychotherapy. Taken more broadly—as a metaphor for dread—it represents the triumph of hopelessness over anything we might do to reduce such feelings. By isolating us, dread cuts us off from the sources that might allay it.
We feel dread when a loved one dies and we decide that we will never experience joy again. We feel it when we have failed in some profound and painful way. The collapse of an important relationship or doing poorly at work can trigger dread (as can failing to achieve a relationship or find work). When anxious, we are at loose ends; with dread we feel discarded. It bleeds the color out of our existence.
In its most familiar form, dread combines the fear of death with a fear of life. Aware of life’s fragility, yet with a diminished appreciation for its preciousness, we look for stability and predictability where neither can be found. Every risk we might take to splash some color into our lives strikes us either as imprudent or so hopeless that we might as well not take the chance. We say to ourselves, "nothing ventured, nothing lost." By such logic, dread invites death to take up permanent residence in our soul. Conscious that any action we might take hangs suspended under the threat of loss or abandonment, we protect ourselves by muting our dreams and curbing our affections. We can’t be abandoned if there is no one to abandon us, so we avoid commitments. We can’t lose face if we don’t show our face, so we hide in the wings. What’s the point in going back to pick up the credits we need to receive our college degree? Why even bother starting that novel we’ve always wanted to write? Why should anything matter more than anything else? No matter what we do, we will die anyway. So we quit life before being fired.
Many of you know David Kelly. David heads the psychological services group through which we run all our referrals for extended psychotherapy. When you wish or need therapy or couples counseling–if you find yourself in trouble at home or at work or suffer from depression, anxiety attacks, or any other acute or debilitating condition–should you reach out to us for help, the ministers here will often direct you to David. He then matches you with a professional. Many psychological conditions have an underlying biological basis, so the right kind of therapy can be a life-saver. We can’t pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps when they are broken.
I recently asked David how he happened to choose his profession. He told me that as a boy he had been terrified by death, and, accordingly, by life. In my discussion with David, I recognized again how closely related these two fears are. David told me that as a result of therapy he finally made peace with who he was. Years ago, after a particularly revelatory and healing counseling session, he walked out of the therapist’s office suddenly free of the weight that so long had burdened his existence. Somehow he broke dread’s logic–that life’s limits are unacceptable. Accepting, even embracing, those limits, he was now free to accept himself and especially his fate. The enormous relief he felt, together with his gratitude for it, led him to a career helping others find liberation from their own crippling fears.
To one degree or another almost all therapy or pastoral counseling addresses the subject of fear, for one form of fear or another lies near the heart of almost every psychological problem. Insecurity tells us that we are inadequate; guilt, that we are flawed; worry, that bad things could happen to us; dread, that we have no control over our existence or our fate.
And dread is right. In a way we don’t. If dread is the fear of uncertainty or of the unknown, it is the fear of two things that, in this life at least, we will never escape. So many things in life lie outside our control. To answer dread requires therefore a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. It also requires courage, in this instance the courage to be.
We all possess courage, more than we may imagine. Motherhood, for instance, produces millions of heroes every day. So do marriage and living alone, friendship, work, illness, loss and the many other conditions in which we find ourselves. Yet, like the woman who walked through her fear into my study, when frightened we feel anything but courageous. We forget that courage shines only in fear’s shadow. Piercing that shadow, the courage to be answers fear’s "No" with a ringing "Yes." It embraces the uncertainty that lies hidden between the present moment and our last, which looms beyond our reckoning.
We can find the courage to be in faith. And in immortal love. And in selfless acts that fill our cup as we empty it. In fact, every time we say yes to life in answer to fear’s no, we manifest the courage to be. This can be as simple as accepting an invitation to a party where we don’t know a living soul. Or as complicated as giving thanks for the life of a dying friend. Where we will not and cannot find the courage to be is in our own personal power. No rug we lay down cannot be pulled out from under us. As I’ve said to you before, the courage to be is therefore the courage to let be. It is the courage to let go–for dear life– of all we cannot keep, including, finally, life itself.
We can’t argue with dread, any more than we can argue with depression. Sometimes, when our world is falling apart, to feel dread or be depressed is an appropriate response. I said that to the young woman who was mourning the impending loss of her father. What she was feeling right now–crushed by her sense of loss and fear of abandonment–was both fine and inescapable. In fact, it was one measure of her love. The more we love, the more we risk to lose and therefore stand to fear. This is necessary fear. When a loved one is fighting for his or her life, we can’t help but feel fear’s anguish. A shadow falls across our very being. "Why," we ask ourselves again and again, tormenting our minds with the one unanswerable question. "If only I could do something," we say, even as, unbeknownst only to us, we are probably doing several quite splendid, simply not lifesaving, things.
At times like these—which recur throughout the best ordered lifetime—we must fight to keep dread from draining our lives of color. This said, to eliminate its influence entirely is impossible. When suffering overwhelms hope, as it sometimes will, life’s burden feels too heavy for us to shoulder. It may in fact be too heavy to shoulder on our own. Beyond ourselves, we rely on others and our faith for strength; within ourselves, we rely on courage. To keep from being crushed by life’s weight, we must do everything we can to sustain the courage to be–the courage to be uncertain, to be vulnerable, to be sentenced to life and sentenced to death.
What we don’t need is the courage to be alone. Which is why we gather in places like this one at times like today–to hold a hand more comforting than the hand of fear. We can’t make the darkness go away, but we can see the light—of love and human kindness—in each others’ eyes. By this light, despite dread’s most persuasive argument, we can answer fear’s "No" with a saving "Yes."
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.