A Reflection from The Rev. David Hoster
Please note that this was written before some of the significant events of this week. For that reason alone, they are not mentioned here.
Dear People of St. James’,
There’s plenty to fear these days. Covid, with its egregious symptoms and lonely death, is greatly to be feared. We can readily fear the deterioration of competence in our government, loss of employment, hyper-partisan politics, greed in the conduct of business, endangerment of democracy and the rule of law, mob mentality at demonstrations, loss of personal liberty in pandemic isolation.
As I say, there’s plenty in our world to fear these days.
Fear, however, is bad for us. As Frank Herbert writes in Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” Fear is the threat reaching right inside of us to seize control with rage or retreat, fight or flight. Fear energizes our apprehension of the very thing we’re afraid of. Fear summons up the least lovely forces in our hearts to counter the thing that frightens. Fear turns us into the very same hostile, alien thing that wants to do us harm.
I read a valuable piece this week about a native tribe in the southern cone of South America called the Mapuche. Though this tribe has a centuries old warrior tradition (they fought off the Incas and the Spanish Conquistadors), they are a culture that doesn’t do fear. For centuries they have trained their children to neutralize things that frighten. In place of fear, the Mapuche inculcate respect. If something frightening threatens to trigger a fight or flight response, Mapuche children learn to look calmly at the actual dimensions of the threat, respect it for what it is, and respond accordingly.
Respect doesn’t mean agreement. If the threat is a racist attack on a Mapuche as an American native, he or she responds with appreciation of the power of the attack, acknowledgement of the depth of darkness in the soul of the attacker, yet still respecting the humanity of the attacker. The idea is to respect the power of the threat and the soul of the attacker and engage the person rather than the misguided views.
Such respect for others is grounded in self-respect. Danger tries to tell me I am weak, maybe even that I am nothing. Insults tell me that I don’t matter. The danger is that my insecurities may give credibility to just such an attack. The danger is, therefore, within, not really from the outside. Thus, a practice of deliberate consciousness of self-respect is necessary to do the opposite. The Mapuche wisdom is that acting as a self worth preserving is far better than setting loose the fragile, threatened, fearful self within me that so readily turns to rage or retreat. It takes deliberate spiritual discipline to achieve such self-respect.
Ultimately, the Mapuche ground their rejection of fear in the “interconnectedness of all beings.” Even people who attack us, in other words, are part of us. That is, perhaps, a statement that reaches beyond even respect. Jesus, of course, goes that far when he tells us we must actually love our enemies. That’s absolutely true, but love for enemies may be more than many of us can manage. Maybe, for now, respect is good enough. If we live a life respectful of self and others, maybe, someday, we can actually learn to love our neighbors as ourselves. Working hard to temper fear, anger, indignation and self-righteousness can build strong spiritual muscles fit for much greater tasks.
The Rev. David Hoster
