RESPONDING TO ANXIETY
How does it feel to be anxious?
Write three quick sentences in response to that question. Don’t overthink it. Just write.
1.
2.
3.
Now pick a situation whether personal or societal in which you recall feeling anxious (or maybe still do.)
Compare that to your three sentences above. Then write two more quick sentences about what it feels like to be anxious.
1.
2.
IN A SOCIETY OF ANXIETY
Whether you look at what is happening across the world, within this nation politically, or the most immediate response to the Corona Virus, what you are experiencing is an atmosphere of anxiety. We may respond to these situations with cynicism or despair, but rarely with hope.
W. B. Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming” describes it well. It is a time when “Things fall apart. The center does not hold . . .. The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity.”
Or, to put it in less elegant terms, people have lost all faith in the normal structures of our society which, in the past, we counted on to hold us together as a society. To use one sad example, if you say, “You can take that to the bank,” does it generate a response of trust or do you just laugh cynically as you recall several recent scandals in some of our familiar financial institutions.
HOW ANXIOUS PEOPLE RESPOND
Brene Brown suggests when people are anxious, they respond in three ways to leadership in our society.
- They reject complexity and want clear and simple answers to their questions. Just tell me what I should do or not do to solve my problems. “Why can’t medical doctors just put their heads together and come up with an antidote to this virus?”
- They expect institutions and organizations to be perfect. If government officials, churches, board chairs of our financial institutions, schools, etc. fail to act perfectly, it is because they are seeking their own benefit and not because there are no easy answers. “If politicians weren’t so self-centered, they would just work together to find solutions to our nation’s problems.”
- They are only interested in answers that benefit them and are not interested in the larger picture of how others may be affected. “You can believe in global warming if you want, but your solutions better not mess with my economic well-being.”
NOT BEING AN ANXIOUS PRESENCE
The question is what can we do to ease people’s anxiety and provide them the confidence to act in ways that can help rebuild trust and hope for the future. I like the quote in Matthew 6:34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Maybe one way to provide some spiritual leadership is to focus on what we can do today that will ease peoples’ anxieties. That is what I want to explore in some future blogs. If you have some suggestions that might help, please let me know.
Risk participating in advocating for healthy clergy and healthy congregations.
Get a free book in the process.
Steve McCutchan www.smccutchan.com
