Deeper Reality

Winston Churchill once said, "Courage is not the absence of fear but the disregard of it." It reminds me of this brief teaching by Parker Palmer in his book "Let Your Life Speak". Fact is, it's so easy in times of hardship to allow fear to loom ever large and become all pervasive. Tempting in those times to live out of fear, and believe the lie that it is our only option. But what if fear is normal, but that we don't need to live out of that place? What if there are deeper truths available to us, available but sometimes need to be discovered and embraced. What if there is a better way to live.

As my wife and I, and our three kids have adopted, we are tempted to fear. And give it way more "air-time" than we need to. 

A friend gave me this brief teaching by Parker Palmer which encouraged me, so I thought I'd share it.

“”Be not afraid” does not mean we cannot have fear and worry. Everyone has fear, and people who embrace the call to leadership often find fear abounding. Instead, the words say we do not need to be the fear we have. We do not have to lead or live from a place of fear, thereby engendering a world in which fear is multiplied.”

He goes on to say, “We have places of fear inside us, but we have other places as well – places with names like trust and hope and faith and joy. We can choose to lead and to live from one of those places, to stand on ground that is not riddled with the fault lines of fear. To move towards others from a place of promise instead of anxiety. As we stand in one of those places, fear may remain close at hand and our spirits may still tremble. But we now stand on ground that that will support us, ground from which we can lead others toward a more trustworthy, more hopeful, more faithful way of being in the world.”