Terry Hershey

The little things. Random thoughts on a morning in October.

“All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears—of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words 'some assembly required'.”
Dave Berry

“Do not be afraid.”
Jesus

“Fear casts a large shadow, but he himself is small.”

“Love can cost a lot, but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”
Merle Shain

The air is crisp. One of those autumn mornings when the air itself is best mainlined, like a shot of adrenalin. Any languor from the summer heat (if you call what we have in Seattle heat) has migrated south. I am at the Village Green, our Island's Saturday market. A sizeable crowd is milling, talking, lolling, selling, buying, everyone energized, enthused, glad to be here, on this day, this morning. . .many like me with no where to go, and nothing in particular to do. If we had a to-do list, we left it at home. Or the dog ate it. For now, it is enough to sit, to absorb.

There is a band playing. A gathering of local Island musicians. Drums, guitar, synthesizer and saxophone. They are playing “Secret Agent Man.” I'm not making this up. 'Tis true that here, on this Island, we are happily frozen in another decade. If you squint and look out at the crowd, you will see it all in tie-dye. These are not easy stories to tell, because people pat you on the head, smile, and recommend medication.

I'm sitting on a picnic table bench, and my mind is doing it's typical free form meander, and I think of one of Richard Rohr's great insights. “Don't push the river.” Which is another way of saying,

“Don't get ahead of your soul. The goal isn't to get somewhere. The goal isn't about forcing something to happen. The goal is to be in harmony with the gifts that are already given. The goal is to fall into your life.”

This makes perfect sense sitting on a picnic bench, but the insight gets sullied with a dose of guilt about not practicing what I know to be true, or I certainly wish I had more will-power to practice that, or compared to others don't I feel inadequate, and other variations on the question of where I should be at this time in my life, and for heaven's sake, why am I not there. All of this, the virulent and bitter stew in the mind, concocting some mid-life potpourri.

I decide to give up that bout for lack of any other great insight, and my mind wanders to a newspaper article I had read this morning, a report following Katrina and the “exaggerated” fears. The chief of police had stated publically, “Tourists are being robbed and raped. In the Superdome gangs are killing and raping women and children.” It turns out that these statements were not true. Perceptions, yes. But in the end, toxic, and fueled by fear. The article went on to say that the fear provoked, literally changed behavior. “The fear changed strike deployment, it delayed medical evacuations, it drove police officers to quit and it grounded helicopters.”

That's what fear does. It rearranges our world.

Fear is not an unfamiliar emotion to a boy raised in a fundamentalist church. I've knelt at many altar rails, committing myself to missionary service or rededicating myself to a life without lust (which means, as a teenager, frequent trips to the rail). There is nothing wrong with either commitment, but in my case, they were not in response to a gracious invitation, but always in mortal fear of what the almighty God would do to me.

In my book I talk about the way in which we treat God no differently than an alcoholic father. We walk on eggshells, eager for a smile, but expecting the ax to fall. Here is the difference between living from love and living from fear. If I live in fear--or by fear or from fear--then I short circuit my ability to invest or commit to life. To this life. I become protective and insular. Fear sets the agenda and determines my course.

In fear. . .
I do not act, I react.
I do not risk, I hedge my bets.
I do not love, I clutch.
I do not take ownership, I blame.

And, to make matters worse, in fear, we create enemies where there are none. There's a great story from some time around the Civil War. A physician in the South argued that slaves were suffering from two forms of mental illness. He named them: Drapetomania and dysathesia aethiopica. What are the symptoms of these mental illnesses?

Are you ready for this? Apparently these slaves suffered from an uncontrollable urge to escape, being disobedient and refusing to work.

So that's it. If it rattles our preconceptions, we fear it, label it, and dismiss it. We don't understand it, we fear it. If we fear it, we call it a sickness.

I read once that Love is what we're born with, fear is what we learn here.

So, what do we do with all of this?

I remember the story of the Native American Elder asked about his life.

“Inside of me,” he said, “there are two dogs. One is aggressive, pushy, mean, fueled by fear. The other is quiet and serene, a dog of peace. The dogs are always fighting. Well, actually, that one dog is always trying to kill that second dog.”

“Which dog wins?” he was asked.

“The one I feed the most.”

It's too easy to create another “pay as you go” system for guilt. Use pure will power to defeat fear. Just say no. But I think that the Elder had it right. So. Which one do we feed?

Which worries or fears in my life are taking up more time than they are worth?

In what ways do I move or act from fear?

What are the symptoms of a life fueled by fear?

Which relationships nourish me?

Which relationships do not nourish me? Which are fueled by fear?

The divided life (a life torn between love and fear) is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb our pain with an anesthetic of choice, be it substance abuse, overwork, consumerism, or mindless media noise.

And in the end, in the words of Stephen Levine, “We bury the very things that might set us free.”

So, now I'm back to Rohr's quote, “Don't push the river.” If it's true that we are born in love, let us rest in that.

Or, in the words of Dag Hammarskjold,

Thou
Whom I do not know
But Whose I am.

How do we rest in love, or in Grace?

How do we fall back into the outstretched arms of Grace?

A woman did just that, in a story from the Gospel of Luke. A young woman crashes a party. She was not invited. And, you could tell by what she was wearing that she did not do “church work.” The black lace gave her away. She carried a jar of perfume. She knelt before Jesus and washed his feet with the perfume, drying his feet with her hair. For a woman to let down her hair in first century Israel was an extravagant risk-taking gesture. It was considered immoral. Across the table a religious leader caught the significance. “Jesus, if you were really a prophet, you'd know who this woman is. She's a prostitute, single, from a dysfunctional family, and no doubt Methodist.”
And that's what fear does. It labels. It dismisses.

But Jesus replied, “You don't understand. A prophet sees more than the way things are. He sees the way they become. And this woman will be remembered through all of history for her act of kindness.”

Jesus reenforced her identity based on love.

And the result? Nelson Mandela says it this way, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Love can cost a lot, but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.

I heard a radio ad for some time-saving technology. It promised to “eliminate the mundane.” Which brings me back to this picnic bench on a Saturday in October. The ad had it backward. If only they were selling something that allowed us to see the mundane more clearly. To see it's inexhaustible beauty.

The band is still playing, a song I recognize, but cannot name. Two small children dance (well, bounce or hop or jump with the beat) unrestrained. A grandfather mirrors his young granddaughters's steps, their delight resplendent. Contagious. These children still see relationships built on trust, not fear. And I see it clearly: She dances because she is not afraid.

She dances because she is not afraid.

Do you have any stories of fear or courage to share?

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Words to Live By

An Interview with Terry Hershey

TERRY HERSHEY: FULLY HUMAN, FULLY ALIVE!
By Louise Krikorian

When he talks, Terry Hershey speaks about living fully human and fully alive, spirituality, and relationships. He has served as a Protestant minister and has written over 25 books from his island home near Seattle, Washington, which he says is, “Just this side of Heaven”.

He led our “Give It a Rest” mission during Lent and visited St. John's in July. On a rainy Saturday morning Terry Hershey sat peacefully in a rocking chair in St. John's nursery discussing slowing down after speaking at a meeting in the Lowry Room and working the day before for about ten hours. He also mentioned listening to the voice of grace, goose bumps, and how none of us are on this journey alone.

LK: What is your ministry?

TH: Albert Schweitzer [French Protestant clergyman, philosopher, physician, and musician] said that the soul suffers if we live superficially. Early on in my life as a young clergy person I was pursuing success in all the ways the world would measure it in terms of how much I produced and what I produced. And in the end I climbed the career ladder, I finally made it to the top, and then I realized I was leaning against the wrong building. And that then became a personal change in my life that it wasn't about stuff. I like the way Abram Heschel, who's a Jewish Rabbi, said the purpose of spiritual living is not to amass information or even spiritual experiences, but to face sacred moments. And for me it's not about stuff, it's about what happens inside. I believe that success is living an authentic life. We are enamored by celebrities and that's how we define success. But I have found that the people who move me the most are people who are comfortable in their own skin. They are fully human and fully alive. I also believe that is the profound truth in being Christian, the permission to be fully human and fully alive.

LK: What are the things that allow us to be fully human and fully alive?

TH: There are only a few things in life that really matter and those few things that really matter, matter immeasurably. One of the things I want us to do is to travel lighter. You know we have so much information. I was in the bookstore the other day and there were 900 book titles on how to simplify your life. And my favorite was 99 Ways to Simplify Your Life (laughs) because apparently one way is not enough and that's just indicative of everything about our culture. What I want people to do is just to slow down for a minute.
Slow down and travel lighter. We have the ability to experience slowness, stillness, and grace.

LK: How can we do that?

TH: The first part is just stop. Literally, just stop. Let's just empty all this stuff. We have to give ourselves permission to do that. Pascal [French scientist and philosopher] said by means of a diversion we can avoid our own company 24 hours a day. And so what we've done, even in the church in the name of spiritual advice, is given more diversions. Stopping is so against the grain, but I believe that in stopping, and all change begins with grace, I believe in the premise in that who owns us makes us important, and only when we stop can we hear that voice of grace. That voice is a still small voice and it doesn't compete with the noise of the world or the culture and so you have to stop to hear it. And when you hear that, then you can ask what does it mean to travel lighter. My new book is called The Sacred Necessities of Life: Gifts for Living with Passion, Purpose, and Grace. People ask me, “What I can do,” and I ask them were you amazed at anything today? Did anything give you goose bumps today? See, because if nothing gave you goose bumps today there's nothing I can tell you to make your life any better, because the ability to have goose bumps means you're alive, you notice things, you pay attention, you're present and that's where life begins.

I have a good friend who went out into his garden to have a half an hour of prayer and he saw a lily and the lily just stopped him in his tracks. He was so overwhelmed by the fragrance of the lily that he was just oblivious to life for 20 minutes. And then he said he remembered he came out to pray and he felt so guilty, but then he realized that the 20 minutes with the lily was his prayer. That's what I invite people to do. A lot of us have those moments, but we miss them because we're waiting for someone to give us advice.

Some people say, “Wait, but what do I do?” And I say it's not what you do; it's what you don't do. Okay if you want something to do, go pay attention to something. Notice something you didn't notice before. Stop. Sit still. In Joshua Tree National Park they have an instruction sheet:
Find an oasis.
Sit still for 10 minutes.
What did you notice?
What did you see?
What did you notice that surprised you?

That's my action plan because there's grace, there's the gift of life and how that relates to your relationships and your work. That's another subject and people get impatient and they want to move immediately to that, but if you notice the grace and the wonderment it will take care of the other, believe it or not.

LK: Is there anything else that you wanted to cover?

TH: The other thing that is vitally important to me is that none of us are on this journey alone. None of us can be self-sufficient. It's very important that we understand that we are on this journey together, that it's a community issue, and that relationships really provide the glue that allow us to walk this journey.

To learn more about Terry Hershey and to listen to his soothing music, visit his website at www.terryhershey.com. You can read about his latest book entitled The Sacred Necessities of Life. “There are only a few things that really matter. And those few things that do matter, matter immeasurably. Which means that the good life is not about success. It is about embracing and cherishing the life we have been given.”

SACRED SPACE—Sanctuary—MOMENT

“My sanctuary is wherever I feel the need for some personal time with God. Whether it be in my car, a room in my house, at work, or some place quiet in His great outdoors. When I'm talking to or just listening to Him, that spot becomes my sacred space. Thanks from John in Manteca CA.”

From a review of the book The Tender Bar: A Memoir,
“This is not a book about alcoholism or even alcohol. It's about the need for company, for community, for the warmth of fellow believers. “Everyone has a holy place,” Moehringer writes, “where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel closer to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship.” For better or worse, Moehringer's holy place was a little gin mill in Manhasset with a liberal buyback policy and a negotiable closing time. The sacred and the profane, it seems, can coexist quite affably in the human heart, regardless of the zoning laws.”

New Book

Sacred Necessities

Sacred Necessities:
Gifts for Living with Passion, Purpose, and Grace

It is a form of soul food. What is it that makes life worth living? What makes the everyday ordinary world extraordinary . . . even sacred? If we want to be truly alive, there are just a few things we really need, a few sacred necessities:

Amazement, Sanctuary, Grace, Stillness, Simplicity, Resilience, Friendship

We can't buy them. We can't make them in an instant. But if we are willing to accept rather than grasp at them, they are already there for us - serendipitous gifts waiting to be experienced. And then, practiced.

Sacred Necessities: Gifts for living with Passion, Purpose and Grace is a tonic for the heart, a restorative for our emotional well-being, and feast for our soul. MORE

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