In Such Times: Reflections on Living with Fear

By Lorraine Cavanagh and Stephen Pattison

What are the fears that govern our lives? Why do we seldom share them with others? How do they inform the way we think of the politics of the day and the life of the church? These are some of the questions addressed by Lorraine Cavanagh in this short and readable book. Her reflections take us through the kind of private fears that originate in early childhood and remain deeply embedded in the adult psyche, so that they later shape the person's thinking and often define that person's life. They also emerge as fear worked out through the need for power and control over others and how that can lead to collective dependency on the kind of leaders we most fear.
Fear is also rooted in loneliness, the loneliness of the individual and the endemic loneliness of Western society, both of which we try to evade with the help of social media and the private screen worlds we inhabit. Through imaginative imagery drawn from the Christian tradition, In Such Times speaks of the need to re-learn trust in the corporate contexts of both church and world. As its title suggests, it is a book whose time has come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Oct 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532641787

Lorraine Cavanagh

Lorraine Cavanagh is an Anglican priest in the Church in Wales, and was the Anglican chaplain to Cardiff University. She is the author of The Really Useful Meditation Book (2004) and By One Spirit: Reconciliation and Renewal in Anglican Life (2009).

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In Such Times

reflections on living with fear

Lorraine Cavanagh

Foreword by Stephen Pattison

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IN SUCH TIMES

Reflections on Living with Fear

Copyright © 2018 Lorraine Cavanagh. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4176-3

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4177-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4178-7

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Cavanagh, Lorraine, author. | Pattison, Stephen, foreword.

Title: In such times : reflections on living with fear / Lorraine Cavanagh, with a foreword by Stephen Pattison.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-4176-3 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-4177-0 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-4178-7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fear—Religious aspects—Christianity | Fear—social aspects | Fear—psychology | Spiritual Therapies

Classification: BT732.7 C343 2018 (print) | BT732.7 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. November 6, 2018

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

World on Fire, INHEAVEN, lyrics by permission of James Taylor and Chloe Little (2017)

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Original Loneliness

Chapter 2: Fear of Failure

Chapter 3: Fear and Faith

Chapter 4: Fear and the Church

Chapter 5: In the World But Not of It?

Chapter 6: Welcome to the Party—The Outsider God

Chapter 7: Fools Rush In

Chapter 8: Return to Center

Select Bibliography

For Connie, George, Emma, and Lachlan

Foreword

When Jesus’ disciples, caught in a boat in a storm in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, see him coming towards them across the water, they are more alarmed and afraid than they were already. His presence does not assuage their fear, it intensifies it!

This encapsulates the challenge that Lorraine Cavanagh sets out in this book. Addressing Jesus’ contemporary disciples, she suggests that religious living cannot be a matter of ignoring, or being insulated against fear by faith. It means facing fear directly, as Jesus himself did approaching his crucifixion. The Christian way might be seen by some of its cultured despisers as an evasion of suffering and fear, a fanciful, imaginary bulwark against the darkness. Religion can perform this kind of suspect ideological function. At its best, however, it is a springboard for living life courageously, with full creative awareness.

Sin is not a well understood concept outside, or even inside, the Christian community these days. But there are probably few who would not recognize the destructive prevalence of the web of fear that seems to surround us. Cavanagh brilliantly observes, Fear, like love, connects us to one another, although we resist the connection for most, if not all, of our lives because it is hard for anyone to own that they are afraid. Paradoxically, the commonality of this connection is to sever each from the other; we experience a fundamental loneliness, a baleful bond of mutual- and self-alienation. Defending fearful solitude, we live closed-up, diminished, uncreative lives in parallel with one other, fearing to trust and tilting at shadows. This is not merely defensive and innocent—we are not just victims of fate or other people. Adopting this stance, we deny both the glorious and tragic possibilities of life and are prone to envy, anger, and hatred. It’s easy, perhaps, to recognize and condemn this in others, to think that they should know and do better. But, Cavanagh notes, we all have an inner Donald Trump. That is why the violent, fearsome antics of the apparently powerful and successful, together with the lies and self-deception that accompany them, so fascinate us—in a ghastly kind of way.

So far, so depressing you might think. But Cavanagh’s aim is not just to help us to recognize and face up to fear, but also to help encounter and transfigure it. The healing unguent here is self-acceptance and compassion based on accepting that we are loved by the God of Jesus Christ. Only in discovering that we are, in fact, safe, that we are, in fact, securely loved, can we begin to lift our heads above the ineffectual defences that fail to keep fear at bay. Through prayer and participation in the Christian community, we can be enabled to see ourselves and others differently. We can emerge from the margins and the darkness and offer hospitality and acceptance based on trust to those fearful and fearsome others. Accepting love and acceptance is not easy, of course. It may take a lifetime, especially for those of us who are deeply wounded by neglect and abuse, as many Christians—including Cavanagh, as she bravely and generously volunteers—are.

Neither a self-help guide, nor a manual of spiritual discipline, this book yet provides an encouraging, wise, and realistic vision of a world in which compassionate vulnerability, rather than fearful enmity, becomes the common denominator and aspiration for human life.

In tone, the book reminds me of R. S. Thomas’s vision of the Christ who Comes to us in his weakness, / but with a sharp song (R. S. Thomas, Song). It emerges from its author’s own rich, sometimes painful, personal and pastoral experience, and it has a prophetic edge. Thus, Cavanagh points up the defences that Christian churches create to deflect chaos and fear; these manifest themselves in introverted tribalism, authoritarian leadership, and organizational bureaucracy. In this context, she provides a radical view of ordained ministry within the whole body of Christ as creative and critical rather than managerial and controlling.

In my lifetime, there has never been a more appropriate moment to write a book about fear. Many social and political institutions, and the assumptions underpinning them (often lazy and misplaced in the first place) appear to be crumbling around us. This book offers a perceptive Christian response and vision for the times, an effective deconstructive reading of some of the powers that bind us, both without and within. It is both heartening and thought-provoking without being guilt- or shame-inducing. It is, thus, empowering! And it contains many individual ideas and sentences that are worth pondering at length. The concept of original loneliness, for example. Or this: Truth is revealed as we seek to know the God of love from a profound sense of need, and in reverence for that need as we sense it in others.

In Our Time is a short, readable, inspiring work. It is a word in season that interprets our times in a thoughtful, clear, and moving way. In one sense it says nothing new. Christians have lived with the difficult, consoling truth that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18 RSV) since the beginnings of their faith. But this truth needs to be pondered and proclaimed anew in every generation. Lorraine Cavanagh has done a great service in doing so at this moment in history, concretizing and interrogating Jesus’ comforting, challenging words to those terrified, storm-bound disciples, Take heart, it is I. Have no fear (Mark 6:50 RSV).

Stephen Pattison

University of Birmingham, UK

Acknowledgements

This book owes much to the experience, wisdom, and creative friendship shown to me by a few exceptional people. I am especially grateful to Vincent Strudwick for his patient reading of the manuscript and for his warmth and encouragement, as well as for his judicious editorial comments. My thanks also go to Ben Colchester, Dominic Erdozain, Joe Harmston, Diane Kutar, Chloe Little, Stephen Pattison, James Taylor, Mary Travis, Murray Watts, and to my husband, Sean, for his technical support and for bearing with me as I revisit some of the pain of the past.

Introduction

I have written this book in the hope that those who read it will be helped to face into their fears. Fear comes in many guises. It insinuates itself into our lives without us being aware of it. I believe we can only begin to make sense of fear by owning it as part of who we are, as something that has been with us from the moment we took our first breath. It is also part of the far wider context in which we happen to be placed for the duration of our one lifetime, the context of a particular society or culture, of nation and of religion. So if we are really to come to terms with fear, and manage it creatively, it is important to understand how it shapes the continuing movement of history, up to and including the present moment.

The book is also concerned with the way fear plays into and colors all our relationships, both personal and collective. There is an undercurrent of fear driving international relations and this affects us personally because these relations influence the politics and economics of the day, wherever we happen to live. The fears that they generate, and that the media and instantaneous methods of communication massage, feed our own personal fears about ourselves and our relationships. So the book is written from the premise that we are bound together by fear as much as by any other commonality. Fear, like love, connects us to one another, although we resist the connection for most, if not all, of our lives because it is hard for anyone to own that they are afraid. We are connected through the stories we share, stories of grief and war and of inexplicably graced moments and outcomes. These shared stories and experiences transcend the divides of religion and nation.

In reflecting on fear from a Christian perspective I am increasingly conscious of the fact that fear is shaped by two universal and fundamental questions: Am I loved? and Am I safe? I begin with a human being’s very first experience of fear, a manifestation of what I call original loneliness. Loneliness leads into fear of failure and judgment. In chapter 3, I look at fear in the context of faith and, in chapters 4 and 5, how the fear of failure plays into the life of the church. Chapter 5 takes the discussion into how our human fears inform the way we think of God and how this in turn informs our understanding of truth in a post-truth world. Chapter 6 looks at the consequences of this fear, especially when it alienates people and nations from one another. The last two chapters look at prophecy as a universal call but one that is shaped by the extent to which prophets are drawn more deeply into the life of God, even if they do not think of themselves as people of faith.

1

Original Loneliness

As a child, I quite often got lost in shops.

I remember Woolworths on London’s King’s Road, when it still had wooden floors. The air smelled of candy and something vaguely hygienic. It was easy to become engrossed with the toys and magazines on display, or intrigued by snatches of conversations going on around you. You were caught up in the feel of it all. Then you looked around and the person you came with seemed to have vanished.

In that moment you knew, possibly for the first time, the visceral fear of being abandoned. I call this fear original loneliness. It is a profound sense of separation that we also experience at birth and possibly at the time of our death. All moments of separation and loss return us to that moment. The fear that comes with separation confuses the senses. When we are afraid and alone, we no longer see our immediate surroundings in the way we are accustomed to seeing them. We are momentarily disorientated.

For the child who is lost in a department store, nothing is where she thought it was. Where is the door she came in by? Where, in the prevailing shop buzz, can she hear or sense the voice of the one person she needs to hear? She is momentarily alone in the world.

Is There Anybody Out There?

She will often return to this moment of seeming abandonment, or be returned to it while sleeping. It might come as a disturbing dream in which she is the last person left alive on earth, except for the one other whom she both seeks and dreads meeting. Most of us have had this dream, or something like it.

In the dream, we know that we must meet this archetype, and that the encounter, for better or for worse, is the meaning and purpose of one’s life. It is a kind of destiny. It represents not only loneliness, but the fear of danger in relation to the unknown and to the stranger. For some people this may later translate into a fear of all strangers. In the dream, we do not know if the figure means good or ill. We have no idea what to expect, but we hope it will be someone we know and who is kindly disposed to us.

I grew up on the East Kent coast, so in my version of this dream I was always on a beach. Over the brow of every sand dune, I expected to meet this other, but when the encounter happened, he, or possibly she, was hooded, ancient, and of troubling appearance. Looking back on this dream, I realize that I was alone with the personification of death itself.

The meeting with the hooded figure reflects primal fear, a fear that we can neither name nor understand at the time. Not being able to understand fear, or to name it and have some measure of control over it, is what makes primal fear what it is. Fear is also part of what we are from the moment of birth. Fear is not something we can prevent or control, although we can sometimes manage it. Furthermore, it does not change. It is always the same, regardless of age or circumstances, and it always has