Still with the fear
What would you do if you weren’t so afraid? This challenge came from a sermon more than a year ago. Today it was echoed in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” What would you write if you weren’t so afraid? These questions don’t have quick glib answers, but most certainly, I’d do and write differently if I weren’t so afraid. I dreamt the other night an echo of the photo of me on the refrigerator, a photo which illustrates my life. I spend way too much time trying to work past fear! Not good.
Tara came by this afternoon to pick up Quentin after school. I enjoyed talking with her for a few minutes. She’s finished her second unit of three units of study this semester and the testing on it. I think she was planning to take the boys to see the movie “Where the Wild Things Are.” Anyway, we had a few seconds to talk about plans for Christmas, Trinidad and birth of the Blueberry. She says she’s coming to New York with me when the Berry shows up. Guess I’d better get those tickets bought pretty soon. No school for her tomorrow morning, and she’ll be out looking for some MD locally who is willing to have her shadow them for a day or two. Ugh. Asking would make me crazy. I can’t even figure out who to ask to play bridge with me next Thursday as my partner has other plans.
After Quentin left, I realized it was a beautiful fall afternoon, so I grabbed my camera and went over to the boat launch near my house and took a few photos. That activity raises my spirits to a wonderful degree. Live artfully!
Linda bit on my postmodernism bait. So I googled it, found the long wikipedia article, and at the end, a quote which gets at the nub of the thing.
Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”
That my friend is to eat heartily of Eve’s apple. Not just eating of the tree of knowlege of good and evil, but deciding that you are God, and can create your own truth. That is a path that leads surely into the abyss. We can seek truth, or we can pretend we own it and make it up as we go.
Proverbs 10:9 The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.
I’m about to the end of the NYC photos. Then I’ll catch up rapidly to the present as I’ve not been out taking pictures much lately. This shot of an icon is required. I got more photos of her from other angles. I was pretty pleased NOT to be able to get tickets to climb all those stairs to the crown. I’d have done it. But I’d have died in the effort too! The ferry through the NY harbor was really nice.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:14 am
But what are we so afraid of? Failure? What do we lose if we fail? Obviously, if one is talking the stock market quite a bit of change. But, what I think you’re talking about is the fear of expression of self. Would your world disappear if you put yourself out there and someone didn’t like it? At our age, we’ve found where to get the strokes when the world hurts, so I think we should take the dare and just do it. Fear is the mind eater and if we’re going to end up mindless at some point, let it be for a good reason. Write to please yourself. Write for your grandkids. Write the story with all the warts, they can be taken out before you show anyone if you don’t like them in there, but write because you are not your whole self if you’re not writing. Don’t think about publication or writer’s club or anyone except yourself and write it down! You won’t get grounded for saying awful things about people, I promise. Postmodernism is making up our own truth? Weird definition. So much of what we have is based on principles we learned as “fact” when young, as many of our ancestors did. I’ve often wondered if those facts and theories of old were proven, and how, or were they just very good ideas that became truth.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Oh, gees, D’Loye, have you stirred up a storm in me. Here I have been thinking I have just been procrastinating on a quilting project when your little piece today points out that I am not lazy, not procrastinating but actually fearful. I never thought I was particularly fearful but here I am anyway. I so do not want to mess up this quilt top that I cannot seem to bring myself to even start. So now I have to ask myself, “Self, what constitutes messing up?” However much I may feel that what I have done is poor anybody who does not quilt or even just sew will think it is wonderful. So today I atually start. Thanks for the insight.
November 6th, 2009 at 1:08 am
afraid, fear, we as human always had fears.The only way you or we can combat fear is through faith.believe in yoursef.I read a book many years ago “death don’t be afraid” it was about living and challenges .about finding yourself and living up to it.
I spoke to some artist before the show and they always came with this sentence ” I am afraid”..of course they were afraid.but the fear was more emotional from the artist point of view,either his (her) art was ” to be accepted or rejected by the public or the art critique” or to be succesful.
As long we have faith in what we do…what ever come next it doesn’t matter.