I have been told that when something is coming up for you repeatedly, you should stop to listen because that is really God/dess speaking to you. This past weekend, a conversation about the emotion of fear was being delivered to me through what seemed like very disconnected sources.

First, I picked up a mythology anthology that I have on my coffee table and started reading the story of Psyche and Eros. Until recently, this had never been one of my favorite myths, but it has quickly grown on me. Psyche (which also means Soul) lost her connection with love (Eros) because of the fear her sisters instilled in her because of their own jealousy. Psyche then learns that there was nothing to be afraid of, but it was already too late. Fear is the opposite of Love. The two cannot coexist. When we reside with Fear, we can be bumped off of our course and then, like Psyche, we must work toward reconnecting with Love.

The evening after I re-read the myth of Psyche and Eros, I attended a production of Neale Donald Walsch’s play, Onebody, which is based off of his Conversations with God books. Again, I was reminded about the power that Fear can have over our lives, if we allow it. In his books, Walsch explains that our actions are coming from one of two places: Love or Fear. All other emotions are degrees of these two. So, the question is “what is fear?” According to Walsch, fear is “the thought that we are not going to be able to have something that we think we need.” Onebody reminded me that we don’t need anything; the universe is abundant and there will always be more than enough of everything. When we come into this world as a baby, we know that we will be taken care of. We will have love, acceptance, food, everything that we think that we need. As we grow up, we begin to think that we have to struggle for these things and we become fearful. We believe that we have to compete with others to have these things. We don’t speak our minds or reach out to others because we are afraid that we will be rejected. When we find someone who loves us, we live in fear that we will lose them.

What this play helped me remember was that 1) everyone is experiencing fear; I am not the only one, 2) there will always be enough of everything, 3) we do not need anything. We are so afraid of not having the things that we think we want that either we don’t try to have them at all or they end up being a burden to us because we are working so hard to keep them. Once we let go of fear, we can allow ourselves to experience the joy that was always there.

The following day, I went to the movies to see Dark Knight. I am probably one of the last people to see it, but I did finally go. I think my favorite scene from the movie comes toward the end when the Joker has two sets of people trapped on boats. One boat is filled with prisoners, the other ordinary people and families. Giving each of them the detonator to the bomb on the other’s boat, the Joker tells them that they have the power to decide which group will live and which will die. A particularly large prisoner asks the captain for the detonator and says that he is going to do what they should have done ten minutes ago. Everyone believes that he is going to set it off, but instead, he tosses it out into the ocean.

I believe that the Joker personifies fear. Like fear, he is dark and scary, but he has a hint of humor (albeit demented). He seems powerful and that he has a plan, but in the end he is only an illusion. As he says, he is a dog chasing a car. He doesn’t know what he will do with it once he gets it, but he knows that he wants it. The man on the boat is able to see through the fear and chooses to act in love. In the end, the very thing that they are afraid of (that the boats will explode and they will all die) doesn’t happen.

Fear is only an illusion. It only has the power that you give to it.

Another set of links to help you live a better Christian life.

 

• OneBody – a free social networking platform for you church. Maybe this could be your new directory instead of the paper one. Saves some trees.
• Life is 2 good – a great blog full of relationship advice. Contains both easy points and long articles helping us to be a good mate.
• Blogs4god – a neat resource portal for Christian blogs.
• Life with Christ – another large blog portal for Christian blogs. Very friendly community found there.
• The Daily Saint – productivity tips with a spiritual twist.

Starting around mid- to late-2006, I started a little project for my church. The idea was to rewrite our existing online membership directory to make it more searchable and to take a stab at creating something somewhat social, where people can easily communicate with each other and also see their interests and such. Plus, I was dying to build something significant with Ruby on Rails, my new favorite web framework.

As the application got closer to completion, I started showing friends and family my creation and getting feedback. The application grew. And grew. At the time, I was heavy into using Facebook to meet up with old friends and new, and started to see the value in connecting people online in ways that just don’t happen offline. And the application grew. And grew.

The application went online the very first day of 2007, and it was a hit. The tech-savvy people in our church got it right away. While others took awhile.

For the past year, the site has been humming along, and we’ve made several big changes as we got feedback, complaints, etc. We worked with people, classes, and small groups in our church to teach them how to use the site and got more feedback.

I’m very proud of the product we have today, and I think it’s time to give it to the community. This week, I have worked to get OneBody out on the web and ready for use by other churches.

I’m praying for a strong, friendly community to grow around OneBody so it becomes the absolute best of its kind. Though I have to say, I still haven’t found anything quite like it, especially not free!