goodbye, bogey man

I am always surprised and dismayed when I run into fear... the kind of fear that polarizes some and sends others running to hide.

I've been lucky. I haven't had to experience enough fear in my life (other than mice) to have a deep fight or flight mechanism. I was never abused, battered, or put down enough to create any permanent scars. And although I can get caught up in worry - another senseless activity - I am very seldom afraid.

Most fear is shadow anyway. Not real when you give it a closer look. Most fear will flea when you turn and look at it squarely, will hide when you open your heart to embrace it... so I am left bamboozled when I encounter someone else's fear... when I encounter a fear that might have some basis in their life experience. A fear founded in some region I have never had to inhabit.

I have to let them voice it, right? I have to sit in silence as they wrestle their own demons, find their own truth. My job, I feel, is to remain present. To witness. I can't discount it. I can't rationalize it away. I can't in any way make them think I find their fear silly or unimportant, it is not. So I listen, and as I listen I realise I need to guard myself from taking on their fear, from sliding myself inside it. I have to listen, but I also have to see what they are saying for what it is. Fear, not truth.

Threats of assassination heard repeatedly sound like truth if that is all you hear. Confederate flags hung unrepentantly amongst Budweiser signs send clear messages to those attuned to that type of thing. Ignorance and hate is enough to scare the crap out of anyone.

This morning that fear still clung to me, and when I watched Meet The Press, I watched them closely to see if I could see any fear on their faces, any sense that they were waiting for the shoe to drop. There was no indication they expected anything but a new president in January... I began to feel better. It was a shadow, not a certainty.

Joy Harjo writes in I Give You Back

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now I don't know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of my
children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you.
I release you.
I release you.
I release you.

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved

to be loved, to be loved, fear.

O, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me, but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice,
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.

From She Had Some Horses... one of my favorite books of poetry.