Anxiety and spiritual resilience
If there was a period in our lives where the accumulation of earthly calamities seemed to mount on top of each other, it was the last two years. For the first time in our lives, we humans, perhaps the most social creatures in the animal kingdom, have lived like hermits as the pressures of a pandemic, the deadly toll on human life, and the daily barrage of bad news made our lives unstable. The Covid-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by the epidemic of gun violence, the epidemic of homelessness, massive unemployment, and the overwhelming of our health care system. Even more, the effects of climate change have become more evident in weather disasters, floods, and draughts.
And on top of that, we, who took for granted our democratic process for generations, woke up on January 6th to an attempted coup on our revered institutions and to the realization that our democracy is as fragile as many of those failed states which we studied in history books.
The last year, as we became used to Zoom, Facetime, Webex, Google Meet, Amazon Web Services and Blue Jeans by Verizon, we realized that our lives as we knew it were drastically changed. Rites of passage we considered of a sacred nature were conducted by video. Death and dying became a video experience as families said goodbye to their loved ones via Zoom. Our Fellowship service, our town meetings, our volunteer groups, all went into hibernation. The vincles to civilization and to each other that helped us to enrich our lives, were suddenly and summarily shut down.
Anxiety became a major issue over the last year and it will be with us for some time. Anxiety not only due to the removal of several layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But deep-seated anxiety over our own beings, our own lives, our own mortality. Anxiety over our own epistemology.
Many of you know me as a cheerful and positive person. Yes, and I also know myself as someone who can control anxiety through my own biofeedback and replace worry with positivity and action. Yet I had my times in this pandemic. Going to bed thinking of whether I, or my spouse, or any close relative, would be dead in a few days, victim of an airborne virus with a high degree of transmission and which would result in a horrible death plugged to a ventilator, alone and frightened. For many other people it’s way worse. The feelings of fear and frustration manifest themselves through eating disorders, cardiac problems, substance abuse, worsening of health conditions, difficulty in making decisions, isolation, and most unfortunately, a breakdown of our patterns of interaction with other people, in some cases becoming violent or self-destructive.
Against this background, the anxiety posed by these challenges can wound our inner beings and create a spiritual crisis where we can find ourselves in a personal and spiritual vacuum from which it is hard to exit.
But what is that spiritual existence? Is there a definition? A rule? Does spiritual mean reading a purported sacred book on a daily basis? Going to a service or religious ritual? Being nice to someone? Are we talking semantics? And what is resilience? Is spiritual resilience a real concept? Are we talking a subjective reality?
In the context of human beings, we can define spirituality as a journey that each one of us takes to discover and realize the essence of ourselves and our role in crafting and achieving our highest aspirations. It is where we place ourselves in the overall order of the universe.
Spirituality is a motivating force in all our endeavors because it gives us the motivation to act and to live. Because it gives us something higher than ourselves. It is a vital factor in our own development. It is an intrinsic part of the will to live. The waning of our own spirituality will also cause the waning of our will to live. When you look at the suicide rate of our own veterans who have lost hope in finding a spiritual place in our world, that can serve as an illustration. And our military forces are now looking at spiritual fitness training, apart from religious constructs, that will strengthen the resilience of our military men and women.
Spirituality is now studied as a part of management science with conceptual frameworks used to determine psychological structures that motivate people and thereby create models leading to empirical programs designed to further workplace motivation.
Such motivating force is the key to strengthening the human spirit against the ravages of the world in which we live.
Throughout centuries, human beings have tried to understand the calamities which we face as a part of everyday living, and tried to find constructs to both, accept these challenges and motivate us to continue our quest for survival and become better people. Much of religion has dealt with this quandary.
Those of us who grew up in a Christian network are quite familiar with the emphasis on not only dogma, but the constant hammering on the theme of our imperfection and our need to acknowledge we were somehow depraved and only by becoming humble supplicants to the tenets of our denomination. Having been “born again”, we would be forgiven, and a source of spiritual strength would be a continuing force throughout our lives.
The Abrahamic faiths indeed have this commonality. For many of us and certainly in our families, the Book of Psalms was a main spiritual tool in times of crisis and despair. The words of the 23rd Psalm “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me”
The Buddha spent 45 years of his life teaching the way to spiritual fulfillment by accepting the concepts of suffering and pain.
Still, spirituality is a very personal journey, and excepting ready-made constructs as an integral part of our existence without the appropriate personal analysis, is perhaps the least effective way to construct a spiritual framework for each one of us that will stand the challenges that life throws our way. And I will state with a certain pride, that my adherence to Unitarian Universalism has given me a model, not a structure, from which I have been able to make my own epistemology and my own spirituality. Our basic tenets include “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”, meaning that we are, by ourselves, responsible for the models that form our spirituality and our own epistemology. Our framework also includes “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations”; allowing us to encourage each other to build our own spiritual construct in a community of acceptance and toleration, and “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”, which exhorts us to consider the cosmic reality of ourselves and our responsibility for other human beings and for nature itself, as key factors of our makeup.
It is in Unitarian Universalism itself that I find the best avenues to employ and adapt our spiritual beings and spiritual behavior to ensure the resilience of our own beings and that of our communities. For starters, let’s look at resilience itself.
The dictionary definition is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, the essence of toughness, and the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.
And it is in our role as Unitarian Universalists that we can build for ourselves a strong set of values that will allow us to overcome any need, any challenge, any vicissitude ahead of us. Moreover, we can also develop a system that will stretch its way in a community of like-minded individuals because we are an integral part of their existence.
Like the American poet laureate Maya Angelou stated, “Nobody, but nobody, can make it out of here alone”.
Resilience does indeed involve self-reliance. Another great Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was perhaps the main proponent of self-reliance and non-conformity in our history. But the core messages of his essays have been distorted into a paean for a rigid, Randian-like individualism which Emerson would have despised. If you read his Essay on Self Reliance today, you’ll find his message one that resembles the Seven Principles rather than a call for a strangement from the body politic. How many times have we heard the old cliches, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, “It’s a matter of personal choices”, the idea that resilience is you and you alone and the rest of the world doesn’t apply.
And that idea permeates our social thought and it has been enhanced by a new wave of raw libertarianism that takes away the role of community. The result is, which we briefly touched, the unspeakably high veteran suicide rate, the gun death epidemic, the unresponsible anti-mask and anti-vaccine crowds, the high rates of opioid abuse.
Resilience in spirit is not a solo flight. Yes, part of spiritual resilience is a personal effort that is inherent in Unitarian Universalist principles. But you don’t have to do it alone. It takes a community of like-minded people to echo the idea that humankind is basically good and that we as persons and as communities, can triumph over adversity. Quoting Hellen Keller, Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. And even more. Resilience means being able to not only overcome, but to integrate such adversity into our lives.
The words of Thoreau in his Essay on the pine tree is such a case. The tree can stand and almost seem overwhelmed by the snow. And fortunately, the entire forest gives its protection against the storm winds so the tree can stand upright once again.
Building spiritual resilience starts with introspection and personal effort and it continues with our communities. Coping with anxiety and stress may be difficult but building awareness of ourselves and the strength of others, we may become stronger as individuals.
Building a community of mutual support is a main way to build up and improve spiritual resilience. But how else can we build up and strengthen our spiritual resilience? A good second step is to give back, both to yourself and others. Give to yourself through a hobby, or starting meditation, or volunteering, or the Adventures in Learning Program. Practice these things that will enhance the acceptance of one another and seek encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations, one of our basic principles.
Another of our basic principles is the interdependence of the world of existence of which we are a part – meaning that change is inevitable. Recognizing that change will happen and learning to manage such change is extremely important in building up our spiritual resilience. And at the same time, be aware of our need to recognize when others are in need. Be aware of, and do not be afraid of recommending a crisis line or a suicide prevention line if needed. When people are in crisis, oftentimes reason takes a second place in their thoughts.
Learn to be awed. Start each day by choosing something to be thankful for. The presence of your spouse of your children in your life. A beautiful day that begins. Learn to be in love with your life. And learn to share it. Yes, things can and often do go wrong. But your attitude is something you can control. Resilience is akin to the pine tree branches lifting upright again. So why would you allow the branches of your pine tree to remain gloomy and despondent? Or in other words, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Laughter is the best medicine. It is a medical fact that laughter changes your body’s response to stress. It applies to you. It applies to your community too. And in the same way you are able to maintain a sense of humor, you’ll make it easier to connect to others to withstand stress and challenges. And together with laughter, throw some music on top. Have you ever heard that tune that picks you up? Listen to it. Enhance your mood.
And lastly: Look at things in perspective. Life is passing. So is stress. So is a tornado for that matter. Look at your community. Realize you’re not alone. The crisis you’re experiencing won’t last forever.
I have witnessed and worked on no less than twenty major disaster operations in my FEMA career. In each circumstance, the real long term survivors were those who not only used the adversity of a catastrophe as a learning experience and approached it with the spiritual resilience that comes from self-reliance and a solid community network. Learning from the past, seeking, paraphrasing Maya Angelou, finding my soul a home, where water is not thirsty, And bread loaf is not stone, and coming up with one thing, That nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone
Lou Botta – May 2, 2021