How can I not be frightened? Let me explain.

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I see They are at it again. I take a quick peek at social media, and an old friend is shouting from afar, to anyone who will listen, “How can you see what They are doing and not be frightened?” My answer is that They are doing Their best to scare us.

Whoever They are, it’s a given that They are up to no good. We have known each other for a long time and made fond long-ago memories together, and now here They are to destroy everything that made those memories possible. They are insidious in every way, and how could we not be frightened?

My question is: Why do They want us to be scared of each other? Who benefits when we are at each other’s throats and frightened to risk living in peace and love with one another? Can we stop long enough to see through this induced hatred and fear and reach out to understand each other?

Rage and fear take a lot of energy, and if we give it a rest, we might find peace in our hearts. Peace is not an absence; it is a fullness. Peace is the default. When we are not quarreling and throwing epithets and stones and bullets at each other, we are buying and selling, and talking and sharing, and playing and working together. Only when the agitators and activists hurl their insults and their anger into the center of things, only then is the peace disturbed. The raging ones have been at it for so long that we forget peace is the default, and we forget that we have more in common than differences. They — whoever They are, and They come at us from all sides — exploit our differences to drive a wedge.

In the fullness of peace is a calm, gentle, patient, kind reality. If there is true fear anywhere, it is the fear in the hearts of these agitators that they might lose control of their narratives and we will stop being afraid of each other.

“How can I not be frightened?” Oh, sometimes I am frightened, because I can see the fear that grows when these manufacturers of fear relentlessly bang the drum that demands we be terrified of The Other. You know the word for those who want us afraid, don’t you? Terrorist. I am wary of those who worship at this altar of Fear and Rage and Anger, but if I yield to the impulse to be terrified, then the terrorists have won and they will rule the day.

No, my choice every morning and, as much as I can manage, every moment, is to love and live in peace with everyone I meet. When we find ourselves at the precipice and about to jump into the pit of fear and rage, let us talk each other down from the ledge and seek understanding in a spirit of love. Let us love and laugh and reason together until the fear mongers give up in frustration.

Light and Dark must balance, but not Good and Evil

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Hard to believe the autumn equinox is coming up in a week or so, and the darker months will be upon us.

I’m trying to imagine a story or mythology about the eternal struggle between Light and Dark — half of the time Light gains the upper hand, but Dark rallies and the days grow slowly colder. And like a stopped annual clock, twice a year their game ends in a tie.

One year Dark cheats and wins more than his share, and spring is delayed. The resulting imbalance shows Dark that he cheats himself by cheating his opponent, who is his brother.

I don’t fully accept the metaphor that Light and Dark must balance. Good does not need an equal supply of Evil for a balanced world, so the analogy does not fit exactly. But I can see the balance in nature — life and death, light and dark, summer and winter. In that sense, to everything there is a season.

I don’t agree that there is a time for hate, or a time for war, but I accept that in most cases there must be a balance. Fear not, for the dawn is coming, inevitably.

Where we were and where I was

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That was a surprise.

Frankly, I didn’t want to join the chorus commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. of A. on this date back in 2001. I was an editor for the late lamented Green Bay News-Chronicle that day, and I have my share of memories, as do all of us who lived through that day. This weekend brings the 25th anniversary of my first prescription for high blood pressure, a condition we discovered after I got worried about the chest pains I experienced while working on the Sept. 13 edition of the News-Chronicle. We had produced an Extra on Tuesday afternoon, the regular Wednesday morning paper, and it was time to consider what was going into Thursday’s paper when my internal alarms went off.

I have very strong opinions about the difference between the U.S. of A. of 2001 and where it stands today, and very mixed opinions about whether I want to go there in this space, and so I decided to peruse the archives to see what I was writing around the 20th anniversary back in 2021.

Surprise! Not a whisper. Instead I was focused on finishing a novel that I had been tinkering with for two or three years already. Enough was enough, and so I set myself a deadline to see if — after decades of meeting deadlines successfully in my news-gathering career — it would help to set a deadline in my novel writing. Spoiler alert: The novel is still not finished. Mind you, I have finished seven other books in the meantime, just not that one.

We also were focused on the newest member of our little clan. Summer had been born around July 20, we picked her out on Aug. 29, and she met Dejah and our cat Blackberry on Sept. 11. Those were sweet times.

The closest I came to addressing the historic date was three days later, and then it was only as I promoted a new edition of my first book of essays from 2010, Refuse to be Afraid. I concluded, “These are scary people who want us to be terrified. We used to call people like that terrorists; I still do … We need to overcome the fear and live in freedom. Otherwise, the terrorists have won.”

And I would add that it’s essential to love God and love our neighbors, remembering that we are 8 billion or so neighbors sharing this little orb in space.