Naming our fears and surviving together

By Johnny Zokovitch

I spent last weekend with members of Pax Christi Michigan at their annual fall retreat. The theme of this retreat doesn’t change from year to year; it’s always focused on reflection and renewal for the long haul, how to find the sustenance one needs to keep going on, especially when hopes are dashed and momentum is stalled. 

Everyone gathered agreed that this retreat was happening against the backdrop of a particularly dark and fearful time. The opening prayer service sought to stir into flame a faith that casts out fear. We sang together “Be Not Afraid” and looked over a sheet chock full of quotes from the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day and Howard Thurman, all aimed at assuaging our fear and stoking courage. 

I started my first presentation by sharing that my own daily meditation practice begins with St. Teresa of Avila’s prayer, “Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing dismay thee…,” a prayer that assumes there’s a lot out there that IS disturbing, that IS dismaying. Indeed, the underlying assumption of Jesus’ exhortations to “fear not” is that there is a lot happening in our world about which it is natural to be afraid. 

It is scary out there. And better that we name this and look at it squarely, lest we find ourselves anxiously endeavoring to pretend otherwise – ignoring it or hiding from it or acting as if we can just wish it away.

The theologian Walter Wink gives us helpful language. In his series on “powers and principalities,” Wink addresses how naming the power – in this case our fears – is the first step in unmasking it and then engaging it. Naming is, indeed, a biblical action. Knowing the true name, for instance in scriptural encounters with the demonic, resets the balance of power. Fear aims to immobilize us, steal our agency, and ultimately enslave us. But naming those fears – intentionally and rigorously – is a first step to reclaiming our freedom. 

Individually, we wrote on post-it notes – as succinctly and exactly as we were able – what it is that scares us right now about this moment in history. One by one, people posted those fears on a nearly bare block wall, adorned only with a Franciscan cross. Then by journaling, in one-on-one conversations, or in small groups, people unpacked those fears, saying them aloud, turning them over by getting up close and examining them.  

In the large group, I shared a story about a particular time in my own life when fear and the pain associated with it had nearly incapacitated me. Friends, meaning well, had sought to encourage me that things were surely going to get better, that there was a silver lining to all of this heartbreak, that I would grow and become stronger because of this. But one person came to my house, sat next to me quietly on the couch, held my hands as I cried and shook, simply looking at me then said, “I’m so sorry. It just sucks.” There was no effort to allay my fear, counter it, or reconceptualize it, or promise a future time when it would no longer scare and debilitate me. All they did was sit with me in the midst of it, name and validate my reality for what it was, and, in that moment, offer the only solace that was really possible – solidarity.

Back to this weekend’s retreat, I offered an invitation for folks to step back up to that wall, read and honor the weight and depth of the fear expressed there, then to remove at least one (that wasn’t theirs), to fold it up and to carry it with them, so that no one would be left alone with their fear.

Some of us have been conditioned to expect that every moment presents the chance to thrive – especially for those of us who have never had to experience unrelentingly the fragility or vulnerability of what it is like to have oneself assaulted or threatened at every turn by the way that things are in the world. But sometimes, all that we can manage is to endure, to survive. 

That survival starts by being honest about what we are up against, and how scary it is. And also that we survive together, naming and validating that fear, but not leaving anyone to face it alone. 

Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis.