It is now approaching six weeks since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. It has been a difficult time for us all. Each week has brought added concerns about our safety as individuals, as a nation, and for our world. We are now actively at war, no longer threatening and planning. And the prospect of more terrorism in our country has become a reality with at least seven people infected with anthrax and over thirty others exposed to the bacteria. It is difficult to find our sense of equilibrium with all that is happening.

Each week, Kathleen and I have struggled with this dis-equilibrium when planning for worship. Our weeks of planned sermon topics were re-evaluated, trying to be sensitive to what would be most helpful in this time of crisis and feeling that it is nearly impossible to make decisions for more than one week ahead, and even then realizing events on any given day - up to Sunday morning itself might warrant something completely unplanned for. It was Monday of this past week that I decided to set aside the sermon planned for today, "The Survival of Unitarianism in Transylvania." With our minds and hearts turned to Afghanistan and the plight of the refugees there, it felt like too large of a leap to begin considering what has happened in Transylvania, the birth place of Unitarianism, since the fall of communism. The Religious Education Committee is still planning a social service project that will focus on this closer to Thanksgiving, so you will get another opportunity to learn more about that part of our history soon.

While there is much that could be said about all that is going on in our world and in our nation, what I am most concerned about is the toll these last six weeks have taken on us. As much as we all try to go on with our lives with some sense of normalcy, there is no ignoring the fact that we have been deeply affected as a society and as individuals. Beginning with the terrorist attacks of September 11, our sense of security has been shaken at its core. A deep dread of what is to come was given birth. And as much as we all hoped in those first days that more violence and destruction could somehow be averted, we intuitively knew that those attacks had set into motion a series of events that would include military action and retaliations that could spiral out of control. I found an article in the October 22 edition of Time that painted an accurate picture of life in America these past weeks and I want to share some of it with you.

"We can argue over when the enemy decided to wage war against us - was it the moment the Ottoman Empire fell or when U.S. troops arrived in Saudi Arabia? But we know exactly when we went to war with them: 12:30 pm E.T. on Sunday October 7. Now our pilots are shredding Afghanistan, and the waiting is over, and you didn't need to be in New York or Washington, or Kabul, to feel like a soldier - or a target. The clock becomes a time bomb: we are warned that retaliation is now certain; we wait, move to higher alert; time passes, tick, tick; see anything suspicious? And we come to realize that something sinister has been planted in our midst, not just the threat but also the fear of the threat.

By the time President Bush showed up in prime time to invite the country officially both to buck up and freak out, the war at home was already well under way. Haz-mat teams from coast to coast were being called out two and three times a day to decontaminate buildings because someone worried about a powder in a package. … A pilot returned to the gate because a passenger switched seats too many times. Donald Trump was reported to be shopping for parachutes. …

"Be on the look out for mysterious health symptoms," said health czar Tommy Thompson, but who doesn't have those? We were told last week not to panic but to be prepared; to get on with our lives, even though we barely recognize them now that there are F-16's overhead and National Guardsmen at the train stations. The Vice-President is in the witness protection program, and the FBI initially coded its Thursday warning of an attack "skyfall." Officials were vague about the targets but precise about the timing. They had "certain information" that there would be more attacks somewhere, "over the next few days." And so people who by last week felt they had regained their footing, who found it liberating to get on an airplane and luxurious to go to a football game on a gorgeous fall day, also found that the path out of our private caves is not a straight and steady one. You can feel cold again just by turning on the news. Or opening the mail. Once the first case of anthrax exposure appeared in Florida and the envelope became a potential weapon of mass destruction, we got to see what panic looks like. The Nashville, Tennessee, haz-mat team was called out five times in forty-eight hours, all for hoaxes. A woman phoned in a report that her computer keyboard was covered with a powdery substance. The FBI discovered that she had been eating cookies. … [It makes no difference if the white powder is anthrax or not] because fear is bacterial as well. It can spread in the air and over wires, infect the marketplace and lay waste to whole industries and leave its victims at home in bed with the covers pulled up. … Fear conscripts its own armies, takes its own prisoners. Even people who appear calm will privately confess: I won't go to the mall anymore. …

How much sleep do we have to lose, how many routines do we have to change, before we should count ourselves as casualties? If we don't take the subway, are we wounded? If we skip a grandchild's baptism because we don't want to get on a plane, have they won? … We are now deciding every day, deciding whether the cost of caution is too high, discovering whether we actually fear doing nothing more than doing something that frightens us. Because we know that this is the definition of courage - not an absence of fear but a willingness to live and move in its company, without becoming its hostage."

It is this sense of fear and that so much in our lives has changed that has created a pervasive sense of anxiety. It is hard to get a handle on it when we are constantly bombarded by the media with stories and images of not only what is known to have happened, but a steady diet of fearful stories of what might still happen based on speculation and rumor. I feel like we are living above the timber line as described in the meditation by Howard Thurman - an environment that is harsh and not conducive for thriving and being able to reach our full potential without creative and intentional adjustments. We must make a careful survey of our situation and work out a method, a way of life, that will yield growth and development despite the contradictions under which we eke out our days.

In taking this careful survey, it might be helpful to understand the phenomena of anxiety. Anxiety is different than fear. Fear is an emotional response to a perceived concrete danger. Fear is helpful when the danger is real. This ordinary human response causes us to be more alert and triggers the fight or flight reaction. It allows us to move into action. But when the threat is or source of danger is vague, or can't be identified, and there is no way to move into action - the options of fight or flight aren't possible, the fear is mutated into anxiety. Anxiety is characterized by feelings of helplessness and loss of control, and a lingering sense that something is wrong. Fear and a sense of doom can be a component of anxiety. It is no wonder we are experiencing anxiety when we are confronted with the possibilities of more terrorist attacks, in unknown forms by unknown perpetrators.

I looked for information on how to reduce anxiety and found very little that was helpful. Most literature focused on dealing with anxiety after the situation causing anxiety was over. We are still in the midst of it and there is reason to believe that we must work out a method, a way of life, that will allow us to cope with this level of stress and anxiety for an extended time. We keep hearing, this is not a war that will be over in weeks or even months. Most of what I found on anxiety also focused on the pathological type of anxiety, such as agoraphobia or anxiety attacks, not a pervasive low-level anxiety. I began to think about the fact that one thing I have heard people say frequently is "everything has changed, there are so many things I have to worry about now that I never thought of before." And I remembered going to France when I was 17 as an exchange student. My French teacher prepared us for entering a new culture by talking at great length about culture shock. People experience this when everything about them seems different. Culture shock is manifested much the same way as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, through a spectrum of behaviors that include sleeping more or having trouble sleeping, increase or decrease in appetite, obsessive thinking, irrational thinking and fears, and is also experienced in ranges of intensity. While in France, I began having nightmares nightly with the theme that I was in danger and couldn't get anyone to understand me. It's interesting to note that I spoke French fluently and even would dream in French. But these dreams were a manifestation of culture shock. Maybe another name for what many of us are experiencing is psychological culture shock. My teacher didn't have a lot of advice for reducing culture shock but he did say that recognizing it and naming it, in yourself and in others, and then talking about it, when it was happening were the most important tools for getting through it, along with eating well, exercising, and slowing down your pace of activities.

I did find one source that outlined three factors that seem to be important in managing anxiety. First is establishing safety. While there are many unknowns, distinguishing between the facts and speculation is necessary. Listen to the news when you must with a critical ear. You can decide to not get drawn in to the sensational "what ifs" of journalism. But if you feel that there is danger that you can avoid by changing your routines - such as not flying, then make decisions that allow you to feel safe. You can decide what feels right for you. Next, it is important to maintain the significant relationships you have in your life. Isolation and alienation will intensify the feelings of anxiety. Anxiety can have a damaging affect on relationships - especially if one person is experiencing anxiety and the other isn't, or if anxiety and fear are being manifested in different ways. So this task requires special attention and effort. The third suggestion is to be involved in a community activity, maintaining an interest in the present and future world wards off feelings of impending doom.

While these are important steps to take in these times of anxiety and stress, there is one more factor that I want to give some attention to, if we are to dare to act as the trees above the timber line and not give up. If we are to reach for the skies and embrace in our arms the wind and the rain, the snow and the sun, and sing our songs of joy to all the heavens, we must use to the full every resource in and around us that will enable us to answer life with life. Howard Thurman lived from 1900 to 1981. I do not know when we wrote the meditations that are collected in his book "Meditations of the Heart", but it was first published in 1953. Besides the one I have already shared with you, there are two others that I found most helpful.

In "At My Center I Find Peace", he says that getting beyond anxiety and trouble to the center of one's own spirit is a formidable task. Again and again a person tries to pray, tries to penetrate mist, only to find he loses his way and lands back in the arms of his anxiety. In the moment, anxiety seems impossible to get through, the mind cannot be focused long enough to find the center. But at the center of our soul is where we will find peace. I believe it is the center of our souls that holds the resources we need to answer life with life. There are many ways, many practices - meditation, prayer, painting, dancing, walking in the woods or by the ocean, spending time with those we hold most dear, all these and more can be paths to the center of our souls, and paths to inner peace.

In another meditation titled, "Life Goes On", Thurman reminds us, "in turbulent times we must remember that life goes on…. It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces by which the meaning of our lives is maintained and sustained. Birds still sing; the stars continue to cast their gentle gleam over the desolation of battlefields, and the heart is still inspired by the kind word and gracious deed. Thurman goes on to say, "there is no need to fear evil, but there is every need to understand what it does, how it operates in the world, what it draws upon to sustain itself. …Over and over we must remind ourselves that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble of cities; the real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of humanity and to give to its soul the contagion of inner disintegration. When this happens, there is nothing left, the very citadel of humanity is captured and laid waste. Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within. This would be to be overcome by evil. To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one's life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive the spirit of [goodness] in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind - this is always the ultimate answer to [overcome tragedy]." Again, Thurman suggests a way to move beyond the paralyzing effects of anxiety and a path to answering life with life.