By Michael Meade

After a series of shootings in three different cities in the United States last Sunday, six people were dead and more than 20 wounded. The gunman from the third shooting was still on the loose when people began arriving for a rally in Richmond, Virginia on Monday. It was a holiday intended to honor the courageous life and meaningful work of Martin Luther King, but this group came out to protest what most people might regard as common-sense gun restrictions passed by the Virginia House of Delegates.

Hordes of grown men and a handful of women appeared, dressed in camouflage and draped with long guns and handguns. Some carried huge assault weapons strapped across their chests, others walked in a masked phalanx flanked by German Shepherds. Of course, there were arguments about guns making people safer, rather than more endangered. But, the photos of so many grown people wearing helmets and body armor, displaying weapons and parading in public are downright frightening. 

They came out to protest any kind of gun restrictions, but they also came out of fear. They looked fearsome, yet underneath all the weapons and battle armor they could also be seen as fearful. As one observer remarked, those are the uniforms of fear. As an old saying succinctly puts it, the bigger the front, the bigger the back.

Thankfully, there were no incidents of violence at that march. However, photos of the event add to the levels of fear spreading throughout the country. There is an increasing sense of fear inside those who are heavily armed, as well as a growing sense of alarm amongst all who question the need for people to stockpile and carry battle weapons. Amidst all the fears, some argue for the importance of the rule of law, others try to become a law unto themselves.

A sad irony appears where a recent report revealed that 67% of all gun deaths in the state of Virginia were suicides. The rate of suicides by gun has grown to two a day and primarily involves rural white males, age 45 and older. That describes much of the demographic of the people at the gun rally. In some ways, when it comes to guns, the biggest thing someone has to fear is themselves.

The gun tragedies and the gun rally quickly disappeared from the headlines which turned attention to the impeachment trial of Donald Trump that began the day after the gun march. Of course, the political standoff inside the U.S. Senate also stirs all kinds of fears as people seem ready to divide into armed camps at the beginning of an already fraught election year.

Fears arise wherever people face the unknown, whenever they feel unprotected and experience a serious loss of control in their lives. By now, many people feel increasingly helpless in the face of mass shootings and tragic deaths that touch so many. At the same time, the effects of political battles and social divisions seem only surpassed by the increasing dangers of the climate crisis. The growing sense of uncertainty and chaos hangs in the polluted air and troubled waters all around us and penetrates the psychic atmosphere elevating collective levels of anxiety and fear in everyone. As an old saying reminds, "fear begets fear." 

As the collective unconscious threatens to boil over people become more vulnerable to visions of annihilation as well as wild fantasies of conspiracy. When cultural institutions fail to function properly and divisions inside a society multiply and intensify, it takes very little to tear the skin of civilization and reveal festering emotional wounds full of fear, resentment and rage.

"Short is the road that leads from fear to hatred" warns an old proverb.

Yet the problem isn't simply fear. The problem is that what we fear will not simply go away. It is more likely to be the case that what we fear is where we are bound to go. Fear Itself is a natural emotion, an inner storing of instincts and intuitions that can include our deepest survival resources. Healthy fear involves a sudden increase of awareness that can be life-protective and even life-saving. The word fear comes from the Old English “faer” that carries original meanings of “a journey, a passage or an expedition.” 

Fear was once called "the awakener," as a healthy sense of fear could guide us to the places where life changes must be made. Our greatest fears mark the places where we must go or else risk losing our souls.

If the issues of truth and meaning are not faced and struggled with honestly; then our fears will not only remain, they will grow greater.

On one level, the current impeachment battle involves issues of the rule of law and corruption of the core values of our society. But on another level, it represents a struggle in the larger battle for truth and meaning and the soul of the country. An old proverb warns that, “Those who live in fear can only live a half-life.” We are in danger now of living a half-life as a culture.

We are in danger of living a half-life if we cannot find ways to reduce the tragic rates of gun violence and the growing rates of suicide. We are in danger of living a half-life and failing to support life on earth if we don’t respond fully to the dangers of the climate crisis. We are in danger of living the half-life of half-truths propagated by those blatantly seeking to divide us against each other. For, without truth there can be no genuine sense of shared understanding and no collective sense of purpose.

Whether we consider our individual lives or our collective lives as a society, the common fear is that we are not able to deal with the issues we face. “Giving in to fear” means not awakening to face issues that drain meaning from our lives. If the institutions intended to protect people and sustain some sense of order fail to function properly, if those given the public trust betray it, then the truth must arise from the depths of the individual human soul. Truly facing our fears leads to drawing upon our inner resources. The hidden purpose of fear involves bringing us closer to the sources of our lives.

We are in that country now, the country flooded with fear; we are in that world and what we fear will not simply go away. We have to find ways to help each other face our fears. And we have to find ways to trust that the specific fears we feel intend to lead us to the deep resources of our own soul. The conditions in which we find ourselves are the conditions through which we must find our true selves and make reclaim the meaning and purpose inherent in our own lives.