Virtual Methodist

In the light of the last post in the 10 Day You Challenge looking at 8 Fears, I thought I would briefly return to the theme of worry, anxiety and fear, which I've looked at a couple of times recently... perhaps for exactly the same reason that God and Jesus repeatedly told people not to fear... because it is, in it's many forms, such a major feature of human life. Back at the turn of the millennium Rohan Candappa wrote "The Little Book of Stress" as a pocket sized antidote for all the other self-help tomes, especially the nauseating "Little Book of Calm" that was so rightly pilloried on Black Books. It is filled with useful little hints and tips aimed at maxing out your stress levels, with many of them centring on worry... including useful suggestions like: Write down your worries. Read the list before you go to bed. Worry or anxiety can be paralysing... And is at times totally irrational. The book "In the Pink" that I reviewed a while back ...

Last year when I was just coming out of a period of prolonged depression, and pronounced and unexpected anxiety (which is something I had never experienced before) I was involved with a discussion where someone suggested I read a book entitled “Respectable Sins” by Jerry Bridges, which describes many of the emotions that we have been discussing in the light of the Psalms as “sins” including anxiety. Now before my illness I might have done the same, and had preached, slightly glibly, on worry, more than once. But in the light of my illness I saw anxiety or worry not as a sin, but as an effect of being a limited mortal being living in a fallen world… Maybe I was making excuses for myself, but actually I don't think so and have come to believe that to describe those who cope with chronic anxiety as “respectable sinners” is, for me, pastorally and morally repugnant… God repeatedly tells his people not to fear, not because they are miserable sinners in this area, but because anxiety...

Are you and arachnophobe? The irrational fear of spiders which is believed to affect as many as half of women and girls, and up to one in six males? Our church building seems to host a range of quite large spiders, especially during the autumn season, and our congregation seems to include more than its fair share of confirmed arachnophobes, because when one of our eight-legged residents marches down the aisle during a service I see people scattering in all directions. Last week I read about a study of arachnophobes , which found that the worse their condition the larger they estimated the size of spiders they were shown. And while it may seem ridiculous to those of us who aren’t reduced to jibbering wrecks by an 8 legged creepy crawly, I'm sure that this disproportionate perception of things that we fear must apply to more than just spiders, and we’re all fearful of something or other, to a greater or lesser extent… with me it’s dogs, needles and tax returns! All fears have ...

Last night something happened to me that, thankfully, rarely does... After a couple of hours of fitful sleep I woke up around 3 am and could not get back to sleep. As a rule I don't get a lot of sleep, but that is usually due to working into the wee small hours and then the rest of the world expecting me to function within the usual hours of 9-5. But normally when my head hits the pillow I sleep the sleep of, if not the just, then the sleep of the just exhausted... I don't know what caused last night's anomally... whether it is a side effect of the flu jab I had a few days ago, another bug at work on me, or some sub-conscious anxiety (although the last is very unlikely as most of my anxieties are very conscious...) But no matter what I did I couldn't get back to sleep for ages... the time dragged and my mind was filled with all the things that I really didn't want to think about in the middle of the night... various pieces of work I've got to do... pastoral issu...