Do not be anxious!

Start your day with prayer

Yesterday I sat down, decided to do my quiet time and got distracted. My day then proceeded, but at a frenetic pace. I found myself feeling strangely tense and almost anxious, which, anyone who knows me well would say, is not like me at all.

Contrast this with the day before… The day before, I arose early, whilst it was still dark, sat by the river at dawn, spent an hour just looking at the river and trees and watched the world awake. The whole day felt totally different from today and yesterday. I felt calm and at peace, my day had lots in it, but it felt manageable and easy. Those around me rushed and stressed and I was able to wipe their stress away like a waterproof coat, better still, I was able to help them improve their day by not reacting to their stresses and strains with some of my own. I was able to be light, rather than shade.

Contrast that with today, I felt somewhat overwhelmed as I looked at my calendar and all the people and things and places I was supposed to juggle. I finally managed my quiet time but I was not focused on it and found my brain kept disengaging and I was totally distracted.

So I’m now actively seeking how I can spend more time just ‘being’ without a phone- without online activity, just sitting and observing life. This is the modern day “treasure” because even when we are ‘alone’ we are scrolling through our phone, messages, WhatsApp, social media and emails. We feel the need to respond NOW to everything.

My father moaned to me that before the invention of the television he would go into the woods with his brother and play endless games which they made up. They would build kingdoms and whole civilisations, read books, collect stamps, quote poems. Or come in on a rainy day and compose plays and paint scenes for their puppet theatre- with paper characters. Then compose stories and sketches to amuse their family and sing around the piano after dinner, reciting the poems they’d learnt off by heart. Basically- they would go and do something creative.

So when I sat watching ‘how to make something’ on Blue Peter, with those now immortal words, “Here’s something I prepared earlier”. Most of the time I was too busy (he pointed out) watching how to make the next thing, to actually make anything at all. You see television was the beginning of teaching us passivity- you’re more active when you’re asleep apparently, because at least your mind is being exercised by dreams. Even the wireless (as my father always referred to it) left you some imagining to do, what the speaker or singer might look like? Or, if it was a story being told, you could imagine the characters. But as soon as you add visuals and a scene, all the mystery and imagination are gone.

But even then, it could be a collective experience, with so few channels to choose from we all watched the same things- there wasn’t a choice. So, when we were found watching television in the TV room, he would stride in and switch it off and turn to us and say, ‘Go and do something creative’. By which he meant, play a game or the piano, sing a song or make one up, or indeed write a poem, or learn one by heart. Indeed, I went to see my Aunt Caroline recently with my sister, and she started singing funny little songs as she ate her food, ‘this is the way we eat our food, yum yum!’ And songs I had long forgotten that dad used to sing like, ‘yes we have no bananas, we have no banana’s today!’ It brought back the fact that he used to sing all the time, doing so many activities and so did I to my kids, instinctively. I even wrote a Lullaby and recorded a lullaby album of all the songs he and my mother sang to me at night, to comfort me as I went to sleep, so I wouldn't forget them.

At some point, somewhere in the last five years, as social media has grown and smart phones become the norm, we started to decide the internet is more interesting than the person who is sitting in front of us because their opinion might bore me and I can’t wait to find out what is interesting about them, so I’ll not bother to get to know them at all. We retreat into our phone and computers and there is no longer a designated ‘TV room’ such as we had in our home growing up- a place where you went to share in the activity of watching a film or a show together. Every room can now be one because we have screens and limitless access to films everywhere. This means even the joint activity of screen watching has become individualised. My daughter has already watched the film someone suggested we should watch together on her own…

When I was small we had three TV Channels and could only watch the ten o’clock news on ITV everything else was on the “beeb” - it was deemed too vulgar to watch ITV which meant on a Thursday night at 7:30pm was Top of the Pops and at 8pm, if we begged to stay up, we were allowed to watch ‘Dallas’. Everyone watched it. Everyone. The next day at school we would all be talking about it. The biggest episode was ‘Who shot JR?’. He was the most hated as the oil tycoon villain with the put upon alcoholic wife. There were bumper stickers with it on, and the whole world held its breath to find out who had done it. And you had to wait… for ages… for the next series. There were no binge box set watching- delayed gratification was an essential part of building momentum.

Far from letting our life get bigger and more expansive whilst we think we are better informed- as we only feed our own appetite and curiosities for whom are we to learn it? If we don’t build Community? Then why do we bother to learn more anyway. We no longer link in this way- few people watch an event at the same time- perhaps with the exception of royal weddings and the funeral of the Queen, I can think of few events we all watch as a nation in the way we used to when it was small, it’s no longer a collective experience but an individualised personal preference. Everyone used to watch the Eurovision Song Contest for example- everyone.

The more time we are left alone and isolated with our thoughts and ourselves, the more anxious we are likely to become. It is easy to start comparing our lives with others, finding that we lack something- we don’t have the perfect diet, bodies, lifestyles and that something we lack can be filled and fulfilled by the endless scrolling and clicking on advice or new regimes. But the reality is we actually are missing something. It is the other- the other we are called to serve and live in community with.

When Jesus says, ‘Do not be anxious but in everything with prayer and supplication bring your requests to your father in heaven’… he says so because He knows it is good for us.

We need to be needed, we need love and we grow strong when we look up and out instead of down and in…

So today, perhaps take a moment to pray first. May be spend time just being and enjoying the places and spaces around you? And perhaps if you are on the bus, the train, the tube- strike may open up a conversation with the other person opposite you, if it feels appropriate. Ask them about their story and their life and find in those meeting points a story that can enrich and enlarge your own and so….

… be blessed!

Helen