Last Sunday was Mother's Day and each year I remember and reaffirm how grateful I am for the love and guidance I have received from the mother-figures in my life.  My own mother, who died far too young some twenty-six years ago, gave me unconditional love and acceptance.  I am moved by the power and grace with which the mother of my children fulfills her role in the life of my family.  

Mother's Day prompts memories of mothers reading to their children.  One of those memorable stories for me is The Runaway Bunny (written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd).  It is the story of a young bunny who wants to run away from home, but each place he considers running, his mother assures him she will come and find him.   I see the little bunny exploring his fears and checking out with his loving parent that she will be with him at each fearful place.

We live in a time of great cultural and individual stress!  The economy, the climate crisis, and all the personal challenges and uncertainties we face can prey on our emotions and bring an unhealthy amount of stress to our lives.  Sometimes I find myself lying awake in the middle of the night, like the little bunny, exploring the places of fear in my mind - some real and some imagined.  

The physical and emotional tensions that mark a high level of stress are usually symptoms.  These often point to other root causes.  This is not to diminish the

importance of symptoms because, when they become severe, symptoms can be destructive in themselves.   When stress gets too high in my life, I have to deal with it by helping my body relax or by distracting my mind - or both.  There are lots of resources around to help us deal with these manifestations of stress.

Ultimately, we have to find the root causes that result in extreme stress.  If we don't deal with these causes, the symptoms can just become chronic in our bodies and minds.  In last week's e-notes, I suggested that much of the sorting out of our lives takes place along a continuum between striving to know who we are and how we'll invest our talents, passions, and possessions on the one hand and learning to let go of that striving and just "be" on the other hand.  I want to suggest that the root cause of much of the destructive stress we experience lies in how we live on this continuum.  

In my recent sermon series Coping with Crisis, I suggested that the most important response to crisis involves discovering more clearly who you are and what you want to do with your life.  Rather than living at the periphery of our lives, basing everything we do and think on what other people do and think, we need to find the source of power, identity, and direction within ourselves.  We also need to see the big picture of how we are connected to others and to the universe itself - God whose existence lies behind the universe.

Resources are available to help us discover our identity and our calling and also to help us let go of the need to control - just to "be."  I hope your community of faith is able to help you on this journey.  We cannot let our faith stop with the idea that God will protect us, like the Mother Bunny, from what frightens or challenges us.  The promise I see in my faith tradition is that God is always present with me and I with God.  We're never abandoned.   God's presence is most often perceived in the loving support of community.  There are always resources for the journey, but each of us must find them and use them.  

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
    
Jack Price

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