Anxiety

Anxiety
Fr. Dale Matson
07-03-10
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1st Peter 5:7)

Anxiety is defined differently than fear. Fear generally has an object, immediacy and a means of avoidance. Anxiety is more of an uneasiness, an apprehension about the future and a sense of the unavoidable. Anxiety is often associated with depression. While Depression is often the primary diagnosis, Anxiety may be the presenting problem. While depression gets “top billing” and treatment dollars, it is anxiety that takes the quality and the could-have-been out of far more lives than depression. Anxiety extinguishes dreams and paralyzes plans. It is the primary ingredient in the opposite of the Peter Principle. Most people will not become who they could be.
Anxiety rubs against our thoughts until it creates an open wound in the soul. To some extent we do it to ourselves. We fail in the basics of eating, exercising and resting. Some dither until they must rush. Some multitask, doing nothing well. Some become addicted to frenzied activity in an effort to fill a life devoid of meaning with substitutes.
We also live in a virtual world that does not wait for us to catch up. We are simply inundated with information beyond our ability to process and absorb it. We are suffering from virtual Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. How many times have we seen the jet airliners fly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center? How many times have you seen the seemingly unstoppable crude oil bubbling from the well deep in the ocean headed toward pristine beaches and fragile estuaries? We no longer live in small isolated communities. We live on and experience a planet’s worth of trauma. We brace for hurricanes and blizzards days in advance with some never arriving. We are informed by scientists that there could be an asteroid that would collide with our earth and we would all perish. Anxiety makes us cautious. Everything we buy including the morning coffee comes with a warning label.
We have a world’s worth of trauma delivered to our home and portable viewing screens twenty four seven with updates on the ten. We are like BP. We cannot plug the leak so how do we survive the spill? At its core, Anxiety is an ego state. It is the ego awfulizing at the prospect that it may perish. It is an existential drama where the individual is continually in a state of “What if”? It is the ego trying to control what cannot be controlled. The worst part of anxiety is that we have no control yet we are responsible. We are shocked no matter where we jump to in the cage. We cannot avoid or escape the shock.
Anxiety is not an uppercut to the jaw. It is a series of body blows that wears us down. It masks the ego vulnerability and manifests itself as road rage, frigidity, autoimmune disorders, social isolation and self medicated fugue states. It is the primary disease of self and the prognosis is morbid. The prescription is divestment of self not destruction of self. It is time to step off the throne of self and surrender to God. We must stop trying to be God. We are vulnerable because life is all about us, our wants and needs. It is our ego that requires applause.
Instead, we must put ourselves in the least honored place, the place of the servant. It is not about acquisition. It is about pouring ourselves out on behalf of others. How much of our time, talent and treasure is wasted building an edifice of straw to ourselves. Our legacy is those we have helped not a curriculum vitae filled with self promotion. The self we keep propping up and defending is a golden calf and a false god. We have fashioned ourselves into idols. We are not only idolaters; we are the worst kind of idolaters because we are the idols we worship.
As St. Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit has told us, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). So what is the release from this prison of anxiety? It is the decision to die to self and live for Christ, for He is our authentic self. It is not our story. It is His story and He is the author. I believe this is not something that happens overnight. It is a daily giving over of ourselves to Christ. Sometimes it is expedited by a “Dark Night of the Soul” like Cancer or the death of a child. It is something I struggle with too but less so as I age in Christ and the new man comes forth. Each time there is anxiety, we can ask ourselves, “Is it my ego that I am defending here?”. If it is then let go and let God as someone said. Amen

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6).

Friendships

Friendship
Fr. Dale Matson
06-30-10

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15
Close friends are really extended family. The connection is so close that the phrase “kith and kin” is intended to encompass both friends and family. Some folks by estrangement, age or disaster have no family and thus their friends of necessity become their family.
Friends are collectables. Friendships are cultivated over the period of a lifetime. To some extent friendships with others have helped make us who we are. They are an external form of DNA. I can still remember permanently changing the way I made the number four in response to the way Tom, a fourth grade friend made his fours. I lost track of Tom after he returned from Viet Nam.
Friendships are similar to annual and perennial plants. Intense and intimate school friendships sometimes wither and die within a short period following graduation. The perennial friendships survive the seasons and transplanting. Like plants however the friendships require tending. Frequently it is not a reciprocal effort. “I was just going to call you.” I was just thinking about you.” Isn’t that the frequent response to a phone call? I am one of those folks who contacts the kith and kin. Sometimes the ego says, “Isn’t it their turn to call you”? No matter, they rarely if ever have. Sometimes one needs the tenacity of an obsessive compulsive and the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes to keep track of the friends without tap roots.
Friendships like wine, improve with age. It is not just a shared history together and a willingness to be interested in their life as it is now. Friends help fill in the outline of each other’s lives as we look back and reminisce. Each new conversation with an old friend reveals new riches in an old stream bed. There are also reassurances. “You were not as bad as you remember yourself to be.” There is a Godly grace that has kept you together. There is a refuge in both shared suffering and laughter. Old friends provide perspective. “You look just like your father as I remember him.”
There is a kindness and a charity to the conversation. There is so much distance and so many years since we have been in the same room together but with telephones and letters and now e-mail the pilot light of an old friendship is kept burning.
I have been blessed with a handful of close friends who have remained in touch with each other for over fifty years and two friends I have known for over sixty years. With our parents now gone, they have become part of our adopted lineage. Most begin their last name with “M” also. We were seated alphabetically in school. Maybe I would be different if my last name began with an “A” or a “Z”.
There are things that they have said to us that has helped change the course of our life and interrupted the trajectory of our fall. Our friends have been such a grace gift of God. I now sign my correspondence or end a conversation with, “I love you.” or “God bless you.” It is so strongly felt and so easy to say now. Jesus has taught us who God is and our friends have helped us to understand who Jesus is.

“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief’s to bear! Joseph M. Scriven, 1855

Work

Work
Fr. Dale Matson
06-25-10
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15 NIV)
We live in a society less and less accustomed to work. By this I don’t mean white collar employment but blue collar folks engaged in the trades or in unskilled workers that live by the sweat of their brow. As someone who worked in construction for seventeen years, I still remember the construction season. We had to work long days and weeks to make up for the winter when deep frost made excavation and grading impractical. During the drive home each day there was a satisfying fatigue that burned bone deep yet provided an intoxicating peace.
The reality is that we were created to work. Work is an irreplaceable kind of exercise. It is unique because it yields a product. The product could be food, a home and even a good bead on a weld. The hot days for me were made hotter as a journeyman plumber when melting the lead ingots for sealing the jute in the joints in cast iron sewer pipes. Sweat would drip into the lead pot and create a small crackle as the moisture was absorbed. Work is also a cooperative effort. Many jobs require more than two hands or two skills. Friendships develop and stories are shared. A work colleague can become a confidant. Firefighters and law enforcement officers become brothers and sisters in the meaningful work of protecting others.
Today gym memberships abound. White collar folks know that sweat comes from places that a shower never reaches. Sweat brings out the toxins of a stressful life and the gym is a place where “parallel play” mimics normal human interaction. Each person with a set of ear buds listening to this or that tune selection. There is a good burn following an intense spin class or weight lifting circuit. Then there is a shower and off to the office. However, there is no work product and no guild fraternity.
There is something holy about work that sets it apart from other forms of exercise. Not only did God create us to work. He gave us a job and this job gave us meaning. For the workaholic his meaning has become his job. He has become an idolater and his god is the center of his meaning. Like all idolaters, the workaholic has replaced God with a gift of God.
I believe worship is a human activity closely related to work. Both take us out of ourselves, give us meaning and make us hardy and resilient. We are better for it. God is a worker also for we are His handiwork. “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:10). Liturgy is the work of the people and so in liturgy we are become coworkers with God. In liturgy the work we do divides both the year and our lives into sacred seasons. We perform sacred work marking points along the path of our earthly journey which includes Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage and Death. Our work in the Liturgy is also preparatory for the specific work God calls each of us to do. Our assigned work is specific to each of us and we are also each a living stone in the building of God’s Kingdom held together by our chief corner stone Jesus Christ.
“And now , Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” (This is a portion of the concluding prayer of the liturgy, from the Book of Common Prayer p. 366).

Christians and Depression

Depression
Fr. Dale Matson
06-14-10
“Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” Psalm 51:12

Depression has been called the common cold of mental health. It is true in the respect that it is common and can also be contagious but it is much more severe than a common cold. It is an isolating, deep, seemingly hopeless hole of despair. It is a place where a broken shoelace in the morning can destroy an entire day. It is a place with no pleasure and no more tears to shed. It can appear normally as a part of grief or comingled with anxiety. Depression has been described as a behavior disorder, a cognitive disorder, a family systems disorder and a neurotransmitter imbalance.
I want to offer another way for folks to consider why endogenous (non reactive) depression is seemingly so intractable yet point to a hopeful understanding and treatment. In some sense I see chronic (with acute episodes) depression as an identity disorder. It is as if people who suffer from chronic depression no longer can distinguish themselves from their disorder. It is as if they would have to give up who they know themselves to be if their depression was removed. They would not know who they were any longer. In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis makes an insightful observation. “The question is whether she is a grumbler or a grumble. If there is a real woman, even the trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again.” From a Christian perspective this means to go to the cross with Christ not to destroy oneself. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20). And we hear also from Paul in Romans “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (6:6). I think that is why a truly Christian approach could provide help. I mean by this, helping the individual to put on Christ as their new identity. This is something all Christians are asked to do. The life of a Christian is continually taking the old man to the cross or as Luther would say, celebrating our baptism daily by drowning the old man so that the new man might come forth. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4: 22-24). There is so much in Scripture that encourages us to put on the new person that is Christ. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2a) What kind of mind are we to have? Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5). “… my friends keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don't ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8).
There is another additional side to addressing depression. Since depression can be isolating, Christians know that physically they reside in Christ’s body the church. Their brothers and sisters who may also have experienced depression are available to offer the comfort that they were comforted with. (2 Cor. 1:4). Spiritually they also reside in Christ. “For in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28a). Christ suffers with us and His church. The topic of depression fills volumes and treatment options are multifaceted with varying degrees of efficacy depending also on the individual. What I have attempted to say, that as Christians we all have an opportunity to seek and to find ourselves in Christ and He in us. For those with depression this is especially important. This is in addition to, not in lieu of other treatment options offered by your physician.
Christ is our true self and our only self. Listen to the life He offers us. It is a not a life without suffering but it can be a life of joy. Amen

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11)

The Jesus Part Of Us

The Jesus Part of Us
Fr. Dale Matson
06-09-10

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

As a Psychologist, I was taught and aware that much of what we do is based on motivation from our unconscious mind and much of this activity is self serving. For example, we might do a charitable deed but the motivation might be self serving. Even though we thought the act was selfless, it was really selfish. We may gift someone and think that this is an affirmation for them but it is really a need on our part for them to like us.
As Christians however, there is another force at work in us. “For it is God who works in you, to will and to act, according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13)
As a Priest it is also evident to me that Christians are motivated in a way that may be unconscious but is mysterious and selfless. It reminds me of the remote control devices we use to turn on our Television or Radio. The remotes use an infrared beam of light that we cannot see. We usually don’t think about the beam unless our dog is standing between us and the TV when we are unable to mute a commercial.
Recently I was conversing with another customer in the hardware store. It is the kind of small talk people make while in close proximity waiting for the clerk. I was having a little difficulty understanding him because of my age and his thick accent but the conversation included mutual respect and laughter. He mentioned to me that he was Muslim and I said that I was an Anglican Priest. I had to put the purchase in the back of my truck and while I was doing that he came up behind me. He said, “You are like Jesus. I like being around you. Do you have a business card where your church is”? As we parted, I gave him a blessing and told him so also. He smiled and went to his car.
To me this was a Kingdom of God moment. Jesus was like that invisible infrared light that had gone out from me to this man. The Gospel light is that Jesus part of us coming in contact with others. Yes, I can be known for having a hard edge but there is also the Jesus part of me too. We must all understand as Christians that when our best self, our only true self, is operating, others want to be around us. We are an incarnation of the Gospel light to others.

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

Servant Gifts, Mission, Persecution and the Body of Christ

Servant Gifts, Mission, Persecution and the Body of Christ
Fr. Dale Matson 05-19-10

In our Wednesday Epistle lesson for the daily office from Ephesians, Paul tells us about Spiritual Gifts and in this passage; he is referring to what could be called “Servant Gifts”. Although the Gifts of the Spirit are generally attributed to the Holy Spirit, it is clear in this passage that these Servant gifts were bestowed by Christ. These gifts include Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. In the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians, this Sunday’s Epistle lesson for Pentecost, Paul makes the Trinitarian nature of the gifts evident when he states, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of Service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but the same God.” (v. 5)
It is fitting that Paul should emphasize Christ as the giver of the Servant gifts because those gifts are primarily provided for the building of the Body of Christ through the equipping of the saints. And what is this equipping that Paul is referring to? Paul is referring to equipping for the battle that is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places. Later in Ephesians (Chapter 6), he talks about putting on the full armor of God. This includes the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet prepared to spread the Gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.
Many church leaders in their zeal to involve parishioners will distribute “gift surveys”. Unfortunately, these surveys often are listing talents and are asking the individual him or herself to identify what his or her gifts are. I believe that it takes one to know one. By this I mean that discerning these gifts is a gift in and of itself and is required to identify these gifts in our brothers and sisters in Christ and to see these gifts in a dormant form in immature Christians. So often we attempt to emulate strategies used by churches deemed as successful because of the large memberships. Is this the metric of Christ that St. Paul is referring to?
There are at least three things that the Church as the body of Christ needs for genuine growth. The church needs to be in mission, it needs to be under persecution, and it needs to truly understand itself as the body of Christ. What is happening now in our church is a gradual understanding of and commitment to mission. Mission is not something that is left to others in a distant land. It is what each of us can contribute to as a church where God has placed us. It is those with the gift of Prophesy who call us back and remind us why we are a church. It is those with the gift of Apostle who give us vision and mission. It is the Evangelists who can see further than the church doors to the neighborhood, the city and beyond. It is those with the gift of pastor and teacher who help comfort and equip the saints.
Our church is under persecution from apostate leaders within the body of Christ. It is under attack by a secular society that is desperately in need of the Gospel message and the church is under attack by a government that wants more than separation from the church.
Finally, the church needs to see itself as the body of Christ. We don’t just need each other’s company for fellowship and worship. We need each other’s gifts for spiritual survival. To really know your brother and sister is to recognize and respect their gifts and in light of that to recognize our own limitations. The church is an army God has raised against evil. Onward Christian Soldiers. Amen.

Holy Orders and Hopalong Cassidy

Holy Orders and Hopalong Cassidy
Fr. Dale Matson 05-04-10
When I was young, Hopalong Cassidy was my favorite cowboy hero. He didn’t smoke, drink or provoke fights but woe to the man who picked a fight with him. I’m fairly sure he never lost a fight or his hat in a fight. So, you ask, “What does William Lawrence Boyd have to do with holy orders”? William Boyd was an actor that decided to create a heroic figure different than the randy version in pulp fiction and then became that person in real life. He was changed by the role he played and the role was who he became. His public persona was a perfect reflection of the character and he never did anything that would bring shame on the character. He owned that character psychologically and financially. He had a deep manly voice with a hearty laugh but a gentle disposition. He dressed in black, carried two six guns and rode a white horse named “Topper”. I didn’t have a horse but I had one of his outfits and his two six guns when I was a kid. After nighttime prayers there was the additional security of the guns hanging on my bedpost. I even brushed my teeth with Hopalong Cassidy Tooth Paste. There was no role confusion and no doubt that he was a trustworthy man who could always be depended upon to do the right thing. He always treated women with respect and would tip his hat whenever he passed them on the street. To me it is like the ordination process. When we are called and pursue holy orders, we too are changed. With monastic’s, who take a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience, it is called conversion of manners. I would call it a transformation of the personality. Doing what you are called to do, no matter what that may be, brings forth what St. Paul would call the fruits of the Spirit. Like “Hoppy” I dress in black but Unlike Hoppy I do not have a script and am not playing a role even though I continually reflect on what I say to measure it against the instruction from my heart. We both came to California from the Midwest and each of us found it to be fertile ground. Boys were fortunate in my youth to also have people like Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry and Hoot Gibson who merged a public persona with a film character. It is really a matter of being consistent on the outside with who God is causing you to become on the inside. Amen