To Walk with Saints and Scholars

3/1/26

“More Famine Pots” Photo by LKV Walsh

When I was growing up in Texas, Christians in my community loved to reference how often “Be not afraid,” or some variant of the same appears in the Bible. The reference, though, was spoken like a dictate and not a balm. It was offered as a rule and not as a reassurance. It was something akin to the t-shirts all over the Bible Belt that read, “Too blessed to be stressed,” as though loving God automatically means nothing is going wrong and nothing bad can happen. The implicit message was always that if there was stress and/or if there was fear, then faith was absent or incomplete.

But real life can be stressful and scary. Just yesterday, the family of one of my dearest friends was under attack in Tehran, and then my new family was under attack in Abu Dhabi. Fearful and stressed are proper responses to such realities. They prevent us from tolerating the intolerable. They also help us to remember that fear and stress are not all there is and that we are not the only ones feeling them.

The Irish have a saying I turn to at times like these: “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.” In English, it means, “In the shelter of each other, the people live.”  It is a reminder that we are not alone, yes, but it is also so much more. It is an invocation…a call to each of us to remember WE are the safety for each other. We walk with each other because we are meant to be safety for each other…and we are not alone. Take note, the biblical texts are never saying, “Be not afraid” because we are bad for feeling overwhelmed…or because an interventionist Divine is going to come along and put everything back the way it was or make it just the way we want it. No. The words “Be not afraid,” are spoken to us by those who walk with us. And it is in that shelter, as well as the shelter of each other, that we live. Still stressed, perhaps. Still scared, perhaps. But with and for and beside each other – “In the shelter of each other, the people live.”

I pray it may it ever be so….

Amen