What is Fear?

There is a lot of fear in the air these days. Something I’ve been thinking about is this quote by Rav Kook:

“Therefore it is important to strengthen our recognition that there is nothing to be afraid of. All images of fear are merely scattered colors of the big picture which needs to be finalized. Once the picture is complete the segregated images will emerge together and elicit a robust, forceful and tremendous trust that fills the soul with determination and courage. (1)”

Fear is but images, images of pieces of a bigger picture that is IN PROCESS of being put together. We can think of it in this way:

Imagine opening out a 1000 piece puzzle onto a table – one of those hard ones of fall leaves scattered about. All these little pieces everywhere looks like a mishmash – nothing makes sense! Perhaps there is an anxious feeling to see such seeming chaos. And if we were to imagine that we stand inside just one of these little pieces and discover our edges, and not know yet where we fit, the experience might be equally disconcerting.

However, as each little piece begins to be put together a cohesive image begins to form. Working it, we begin to see how perfectly each sliver of image belongs to another, how through the process and movement of time something new begins to emerge. Stepping inside our specific piece we feel how our individual piece connects with others, how each part is needed to make the whole.

When finally we step back, a full picture is before us. From that stepped back place of perspective it is revealed that every little piece has purpose; that what was once chaos becomes clear.

The Rav was no sheltered man. Born in Latvia, hunkered down during WWI in Britain, and appointed Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of British Palestine just after, Rav Kook was speaking to congregations who knew challenging times. Take any puzzle piece of his life – for example, when he was sheltering in a foreign land during a world war – and that moment perhaps made little sense; and, in making little sense, provoked fear. But what the Rav was telling us is that at any ONE moment in time we are simply seeing one puzzle piece unconnected by time and perspective from the whole. Let more time go back and look – the pieces may start to feel put together. Just as, in winter the brown bareness shows no hint of leaves, blossoms, or fruit. Wait three months and watch, suddenly there is green sprouting, blooming, and life renewed in every direction.

Rav is talking to us about our human limitation – we can only see one day at a time, and only those days we have walked through to now; we can only see through our unique window of self. At the same time, the Rav is telling us something even bigger … there is a larger coherence beyond anything we can see from our own human perspective. Our own lifetime is but one puzzle piece. Perhaps, too, that of humanity. But there is a blueprint of sovereign life that every piece is moving toward fitting into. Remember the story of Job – when he was awash in anxiety, God brings him outside and tells him to look up into the vast, starry sky. In other words, look up at the great cosmos and remember there is a big picture here.

“…. It is important to strengthen our recognition that there is nothing to be afraid of.”

Thank you, Rav.

(1) Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, Middot HaRe’iyah, Fearfulness, Section Four
Jigsaw puzzle photo credit: Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash
Rav Kook photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Isaac_Kook