Franklin may have been mistaken?

Now begins the season of fear....or, would it be more accurate to say now is when the season of fear becomes more pronounced and tangible and observable. We are a fearful lot. Houses and lawns are being decorated, signs are prevalent for Haunted attractions be it houses or fields or amusement parks, and kids are planning their costumes.

I have neighbors who totally rock the house decorations at Halloween to the point where when returning to my house I drive around to be spooked.  I can do so in the safety of my car and the good acceleration of my vehicle when the gas pedal is fully engaged.     

The neighbor kids are doing a preview of their costumes; thumbs up to the female vampire! 

I'm not a major fan of scary movies. Honestly, I never got over being in tenth grade and watching the film, HALLOWEEN; speaking of, exactly how many sequels of this are there??? What rattled me about the movie was that Michael Myers, the white mask wearing, knife wielding terror-inducer showed up even in the daytime! And, at the conclusion of the first movie when after having been shot multiple times and fallen twenty feet from a balcony ..... survived! The film ends and he's not there....hence, versions 2-5 of this film franchise.....

Why do we like to be frightened?  When I was in church youth group we had the grand idea to do a Haunted House within the basement of the church (!!??!).  How that approval was secured, I do not know.  One of the members of the congregation ran the local funeral home.  He secured for us a wooden casket.  I laid in it and as patrons of our fright fund-raiser approached, I at the opportune time would rise up, stare and reach out my arms. Screams ensued as did selective curse words.

It is that which we do not know that scares us.  In unsettled times, such as ours, we are on edge, scared and for added angst, quite angry.  During another time of uncertainty and anxiety, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the country, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I find myself repeating that line often. Perhaps we go to haunted fields, caves and forests to make tangible our anxiety and worries. Alas, what really troubles us remains and presents itself in very scary ways.....

Being seen

 As we still do the majority of our meetings via ZOOM there is still much WOW! about the technology.  I was on a ZOOM meeting last week and there I am chatting with and listening to and learning from someone in Oklahoma, a person in British Columbia and another individual in Arizona; I will never get over how cool that is.  Alas, there are also the frustrations and nothing beats in-person meetings for connection.  

Someone sent me a meme that compared being on a ZOOM call to holidng a seance; as one waits for folks to join there are the questions of "Are you there, Mike?"  "We can't hear you."  "We hear you, yet can't see you."  Classic.

This morning while participating in a ZOOM style Bible Study, one participant who was joining by phone while on her way to her office to get on her computer said, "I'm here. I'm not visible yet."

In the blockbuster film from several years ago, AVATAR, the blue aliens expressed love by saying, "I see you."  Some of us are old enough to remember the children's television show, ROMPER ROOM and the magic mirror segment were the hostess would hold up the magic mirror and say, "I see Tommy and Johnny and Elizabeth...." I watched that damn show daily for years and not once did I hear my name. I was not seen. Clearly, I'm still carrying a grudge and a hurt.  

Each one of us longs to be seen and to be visible.  Isolation and loneliness kills. There are a variety of reasons why persons hide and make do on the margins. I believe part of our work is to let others know we see them, they are visible to us, they matter.  It's why the theme song for the t.v. show CHEERS celebrated the bar as a place where "everyone knows your name."