The old legend--that there are 365 different appearances of the phrase "Fear not" in the Bible, one for each day of the year--doesn't really stand up to scrutiny regarding technical translations across time and language.
But the gist of the matter is that we humans tend to suffer from a fundamental fright reflex, particularly when confronted with something unknown or overwhelming.
A consoling truth is that overcoming fear is hardwired into our national DNA. Our country was founded amid a time of great fearfulness.
In late 1776, the most relevant document was no longer the one which eloquently begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..." Less than six months after Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the red-white-and-blue fanfare and spirit of liberty was barely a memory amid the blackness of war-torn despair.
The newly christened United States of America was facing its first crisis, and a pamphlet out of Philadelphia would introduce a new and enduring opening phrase that would recharge the revolutionary cause for soldiers and patriots everywhere.
"These are the times that try men's souls," Thomas Paine's essay began.
He went on to declare that while "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" will shrink from service in the time of panic and confusion at hand, those that stood by their duty deserved the "love and thanks" of all.
General Washington ordered the pamphlet read aloud to his battle-weary, beaten-down, barely-fed-and-clothed troops just before Christmas. Two days later the re-energized Continental army crossed the Delaware and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries, without losing a single American life.
Ten years later, Washington's worry was not for his army in combat, but the people in peacetime as they battled with the unanticipated challenges of self-government and discords mounted.
"No day was ever more clouded than the present," he wrote in November 1786. "We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion."
A few weeks later, Washington expressed his bewilderment about disorders among the states, asking rhetorically, who could have foreseen or predicted them?
Timeless words with timely import. Confusion and anarchy no longer seem like disconnected concepts from centuries ago; uncertain fear of both lives in today's apprehensions.
Nobody could have predicted that every large crowd-attracting event would be canceled. That schools would be closed. That we would be advised to gather in groups of 10 or fewer.
The series of unimaginables probably isn't over yet. But just as with the accomplishments at our founding and every other soul-trying time since, the path to success requires stepping over fears.
Thankfully, this historic pattern has produced an inordinate supply of inspiring commentary. One of the treasures of my library is aptly named The Treasure Chest. It's a self-styled anthology of "memorable words of wisdom and inspiration."
Forty-one subjects--ranging from achievement and beauty and education to joy and opportunity and work--are listed in the contents, with several pages of quotations from great thinkers and writers dedicated to each topic.
I pull this book down frequently to let the voices of sages long past return to life in my mind, and recent events have drawn my eyes to several appropriate sections.
Under the subject of courage, some passages leapt from the page.
"Courage is resistance to fear; not absence of it."-- Mark Twain
Nearby, coincidentally enough, an old Italian motto: "It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."
A page over, and this prominent excerpt: "Courage and cowardice are antithetical ... . Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it. We must continually build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."-- Martin Luther King Jr.
In the determination section, William Blake is quoted: "Great things are done when men and mountains meet."
Flipping through, my fingers pause at the hope subject page, where the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe are anchored near the lower margin: "The longest day must have its close--the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning."
Here, too, is found a favorite poet at her best:
"Hope" is the thing with
feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without
the words--
And never stops--at all.
-- Emily Dickinson
Finally, nestled among the pages of the community chapter, a point of revelatory punctuation arrives.
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."-- C. S. Lewis
Extraordinary moments unmask otherwise ordinary routines and roles because there is extraordinary capacity within our souls, in times that try them, for enormous virtue.
In Jonesboro, the leading arts organization is hosting daytime arts camps for the children of health-care workers while schools are out. A downtown landlord has told struggling restaurant tenants to not pay rent and instead pay their employees.
Every community is witness to its own miracles, all wrought by mere mortals.
"I thank God, that I fear not," Paine wrote near the end of his American Crisis pamphlet, saying he could see the way out of the current situation, "by perseverance and fortitude."
Words to remember, principles to guide, history to honor.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 03/20/2020