How Are You Feeling?

Cast all your anxiety on God because God cares for you. 2 Peter 5:7

On this day in 1928, Fred Rogers was born. This seems a fitting thing to mention because—until The Pestilence turned life upside down—our congregation had been engaged in a Lenten series inspired by the movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The feature film is about a real-life journalist’s encounter and subsequent friendship with the Presbyterian minister who created the simply profound children’s television show, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. When asked in an interview what he was trying to accomplish through his TV show, Fred Rogers said, “We are trying to give children positive ways to deal with their feelings.”

During the course of the movie, it becomes clear that adults also need positive ways to deal with their feelings. And are there ever a lot of feelings to feel these days! On the negative side, they run the gamut from restless to apprehensive to jittery to annoyed to angry to frightened.

Have you paused for a moment to figure out exactly what it is you’re feeling? It would probably be good for your mental health to do so. Naming what is going on within us helps us to get a handle on our emotions and allows us to choose our responses. In the movie, we discovered that Fred Rogers had several preferred methods for working through his negative feelings. He would pound on the lowest notes of his piano, or swim laps, or write letters, or pray for people—lots of people—by name.

Practicing kindness through empathy and compassion also aids in overcoming negative feelings. In helping others, we help ourselves step into a brighter day. There are lots of things that can be done even under the strange dome of sheltering in place. You can make phone calls to spread cheer, pull the weeds from a neighbor’s spring flower bed, send encouraging notes to old friends, open the windows and play the violin or the banjo or the harp for the world to hear, or just SMILE while walking around YOUR beautiful neighborhood…

When we were meeting in person on Wednesday nights, part of our ritual was to proclaim a “Kindness Declaration,” a sort of faith statement penned to go with our Lenten study. In honor of Fred Rogers’ birthday, and as a positive response to a situation that could easily sap our spirits if we allowed it, I share these words. You might want to speak them out loud:

Kindness Declaration

We believe in kindness.

We believe that small actions

can have a large impact,

 that kindness is contagious.

We believe in being neighborly.

We believe that gratitude

restores the soul,

That taking time to say “thank you”

 is always worth the effort.

We believe we are missionaries

in our neighborhoods–

that being salt and light in the world means loving and living like Christ.

We believe in the life-changing

power of friendship.

We believe that beautiful days

are not made by what we have,

but by who we love.

We believe in cultivating

the Fruit of the Spirit:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,

and self-control.

We thank God for this beautiful day.