It’s funny what a lone typo can do. If Smokey the Bear was fronting this post, you’d know what, or who, not to feed. But I think we’re much more likely these days to feed fears than bears. And that’s a spiritual problem.

It stretches back to 9/11. We rarely add the year to that number–it was 2001. The very start not only of a new decade, a new century, but an entire millennium. A 1000 year stretch, the long view, and we never got to dream. The last millennium humans, after a rough start of dread and plague, dreamed up cathedrals, and built them. The 20th century had its share of carnage and glory, and at the turn of the millennium, after we got past whether the computers would all die and the banks empty, we could start to focus on the possibilities. Travel to Mars and stars, end child hunger, clean the earth and seas, we might even have dreamed of peace. I sense 9/11 put the kabosh on those visions–at least in the mean time.

I had a teacher who drove me crazy. He was from South America, and always referred to us as “you North Americans.” But what he said hit home. He suggests that “you North Americans never give yourselves a chance to be brave. You keep your real fears far off over the horizon, and are tyrannized by petty anxieties.” Then came the challenge: “You must walk up to the boundary of your real fears–and Act!”

So where are we today? I think we’re mired in anxiety and fear, quite out of proportion to what our real dangers are. Mass shootings, terrorist attacks, zombie apocalypse! They all get our lizard brain kicking in, riling us up, forcing us to react and run rather than observe, think and plan. Calm down everybody. God is with us in this. We need to find some antidotes to this soup of anxiety and the rule of fear. May I recommend to us three balms, over bombs? Apply trust, mercy and joy.

“Trust is a quaint idea,” we’re told in James Bond’s “GoldenEye.” It does feel pollyannish, old fashioned, I mean, who do you really trust? You need a password for your password file. We’re conditioned now to be suspicious–of unlighted space, of neighborhoods, even neighbors, unless their pay grade is higher than ours. Even then. Trust is to belief, as hope is to faith. Faith these days always implies content, some credal presumption to check off or dispute. So I look more to hope these days, it’s less judgmental. Hope and trust are less concerned with information. Faith invites a leap, hope is more a progression. Hope wishes on a relationship, and offers hugs. When you trust, you decide to forego suspicion. It’s like being on a flying trapeze. You let go of what you have, for what you don’t yet have, on the word of someone who loves you.

Trust feels peaceful, evolved. It drives back fear. Mercy is another Star Trek shield against anxiety and fear’s dominance. Our brother Pope Francis is making mercy the theme and goal of 2016; he must not know we’re having an election campaign! Mercy has a liquid feel, it flows toward me, divine, compassionate. In the Merchant of Venice: “The quality of mercy is not strained (forced); it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,” and is “twice blest; it blesseth one that gives and one that takes.”

Sometimes I think mercy is a one way street, but it’s not. It defies hierarchy and status, it frees us from having to judge every homeless person on the corner, each possible dumpster trickster, every victim of abuse or neglect. Be merciful, it tamps down fear. I get there are real fears that procede from real dangers. But here’s fear inflation: in 2015, 44 U.S. residents were shot by Muslim terrorists. 52 of us were shot by toddlers. Do we need to brick up those playpens? Wall in the cradle? I’m inviting us, as I think the Reign of God does, to relax back from the frown and grimace, exit survival mode as soon as we can. It confuses and narrows our humanness.

Which brings us to the real positive nuclear option: Joy. Times of joy need to be part of our core memories. That library of tapes you play in your brain, the insults, slights, rejections, condescending crap? Pluck them out, and plug in the joy memes. When were you truly happy? What makes you exult? My new granddaughter, thank you God, what joy she brings. Am I scared for her sometimes? Yes, but I need to hold to the joy while knowing I will do everything to protect her. Joy is a pure gift. It’s ecstatic, serene and divine. My face and heart are warm, and I feel fully human, alive. And it wasn’t the pot or booze, it was being present to the good and love in my life. No knock on the first two, but the good and love led me to the fully human experience of joy. I let it come, I didn’t turn back or question it.

So when the anxiety and fear start to screw with us, practice trust, mercy and joy. Beware feeding the fears. Walk to the boundary of your real fears, then they can’t paralyze you, and we can act bravely. Go to your best places in your mind, that beach, bar, forest, mountain, lake, garden where joy and peace await you. Relax, write, breathe, meet, walk, dance, rest, bathe. Be aware, attuned to nature, drink, dine. Stand arms up, exultant in joy. Then dream our next thousand years. It’s time to get going.