Is it a creeping tension in your neck and back? Perhaps you're finding it hard to focus or can't quiet your thoughts? Maybe your stomach is upset, your head aches, your teeth are clenched? Maybe you find yourself hyper-vigilant or distrustful of others in public spaces? You are feeling the subtle and insidious presence of anxiety, which seems to affect us all in these difficult days.

Scripture says 'perfect love casts out fear' but it's hard to believe when our Facebook feed, the 24 hour news cycle, and family, work, and church relationships are full of grief, anger, trauma, and more. Our spiritual vision is easily clouded. We are paralyzed by negativity. Weeds of hopelessness and isolation grow too easily in fearful soil and choke expressions of love, trust, and gratitude that can comfort and heal.

While I don't have a quick fix to our collective unsettledness or the anxiety that ebbs and flows, I have noticed that singing settles us. It roots us in our breath. It slows our minds and helps us focus. And when we sing in community, especially in safe, life-affirming spaces, we feel better, connected, hopeful. Barriers that divide and isolate disappear and we experience unity, audible wholeness.

Perhaps one of the ways we can defuse anxiety and diffuse peacefulness is through song, specifically songs that remind us who we are and whose we are. As we nourish ourselves with words of hope, healing, and peace, our intuitive response to crisis and change shifts. When we sing of a Love that holds all the broken, challenging, unsettled parts of life with gentleness and care, we clear a space for compassion, creativity, and community to grow.

Here are a few short chants and hymns that have been helpful to me and to communities I've served over the past years. They offer language of prayer and praise rooted in God's deep and ending love. In these challenging times, perhaps you might sing one as a daily meditation, share one with a small group of friends, or use one as recurrent response or refrain in worship.

Don't Be Afraid, My Love is Stronger - John Bell
Music + Video

Healing River of the Spirit - Text: Ruth Duck, Tune: BEACH SPRING
Music

In the Lord I Will E'er Be Thankful - Taize Community
Music + Video

Nada te turbe/Nothing Can Trouble - Taize Community
Music + Video

Open My Heart - Ana Hernandez
Music + Video

Pues si vivimos/When We Are Living - Roberto Escamilla
Music

There Is No Fear In Love - Elliot Levine
Music + Video

There's a Wideness In God's Mercy - Text: Frederick Faber, Tune: Calvin Hampton
Music + Video

Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section and share tunes that have helped you or your community through times of anxiety.