MY OPINION ESSAYS
Let Everything That Has Breath Praise the Lord
Digital design. Planned limited edition of 50.
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Jean-Marie Lee
Be Not Afraid: The Level Zero Hero
By Jean-Marie Lee
In our current era, the "architecture of anxiety" has become our primary shelter. It feels like everyone is braced for impact, 24/7. When I taught at a public high school, I saw the early stages of this. We had metal gates ready to be pulled out to contain fights, locked doors to prevent gun violence, and a sheriff on campus at all times. The students knew it; we all knew it. But are students in 2026 really that different from students in 1986 or 1946? And yet, today, there is a whole generation that seems paralyzed—terrified just to walk through the school doors.
We are trying to curate a sense of safety by building walls, but all we’ve really done is build silos. We are retreating into ideological and theological bunkers, trying to keep the "other" out, while ignoring the fact that our own hearts are falling apart from the inside.
In our early years, we move through the world with a profound, almost dangerous, lack of data. I call this the "Level 0 Hero" stage. It’s that reckless, unearned chutzpah of youth. Back in April of 2001, my friends and I camped out overnight on the south lawn of the White House. We weren't asked to leave. We were just kids in the world, assuming the world would always let us be. By September of that year, that sense of access—that feeling that we were just part of the landscape—evaporated.
I learned the hard way that you aren't the architect of your own survival. My brother shattered his ribs on a motorcycle, and I didn't see a warning; I saw a fluke, so I went and bought my own bike. Thirty minutes later, I was on the asphalt with a torn ACL and a very disappointed nurse. My mother’s worry wasn't just nagging; it was a map of the world’s harsh, unvarnished history that I was too arrogant to read.
But there is a new, darker layer to our anxiety today. It’s the "vicarious trauma" we feed ourselves. We have become a society addicted to the live feed of tragedy. I remember meeting a man in Boston after Hurricane Katrina who told me he had a stroke while watching the Twin Towers collapse. He worked in those towers but happened to be away on business. He was watching his own life vanish on a screen.
I knew exactly what he meant. When the levees broke during Katrina, I made the mistake of watching the news. I watched the aerial footage of my own street, my own apartment complex. It was soul-crushing.
But the trauma didn't stop there. I didn't just see the destruction; I saw the data. They started posting the zip codes and, specifically, the depth of the water in feet. My swimming pool had a four-foot shallow end and a six-foot deep end. When I saw the news report say there was eight feet of water, I didn't need a description. I knew exactly how much water that was. I knew my ceilings were ten feet high and there were only two feet left of air.
I didn't need to see that. I didn't need to have those images burned into my mind. You can live your whole life not knowing some things, and you will be just fine. If it isn't happening to you in the present moment, you don’t need the information.
This is the irony of 2026: we are so afraid of a "Mean World" that we’ve stopped living in the present. We think if we watch enough news, we’ll be prepared for the disaster. Instead, we just end up traumatized by things that haven't even happened to us yet.
I still have a dream that comes back to me whenever I’m in a state of total shock. I’m held in Langan Park by a giant dove that swoops me up into a hug. In the distance, I see my deceased father waving. It’s a reminder that I am held. And if I am held, so is every single person in this world. God is big enough to hold all of us simultaneously, as if we were the only one being held at any given moment. I’ve even done several renderings of this dream, but I left my father out of it this time—because I realized the holding is enough.
"Be Not Afraid" isn't a command to be naive. It’s a call to surrender. It’s the realization that we aren't the ones keeping the world spinning. We are fragile. We are all walking down a dark street, or riding a bike toward an inevitable fall. But we are already held. Held by the Shekhinah, by the Holy Spirit, by the legacy of all those who walked before us.
In a world with no guarantees, the most radical act left is to stop being afraid of the collapse. We can put down the remote. We can walk out the door. We can trust the arms that hold us through it.
Posted on: July 12, 2026