Cultivating Courage and Community

Fifteen years ago I wrote a piece for a spoken word event called You Can’t Have Courage Without Fear; it had a line in it that I come back to often and share with others (and myself): Courage is doing hard things scared. When I was thinking about the last post in this New Ways for a New World series I went to the old blog on my website to see what else I said about it and found the piece I shared out loud that I completely forgot about. Here’s the whole thing, unedited (all in lower caps, still my favorite even though I adapted to capital letters for writing a few years ago to stop annoying so many people).

It’s also more in the “I” but almost everything can also be translated to “we.”

you can’t have courage without fear

by kathy escobar, from voca femina, august 2011

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fear.

damn it, i hate fear.

i wish i didn’t know it so well. that its tentacles hadn’t wrapped around my heart & my soul so deeply, sometimes sapping my courage like some kind of cruel sport.

fear kills.

fear destroys.

fear paralyzes.

fear maims.

but i’m learning something important right now about fear. something deep inside the marrow of my bones, in the blood that flows through my veins into my heart and my head and my hands and my feet and my eyes and my ears.

fear can’t win.

it tries, oh it tries.

but i must–oh i must–refuse to let it.

refuse to let fear win.

refuse to let it silence me, stifle me, wither me, squelch me, punish me, abuse me, paralyze me.

life’s just too short. too precious. too fragile. too beautiful. too sweet. too rich. too deep. too wide.

to let fear blind us from beauty and hope and love and peace and peace and freedom and joy and peace. and peace. and peace.

so what’s the way out from under its grip?

how can i move when i feel so stuck?

i must find courage. i must find courage. i.must.find.courage.

i know it’s there. it’s in me. it’s in you. it’s in all of us. yours helps mine and mine helps yours. and yours helps yours. it’s stronger than we think. deeper than we know.

available right now.

not once i do this or do that or read this or read that or know this or know that or figure out this or figure out that or therapize this or therapize that.

it’s here. right here.

courage.

lovely, strong, tender, mighty courage.

deep in the marrow of my bones and the blood in my veins and the ventricles of my heart.

courage, crying out–“use me. use me. use me. i may be small. i may not be as loud as you wish. but i’m here. i’m here. i’m here. to help you. to strengthen you. to move you. and just so you know, i may not look like it, but i’m way stronger than that ugly bastard named fear. quit. letting him. win. quit standing there yelling and screaming at him. instead, maybe reach out and make friends with him. “

you can have fear without courage, but you can’t have courage without fear.

you can have fear without courage, but you can’t have courage without fear.

that’s what courage is. doing hard things scared.

i can. i must. i will. i am.

you can.

you must.

you will.

you are.

Whew, that’s a little vulnerable but glad I dug that one up.

I’d definitely add for 2026: we are. we are. we are.

In order to make it in this new scary, disorienting world, we’re going to have to keep doing hard things scared in the midst of many unknowns.

We are going to have to make friends with fear instead of trying to push it away and to actively cultivate courage to show up in new ways. All of the different parts of this series all require courage: Owning our Agency, Shedding Shame, Dismantling Binaries, Metabolizing Grief, Expanding Faith, Embodying Our Values, Nurturing Equity, and Practicing Paradox.

Each one of them requires doing hard things scared.

They require changing unhealthy patterns in our lives, using our voices in ways we maybe haven’t before, leaving toxic systems, letting go of constricting beliefs that no longer serve us, expanding our vision and our views to make room for new possibilities, allowing ourselves to grieve and feel all the feels more fully. They require courage to own what’s most important to us despite resistance, to lead more strongly, clearly, and with more resolve, and to develop the wisdom and security to be able to hold contradictions more tenderly.

Yeah, the new ways of this new world require cultivating courage.

Like “nurturing”, I love the word “cultivate” because it implies intention, nurture, developing, tending, and encouraging. In fact, a few years ago my title at The Refuge changed from Co-Founder and Co-Pastor to Co-Founder and Community Cultivator because that’s what I love to do the most–cultivate community in real life, online, and outside, in all the ways.

Community also helps us cultivate courage. It’s hard to muster up what we need on our own separate from some kindreds and other safe and vulnerable humans. It doesn’t have to be in a church or an organized group; in fact, in the new world we’re living in, there are so many creative ways to find community online and in real life.

No matter the form in this new world, we need cheerleaders, allies, advocates, advocates, and hype-squads to help us cultivate courage.

We need real-life people, not in books or movies or on social media, but in flesh and blood relationships who we see doing hard things scared and embodying courage.

We need people who witness us stepping out and stepping up and stepping in and letting go and moving forward and finding healing and say to us, “I see you, we see you, I’m with you, we’re with you, you got this.”

We need other humans to celebrate with, grieve with, feel with, grow with, advocate with, learn with, dream with, practice with, fail with, find our way forward with.

Doing hard things scared is so pure, so beautiful, even though it’s always pretty messy, too. It makes me think of a line in a Rupi Kaur poem, “the world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it - there is nothing purer than that.”

I’m out of word count today, and there’s only one practice I’ve got for cultivating courage today: Let’s all listen to what our soul knows it needs to do but we’re scared to step into (or out of, or whatever it is). The answer of when and how might not come right away but let’s maybe try sharing with someone out loud as a start if we haven’t already.

Courage. Community.

Yeah, may we keep cultivating it and find what we need to keep making gold out of pain and doing hard things scared.

Sending courage from Colorado today,

PS: You can send me some courage back right now, too, as I will be sharing the message at the 79th Annual Easter Sunrise Service at Red Rocks Amphitheatre this year! I am so honored and excited (and nervous as it’s a big venue and definitely a long way from how we do things at The Refuge, ha!). Red Rocks is a special soul place for me in Colorado and I love easter sunrises and the hope of new life. It’s also The Refuge’s 20 year birthday month, which is a special gift and makes it even more meaningful to me! It’s livestreamed too, if you want to join from afar and you can get all the details at Colorado Council of Churches Events page.

Also, thanks for hanging in with this 9 post series–New Ways for a New World: Life and Faith Beyond Boxes, Binaries, and Borders. If you haven’t read the other ones, I hope you’ll go to my Substack site and read them all because they make more sense together. It’s been fun and good for my soul!