Psalm 131 -7/6/2026
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul within me is like a weaned child. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 131:2-3 (NRSVue, alternate translation)
Anxiety is an important mood for philosophical reasons. Anxiety exemplifies the human condition. Our well-being is precarious. We do not know where misfortune will come from that will upend all our plans or take away the good things in our lives. Anxiety reveals that humans are essentially beings who care, beings for whom things matter. What matters to one person may not matter to another. Even one’s own life is not a universal value. Some value their lives above all else, and some are willing to put other things above life, so that they are willing to risk their life. Some value their wealth and material possessions, others family and friends, and still others a cause or a vocation. What each has in common despite different objects is the structure of caring, of giving a damn.
Each of us gives a damn about something; anxiety reveals this because anxiety shows how distressing the potential loss of what we care about is. In everyday, ordinary life we many not be aware of the background structure of caring, or of things mattering, but once anxiety enters into the picture, we cannot help but be aware that we are the sorts of creatures to who things matter, things that are beyond our control. We relate to a world that does not depend on us, but we depend on it for the very meaning we give our lives.
Anxiety then reveals the structure of care and the contingency of the things we care about. Anxiety unsettles moods of contentment, joy, and accomplishment. It reveals a world in which we are ultimately powerless but where our actions still matter. We can affect outcomes that relate to our values, that relate to what matters to us, but we are not in control. Anxiety then is a kind of paradoxical mood, one that reveals the peculiar mixture of power and powerlessness that comes with being a human in a world where things matter to us.
Once anxiety has revealed the structure of mattering to humans who act in the world, it ceases to be a useful emotion and starts to look like a curse. It is unpleasurable and ceases to make a difference once the lesson we can learn from it has been internalized. Today’s Psalm points toward hope as the antidote to anxiety that calms the disquieted soul and soothes anxiety. “Hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.” Just like anxiety, hope reveals the same structure of our human caring about things. Hope, however, unlike anxiety, takes comfort in lacking control instead of being unsettled by it. The anxious person sees all that they care about and how they do not have the control over the world to bring what matters to fruition without risk. Hope takes that same situation, that same structure of value and power, and takes comfort in that lack of control, in acknowledging that other forces or factors other than one’s own will are decisive.
This Psalm does not give specific insight into how to move from anxiety to hope, other than to hope “in the Lord.” What goes into hoping “in the Lord” will have to be unpacked more, but what we have learned here is the dichotomy between anxiety and hope; there is no third option. Anxiety that resolves itself into feelings of power instead of a mood of hope is an illusion that will reveal itself as illusion once that power is shown to be itself illusory. Hope/anxiety in our powerlessness is, I would argue, simply the human condition laid bare.
Further Reading: For more on anxiety as an existential mood that reveals the human being as a being to whom things matter, see Heidegger’s Being and Time.
Revised Common Lectionary Readings for 7/5/2026:
Jeremiah 27:1-11, 16-22
Romans 1:18-25
Psalm 131
Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis
Dionysus on a Bike 
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