Article March 20, 2017 Issue

A gentle prayer that heals fear

Pamela Hernaman

I once learned a wonderful spiritual lesson about healing fear. It happened when I was engaged in a favorite pastime: traveling on a water-powered funicular railway between two towns that are separated by a 500-foot cliff.

This funicular railway consists of two counterbalanced carriages on parallel sets of rails, and one carriage is pulled up and the other is lowered by cables. When each carriage is docked at its respective town with full water tanks, then the carriages are “balanced” because they weigh the same. The driver of the carriage at the bottom of the cliff discharges the water from his tank so that the carriage at the top of the cliff becomes heavier. The top carriage then rolls slowly down the rails, pulling the bottom carriage up at the same time. The positions of the carriages are then reversed for the next trip.

One day when my family and I arrived to board the carriage at the top of the steep cliff, there was already a long line of people, and I became aware of feelings of apprehension and anxiety among the group.

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