On My Fifth Anniversary

In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

From Luke, Chapter 1.

More to come...

Exodus

During the first three weeks of Lent, those who pray the Office of Readings read daily from the Book of Exodus.  This week, we find that the Israelites, having been led out of Egypt by the Lord, are exquisite whiners.  They fear that the Egyptian army will crush them; they are hungry; they have no water -- and they complain.  In each instance, they long for the relative safety and comfort of their slavery in Egypt.  In each instance, they are saved by the Lord.  Pharaoh's chariots and charioteers are swept into the sea.  The Israelites find manna in abundance in the morning; quail, at night.  Moses strikes a rock with his rod at Massah and Meribah, and water flows.

In other words, Exodus depicts a people from whom a heavy burden has been lifted; they are free.  Their reaction: "This is hard!"  They prefer the easy acquiescence to the responsibiity-free days of forced labor and abundant pork of Egypt's fleshpots.

These are great stories because they work at so many levels.  Christians read these stories not only as the history of the deliverance of the "stiff-necked" Israelites out of Egypt, but as a pre-figuring of a more global Passover.  Christ, the Paschal lamb, leads sinners out of the bondage of sin and death to the Promised Land of communion with God.

I don't mean to be harsh in my assessment of the Israelites.  I think that these stories have such an enduring appeal, not because they attempt to describe actions just at a cosmic scale, but at a human, personal scale, as well.  I recognize the reaction because it is my reaction to difficult days all too often.  It is the reaction of a recovering alcoholic or addict, longing for familiar escape.  Even well into to sobriety, it's natural to wish that life freed from our own slavery didn't require constant diligence.  In that way, the story of the Israelites suggest the story of addicts in recovery.  It is hard.

Of course, the Israelites were right about one thing; they didn't leave Egypt and slavery behind to die in the desert.  They had a destination, however difficult it may be to achieve.  In recovery, we are freed from our slavery to drink or drugs, but sobriety isn't the destination.  Sobriety is the liberation from our slavery and a journey to undertake, as well.  For most of us, it involves doing the work to understand how we came to be drunks and addicts and to do what we can to repair the damage we've done.  We have our own Promised Land to get to.

The Edge of Sadness

Who knew that such a mild winter could be so hard?  That the gravitational pull of my sofa and my bed could exert such tremendous force?  The strange thing was that the effects weren't felt so much by my body as my spirit.  Physically, I was active.  I was running regularly, getting reasonably fit.  The other side of the coin: it was next to impossible to get out of bed, off the couch.  Chores wouldn't have been done at all except for hosting a get-together with a few colleagues.  I felt constantly behind at work.  No meetings.  No Vespers.  Prayer, which usually is a real joy, had no appeal whatsoever.  My waking life seemed to revolve around the web and the remote, each involved in a futile search for something that would catch and hold my interest.

So, I got sick.  Facing a cold and a weekend that promised a little winter, I made soup -- 2 gallons of soup -- and settled in with a novel.

Somewhere, months before, I had read a discussion of The Edge of Sadness.  It sounded like an excellent novel.  I bought it, brought it home, and put it on a bookshelf in the disaster area that is my extra bedroom.  There it stayed.  As I considered my weekend of winter and discomfort,  I remembered reading this:

I just finished reading “The Edge of Sadness” by Edwin O’Connor. It’s the best novel I’ve read in a long time, about a priest who’s been through a period of spiritual aridity and finds at the end of it, the freedom to embrace the life he’s been living as opposed to the life he always thought he wanted. When Father Kennedy finally acknowledges that what he wants is not the warmth and regard of other people, but love and truer devotion to God, his conversion works out like this:

“The mighty changes, of course, did not take place—or if they did they remained invisible to me. Which was natural enough…since a slight increase in the zeal of one man produces no miracles—unless the one man is himself one of the extraordinary few who can and do change history. But nothing like that was involved here. I did my work, time went by…”

And so it does.

Taking my cue, I read the novel, and it is one of the best novels I've read in a long time.  It is beautifully written; the pages flew by.  It is wise.  And, as the Quakers would say, it spoke to my condition.  It cast a new light on how I had been living, not just this winter.

Even though I've fought against it, however passively, it's time for me to actually do the Steps.  My 4th Step is very much clearer now.  It's time for me to arrange my sock drawer, remove the extraneous from my extra bedroom.  It's time to recognize that I'm home.

Heroes

As you may know, CNN names a Hero of the Week celebrating those people who perform truly notable deeds of community service.  This week's hero is Scott Strode, the founder of Phoenix Multisport.  Phoenix is an organization dedicated to the creation of sober, physically active communities.  Right now, Phoenix is located in Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs, doing wonderful work with recovering addicts as well as working with the Wounded Warrior Project.

CNN and its sister channels are running brief spots about Scott and Phoenix over the course of the weekend.   If you are cable-free, the Phoenix web site has a link to the video.

I'm thrilled for Scott, Ben, and the Phoenix organization.  Their web site has occupied a seat on my sidebar from Day One, and I've written about them before.  I hope you'll take the time to give them a look.

Our Lady Of Lourdes

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes.  In 1858, Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous close to the River Gave, directing her to drink from an almost imperceptible stream. Mary directed Bernadette to instruct the priests to build a chapel at the site.  Today, the waters of Lourdes are famous for miraculous healing -- 67 cures are considered miraculous by the Church -- and about 5,000,000 pilgrims visit Lourdes annually.

"What does this have to do with sobriety?" you may ask.  Almost five years ago, I went to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, desperate and afraid.  My wife, after many patient years of pleading, had told me our marriage was over.  I knew that I was an alcoholic and that I was at a crossroads.  I knew nothing about my life would improve unless I got sober, but I had no idea how to find the strength to do so.

I stopped in the Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes and asked for help as a son would ask his mother.  I prayed in a way that was completely foreign to me; I wondered where it came from.  I left and didn't give it another thought--until later that night.

It was Holy Week, and I went to a Tenebrae service; a celebration of darkness seemed fitting.  Amid the darkness, I was overwhelmed by the awareness of love that I couldn't imagine or understand, and I knew that the love I could perceive was more than dwarfed by the love being offered to me.  It offered me not just the faith that I could become sober but reassured me that getting sober was just the beginning of a beautiful life.  I understood that even the pain I would experience was nothing at all compared to the joy of following the love where it might lead.

In the lexicon of AA, asking Our Lady of Lourdes to pray for me marked the decision to turn my will and my life over to God.  This is a decision that has to be made daily, hourly, constantly.  My desire to hold on to my will is powerful, but the promise held out to me is far, far greater.

So, today on her memorial, I will once again ask Our Lady of Lourdes to pray for me, that my healing may continue.  I will ask her to pray for all addicts, active and recovering.  And, I will thank her for the prayers that she has offered on my behalf.

Grace

At the Last Judgment Christ will say to us, “Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!” And he will say to us: “Vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well.” And the wise and prudent will say, “Lord, why do you welcome them?” And he will say: “If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has ever been judged worthy.” And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the Gospel of grace! Lord, your kingdom come!

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Kaleidobible: At the Last Judgment (via mshedden).  

A prayer for those in despair

Dear Lord, I know not from whence this darkness comes; this temptation to give in. I stand on the precipice of despair and I long to jump headfirst over the edge. Yet when my heart thinks of You, the darkness is overcome by the light. I am no longer able to give in. Be Thou my everlasting light. O Lord God, grant that I may forever turn my thoughts and heart to you in all my troubles. Amen.

A couple of days ago, I reblogged this prayer on my tumblr page.  I think this prayer is beautiful.  It expresses the seriousness of the problems we face and contrasts their bleakness to the efficacy of God's grace.  


Notice that the prayer doesn't say that it's easy to turn away from the precipice, that it's all good.  Life is hard, and that's a constant whether you're sober or not.  If we persevere, what changes is what we turn to for help.  What changes is our ability to carry on - with a little help - despite the weight of our burdens.  We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.