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.

From other parts of the blogging world...

A redeemed drunkard, with vivid memory of past hopeless struggles and new sense of power through Christ, was replying to the charge that “his religion was a delusion.”

He said: “Thank God for the delusion; it has put clothes on my children and shoes on their feet and bread in their mouths. It has made a man of me and it has put joy and peace in my home, which had been a hell. If this is a delusion, may God send it to the slaves of drink everywhere, for their slavery is an awful reality.”

—	E. Y. Mullins (via northodoxy)  and deepinhistory

More on getting small

During his October 30, 2010 address, the Pope answered a question from a member of the audience: What does it mean to love completely?  How can we learn to love?  His response, via Irregular Theology:

It is very important, fundamental, I would say, to learn to love, to really love, to learn the art of true love! ... (I)f you only look at yourself, you never grow up! You grow up when you no longer let the mirror be the only truth of yourselves but when you let your friends tell you the truth. You will grow up if you are able to make your life a gift to others, not to seek yourselves, but to give yourselves to others: this is the school of love. 

When I was drinking, the egomaniac with a self-esteem problem was essentially an adolescent, although that does a disservice to many adolescents.  My mirror was essentially inside my head.  I wasn't honest enough -- with myself or anybody else -- to acknowledge that the yardstick by which I measured situations was me and whether something would affect what I wanted to do (mostly drink).

The Pope's direction parallels what a newcomer will hear in an 12 step meeting: Go to meetings and be with other addicts.  Get a service position.  Get involved because you need to be available to others and less reliant on yourself.

While a 12 step program isn't necessary, this attitude is essential.  It is the school of love -- love of family, mature and healthy love of yourself, and a love that the Church calls caritas.

Thoughts from IAD

Early in John's Gospel, we read John the Baptist saying, "I must decrease that He might increase."  Once again, John makes it plain that he is so dedicated to living out his vocation that he is willing to disappear in the process.  In sobriety, many try to follow a path that is similar in intent, if not degree.  Sobriety becomes their vocation.

I don't intend to argue about their objective.  I think that a vocation, be it making clear a way for the Lord or pursuing sobriety for its own sake, demands the same process: "I must decrease..."

One of the most striking things I ever heard in an AA meeting was one speaker's self-description: an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.  Amen.  John the Baptist's plan clearly addresses the first, but it also addresses the second in unanticipated ways.  Reducing the sway of my ego increased my capacity to receive help, to grow up a little, to receive love.  Even if these gifts are truly underserved--and they are--the quaking fear that I would be discovered as an impostor began to fade.

This isn't a path I would have chosen for myself, but it seems to be working.  It's a simple way, small.  An earlier post pointed to the path I try to take:

Here's your life. Do the work. Let it take you where it takes you. Just remain in my love.

Beyond that, experience tells me that the old way just allowed me to make a mess of me.

A Psalm for Those Seeking Recovery

From today's Office of Readings.

More on leaping

This time from Auden, courtesy of Wesley Hill and Curlew River:

“When the ground crumbles under their feet, [people] *have* to leap even into uncertainty if they are to avoid certain destruction.”

Evidently, Auden was describing his conversion, or return to the Anglican church in broader context, claiming that many find themselves in similar conditions "...in all states of life." This certainly describes the circumstances surrounding my step away from alcohol.  As a friend of mine says during his shares at an AA meeting: "Thank God for the gift of desperation."