Tag Archives: faith

Lessons from Senator Kirk’s Brush with Death

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Senator Mark Kirk had an interesting report in the Washington Post yesterday about his recovery from a life-threatening stroke last year and the emotional and physical anguish that this NDE (near death experience) subjected him to. His report suggests this event has greatly humbled him, enriched his faith, and given him new hope in life, not only for himself but for mankind, even including the always dead-locked, hyper-partisan Congress.

His facing death forced him to address his finitude. Death does that. And the teachings of most world religions is that we can, and should, die before death and thus begin to live a more full, mature life. When we die symbolically we can tap into another…or other…dimensions of life which our ego-bound consciousness has kept us from seeing and experiencing. This will allow us to see that we are all on the same team, that the “us-them” paradigm is deadly, and that there is more to life than meets the eye. Here is Kirk’s report:

“Am I going to die today?” I asked Jay as we rode together in an ambulance through the streets of Chicago. Jay Alexander was my doctor but also my friend, and I knew he wouldn’t lie. “Just give me a percentage,” I pleaded.

“There’s a 98 percent chance you’re not going to die today,” he said.

It wasn’t the way I expected my day to go, but as soon as I’d felt dizzy and experienced numbness in my left arm that Saturday morning, Jan. 21, 2012, I knew I was in trouble. An MRI soon discovered that the inner lining of my carotid artery had peeled away. The dissected artery was blocking the blood flow to my brain, putting me in imminent danger of a stroke.

Anticoagulants kept my blood pressure down, and for a few hours I seemed to stabilize. But then the numbness and tingling on my left side worsened, and my vision got blurry.

Jay, who had met me at the emergency room at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, ordered me transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, which has a certified stroke center. It was on the way there that he gave me my chances and assured me that, given my age and health, my chances for recovery from a stroke were good.

I was in my hospital bed when the waves came and I began to lose control of my body and mind. Unbelievable, I thought. I’m only 52. I didn’t even know anyone who’d had a stroke.

More than a week later, I regained a confused consciousness in the intensive care unit. I knew I was lying in a bed. I thought someone was sharing the bed with me, but it was my own leg. I vaguely remember a party the ICU staff had for the Super Bowl and the smell of the food they brought.

I had two operations to relieve the swelling in my brain and remained at Northwestern Memorial until Feb. 10, when I was transferred to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC). In all that time, I remember only one rational thought: I needed to get out of there and back to reality, back to my job serving the people of Illinois, which has always been the greatest ambition of my life.

I still worried I would die. I dreamed that three angels came into my room and wanted me to go with them, but I said no because I knew where I was, on the ninth floor of the RIC, and why I was there: to begin a long, difficult recovery from an ischemic stroke.

When you’ve been flat on your back for weeks, your circulatory system doesn’t respond well the first time you try to get up. The therapists at the RIC were prepared for that. They strapped me on a table and tipped it upright. I passed out immediately. When I came to, I realized how hard a recovery I faced if I couldn’t even stand up.

I had blood clots in my leg that were treated with anticoagulants. I asked a doctor what would happen to me if one of the clots broke loose. “You could have a pulmonary embolism,” he answered, “and you would die.”

At best, I thought it unlikely that I would recover enough to return to the Senate. I had always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy, a believer in Murphy’s Law.

The staff at the RIC consider that kind of attitude debilitating, and they don’t tolerate it in their patients. My physical therapist, Mike Klonowski, was a tyrant and, God bless him, a great inspiration. The stroke had severely impaired my left leg, but Mike expected me to walk again. He would teach me how to do it, or we would both die trying.

One day he pulled me into a seated position on my bed, but I couldn’t stay upright. He kept pulling me up, and I kept falling over. “Give me a second, will you,” I snapped. “I’m about as weak as you can get.” But whenever I thought I couldn’t do anything, Mike and everyone at the RIC always answered, “You will be able to.”

He had me on the treadmill as soon as I could manage. I regarded my left leg as a lifeless appendage. Mike kept insisting that it would bear weight. The moment I realized that it would, and that I could swing it from my hip and propel myself forward, was the breakthrough revelation of my rehabilitation.

Kept upright by a track and a harness, I wanted to run down the hallway that day — and tried. But Mike stopped me and told me that slow walking was more instructive to my brain. I disagreed; we had a screaming match. He prevailed.

Hour after hour on that infernal machine, trying to do a simple thing that my brain would no longer communicate to my limb, was torture. Once, during an exhausting session, I threw up on Mike. He just looked up and said, “I can’t believe you did that to me.”

I wanted to give up almost every day. I was indescribably fatigued. I wanted to sleep all the time, a common desire in stroke sufferers. But I was beginning to believe. I used the prospect of returning to work, of climbing up the steps of the Capitol and walking the 50 paces to the Senate floor, as motivation. With every swing of my leg on the treadmill, I became more convinced I would do it.

Once, when I was a little down in the dumps, the RIC chaplain read to me from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”

I’m different from what I was. My left leg and left arm might never work like they once did, but my mind is sharp. I’m capable of doing the work entrusted to me by the people of Illinois, but I am forever changed.

I’m an optimist now, grateful for every blessing. Bad things happen, but life is still waiting for you to make the most of it. I want my life to count for something more than the honors I once craved. I believe it will.

My faith is stronger. My humility is deeper. I know I depend on family and friends more than I ever realized. I know, too, that the things that divide us in politics are infinitesimal compared with the dignity of our common humanity.

Climbing the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 3 was one of the greatest moments of my life. It was a goal fulfilled and a message to all stroke survivors: Never, ever give up.

I was the beneficiary of many kindnesses from colleagues on both sides of the aisle after my stroke, and those acts will forever matter more to me than any political differences. I don’t expect to be the same senator I was before my stroke — I hope to be a better one. I want to make my life matter by doing work that matters to others. I want to do it with the help of my friends, Republicans and Democrats, and to share the satisfaction of knowing we have honored our public trust together.

I was once a pessimist. I’m not that man anymore. And that change, brought about by misfortune, is the best thing that ever happened to me.

 

Random Thoughts about Prayer and Such

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Prayer is not a request for God’s favors. True, it has been used to obtain the satisfaction of personal desires. It has even been adopted to reinforce prejudices, justify violence, and create barriers between people and between countries. But genuine prayer is based on recognizing the Origin of all that exists, and opening ourselves to it….In prayer we acknowledge God as the supreme source from which flows all strength, all goodness, all existence, acknowledging that we have our being, life itself from this supreme Power. one can then communicate with this Source, worship it, and ultimately place one’s very center in it. (Piero Ferrucci)

I have paraphrased the teachings of Jesus before as, “Come on guys and gals, just get over yourselves! Get out of the way and I’ll fill the vacuum.”

But, so often, as W. H. Auden noted, “And Truth met him and held out her hand and he clung in panic to his tall beliefs and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

I Want to be (Un)Famous!

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I think all of us want to be famous meaning we want to be admired and love more than we can possibly be.  We want to be the BMOC or BWOC.  And some of us get to be but most of us are confined to obscurity and left with the vicarious satisfaction that comes from glomming onto (identifying with) popular heroes—sports stars, movie stars, musicians, political figures…and in my case, literary greats.

But I think we can still take great satisfaction in being insignificant  For, life is inherently paradoxical, nothing is as it seems, and if we look carefully at what we are doing we can take great satisfaction in our meagre, “insignificant” station in life.  If we have the humility to realize that our prime responsibility is to merely show up and fulfill our responsibilities…mundane though they may be…then we are doing our part in keeping this dog-and-pony show afloat.  And that IS significant and we can take the same satisfaction that we could have if we were famous!  There IS glory and power in mere Be-ing.  And ultimately, there is found the only Glory and Power in the universe even for those who are the movers-and-shakers in our world.

T. S. Eliot advised us to “offer our deeds to oblivion.”  That was not nihilistic…he was a man of great Christian faith.  He was merely noting that we should live our life as productively and meaningfully as we can and then realize that the outcome is beyond us, and we must trust that our actions will be helping to the unfolding of God’s purpose.  Eliot, in the same marvelous poem, The Four Quartets, said that this faith requires merely, “prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.”   Here is a marvelous poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about this type of “fame,” entitled, Famous:

 

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Newtown, Ct, Faith, Hope, and Action

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The recent tragedy at Newtown, Ct. revealed the best and worst of our country. The worst is obvious—senseless violence, self-loathing turned outward. The best is seen in the ability of some of the parents to mobilize and in the midst of their agony voice a desire to take a lead in changing the laws re gun ownership. The event was so horrible that most of us can never really understand unless we have lived through something similar. It was horrible enough for us to hear and read about but to have actually had it happen to you is beyond my ability to comprehend. Part of me would be tempted to immediately surrender to bleak despair which always beckons just beyond the periphery of our conscious mind. In tragedies like this even our faith is sorely tested as that despair threatens that bedrock of our life, tempting us to go down the rabbit-hole of meaninglessness ourselves.

Maureen Down, the exquisite columnist for the New York Times, responded to this tragedy with a column entitled, “Why, God.” She then shared a response from a rabbi friend of hers, Father Kevin O’Neil,  to whom she posed the question. Here is his wisdom:

How does one celebrate Christmas with the fresh memory of 20 children and 7 adults ruthlessly murdered in Newtown; with the searing image from Webster of firemen rushing to save lives ensnared in a burning house by a maniac who wrote that his favorite activity was “killing people”? How can we celebrate the love of a God become flesh when God doesn’t seem to do the loving thing? If we believe, as we do, that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why doesn’t He use this knowledge and power for good in the face of the evils that touch our lives?
The killings on the cusp of Christmas in quiet, little East Coast towns stirred a 30-year-old memory from my first months as a priest in parish ministry in Boston. I was awakened during the night and called to Brigham and Women’s Hospital because a girl of 3 had died. The family was from Peru. My Spanish was passable at best. When I arrived, the little girl’s mother was holding her lifeless body and family members encircled her.
They looked to me as I entered. Truth be told, it was the last place I wanted to be. To parents who had just lost their child, I didn’t have any words, in English or Spanish, that wouldn’t seem cheap, empty. But I stayed. I prayed. I sat with them until after sunrise, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, to let them know that they were not alone in their suffering and grief. The question in their hearts then, as it is in so many hearts these days, is “Why?”
The truest answer is: I don’t know. I have theological training to help me to offer some way to account for the unexplainable. But the questions linger. I remember visiting a dear friend hours before her death and reminding her that death is not the end, that we believe in the Resurrection. I asked her, “Are you there yet?” She replied, “I go back and forth.” There was nothing I wanted more than to bring out a bag of proof and say, “See? You can be absolutely confident now.” But there is no absolute bag of proof. I just stayed with her. A life of faith is often lived “back and forth” by believers and those who minister to them.
Implicit here is the question of how we look to God to act and to enter our lives. For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago.
I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.
One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God’s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I was asking “Why?” and I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn’t explain why he died. Even if they could, it wouldn’t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. They held me up to preach at Brian’s funeral. They consoled me as I tried to comfort others. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong.
A contemporary theologian has described mercy as “entering into the chaos of another.” Christmas is really a celebration of the mercy of God who entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. I have never found it easy to be with people who suffer, to enter into the chaos of others. Yet, every time I have done so, it has been a gift to me, better than the wrapped and ribboned packages. I am pulled out of myself to be love’s presence to someone else, even as they are love’s presence to me.
I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.

In moments like this, it is easy to rely on religious and spiritual bromides. And I’m glad this formulaic wisdom is available as it too certainly has a place. We do the best we can. But this Rabbi’s response speaks to me as he acknowledges the uncertainty in life that religion cannot take away and should not in some instances. The uncertainty provides an opportunity for a mature faith that cannot be found with mere spiritual rhetoric and platitudes, regardless of how noble the intent. And this faith avows a hope…a Hope…and a courage to respond with meaningful action. When life disappoints, and certainly when life deals us a body-blow, can we find the Grace to right ourselves at some point in our grief and act with maturity, intelligence, and spiritual wisdom. How do we “give the name of action” to our emotions?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

(Hamlet, William Shakespeare)

Simple Child-Like Faith

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This God business is really complicated. Or is it? I know that I tend to overly-complicate things at times with cerebration. Sometimes I wish I could merely accept the tribal version of the gods that came my way and then immerse myself in the customs and amusements of the culture.  (Goethe described people who do this as having,   “scanty wit, yet wholly at their ease, Like kittens given their own tail to tease.”)

And it is so easy to catch oneself trusting merely in his/her own “cerebrations” re God, captivated by our own cleverness, forgetting that according to Jesus it is only a child-like faith that brings us into the Kingdom of God. The cerebrations, perhaps even some “cleverness”, the intellectual pursuits, the “hunger and thirsting” after righteousness, all has its place. But ultimately spiritual matters are an issue of a simple, child-like faith. Belief in our belief will not suffice.

Here is a relevant poem by a 17th century English nobleman, Fulke Greville:

Chorus Sacerdotum

O wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?

Passion and reason, self-division cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power

To make offenses that it may forgive?

Nature herself doth her own self deflower

To hate those errors she herself doth give.

For how should man think that he may not do,

If nature did not fail and punish, too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard,

Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,

Makes easy pains, unpossible reward.

If nature did not take delight in blood,

She would have made more easy ways to good.

We that are bound by vows and by promotion,

With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,

To teach belief in good and still devotion,

To preach of heaven’s wonders and delights;

Yet when each of us in his own heart looks

He finds the God there, far unlike his books.

Obama’s “Clinging” to Guns and Religion

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President Obama was caught on tape in the 2008 campaign speaking dismissively of those who “cling to guns and religion.” Now that was an impolitic moment for him but I agree that often people do “cling” to things, including guns and religion. I do not think he would disparage anyone for liking guns and certainly not religion. But he recognized that when people “cling” to things…or shall we stay “stuff”…it often impairs their ability to make rational decisions.

“Clinging” often belies an impoverished identity which makes an individual to compulsively place value on “stuff” (including ideas and beliefs) as a way to assuage a gnawing emptiness on the inside.

But how can “clinging” to faith be a problem; or, certainly “clinging” even to Jesus? I think a meaningful faith is very intense and passionate but if it goes beyond the pale, it poses problems and there are always warning signs. For example:

a) If your faith creates an urge to kill people who believe differently than you, I think there is a problem.

b) If your faith creates a need in your heart to intimidate, browbeat, and shame others (certainly children) into believing the way you do, there is a problem.

c) If your faith creates in your heart the belief that you have “got it right” and that everyone should believe just as you do, you have a problem.

d) If your faith creates in you an emphasis on correcting the ills of the world, while totally neglecting the ills of your own heart (which are always wreaking havoc on those nearest and dearest to you), then you have a problem.

Now these are four rules that I’ve created off the top of my head. There could be many more. Violation of these rules almost always comes from a passionate intensity which outruns the Shakespearean “pauser reason”. This is “clinging” to religion rather than having a simple faith which permeates the whole of your being and radiates out to others in your life. This is often an obsessive-compulsive disorder in full sway or even an addiction. This is at best an ersatz religion.

 

Showers of Blessings we Plead!!!

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I woke this morning to the unanticipated sound of thunder and the flash of lightening. We were going to get a respite from this oppressive drought (which God has sent merely because of my sin!!! wink, wink; I just can’t get over this narcissism!!!). I performed a ritual that I’ve utilized the last two years or so and gone to the garage, opened the door, grabbed me a chair and cup of coffee and reveled in the gracious beauty of a magnificent, generous rainfall. An old hymn always comes to my mind on these moments, “Showers of Blessings” even though the hymn was not talking about rainfall!

And, being random as I am, that brought to my mind the following verse from my beloved brother, William Shakespeare. This is so magnificent and it gets more so every time I read it:

 

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. . . .
. . .
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
(The Merchant of Venice)

 

Oh, yes. Showers of blessings. They are around us each day if we but look.

Viva la Difference!!!!

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I think most of the time we live our lives on automatic pilot, blithely be-bopping along listening to the tune of our prejudices and self-serving certainties. This is a problem individually and collectively. But occasionally, reality (or might I say “Reality”) intrudes and we are given pause. As W. H. Auden said, “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”

My dear friend, soul-mate, and sweet heart Emily Dickinson knew something about this exposure. In the following poem she poignantly and vividly describes a visitation of this always present Presence:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the heft (or weight)
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

Difference is scary. In literature and philosophy there is a lot of discussion of “difference” and its meaning in our world culture. But difference is scary as hell as we naturally prefer to live in our comfortable, smug little world of certainty. I love the way Emily set this poem up with “There’s a certain slant of light…that oppresses, like the heft of cathedral tunes.” She then addresses the “heavenly hurt” that has been sent and though it leaves no “scars” it does leave the gut-wrenching phenomena of “difference” in our heart.

But who would ever opt for “hurt” of any kind, even “heavenly” hurt?!!!! To mature spiritually, however, we have to find the temerity…and Grace…to fore-go our own interests and need for comfort and allow “difference” to visit us. This visitation makes us acutely aware of our own mortality, of the ephemeral nature of the world we live in, and the connection we have with everyone else…and even with this lovely world itself.

 

Gratitude and Forgiveness

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Oprah Winfrey had a thoughtful blog posted this morning in the Huffington Post, making observations re gratitude and forgiveness.

She described the “power of gratitude” that she had discovered in her life and noted how the practice of daily expressions of gratitude can produce a “shift in your way of being in the world.” I too made this discovery a couple of years ago, discovering that the ritual of gratitude can be a powerful tool in coping with the vicissitudes of daily life. When things are not going well…or when they are…I try to just focus from time to time during the day on the many things in my life for which I can be grateful.

She listed forgiveness as the “other fundamental building block” in her life, describing it as “releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda (and I would add ‘coulda’) been.” And this is very tough. For I know that I hang onto grudges, disappointments, and shame that lies decades behind me. But I just can’t let them go.

I think it is very easy to grasp the concept of God’s forgiveness and to “accept” that forgiveness as a concept. But it is another matter to delve deeply into the heart and allow Forgiveness to permeate one’s being. This error is related to the human tendency of keeping God “way out there and far off” and not allowing Him to dwell within which is what Jesus meant when he reminded us, “The kingdom is within.” Discovering this “kingdom within” is a spiritual enterprise and it is not furthered by mere regurgitation of biblical bromides, regarding of how noble and inspiring they may be. And once again I must confess, when I’ve resolved this dilemma, I’ll let you know!

Below is the posting from Oprah:
Five days ago, I asked that you open yourself to the power of gratitude. If you took me up on that offer, you should already be feeling a slight shift in your way of being in the world. Looking out for five things to be grateful for changes the way you see your whole day — and eventually your life. It’s a major cornerstone of living a happy and fulfilled life.

The other fundamental building block I know for sure is forgiveness: releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda been.

My favorite definition — if you’ve watched “The Oprah Show” or read O magazine, you’ve heard me say it repeatedly — is that forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. That was said by an expert many years ago on the show.

When I first heard it, I literally I got goose bumps. The message that came through so clearly and stayed with me is this: Forgive, so you can truly live.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you condone the behavior or, in any way, make a wrong right. It just means you give yourself permission to release from your past — and step forward with the mud of resentment cleared from your wings. Fly!

Is there someone you need to forgive? Let that be the best gift you give yourself this year. It’s the gift for all seasons.

 

Addiction as an Ersatz Religion

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“Break on through to the other side. Break on through, break on through, break on through to the other side.” These lyrics from a Jim Morrison (and The Doors) song are so compelling to me in part because I always hear the intense musical rhythm that accompanied the words. And I think these lyrics express a deep hunger of the human heart, a hunger to “break on through to the other side” and experience another dimension of life that that often teases us. Unfortunately, I think Jim succeeded in this quest literally as he died of a drug overdose in the prime of a brilliant career. The metaphorical, or verbal, or spiritual “breaking on through” is the route to take.

I do think this hunger can be fatal if not approached in a spiritual framework. From my clinical work and from my personal life I feel that addiction, for example, can be seen as an ersatz religion, a contrivance that has been fashioned to cope with the abyss of this primal hunger. Kierkegaard noted that in the abyss one is apt to glom onto any “flotsam and jetsam” that happens to be nearby and once one has “glommed onto” something, it is let go of at great peril—the very abyss it was chosen to replace in the first place.

The Bible has lots of verses which reference this hunger and I think they are relevant to this urge to “break on through to the other side.” For example, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Or, “My soul followeth hard after Thee, O Lord.” Or, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so my soul panteth after thee O Lord.”

These writers were feeling the anguish of addiction, that deeply spiritual urge, and for some reason or other they used words to cope with those emotions, sublimating their hunger with articulation. (And I don’t think it is happenstance that in the Judeo-Christian tradition God is presented as “The Word.”) There is an incredible difference between the unmitigated, non-verbal (and therefore behavioral) experience of being an addict and the humble statement, “I am an addict.” This is the kernel of the success of the 12-step movement.

Now I’ve always had this hunger. And in my youth I cloaked it in traditional religious garb and sought to make myself “special” as…more or less, for lack of a better term…a “holy man.” But religious clothing or personae is deadly as it appears to assuage the ravaging hunger but is often merely the above referenced “flotsam and jetsam”. I now see that hunger of mine as merely a simple refusal of the “fig leaf” that culture offers each of us. And, yes, it is tempting to let that itself cater to my need for being “special” but I just can’t take that bait any longer. I don’t accept artifice as readily as I used to. Yes, I am “special” but in the very same way that you are, and that my beloved dachshunds are, and those who I don’t like are, and even those who don’t like “literarylew” are! All of us, and the whole world, is an expression of the Divine and that Divine is always seeking recognition and finds it when we merely, humbly accept our human-ness. When we do this, and to the degree we do this, the Word has been made flesh. But all we get out of this is the simplicity of day to day life, of “chopping word and carrying water.” Beware of that tempting “specialness” as it springs from the pits of hell. Remember the Christian doctrine of kenosis, that God “humbled himself” and took on flesh.

And here is an afterthought, relevant to addiction, from the always astute Marianne Williamson:

If there is something you want really badly, and you think obsessively about getting it, then know that on an energetic level your attachment is actually sending it away. The answer? Prayer. ‘Dear God, take away my idolatrous thinking, luring me into thinking that something or someone other than You is the source of my salvation.’