Compassion 2

I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion recently. It’s something I’ve written about before, but the last six months have given me much more direct experience than I had previously. Having been on the wrong side of a cancer diagnosis in early summer, I’ve received a lot of kindness, help, sympathy and understanding, all tangible displays of love and support. But there have also been a number of people who have shown me immense compassion. They’ve offered a solidarity which has touched, strengthened and healed me in a much deeper way than anything else.

There are seventy-seven uses of the word “Compassion” in English versions of the Bible. Incredibly seventy-six of these are about the compassion of God (or God in Jesus), the only exception being in the parable of the Prodigal Son where the Father had compassion for his lost (prodigal son). And of course, in that story the Father’s response is a picture of God. So, the only uses of the word compassion in the Bible are about the nature of God.

What then is compassion? It seems to me that it differs from sympathy, pity, empathy, concern or assistance because it’s not just about reaching out and doing for someone, but about a complete identification with them and their situation. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “When we can free ourselves from the idea of separateness, we have compassion, we have understanding, and we have the energy we need to help.” This was the essence of Jesus’s ministry. He identified with the suffering of human beings, especially those on the edges of society, so often defined as unworthy by the seemingly good and acceptable religious community, and he stood alongside the people who suffered. Not as a token of how caring he was, which we can sometimes do in our relationships with those in trouble or need, but as a sign of his oneness with them. He became one with us as he was one with God. It is a willing relationship of equals. There is no power dynamic involved – it’s not about someone being sorry for us and helping us – it is a response of the heart not the mind.

I don’t know if we can cultivate compassion in and of ourselves, but it is the essence of God, so it’s something that every single one of us can be given and receive if we desire it. It does not come without a price though, as the life and death of Jesus showed. His oneness with those in need brought a rejection by the establishment and all their lackies who knowingly or blindly bought into the false reward system they peddled. Ultimately as we know, the compassion of Jesus was something which cost him his life.

There is a good deal of compassion in 12 step programmes. This is not particularly evident amongst active addicts – they may hang out together, but they’re not a unity. It only comes when addicts start to get well by working the programme, which rather than giving them an elevated sense of superiority over the active addict, actually creates a greater sense of one-ness. The programme works in a way which keeps people grounded, recognising the on-going similarity and unity between the active and recovering addict. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Compassion arises when you recognize that all are suffering from the same sickness of the mind, some more acutely than others.” We’re broken and remain broken, lost and without a hope, desperately in need of acceptance and forgiveness but by the grace, mercy and above all compassion of God, we are saved from ourselves and in oneness with each other come to the party, the feast that is given by God.

The Compassion of Christ

Christ is the one who sides with the addict,

Bears the bruises of the beaten wife,

Knows the cold and misery of the homeless,

Surrenders to the loss of control and fears of the person with dementia,

Shares the powerlessness of the little child,

Experiences the isolation and stigma of the mentally ill,

The hopelessness and confusion of those with long covid,

Accepts the shame and humiliation of the poor,

Carries the shackles of the slave,

Grieves with the bereaved,

Suffers the rejection and abandonment of the asylum seeker,

And offers his arms to take the poisons of chemotherapy.

Christ is for ever one with us and for us, in all our adversity and pain.

May we share his compassion with all those we meet on our journey through life.

Kindness

The other day I was walking along the street behind a young boy wearing a brown hoodie. He held his mother’s hand, and they were chatting away to one another as they walked. On the back of his top, in large cream-coloured letters it said, “Be Strong, Be Courageous, Always Be Kind and have Fun.” They were walking quite slowly and as I overtook them, I said to the boy, “I like the words on your top, that’s a good way to live your life.” He was too shy to reply, but his mother beamed at me and said, “Thank you so much. He chose it himself.” She was right to be proud of him.

When so much in the world seems bleak and unpromising, it is a sign of hope that children can recognise the importance of kindness. His hoodie has continued to make me think more widely about what kindness means and how we can try to build it into our lives (along with strength, courage and fun!).

According to one dictionary definition, kindness is the quality of being generous, helpful and caring about other people. It’s more than just being nice, there is an element of intentionality – another person has thought through what might help us and perhaps even gone out of their way or inconvenienced themselves by their act of kindness. They’ve put us before themselves.

What is so interesting about kindness is that when we are the recipients of a kind act, it doesn’t just help us in our predicament or at least make us feel valued, it can stir something within us which makes us want to be kind too. It is not about pay-back or settling a debt, some new good thing has been ignited at a deeper spiritual level. We want to pass it on to someone else by being kind to them in turn, the first ripple of a new movement or flow of kindness. It’s not just about doing acts of kindness either, we need to speak about acts of kindness we witness too, rippling the effects more widely afield. As Amelia Earhart puts it, rather more poetically “A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.”

Kindness is the outworking of loving our neighbour as ourselves, which Jesus spoke of as the second great commandment. Jesus is constantly referred to as showing compassion to people he meets and to all those with great need whom he healed, taught and fed. His stories too were often about the importance of showing kindness, compassion and generosity to others – the good Samaritan, the parable of the sheep and goats, the lost sheep, and when he received an act of great kindness from a repentant woman who poured expensive perfume on him, he predicted that her story would be told for ever.

Kindness is central to all twelve-step recovery. In meetings newcomers are welcomed and shown complete acceptance, the primary purpose according to the fifth tradition of AA being to carry their message to the alcoholic who still suffers. This requires kindness, which becomes an important way of helping us to stop being so self-absorbed, to look beyond ourselves. That’s how our own healing and recovery come about. If we are thinking about other people, which requires some imagination, empathy and most important of all, action, then we are taking time out from just thinking about ourselves. There is always the need for balance though. As addicts we tend to do everything to excess, so being kind and gentle with ourselves is also important.

Acts of kindness are unilateral and radical. In a world where so much isn’t in our control, we have complete license to do acts of kindness, to pretty much whoever we want, whenever we want to do them. It doesn’t require anything in the way of resources either apart from a willingness to make ourselves vulnerable and put the needs of others before our own wants. The author Og Mandino’s words inspire us to action. “Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”

Hope at Christmas

This guest contribution is written by Revd Pauline Shelton

‘‘God wants us to know that God loved us before God even made us, and this love has never diminished and never will. Powerful truths written by Mother Julian of Norwich, a remarkable woman who lived around 750 years ago in Norwich, England at a time of plague, riots and war with France — some things never change! That’s what God wants us to know — love, love and more love.

Really? You may be thinking. Where have you been this last year? Don’t you realise how awful2022 has been? There’s war in Ukraine — and a madman in the Kremlin. In Pakistan, floods devastated a third of the land. In Somalia, drought threatens the lives of millions, whilst rising sea-levels threaten the very existence of small oceanic countries. And closer to home, we have Covid, avian flu, and ‘normal’ winter flu, not to mention strikes — while figures show that the gap between rich and poor in Britain is wider than ever. In 2021, the richest 10% of households owned 44% of all wealth, while the poorest 50% owned just 9%. Scandalous. And more and more people are driven to food banks and to desperation.

But I refuse to despair. I won’t give way to the prevailing discourse that all is just getting worse and worse, even though that is how it often feels. Why? Well, it’s summed up in a verse at the start of John’s Gospel – ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’. The literal translation of that is, ‘The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us’. Only the very poorest live in tents. Tents are rarely permanent homes. They offer very little protection from the weather, or from thieves. God chose not only to become human, but to live among us in a marginal and vulnerable place — in temporary accommodation, in a tent on the edge of society.

And that’s summed up in the word ‘incarnation’. Incarnation means this extraordinary truth that God becomes human. And though at Christmas we may bless a crib or sing carols about mangers, shepherds and angels, the hope that I want to share with you isn’t just about a massive baby-fest. It’s not just confined to Bethlehem, and winter snows, stars and stables, beautiful and moving though all of that is.

Incarnation is about a change in the very heart and mind of God. It is about God deciding no longer to remain distant from the vulnerable world, the mess and fears and muddle and disease of the flawed and fallible people created and loved by their Maker. Instead, incarnation is about God deciding to enter into the midst of our tensions, our political injustices, our poverty and need — to enter into solidarity with wonderful and broken humanity.

It’s as if God said, ‘What if . . .?’

What if, instead of staying within the boundlessness of eternity, I accept the limitations of time and space?

What if, rather than be a disembodied Spirit, I limit myself to the physical body and intellectual capacity of a human being?

What if I come to earth not as the super-gifted child of an aristocratic family, but am parented by people who have no status, no secure home?

What if, rather than being educated at an exclusive fee-paying school, I learn about life through 30 years of anonymity?

What if, instead of being Superman, I make myself vulnerable — vulnerable to pain, to prejudice, to slander, to disease, and to the loss of credibility because of what I say and who I mix with?

What if, instead of choosing elite graduates from Oxford, Cambridge or Ivy League Universities I pick my companions from a random group of tradespeople, unskilled workers, social misfits — and at least one who is totally untrustworthy?

What if, rather than repeating safe cliches as a tele-evangelist, or from the safety of the pulpit six feet above contradiction, I talk face-to-face with real people about the forgotten and disregarded truths about life, faith and social justice in ways that will make religious people so angry that they’ll plot to kill me?

What if all I say and do to save the world by my life, my love and my example leads to hatred and rejection? And what if, rather than returning to the safety of heaven, I accept death, crucifixion — a sentence reserved for those whose love, honesty and integrity are too much for the powers-that-be to bear?

And what if, when I am dead, I don’t stay lying down?

What if that is what Christmas is really all about? And what if we see again this Christmas that Jesus comes among us, not to fix everything as if by magic, but to be in total solidarity with us. To be with us in all the messiness of our lives. To be part of the joys of today and tomorrow — and a part of the tensions and anxieties too. Jesus comes to be part of those, and to show us a truer way of being human. The incarnation is God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus the Christ. The one born as a baby who pitches his tent in our garden, our yard, our street, our lives — so that incarnation keeps on happening, love keeps on flowing down the ages, always abundant, always pouring from the very heart of God.

Our grief, our pains, our troubles, our addictions, our worries, our loneliness are not the end. Thanks to what starts at Christmas they can be the birth pains of something unspeakably better.

‘The Word became flesh and blood and pitched his tent among us.’

‘‘God wants us to know that God loved us before God even made us, and this love has never diminished and never will.’

May the life of the Christ-child given for this broken and beautiful world be born anew in us this Christmas and always.

With grateful thanks to Revd John Bell, Minister in The Church of Scotland and until recently a member of the Iona Community for his idea of the “What if..” within both Advent and Christmas.

An Advent Reflection

Whilst searching online for an unusual Christmas present for my brother I was struck by the number of websites offering me a memorable “experience”. There seems to be something for everyone, whether that is bungee jumping, afternoon tea, a flight in a hot air balloon or gin making. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these activities but looking at them as a drop-down menu conveyed a rather desperate sense of how far we have all drifted from a pathway of spiritual wellness. In the first world at least, where materialism rules, we desperately fill our lives with possessions, the newest things and latest models, the next labour-saving device, the most amazing experience ever. All of this is just another form of addiction. We numb the pain, fill the void and cope by consumption of goods and experiences hoping that somehow this will leave us fulfilled and whole. But it leaves us hungrier than ever, looking for the next fix.

God and spiritual growth cannot be bought on Amazon nor are they to be found on a Virgin Experiences website. Neither for that matter are they to be found in other sorts of drugs or material experiences. We grow by letting go, by giving away and by emptying ourselves to allow room for God to work. As we have waited through the weeks of advent, we remember Mary, the expectant mother of Jesus who is the exemplar of this. “Let it be to me according to your will,” was her response. By letting go of her own plans or desires and embracing a far bigger picture, one in which God was pleased to dwell, everything became possible. Through her we are all blessed. The pathway for us is the same. We may not be remembered by future generations as she is, but the response is the same. As the saying in recovery goes, let go and let God.

Transformation

I was making some toast for breakfast the other morning when I heard someone on the radio talking about the start of the season of Lent. “Here it is again” he said, “summoning me once more to reflect on and change how I live my life.” It set me thinking about change.

I remembered a day some years ago when I showed a small group of church leaders around a Twelve Step Day Treatment Centre that I was involved with. They saw the facilities, heard about the programme structure and met with some honest, articulate people in early recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. The visitors seemed to be impressed by the changes these people spoke about and the new spiritual pathway that they were treading.

It turned out that Frank, an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest was not completely convinced and in our closing discussion he aired his doubts. “I can see that their lives have improved for the better compared with when they were drinking or taking drugs,” he said, “but aren’t they just replacing one addiction with another by attending AA or NA meetings all the time instead?”

There were many answers I could have given, but I was beaten to it. Ellie, a Methodist deacon responded quickly with a passionate and perceptive reply.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Don’t you see Frank, this isn’t just a change, this is transformation. It’s so much more radical.”

The conversation moved on, but I was intrigued by Ellie’s profound answer and talked to her about it later, when the others had left. She elaborated on her comments.

“As I see it, getting into recovery is not a minor adjustment in life and neither is a decision to follow the way of Jesus. They both involve a fundamental change of mind about how we deal with the mess of our lives because the coping strategies we’ve been using are not working and our eyes are finally opened to see it.”

This was certainly my experience and seemed to fit with how twelve step recovery works. As Step One puts it, “our lives had become unmanageable.” In other words, we’ve got to admit we’re broken before we can begin to be made whole. The change required to do this is a paradigm shift, or transformation as Ellie put it, because it’s not just the addictive behaviour that has to change but our whole perspective and existing assumptions about life too – how we view and react to ourselves, other people, events and everything around us. The same goes for following the way of Jesus. No wonder that’s sometimes referred to as conversion.

“So what about Frank’s assertion that people in recovery are just switching to another slightly less damaging addiction by going to meetings?” I asked her. “I imagine he attends church far more often than most people go to AA meetings but I don’t think he’s addicted to it.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Ellie with a laugh. “As I see it, attending AA or Church meetings are only the outward signs of the inner transformation and not the change itself. People attend these meetings because of the inner change and because they help us to commit to and maintain the change by spending time with other like-minded individuals. They can show us how to deal with the damaging addictive behaviour, mistakes, sins or whatever it may be in a different way, one which is far better thought out.”

Again, this rang true for me. I was keen to find out more.

“Transformation is definitely about embracing the new but isn’t it also about letting go of the old ways of thinking and behaving?” I said. “In recovery this is most obviously seen by stopping drinking or drug taking, but really it goes much deeper than this and is about a change in all behaviours. So many people in long term recovery have said to me that after a while the addictive substance or process is no longer the problem, it’s much deeper things like anger, resentment, ego, self-pity and fear which need to be dealt with.”

“Yes,” said Ellie. “Jesus certainly saw the need for this inner transformation, not just in his teaching about a new way of living where we love our neighbour, but in recognising that our problem lies deep within, wrong reactions and conduct come from our hearts and unless these are transformed, everything else is superficial and cosmetic. Time after time in the gospel accounts of his encounters with people, Jesus talked about this deeper, inner transformation which we need to undergo and his offer to help us find this new way.”

“Exactly!” I said. “We let go of the familiar old patterns and enter a new world, the counter-intuitive one of the Sermon on the Mount where we give to receive, we become great by serving and we surrender in order to become free. Twelve step recovery is full of this counter-intuitive behaviour too, but it doesn’t come easily.”

“It certainly doesn’t,” said Ellie. “Have you read any Richard Rohr?”

“I love his stuff,” I replied, “I’m sure friends of mine get sick of me mentioning him.”

“You may already know this quote then,” she said. “Rohr says something along the lines of spiritual transformation being the process of letting go and living in a confusing dark space for a while, allowing yourself to be spat up on a new and unexpected shore. That’s why Jonah in the belly of the whale is such an important symbol.”

I’d not heard that but I liked it. Going into recovery really is like a period of darkness before entering a new land. Fortunately there are people who’ve now become familiar with that new land who are ready and willing to welcome the newcomers and help them to find their way around. All part of the new life of service. The same goes for those following the way of Jesus. The Kingdom of God that he spoke about is very new and very different from how we naturally think, what we thought we knew and the ways of living that we had become familiar with.

The sound of the toaster popping up brought me back to the present day. The man on the radio was right. We do need to be summoned periodically to reflect on and change how we live our lives, because new places and pathways quickly become routine and familiar. Lent offers us this time for self-reflection, when we dig into the layers of our hearts and minds and find the inner seams of unhealthy thinking and behaviour towards God, others and ourselves and set about correcting them.

I thought about one final comment Ellie had made.

“We can get too caught up in thinking it’s all about us. Whilst we play our part in the process, transformational change is not really about us and what we do. God chooses to ‘co-produce’ it with us as they say these days, so we do play a part, but in the end, transformation is all about God’s grace working in us.” She paused and then laughed. “I’d love to talk to you about grace because it’s one of my favourite subjects, but we’ll have to come back to it another time. My car is on a meter and I really don’t want another parking ticket!”

Sadly, we never did have that conversation about grace but I received an email from her a few days later thanking me for the visit which gave me a flavour of how change and grace are connected. At the bottom of her message there was a quote by Ann Lamott, writer, follower of Jesus and recovering addict. “I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

Much as I’d like to be instantly transformed into a new way of love and self-giving, it’s going to be a life-long process. Fortunately, Lent is here again, suffused with grace, to shake me from my lethargy and to challenge me once more to follow more closely in the way of Jesus.

Faithful Friends

A little while ago, someone I knew was going through a difficult time with his drinking. In order to offer him some support and help, I introduced him to a few friends of mine who are recovering alcoholics and part of AA fellowships. I was sure they’d do their best but I was quite amazed by the generosity and kindness they showed him, dropping things they were doing and changing their plans, prioritising his needs and requirements over their own convenience and comfort. They wanted him to get into recovery and to sort his life out and they did their best to help him in ways that he couldn’t do himself, accepting him and his problems, easing his path and making it clear that he was not alone and that he and his life mattered. They were kind, understanding and compassionate, behaving in a way that can only be called loving. When I thanked them, they dismissed it as nothing – or at least only Step 12 stuff of taking the message to others, but their genuine, generous actions touched me deeply.

It reminded me of the story in the gospels of both Mark and Luke where Jesus was teaching a crowd who had come to visit him at the house where he was living. There were so many people that there was no room for anyone else to get in or even stand in the doorway. Along came four men carrying a friend of theirs who was paralyzed and unable to walk. They were desperate to bring him to Jesus so that he could be healed. Undeterred by the large crowd, they carried their friend up to the roof using external stairs and proceeded to dig through the roof in order to create a hole big enough to lower the mat on which their friend lay so that it came to rest at the feet of Jesus. Jesus commended the men’s faith on behalf of their friend, forgave the man his sins and then to prove a point to the critical religious folk watching, healed the man. He doesn’t ask the man whether he has faith, his friends appear to have answered that question already. Their faith was sufficient. This story doesn’t stand alone either, there are many other examples in the gospels where Jesus healed someone because of another person’s faith.

How we care for our friends and our faith on their behalf seems to play a more important part in the process of change than our individualistic way of thinking allows. If we look around us, there is always someone we can help, be it a relative, friend or acquaintance who might require our support and encouragement, who needs someone to believe in them and have faith on their behalf. Strangely, it can often be easier to pray and have faith on behalf of others than it is for ourselves, maybe that’s because this is the way it’s meant to be. As we saw in a recent blog, we’re created to co-operate with one another, not compete. As we turn our eyes towards the needs of others and away from our own personal concerns, our self-obsessed way of thinking begins to reduce, giving becomes more important than receiving and love finally comes to town.

Loving God,

We pray in faith for our friends.

Bring your restoring presence to the dark places in their lives.

Bring your hope to their hearts when they feel defeated.

Bring your love and healing mercies when they are in pain.

Bring them safety and comfort when they are fearful and lonely.

Bring them through this hard time to a new place of freedom and light.

Amen

Competition or Co-operation?

“I’m really grateful for one thing,” my brother said, “Dad taught us to be competitive and go in hard.” We were talking about my father and our upbringing, not long after his death. Even if this statement about him was true outside of the board games we used to play, his contribution was still only a small part of the big lie we are all told many times over, that life is about competing with other people and it pays to be ruthless in doing so. It is only in recent years that I have begun to see this lie for what it is, although changing the way I live is taking a whole lot longer.

From the start I want it to be clear that I’m not talking about winning at school sports, a game of monopoly or pool or even getting a job or wanting the football team you follow to win every match. Neither am I suggesting that wanting to achieve and excel at the things we do as individuals and in groups is wrong. What I am doing is kicking back against idea that absolutely everything in life is about competition and that this is an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. In other words, the notion that we are hard-wired to be competitive and competition is just another way of describing the survival of the fittest. Really? So the rush to get a seat on a crowded train or to be at the front of the dash into a store on the first day of the sales or to stockpile sugar, pasta, or flour is simply our need to provide for ourselves and those we care for? Even if there is a grain of truth in this, it quickly becomes a very unhealthy belief system to operate by, because the reality is that if I get what I want, this invariable results in someone else having less – no seat on the train, empty supermarket shelves and so on. The idea of competition and its alleged evolutionary source can so easily be an excuse or rationalisation for our selfish, greedy behaviour. What’s true for individuals is true for nations too. The current UK government has recently cut its overseas aid budget because it says the UK needs those resources more than other much poorer countries. When it’s got much richer, it will increase its aid budget again. Indeed.

Self-interest dressed up as competition could be seen in the subsistence farming economy of Jesus’s time – if a person accumulated crops in his barn and needed to build bigger barns to hold the grain then it was at the expense of others who had little or went without. No wonder Jesus’s parables often touched on this important area of life. His teachings suggest that we are meant to be in co-operation with God and with one another, not in competition, because there is plenty to go around. As beings created in God’s image, we have rationality and moral principles as our guide, not just survival and reproduction instincts. The early church at least was very much a community which had sharing and caring as its hallmark, following in the way of Jesus. It’s also a key element of recovery –we even talk about the recovery community. It’s not a competition about whose recovery is better or who is a better follower of Jesus. In the latter case we are all poor at it and the whole point about grace and mercy is that they are freely given to all of us, not just those who earn it or achieve a certain level of merit. And how do we respond to this grace? We serve one another, as Jesus taught us to do and showed in his life as a Servant Leader.

I always remember being moved by the slightly corny yet profound school assembly story of heaven and hell. Both were places with plenty of food but people could only eat using six-foot-long spoons. In hell everyone went hungry because they could not get the food into their mouths but in heaven everyone was full because they fed each other. In 12 step recovery this idea of working together and being non-competitive is perfectly illustrated by the complete absence of hierarchy and positions of status. The emphasis on service is very strong – again the model of Jesus as servant leader, and his counter-intuitive message that to become great we must become the least and the servant of all.

Pushing ourselves and having a competitive spirit isn’t a bad thing but the real lie is that this is what defines us as people. It’s even been said that extreme acts of heroism or altruism are really just self-serving actions, a cynical view of someone’s self-sacrificial act of giving and love for another. Love is what make us truly human and that is what both Jesus’ teachings and 12 step recovery are both about – making us more fully who we are meant to be and less the isolated, fearful, addicted people that the competitive world creates and fuels.

Christmas is a reminder that Immanuel is God with us, not God against us or watching us or even letting us sort it out for ourselves. God is with us, co-operating, working together to make the Kingdom of God a reality, not just seasonal bonhomie but good will to all, now and always.

An Inside Job

I love browsing in flea markets and junk shops. You just never know when there may be something of value hidden in the midst of all the tat and rubbish. It’s kind of ironic, really, because over recent years I’ve come to realise that my inner life also contains a great deal of clutter and trash. I may try to convince myself or others that it is a tidy, well organised place, full of unique pieces – interesting curios and charming antiques if you like, but unfortunately, it’s not really like that. Inside, there’s the cluttered rubbish of a junk shop – wrong ways of thinking, distorted memories and beliefs, long held resentments and unhelpful patterns of behaviour. I suspect too that I’m not alone in this if conversations with a few close friends or comments that I’ve read are anything to go by. As the author CS Lewis said, “on looking inside myself I found a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears and a harem of fondled hatreds.”

Jesus was well aware of our inner mess and was never fooled by those who were presenting themselves as neat and well-ordered. He responded in different ways. To the scribes and pharisees, self-righteous and proud, he was scathing: “Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.” On other occasions he was more sensitive, though just as clear about the problem. For example, when a rich man came to him asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus was gentle in his response when the man said that he had kept all the commandments since he was a boy. Jesus told him to go and sell all that he possessed, which got to the heart of the man’s inner problem – his wealth was a false source of security, an idol in the place of God, sadly too much for him to let go of at that point in his life. On yet another occasion Jesus spelt it out for us all when he said that “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come.”

Twelve step recovery is also very clear about our inner mess, and it is probably fair to say that the bulk of the programme is about addressing this mess rather than the specific addiction. There is a clear recognition that it is the accumulated rubbish in our lives which not only pushes us towards addiction but keeps us there and creates wrong ways of living. This may be a result of things done to us, traumas suffered even, or it may be a consequence of incorrect ways of coping with the ups and downs of life, bad decisions we’ve made and wrong actions on our part. Whatever the cause, the result is the same and dealing with our inner mess is the stuff of almost half of the twelve steps, beginning with Step Four’s “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” followed up in quick succession by the next two steps where we admit to “God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,” moving on to a point where we are “entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” It is a way of living which deals with the rubbish in our lives that many of us would prefer to bury away from the scrutiny of others.

Because it’s an inside job, we must reply upon and co-operate with God, our Higher Power to do this work within us. Prayer and meditation is the central, golden thread through which we seek knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out. This is of course not a one-off event but a daily practice, which ultimately becomes a lifelong way of living. It’s not a solo flight either. We don’t have to do it alone – in fact we were never meant to. We need others to help us, through confession, spiritual direction, sponsorship, discipling, mentoring or even just plain, honest conversations and sharing over a cup of coffee.

Unlike Twelve Step Recovery, much of Christianity has now become a private faith, something that is just between ourselves and God, but when we do involve others and share something about our inner junk – our “dead bones and uncleanness” – we begin to find freedom and healing. This is helped by the fact that we not only find an acceptance from the other person about this part of ourselves and the things we have done/think which shame us, but invariably an acknowledgement by them that they are pretty much the same. We are not alone.

As jobs go, inner change is a slow business. At times it can be disheartening, because once we are aware of our inner mess, we tend to continue to notice the junk more than anything else. “All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter,” says Ekhart Tolle. When we do, these mysterious currents of God’s Spirit get to work within us, highlighting our beautiful and valuable inner treasures to other people who are helped and blessed by them, even if we aren’t aware of it. Miraculously, when we change, the world changes a little bit too.

Searching for Soul Food

The strawberries I’ve eaten this summer have been a big disappointment. Though bright red and as beautiful looking as ever, they taste weak and watery, not delivering that massive hit of flavour which should leave you reaching for the next berry, the one after that and so on, a conveyor belt of pure strawberry pleasure.

It reminds me of my experiences attending church. I usually go with great expectations, but if I’m honest, services generally don’t hit the sweet spot I’d hoped for. It doesn’t really matter how hard I try or what style of service it is either, other people around me always seem to be getting a lot more out of it than I do, as if their bowls of strawberries are packed with flavour, whilst mine is not. Some of these people appear to be in a state of ecstatic rapture, some exude an aura of quiet holiness, others have the intense look of desert hermits but unfortunately, I’m not as transfixed. It’s not the fault of those leading or taking part in the services and I have the best of intentions, genuinely wanting something profound to happen, but invariably I end up distracted by a wandering mind or I’m just plain bored. Inevitably I feel rather shallow and unspiritual as a result, but somehow, inexorably, I’m drawn back, week after week.

I was helped enormously with this problem by a friend in Twelve Step Recovery who talked to me in passing about an AA meeting he’d just attended. “It was awful,” he said. “I wanted to walk out, listening to some of the ridiculous stuff that was being said.” This intrigued me because neither he nor anybody else I know who attends meetings had ever said anything like that to me before. My friends in recovery are all wise, honest, perceptive people and I imagined the meetings they attended would be full of sassy folk like them, pouring out words of understanding and insight from loving hearts. I probed, wanting to find out more. He laughed at my naivety. “You’ve been to meetings,” he said. “You know its not all love and enlightenment. A lot is quite boring and there’s a fair bit of unchallenged nonsense spoken too. Whatever my feelings may be though, I stick around and continue to turn up at the meetings because it’s all I’ve got, and somehow the five percent that’s really good helps me to stay clean and sober.”

I thought about my church-going experiences. The parts which pass me by or I miss through not concentrating and mentally drifting off certainly aren’t nonsense, but perhaps it’s okay for me to stop worrying about them. Maybe there’s never going to be an earthquake, wind and fire, or at least, until there is, why not concentrate instead on listening for the still small voice in the five percent that does do something for me. On the days when I can’t even get as high as five percent, I need to remember that always, always I come away feeling better in mind and spirit than when I arrived. Something happens deep within. The still small voice may not be audible, but I’m reminded that I am connected, part of a motley shoal of people that is swimming against the prevailing current. I get fed with tiny morsels of spiritual micro-protein and wisdom. I recognise the need to be still and to receive God’s love whether that is through sharing the Peace, receiving the Eucharist or conversations over coffee afterwards. Jesus said “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” I know that I’m hungry and need food from the table, provided by the Bread of Life, so I’ll just keep on turning up to receive this in any way I can and in any place where I find it. As they say in Twelve Step meetings, “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”

On the Frontline – learning from Covid

It now feels like a very long time ago that Coronavirus so rudely kicked down the front doors of our comfortable, stable, well-planned lives and unceremoniously marched on in. At long last, nearly eighteen months later, many of the worst affected countries are finally lifting their lockdowns and easing the various restrictions put in place to limit the virus’s rapid and seemingly relentless spread. It is noticeable, however that this gradual relaxation has been accompanied by signs of the usual human tendency to forget what we’ve been through and the lessons we thought that we’d learned, as we rush headlong to bury ourselves once again in what Heather King calls “the low-level anaesthetic haze of distractions and false gods.” There’s an old Irish blessing which says, “May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.” Maybe now is a good time for us to take stock and reflect on the things that we thought we’d learned during the Covid Pandemic but are now in danger of forgetting. We need to remember what is worth remembering.

Over the first six months of the pandemic there was a lot of talk about both love and suffering. Love was perhaps most clearly seen in the work of many of the frontline health and social care staff whose self-sacrificing care for the ill, lonely and dying went far beyond their job descriptions or professional expectations. Other essential workers, all too often the lowest paid people in our communities served us with immense dedication and love, keeping shelves stocked, food supplied, garbage cleared, fuel flowing and transport running. With schools and workplaces shut, families suddenly found themselves living close to one another 24/7 which required them to discover new depths of love, patience and tolerance. Love was also to be seen in many small acts of kindness for others in need in the community. People looked out for neighbours who were old or vulnerable, significant increases were seen in donations and contributions to local food banks and meal services, help was offered to those who could not manage. Little kindnesses of many sorts abounded. We discovered the truth of Mother Theresa’s words: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Communities flourished and we dreamed of a greener, cleaner, more loving world.

The virus also caused much suffering too. Not just the premature and often painful death of nearly four million people world-wide, but also those who were acutely ill and survived, as well as relatives who suffered as their loved ones died alone and without the opportunity to say a final goodbye. Those who have developed ‘long-covid’ continue to suffer in painful and extreme ways. Elsewhere, many people with other health conditions suffered from temporarily inferior services and slower treatment as resources were shifted to fighting the virus. And all around us the poor, those in overcrowded living conditions, those in households where there was domestic violence, suffered even more than normal. Some experienced a double or triple whammy of these and other sources of suffering.

The majority of us, may not have experienced such extremes and instead found ourselves stuck in the lockdown hinterland of reduced options, dull routines and loss of purpose as its duration dragged on beyond any of our expectations. We just longed to get back to normal, whatever that new normal would look like. Yet, our eyes had been opened to a global vulnerability, and maybe we’d never have quite the same self-assuredness ever again.

Love and suffering have always been the most significant means by which we achieve spiritual growth. People in recovery know this and Jesus taught and consistently lived this truth. Addiction itself causes “acute and constant” suffering to both the addict and those around them and arguably the turning point is when the prolonged suffering caused by the addiction becomes too great to carry on. As the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions says, “Until now, our lives had been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was always our solution. Character-building through suffering might be alright for the saints, but it certainly didn’t appeal to us.”

The road to recovery is painful. The simple fact of living without a substance or process that we have always relied upon and having to stand without it, emotionally naked before the world is hard. Recovery is also painful because it requires change, most significantly the loss of ego which comes from our surrender. But wherever there is pain and suffering, love is usually there too, lurking in the shadows in the form of other people for whom this is a way of living and service. As the Big Book of AA says, “Love and tolerance of others is now our code.” In twelve step recovery, people find themselves drawn to others by acts of love; the duty which begin as a requirement of the programme ultimately develops into a way of life for the individual who gradually becomes loving and giving rather than selfish and taking.

The single most important message of Jesus was that God loves each of us and as a result will do anything to bring us back into his light. Anne Lamott says, “Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost – his or her wildest, most messed-up children – the way you’d ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.” The two great commandments of Jesus urge us to love the Lord God with all our heart, mind and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. No soft, sentimental love this, but a diamond hard centre of being, made so by the intense forces of costly self-sacrifice and suffering. As children of God we are to fill our lives with such love for God and others. Never one to ask anything of others that he did not do himself, Jesus lived this love to the full and experienced the process of dying to self. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it cannot bear great fruit.” His brutal death brought great love and extreme suffering together in one final cataclysmic yet ultimately triumphant event.

None of this is news to most regular readers of this blog and certainly not to anyone with a strong recovery from addiction or Christian faith. One of the golden threads running through both is that love and suffering are our great teachers. But because we sometimes lose focus and our ego seeks to reassert itself from being in its rightful place and constantly tries to Edge God Out, it always pays to do a spiritual health check on how we’re doing, remembering that we so easily fall prey to self-deception. No time is better for doing this check than right now when things are starting to return to “normal.”

As I’ve said previously in these blog posts, I’m a real coward and will do my utmost to avoid pain and suffering if I can, but I am also a realist who knows it’s a fact of life and that somehow, at some point it will come knocking. In the meantime, whether suffering or not, we can always work at being better at loving others. So, the question is, each day, how can we better love those around us, not just by what we do but also by what we don’t do. Not saying the unkind, uncharitable things but only speaking words that encourage, build up and bring life. Giving the nicest and the best – not just the cheapest or most convenient, sharing the things we hold dear, sacrificing our time, comfort and ease. It’s the kind of love which has no price tag on it. Such love is steady and slow work, changing us without us ever knowing it’s happening. Life may sometimes feel dull or purposeless but the challenge to love those around us means that each day and in every situation, we are all called to be frontline workers. “Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and in the life to come.” (Henri Nouwen)