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.

A Morning Prayer

Someone recently showed me a powerful quotation – the sort which stops you in your tracks. It went thus: “Christianity is a lifestyle – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared and loving. Unfortunately, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself.” This stunning critique by the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr seems to get to the heart of why we Christians have so often failed to transform society as Jesus intended. If, by the way, you’re about to question that, go read the Sermon on the Mount first and see the manifesto for lifestyle change which Jesus proposed. It’s radical stuff. Not just The Beatitudes (which themselves are a call to new and positive action), but the subsequent teachings about loving our enemies, giving to the needy, forgiving those who wrong us, not judging others and living a day at a time, trusting in God’s daily provision for us.

Twelve step programmes of recovery are also about lifestyle change. Yes, they’re about stopping an addiction, but ultimately, they’re about living a happy, joyous and fulfilled life by behaving in a totally different way, one day at a time. The Big Book of AA (p84) describes the process in detail. “We continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. When they crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.” As one of the sayings within recovery puts it, “You can’t think yourself into a new way of living, you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.”

One of the best ways any of us can do this, is to start each morning with a prayer, committing ourselves afresh to this different way of living and asking for help to carry it out. For those in recovery this is Step 11 work (“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the God of our understanding”), which is probably the most easily neglected or side-stepped part of the programme. There are of course countless prayers we can use but here is a simple one which helps me to begin each day with fresh resolve to live it well and live it in the right way.

Broken Vessels – the Mystery of Redemption

Whilst walking the dog, I’ve recently begun to collect those small fragments of broken pottery that are so inexplicably present in gardens, streams in the woods and on beaches. It fascinates me how they ended up there and I like speculating about the unknown history of these small worthless pieces, imagining the larger functional item they were once a part of and the owners who used and perhaps treasured them. I may use the fragments I’ve found as mosaic pieces surrounding a central mirror, giving them a purpose and value once more. As far as I know, and rather disappointingly, there isn’t a Japanese word for this, in the manner of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold which highlights and embraces the flaws and imperfections, creating an even more beautiful piece of art than before it was broken.

The spiritual parallel is not difficult to see in the life and teachings Jesus and in Twelve Step Recovery. The idea that God is interested in broken people and somehow, mysteriously, uses our flaws and imperfections to make something more beautiful and valuable than it was before, lies deep within these ways of living. Our initial surrender and trust in God’s will and purpose for our lives allows this transformational work to take place. Jesus constantly talked about how he had come for the lost, the sick and the lame – the equivalent of those broken, pieces of pottery – transforming us into new people, with fresh meaning and purpose. (His deeply flawed disciples illustrate this perfectly). These flaws in our nature become the marks that make us special, like the knot in a piece of timber which the master craftsman turns into a feature on a table-top or bowl, a thing more beautiful than it would have been without it. It is part of the topsy-turvy world of the Kingdom where loss is really gain, giving is receiving and brokenness becomes redemptive. And redemption is God’s core business with human beings. In one of Susan Howatch’s Starbridge Novels, Harriet a non-believing sculptor explains the mystery of the relationship between the creator and their creation. “No matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work …..it’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of the distortion and beauty out of all the mess. You love the work and you suffer with it and always – always – you’re slaving away against all the odds to make everything come right”.

A few years ago, some fascinating research from Connecticut showed that after more than five years in recovery within Twelve Step Programmes, people were contributing more to society and the world around them than if they’d not had an addiction in the first place. They were more generous, more grateful, more sacrificial, more willing than the average person or the way they had been prior to their addiction. We see this to be true in the lives of pretty much anybody regularly attending Twelve Step Meetings and working the programme, whether it is the woman alcoholic who only used to leave her house once a day to buy drink at the corner store, forbidden from seeing her grandchildren who has now become a wonderful, caring grandmother working on reception at the local community centre; the heroin addicted artist who produced nothing for years but is now reconciled with their parents and painting stunning and profound pictures, or the crack addict now repairing cars, volunteering on a helpline and supporting his kids.

Broken vessels made useful and beautiful. It’s both that simple and that profound. We may not always feel like we’re beautiful and useful and we may only see our flaws and failures, but we can each be part of the redemptive, transformational work of God going on all around us. We remain flawed and imperfect, but we are never useless, “because God uses broken people like you and me to reach broken people like you and me.”

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)

Do the Next Right Thing – letting go and letting GOD

We were about 5 hours into the walk when the mist came down. Silent, damp and seemingly impenetrable. Doubt began to fill our minds, every bit as engulfing as the mist. Increasingly unsure of where we were and where we should be going, we stopped and stood still, afraid to make a move in any direction. We had not reached this point of the walk with strong legs and clear minds either. My friend and I had already endured several hours of trudging through cold, biting rain flecked with sleet and a further hour clambering through ancient peat bogs which had at times left us struggling on all fours in order to get out. As we stood in the April mist, trying not to panic, the route where previously there had been other walkers and a fairly clear path, was no longer straightforward. Even using our map and compass was difficult, something that is so easy to do when it’s dry and sunny and you already know the right way. After some calm discussion and marking where we had been, we took some tentative steps forward into the mist and the unknown. Fifteen anxious minutes later we were very relieved to reach a trig point, which not only confirmed our position but revealed two young women who had already made it there. After a break for hot tea and some photographs, we headed off together from this point of security in the agreed right direction. In another twenty minutes we found a rough track and began to descend, emerging soon after into the April daylight. Although we were only about half-way, we sensed with relief that it was going to be alright.

As we all know, life can be very like that walk. We are faced with a dilemma or a difficult decision to make but have no idea what we should do next or in which direction we should go. Nothing seems clear. There are many wise and pithy sayings within 12 Step fellowships, but none is more helpful than the injunction for us to “do the next right thing.” The beauty of it is that it provides no master-plan, no glib answers, no being told by someone what you should do or where you should go – just the assurance that somewhere deep within, if you search for the answer, you will find the next right thing to do. It might be a tiny step forward, very tentatively made, but having taken that step, the premise is that you will then know the next right step. And the next. And so on. It’s easy to pick holes in this saying when you’re sitting in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee and not a care in the world, but amazingly, when you’re in the thick of it, a reminder to “do the next right thing” really does seem to help. If we seek it, we seem to find an internal compass which can help to guide us, like the compass we used to find our way out of the Northumberland mist. Perhaps this compass is really God with us and within us, ever present and guiding us in the right direction to go, as well as giving us the courage to take that next tentative step forward.

It seems to me that “doing the next right thing” doesn’t just apply to the big decisions and difficult choices which we face from time to time. We are constantly making all sorts of choices in our daily life which have implications for us and for others. It is estimated that we make more than 30,000 choices every day! Decisions to make, goals to set and expectations to meet. In early recovery it can feel particularly overwhelming to have so many decisions to make. Life can suddenly feel even more complicated than it was feeding an addiction. No wonder the Big Book of AA says “we earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and for strength to do the right thing.” This is a prayer for us all. Of course, there are times when we ignore this advice, times when we do what we want and dress it up in our minds as doing the right thing, or times when we just plain get it wrong. When we recognise that we have done this, doing the next right thing is invariably to acknowledge our errors to God and those involved, making amends where necessary. We can get back on track by “earnestly praying for the right ideal” and for “strength to do it”. As Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds and to those who knock, the door will be opened.” It does open and we do receive.

Although Jesus is never quoted as using the expression “do the next right thing,” he lived in this way and encouraged others to practice it too. Living it meant that he remained in the moment, responding to the next thing he needed to do. On his way to the dying Lazarus and on another occasion to Jairus’s daughter who was very ill, Jesus was side-tracked by other calls on his time and compassion. But was he side-tracked or just doing the next right thing? At that point Lazarus and the little girl were not his immediate priority, their time was to come. And how! Elsewhere in the gospels we see that when Jesus knew what he should be doing, he could not be deflected – Peter’s insistence that there was another way than the road to death in Jerusalem was met with a vigorous rebuff – only someone who knew what they should be doing next would not be swayed by that sweeter alternative suggestion. The hours Jesus spent alone in prayer were the reason why he was clear about what he should be doing. Praying “for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and for strength to do the right thing.”

Living in this way, in complete assurance of what he was to do next is a wonderful template for how we might live our lives. In his conversations with the people he met, Jesus never provided them with a detailed road-map for their lives, he simply helped them to do the next right thing. After raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead he told the little girl’s parents to give her something to eat. He did not offer them a treatise on parenting. The madman living in the cemetery who was restored to his right mind was told to return to his village to share the good news. Lepers he healed were told to present themselves to the priest, which was the prescribed way of enabling them to re-join society. No road-map or grand plan, simply the next right thing.

Doing the next right thing is about every day and every situation not just the stuck times when we are lost in the mist. At all times and in all places we simply need to do the next right thing. Our personal road-maps for life may give us comfort, but as the recent months of Covid 19 lockdown have shown, we are not in control of nearly as much in our lives as we like to believe. Many of our plans and grand designs have been made obsolete or at least put on hold. All we can really seek to do is the next right thing. As we let go of our plotting and planning and our attempts to strong-arm God into rubber-stamping our own ideas and projects, we find something amazing happens. Not only do we relax into each day and the things that we do, living much more in the moment, but something more wonderful and beautiful than we could ever have imagined will emerge from the steps and actions we take. God’s handiwork is always the most stunning.

The House of the Rising Son : An Easter Reflection

I love early morning during the spring and summer months. I used to attribute it to happy memories of doing a paper round as a boy which required a 5.30am start and then a first job where I worked early shifts. But the more I reflect upon it, the more I think that it is because there is something deeply sacred in the early morning, which we are better attuned to so soon after waking and before the hustle and bustle of the day takes over. We hear the birds singing, we feel a freshness in the air and smell the sweet fragrance of the new day. With the dawn there comes not only the light of day but a lightening of the heart too. The messes of yesterday and the spectres of the night are washed away by a sense of hope and possibility that this new day can offer. It is, as the Celtic Christians might have put it, a thin place, where heaven and earth are very close.

Our own experiences and memories of being out early in the morning make some of the post Easter stories of Jesus all the more accessible. There is the Easter Sunday resurrection story when before sunrise a group of women went to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. Shortly afterwards Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus and didn’t recognise him in the half-light after dawn, her eyes full of tears as she mourned the one who had given her the love and respect she had found nowhere else. Some days later there was another dawn encounter, this time for some of the disciples returning tired from a fruitless night-fishing trip, to find the risen Jesus on the beach welcoming them with a cooked breakfast. New days, new beginnings, new hopes.

One of the highlights of my whole year is the dawn Easter Service, where we meet in the darkness of Newcastle’s old Castle Keep, ascending during the service to t Easter Dawn 1a he rooftop where the fire is kindled and the paschal Candle lit as the sun starts to rise. This year we were not able to hold the service, but the glorious sunrise last year remained in my memory and the sadness about not celebrating the resurrection story in that way does not detract from the wonder of Easter. And that wonder is not limited to Easter Day but carries on in the days and weeks afterwards. For many outside the Church, Easter is done and dusted when the last Easter egg is consumed, but in the Church we continue to celebrate the season of Eastertide over subsequent weeks, discovering that the resurrected Jesus continues to bring us hope and joy, turning our sorrow into rejoicing. Reminding us that the downward path we have so often reflected upon in these blog posts is in fact part of the topsy turvy reality in the Kingdom of Heaven where we lose to gain, give to receive and die in order to truly live. Revealing that our systems of merit, worth and just deserts are not the ways the God of grace works at all. Showing us too that it is not about grim suffering and endurance but about finding joy, hope and happiness that go deep into the centre of our being as we discover who we really are and our hearts truest desires.

This understanding suffuses 12 step programmes and practice. Letting the old habits and addictions die is necessary in order to live, surrendering control to our higher power brings new life and service to others brings joy and happiness. As the Big Book of AA says of the steps, “The joy of living is the theme of AA’s Twelfth Step, and action is its key word.” Elsewhere it affirms that “We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous and free.” Bill W tells his own story of recovery later in the book and says that “I was to know happiness, peace and usefulness in a way of life that is, incredibly, more wonderful as time passes.” Countless people in 12 step recovery still say the same: “I never knew my life could be so happy”, “I feel as if I’ve truly found who I was always meant to be and that gives me a wonderful feeling of happiness and joy”. “Every day in recovery is one of joyful discovery and the hope that others may find this too.” “All the pain and misery of my addiction has given way to a new life which just gets better every day”. So resurrection is alive and well!

Eastertide is all about continuing to celebrate this resurrection hope and joy. “May you know the Joy of Easter”, we are told in the liturgy. Many of these blog posts may present life as one big struggle through the mess and problems (self-inflicted and imposed) that life brings. Which I believe to be true, but I also believe in resurrection, the hope this brings out of the pain and struggle and the joy that life holds now. Yes now, not in some distant future. Time after time, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven being here now. It has arrived. And with it comes joy, laughter and happiness. Not for show, not for the future, but now. Joy of living – of celebrating the beauty of nature, the awesomeness of the night sky, the complexity and order of the natural world, the tastes, sights, sounds and smells which bring us moments of delight throughout each day. Joy in the service of others, all unique and valuable individuals, each one fearfully and wonderfully made. Joy in the presence of God all around and within. Joy in and through resurrection. May we all discover that joy and continue to live it this Eastertide.

Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world we live in is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. Henri J.M. Nouwen

A joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together. Brene Brown

Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

If you can’t find joy in the path you are on and what you are working toward now, how do you expect to find joy once you get there? Anonymous

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. Tagore

Adversity, illness, and death are real and inevitable. We choose whether to add to these unavoidable facts of life with the suffering that we create in our own minds and hearts -the chosen suffering. The more we make a different choice, to heal our own suffering, the more we can turn to others and help to address their suffering with the laughter-filled, tear-stained eyes of the heart. And the more we turn away from our self-regard to wipe the tears from the eyes of another, the more, incredibly, we are able to hear, to heal, and to transcend our own suffering. This is the true secret to joy. Dalai Lama

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s Kingdom. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. NT Wright

A Prayer for our Troubled Times

Serenity Prayer

Pathways : Restoration instead of Despair

J and P had been in recovery together for about 3 years. Although they had very different backgrounds, both attended the same 12 step meetings and they had the same sponsor. Within hours of one other, both relapsed – though not together. Their sponsor had seen it coming for them both, but neither believed his warnings about what might happen. Afterwards, the outcomes were very different. As a result of what he did, J was overwhelmed by remorse and shame. Rejected by those who had encouraged his actions he could see no way out and his desperation spiralled into deep self-loathing and isolation. He killed himself. P, however, was also full of remorse and shame but stumbled on, meeting with others, admitting what had happened and then finally meeting with his sponsor who showed he did not judge him for what happened and helped P to forgive himself. P went on to live a life of great purpose and achievement.

In the gospels, J and P also had choices to make and falls to recover from, as we see in the stories of Judas and Peter, two disciples of Jesus. Both failed him in the last hours of his life, failures that Jesus saw coming and warned them about in advance, but which neither managed to avoid. Afterwards, each of them realised very quickly what they had done wrong and both were filled with immense grief and remorse. Judas, went back to those to whom he had betrayed Jesus and acknowledged his sin, but there was no mercy or forgiveness to be found there and they rejected him and turned him away. Desperate and alone, Judas went out and hanged himself. Peter, however, took a very different pathway. He remained with his friends who probably knew full well what he had done, but sticking around was the only option he could see. Two days later, his hopes were raised by the account of the risen Jesus given by some of the women who had also been followers, and then some days later Peter was met by the resurrected Jesus who offered him forgiveness and restitution in a beautiful and moving account in John 21. The most wonderful part of that story, is the fact that Jesus had cooked breakfast on the beach prior to meeting the small group of his followers, attending to their physical, bodily needs before taking Peter to one side, to forgive and restore him. So, for Jesus, the denial wasn’t even the number one priority when he met Peter again – he was already forgiven! True grace and mercy. I am absolutely convinced that if Judas had been able to stay around long enough to meet with Jesus again, he too would have received forgiveness and been fully restored.

The reality of course, is that we all mess up like Peter and Judas. And we all know the deep sense of failure and self-torment when we do. It can feel like a living hell. In the story of Judas we really do get the sense of a suffering soul. Over the centuries, he has been vilified and despised by most within the church, with all manner of eternal tortures and punishments suggested for him, but nothing can compare with that awful deep chasm of despair he felt when he realised what he had done and saw no hope of redemption. Peter, for his part has always been a figure we can identify with – he says foolish things, he behaves in irrational and blindly emotional ways, he seems to have little self-awareness at times he most needs it, which most of us can recognise in ourselves. How many of us recall conversations or things we have done which we replay in our mind over and over again, making us blush with embarrassment or feel hopelessly shamed. So, when we have genuinely done wrong and messed up, Peter’s restoration is our hope of restoration too. And our personal torment until we are restored, is the greatest punishment of all. Those who are working a programme of recovery know this better than most of us. Failures and slips can become significant relapses, which offer a destructive pathway and require a turning back onto the original pathway through reconnection, honest admission and restoration. A difficult but necessary process.

The golden thread of failure and restoration is woven throughout the Bible, though perhaps most clearly shown in the lives of people who met Jesus. Almost every character is shown as a transformed sinner, someone who does it wrong before they ever do it right. “We have erred and strayed from your ways”, says the general confession, from which none of us are exempt. And even when they and we get back onto the right pathway, we all will inevitably go wrong again (and again), “through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.” It seems that this is not just one of those things, but is the way it has to be, for us to learn to let go of our self-assured, self-interested ways of living. As Richard Rohr says, “We must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say. We must be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern”. It is only our addictions, our failures to do things right (or sins), death or major loss, serious illness, broken relationships or lost dreams which really bring us to the point where we recognise that not only is the pathway we are on the wrong one but the roadmap we have been using cannot help us find our way back. We have run out of solutions and “our lives have become unmanageable.” At this point we either despair or we turn to look for a place or a person who has the answers. In 12 step recovery this is our higher power; Jesus used other language for the same solution declaring that he offered the thirsty living water from a source which would never dry up, a new way of living and being.

This Holy Week, as we remember and contemplate the path which Jesus trod, leading to his rigged trial and execution, including betrayal and denial by friends who just hours before had shared in the first ever Eucharist, we are reminded that this is a downwards path for us all. Both those in 12 step recovery and followers of Jesus understand this and live it out in their daily lives. It is counter-intuitive, like so much of the golden thread within Jesus’ teaching and 12 step recovery. In life there is no glory without pain – would that it were otherwise! There is no Easter Day without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. But as the resurrection of Easter Day shows and establishes for all to see, not only can we survive the downward path and the pain we experience in our lives, but we can rise up and grow from the tragedies and failures of our imperfection. We win by losing. We are Easter people.

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. Pope John Paul II

Religion is for people who are afraid of hell, spirituality is for people who have already been there. Anonymous

Whenever God restores something, He restores it to a place greater than it was before. Bill Johnson

Pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth. Anonymous

Where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are. Anne Lamott

In my recovery, I learned that the pain of my defects is the very substance God uses to cleanse my character and to set me free. Alcoholics Anonymous, Daily Reflections: A Book of Reflections by A.A. Members for A.A Members

Christ is building His kingdom with earth’s broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. He can lift earth’s saddest failure up to heaven’s glory. J.R. Miller

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. The Big Book Step 2

The pattern of the prodigal is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration. Edwin Louis Cole

In the light of the new understanding that I have found in A.A., I have been able to interpret that defeat and that failure and that shame as seeds of victory. Because it was only through feeling defeat and feeling failure, the inability to cope with my life and with alcohol, that I was able to surrender and accept the fact that I had this disease and that I had to learn to live again without alcohol. Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous,, 4th Edition

Everything Works Together – interconnected golden threads

The first few pages of Jerome K Jerome’s story Three Men in a Boat, contain a very funny account by the narrator of how he read a medical text book and discovered to his horror that he had the symptoms of every illness and disease he looked at, apart from a mild form of cholera and housemaid’s knee! It’s amusing because most of us can identify with this sort of hypochondria, especially now that we have the internet, with countless medical sites containing descriptions of diseases and symptoms of illnesses, all of which seem to apply to us, when we read about them.

When we think about the themes of Grace, Guilt, Hope, Mercy, Gratitude, Forgiveness and Generosity covered in some of the blogs posted on this site over the last 18 months, there is probably a similar effect. We’ve got problems with every one of them. We feel as if we are constantly in deficit and are not good enough in any department. What became very clear to me early on, as I tried to write about these things on an individual basis, was that whilst they may appear to be separate, they are in fact part of a much bigger, interconnected whole. golden thread - electron microscope The Golden Thread of Jesus’ teaching is many separate strands woven together, each with its own shade and lustre which together make the thread as strong and as golden as it is. A photograph of a golden thread seen through an electron microscope as it is passed through the eye of a needle shows clearly that the thread we thought was a single strand is in fact made up of many finer strands. (no wonder it is difficult to thread a needle!)

In reality however, they are more than just interconnected – they are actually interdependent in the sense that there is a dependence between things. For example, if I provide my dog with food and walks and my dog provides me with devotion and happiness, then my relationship with the dog is one of interdependence. Likewise, the individual strands of the golden thread are interdependent, each strand depending on another, which in turn depends on yet another. Thus, there can be no resolution of guilt without forgiveness, and this in turn requires mercy and compassion. The result of forgiveness is often gratitude. And of course, everything, absolutely everything is connected to and held together by love. So, we don’t have to feel despair about how little we may have of these things or what we must “get better at”. Nor do we need to think that we need to work to develop all of these things or set out a regime to “improve ourselves”. They are not ingredients in a cake or bottles of medicine and lotion that need to be taken daily in precise amounts. If I do X and Y then Z will happen. Such a formula would be all about us being in control, a false pathway. Because whilst it may offer some growth, the reality is that the process is much more of a mystery. If we can try to get the conditions right, then growth will happen, and what is amazing is that they all grow, not just one or another. That’s because they’re interconnected and interdependent, both within ourselves and between each other. So, whilst we do have our part to play, maybe by practising gratitude for 30 days, dealing with our resentments and forgiving or perhaps actively seeking to be more loving, after that it’s not down to us at all. As we so often find in the teachings of Jesus, and central to 12 step recovery, it’s all about letting go and letting God. The important lesson here is that spirituality, and the growth of the individual golden threads in our lives is through relationship rather than knowledge or achievement. And the real wonder is that the process of inner growth happens as we seek to serve and bless those around us, because none of the strands of the golden thread are just about us. This is the mustard seed or the yeast in the bread which Jesus talks about. The things which grow silently and miraculously if we let them, in ourselves and the people and community around us. Which once again brings us back to the Kingdom of Heaven, where all things connect, and everything works together for good.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed. Vincent Van Gogh

I think we’d like life to be like a train…..but it turns out to be a sailboat. Barbara Brown Taylor

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 the life to come. Henri Nouwen

Through my years of darkness, some spark of spirit remained in me, helped me survive until I found my way into A.A. Then, nurtured by the program, that inner spirit grew, deepened, until it filled the emptiness I had so long felt inside. Step by step I moved to a spiritual awaking. Step by step I cleared up the past and got on with the present. Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

Grace – Amazingly Amazing

“I was sitting in the boughs of a large sycamore tree on a hot, dusty day. The sun shone brightly and there was a shimmer of heat rising from the ground as I looked along the road and into the distance. There were people everywhere. It was like market day and festival all rolled into one. It had been quite an effort to climb the tree in the first place, as I’m not very tall, but once up, it was a good place to be, because nobody knew I was there. The leaves offered some protection from the sun and up high there was a very slight but welcome breeze, but I wasn’t there for a place of rest or shelter. I needed a good vantage point, and a secret one at that. Nobody down there would want to rub shoulders with an outcast like me. For what it’s worth, the feeling was mutual.

I saw the entourage moving down the street in our direction a long time before the people on the ground below me could see. The crowds were especially dense at that point and their progress was slow. It was about 20 minutes or so before I could see the group really clearly because they kept stopping and getting side-tracked – a right royal walkabout. The Teacher was closely surrounded by his followers who seemed impatient to keep moving, overly protective and dismissive of those who wanted to see him, let alone speak. He didn’t seem to notice or care what these disciples thought. No matter, up in the tree I wouldn’t be getting in anyone’s way! There were quite a few of the religious leaders around him too, trying to engage him in conversation and generally lording it up as if the crowds had turned out to see them. No chance of that!

It was interesting watching everybody’s reaction to him, and the noise and clamour grew louder as the Teacher and his followers moved nearer. In the midst of the group I recognised a blind beggar who I passed in the street most days. He’d left his pitch and his bowl behind and was up on his feet, singing and dancing. No longer blind! Just as they were about to pass by, The Teacher stopped. He looked up into the tree, saw me in my hide-out, smiled, and spoke, calling me by my name and saying that he wanted to stay with me in my house. For some reason, I couldn’t get down the tree quickly enough and we talked as if we’d known each other for years. That meeting with the Teacher set my life off on a new path, one that I neither expected nor deserved but one for which I will always be grateful.”

This story of how the despised, cheating, collaborator and tax-collector Zacchaeus met Jesus and the changes that happened in his life as a result can be found in Mark 19 and are just one of the many examples of Jesus reaching out and blessing the least expected of people. Story after story about his life show acts of grace to so many people – thieves, poor, disabled, ostracised, foreigner, old, women and children, none of whom were deemed to be of much value by society at that time. And the parables or stories he told were ways of introducing and conveying the truth about God. A God in love with the world extending grace to all.

The blog in October 2019 looked at Mercy, which is closely related to Grace. But the distinction is important. Mercy is not getting something bad which we deserve, whereas grace is receiving something good that we don’t deserve. Grace is thus a much larger concept, and in turn is more amazing, more remarkable and more beautiful. We all need mercy in our lives and when we recognise this, we hope that people will show us mercy, but grace is like a great big bonus that we could never really ask for or expect. I see it a bit like this. If I am in a queue of traffic at a busy junction waiting to make a difficult turn, then the driver behind can show mercy by not getting impatient with me if I’m a bit slow and it takes me time to make the turn. But if a driver on the road I am trying to turn into stops to let me in, then he shows me grace. If we think about it, there is so much to be grateful for that is a result of grace. And if this is hard to do, then a good starting point is to realise there’s always someone worse off than us simply because of where and when they were born. What we have is a gift, like life itself.

Jesus was, as the start of John’s gospel says, full of grace and truth, and told us about a God who was forever wanting to bless us, to extend grace and favour to each of us in our lives. As a follower of Jesus, I see God as the source of all the acts of grace in my life. Recovery too is also a place of grace. Becoming clean and sober always begins with an act of grace when the individual receives something of tremendous value that they don’t deserve in the light of the choices they have made and all the hurt they have caused other people. And neither do those who receive it merit it any more than other struggling addicts or alcoholics. It isn’t earned, nevertheless it happens. It is an act of grace. Nadia Bolz Weber who straddles the 12-step recovery and Christian communities is her usual honest and incisive self in describing this Grace at work in her life. “Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, ‘Screw you. I’ll take the destruction please.’ God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, ‘that’s adorable,’ and then plunked me down on an entirely different path.”

The very existence of the 12-step programme is a sign of grace – especially when you consider the flawed and broken people who helped AA to begin and to develop. Over the last 80+ years it has been a vehicle of grace to thousands and thousands of undeserving but beautiful people, who became transformed and carried the message, offering this grace filled programme to others, helping their souls to heal and placing faith in them until this belief became their own. Sobriety is obtained through “working the programme” but anybody who sees or experiences this transformation knows that something bigger and far more wonderful is at work here and that is Grace.

Fortunately, Grace does not come as a one-off thing – we need grace on a daily basis. Zacchaeus experienced grace when Jesus called him and ate with him and we see the transformed behaviour of the tax collector as he made amends, repaying money he had stolen or wrongly taken. But if his addiction and attachment was to money and making a fast buck, then he will have needed daily grace to continue to live that new life of honesty and integrity. Just like us.

Jesus talked about grace and longed for those he met and still meets, to experience it. In his stories and parables and in the way he lived his life, God is always shown to be the giver of gifts for the most undeserving of recipients, the thrower of parties for the least likely of guests, the welcoming host for those with a record of trashing the places where they stay. As beneficiaries of such grace (or whatever else we may choose to call this mystery), we experience feelings of deep humility and gratitude, hallmarks of both a good recovery and of a well-founded Christian faith. But as ever there is a challenge. We must go and do likewise offering acts of mercy and grace to those we meet, loving the unlovely, giving to the undeserving and forgiving those who have wronged us. As we stumble along this path, usually with the most limited of success or even if we find ourselves side-tracked and self-obsessed once again, grace continues to come knocking at our door. Why? Because, that’s just what God’s grace does. In the words of Zaphod Beeblebrox, it’s amazingly amazing!

Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands. Brennan Manning

I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. Anne Lamott

Grace isn’t about God creating humans as flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace—like saying “Oh, it’s OK, I’ll be a good guy and forgive you.” It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.” Nadia Bolz Weber

We are captured by grace. Only after much mistrust and testing do we accept that we are accepted. Richard Rohr