How it works

I think it really comes down to just trying to reach people on an elemental level, using an appeal to universal feelings and experiences.

It doesn't help to try to tailor the message - whatever the message happens to be, and here I'm referring to spiritual things - to the individual.  What works is to bind us somehow to one another, or to God, and to describe at depth the total experience of living a human life.  Speaking to the particular may flatter a  person, but in the end it fails; it only separates us further.

I'm thinking at the moment about being in love; everybody knows what that is.  And everybody can understand what it is to have to live with acceptance of the failure of love - of its ultimate disintegration, through nobody's fault, or the fault of fate or of God's will, or wherever the problem lies this time.  We identify with this, and I can use italics right there as a way of appealing - sardonically - to the universal experience of knowing that things fall apart, and there's nothing for it but to live with it and accept it and try to move on.

So this is another answer to the problem we face in the church, I think. It's all well and good to emphasize "the right thing to do," etc. - but this is not what people need to hear when they are suffering. They need to hear that they are understood; that their experience is not unique and that others have lived through it and understand and empathize and can help.  That is muy A.A., by the way.  (David Brooks' column today is about A.A., interestingly.)

This is why it's been so difficult for gay people to live in the world until recently, too; our experience was pointedly not understood; nobody empathized - and in fact, most people thought our ordinary human emotions were disgusting and crazy.  Is it any wonder that so many people spent their whole lives killing themselves slowly for so long?  Well, no.

I'm not sure how this fits into Rite I vs. Rite II, or East vs. West, or Chasauble vs. Cassock and surplice - all of which seem so irrelevant to me, because God certainly can't be very interested in these things; if God is not bound to his sacraments, how much less is he bound to particular tastes in worship - but this is where the church needs to go.  It really can't focus on these absurd non-issues any longer and expect to do anybody any good - or even survive.  I've become very impatient at this point with everything that's going on, I'm afraid.

The church needs to get seriously and deeply human. (How's that, Rev. Sam?)

Love is really all there is to care about, in fact.

My Kindle arrives

Not such an "early-adopter" on this one - and I took the last-generation technology because it was on sale (the new one is much more expensive, but gorgeously bigger, too) - but my Kindle was just delivered today.  Immediately I downloaded everything in the "Kindle Classics Library" - The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Prince, Concerning Christian Liberty, The Origin of Species, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, The Ice-Maiden and Other Tales, The Idiot, Aesop's Fables, The Tempest, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Art of War, The Republic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, and so forth and so on. 51 titles in all, smoothly downloaded behind the scenes by "Kindle Whispernet."  Apparently it will read to me, too, if I ask it nicely.

Yes, it's all so very quiet and so very classic.  And at the total cost for all those titles of....$0.00, not a bad deal, either.  Really, I do like paper and I like the heft of real books, and all the other usual objections - but this is pretty good.  I can read any of the stuff above any time, without having to go to the library (the only other way to get a total cost like that one) and/or wait till somebody brings the book back, and then lug it around and renew it dozens of times and then have to return it anyway because I didn't quite finish it.

I've never read some of that stuff - and the rest I've forgotten.  So I have 51 books in there now, leaving me room for 1450 more.  I'm trying to fall out of love at the moment, and I badly need something to do.  The World's Classic Literature seems to me to be a good bet.  (I'm willing to be hooked up, too, if anybody knows anybody; I'm desperate now - although I'm afraid I'm still a little particular.  I like the intelligent, passionate, and compassionate type; I like depth and emotional maturity.   I like long walks on the beach, too, etc.  Let me know.)

(I shouldn't complain, of course.  Falling in love at my age was a completely unexpected and undeserved gift, and glorious for awhile.  Those days are over now, though, and it's going to be painful for awhile, I can tell....)

Step 2: Hope

"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

I was struggling trying to come up with a title for this post. What, exactly, is at issue here? Is this about "faith"? No, I don't think so. It's more like an a acknowledgment of one's lack of faith - a bit like the famous passage from Mark 9 below, in fact - but it's mainly about the process of acquiring it. "Came to believe": this describes a journey of the soul to an hitherto unknown (or perhaps, once known but long ago forgotten?) internal landscape. An acceptance, too, and an acknowledgment of one's current insanity.

I'm not sure what word encompasses all that; for now, I'm using "Hope," but that may not last the night.

Here's the relevant section of Mark 9 referred to above:

“Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you are able! —All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief."

This is of course a casting-out-of-demons story, and it finishes this way:

When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.” They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

"This kind can come out only through prayer"! Well, for many addicts, this describes our experience fully and perfectly. (Though not for all! There have always been agnostics and atheists in A.A. - these people tend to make A.A. itself the "Higher Power" of Step 3, and ignore the word "God" elsewhere - although there are perhaps fewer today than there once were, because there are other recovery options today.)

Addiction does seem to me to be a form of demonic possession, although it's pretty obviously not what's at issue in the above passage. Certainly it's a betrayal of the soul by the mind and body in a similar way - though of course there's a volitional aspect that's not present in other forms of mental illness.

But this has all been said before; what I'm looking for here is something I haven't seen already - some new insight. Anyway, what I'm really searching for is something that's convincing to all people, not just addicts or the mentally or emotionally ill.

Is there something like that here? Well, one thing I think we don't acknowledge very often in Christianity, and to our detriment, is the process - the "coming to believe" - that is the heart of the religious life. I think that is the important aspect of this Step - something that can speak to everybody. “I believe; help my unbelief."

In this Step, it's faith - a hope for faith, really, seen now only through a glass dimly - in a power outside oneself, and in "restoration" by means of that power. Remember, too, an important aspect of the Steps that doesn't actually appear in this list form, although it does in the book where they are introduced: these are "reports of actions taken." "Here are the Steps we took," the book says, "which are suggested as a program of recovery." The Steps are a summary of other people's experiences, in other words - people for whom this faith did indeed become a reality. They are a summary of experience, offered to those who haven't had this particular experience - yet. They are collective wisdom gained through pain, nothing more or less - and this is the journey itself.

One reason the Gospel story speaks so strongly to us, I think, is because it's about a human life and experience. God became a human being, to live here among us and experience life as we do - in all its joy and terror. While Jesus is admittedly a person unlike any other, still the life is recognizable. The birth of a child; the growth of a boy; the journey of a man. The Crucifixion speaks to the suffering human being of his own experience - which is now God's own experience. And "restoration" is the theme in Christianity as well; Christ comes into the fallen world to restore us.

And surely, non-alcoholics can understand the longing for "restoration" also. Life is full of loss, and there is destruction of all kinds everywhere.

Today I was in a Bible study on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13, and "through a glass dimly" was part of the discussion. Something I'd never paid much attention to before, though, was this part:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

"Even as I have been fully known" is actually a pretty important part of the "restoration" to sanity. This refers to "known by God," of course. But also, this is what a later Step - Step 5 - is all about: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." In Step 5, you'll find these passages:

When we reached A.A., and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thought the isolation problem had been solved. But we soon discovered that while we weren't alone any more in a social sense, we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apartness. Until we had talked with complete candor of our conflicts, and had listened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong. Step Five was the answer. It was the beginning of true kinship with man and God.

This vital Step was also the means by which we began to get the feeling that we could be forgiven, no matter what we had thought or done. Often it was while working on this Step with our sponsors or spiritual advisers that we first felt truly able to forgive others, no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us. Our moral inventory had persuaded us that all-round forgiveness was desirable, but it was only when we resolutely tackled Step Five that we inwardly knew we'd be able to receive forgiveness and give it, too.

....

The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. Even when you've found the person, it frequently takes great resolution to approach him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place you may require all you've got. Happily, though, the chances are that you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your mission is carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the conversation will start easily and will soon become eager. Before long, your listener may well tell a story or two about himself which will place you even more at ease. Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquillity takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, something else of great moment is apt to occur. Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God. And even those who had faith already often become conscious of God as they never were before.

This feeling of being at one with God and man, this emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a resting place where we may prepare ourselves for the following Steps toward a full and meaningful sobriety.

The author of an A.A. pamphlet called "A Member's-Eye View of A.A." writes this:

"I am convinced that the basic search of every human being, from the cradle to the grave, is to find at least one other human being before whom he can stand completely naked, stripped of all pretense or defense, and trust that person not to hurt him, because that other person has stripped himself naked, too."

And perhaps this is what Step 2 is really about: the dimly-sensed awareness that this "basic search" is about to end; that the journey is really one of stripping-away of pretense and - above all - of defenses. We believe that we might someday have real friendship - which comes by acknowledging our weaknesses and vulnerabilities and failures - at last.

So: can the church learn that the life of faith is a journey, and that at all times we see ourselves and everything else "in a mirror dimly"? Can it teach that we become weak - we acknowledge our failures and vulnerabilities once and forever, as in the above example - to become strong? In A.A., when new people come through the doors, they are filled with shame and despair. But then they walk into a room filled with people who openly acknowledge the things the newcomers have been so desperately ashamed of for so long - and laugh uproariously about them! And then these A.A. members talk about their own journeys in addiction and in sobriety.

Would it be so hard to change our churches to be more like this? To talk more about our own failures to others, and to end up laughing about our common weaknesses together? To acknowledge that we "see through a glass dimly" even now, but enjoy the journey anyway?

" Q Gathering 2010: Heralding the Arrival of a Post-Christian America "

From Huffington Post recently:

American Christianity is beginning to look a whole lot different.

Picture hundreds of jeans-clad 20- and 30-somethings filling the floor of a vintage opera hall in Chicago, armed with laptops, smart phones, and iPads. Picture a stage backed by a large screen, dark but for a large white image in the center -- not a cross, but an upper-case "Q." Picture a guy with the shaggy blond bangs of an indie-rock guitarist taking the stage to launch the proceedings with the matter-of-fact acknowledgment that we have entered a new "post-Christian context." Imagine three days of quick-hit presentations on everything from emotionally intelligent robots to nuclear weapons abolition, from fatherlessness to coffee-growing for the common good -- and nary a word about abortion or "reclaiming America for Christ."

If the arrival of the "post-Christian age" is upsetting to this emerging generation of (mostly) evangelicals, they did an awfully good job of hiding it at the recent "Q" gathering -- the signature annual event for these next-generation Jesus followers. In fact, judging from the spirit and energy reverberating through the hall, I get the sense that they find the whole thing liberating.

"Christians can bemoan the end of Christian America," shrugs Q creator and convener Gabe Lyons, "or we can be optimistic about it. What's good is that it forces us to get back to the basics of serving people and loving our neighbors. Through history, Christianity has affected more people from that position than from a position of dominance."

If this is how it's going to play out, the end of Christian America could turn out to be a profound blessing for American Christianity.

You can learn a lot about something from its name. Besides its edgy graphics and stage design, Q provokes surprise and curiosity with that name -- a name that reveals volumes about these young- and mid-adulthood Christians and where they are coming from in their conceptions of the faith and its place in the culture.

As they keenly sense, a major problem with evangelical Christianity in our time has been its bold assertion that is has an answer -- the answer -- to everything, namely, a particular understanding of the Bible and how it applies to present-day issues. Not that they are any less on fire for Jesus, but these Q-generation Christians are comfortable in complexity and ambiguity. The new guard seems to be pleading with the elders: "It's not that simple!"

Hence, the name "Q" and the ethos it suggests. Think of it an ongoing question-and-answer session--Q & A, but minus the "A."

"Having the quick answer to everything doesn't exhibit the humility that Christ exhibited," Lyons explains. "We don't want to project answers to questions that people aren't even asking."

Clearly, one of those questions-they-aren't-asking (or not asking as much) is how to get to heaven. A major focus of conventional evangelicalism, eternal salvation gets less emphasis from the emerging generation. Addressing the hells on earth is what really interests the activists, church-planters, innovators, and social entrepreneurs who form this loose movement.

Between pauses for praise songs and worship, the Q conference buzzed with new possibilities for meeting human need and alleviating suffering around the planet. Among the projects and causes promoted by speakers in their three-, nine-, and 18-minute time slots: gospel-fueled drives for nuclear disarmament and protection of the environment, a shoe company that gives a free pair to a poor child for each pair sold, a plan to reform American education, and a coffee company that grows its beans in Rwandan fields where former enemies now work together. But don't get the impression that this was a grand exercise in leaning left. One presentation, for example, made the case for delaying sex until marriage.

Fewer than a third of the participants at this year's Q are 40 or older. More than half work in professions -- or "channels," in Q parlance -- other than the church world, including business, arts, media, and education. One table included a brain surgeon from Kansas and the creator of a large organic farm in Idaho dedicated to feeding poor people. Appearing on stage were high-profile figures like CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien, who reflected on her recent experiences covering the disaster in Haiti, and Joshua Dubois, head of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In his new book To Change the World, religion professor James Davison Hunter uses the term "faithful presence" to describe his vision for a new kind of publicly applied Christianity. Hunter, a man in his fifties, is not a part of the Q generation. But he is clearly a sympathizer. He advances a model that that eschews political battles and aggressive promotion of doctrine. Hunter calls on Christians instead to use their lives and institutions as vessels to bring goodness and compassion into their social and professional spheres and the public square.

The 35-year-old Lyons has perhaps an even more compelling way to describe a role for Christians in pluralistic America -- to be a "blessing" to society. A huge and necessary first step, he says, is for evangelicals to break free of the Christian subculture they constructed over the last century and engage with non-evangelicals. "We have a chance now," Lyons says, "to show that following Jesus is not defined by heritage or politics, but by the church serving as countercultural example and as a curious, winsome presence in a broken world."

If anyone understands the attitudes of younger Americans on questions of faith and culture, it's Lyons. A graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Lyons is the co-author, with David Kinnaman, of a highly influential book that used extensive public opinion research to explore and document public perceptions of Christianity. The title of the 2007 volume summed up the findings with a stark phrase: unChristian. Since then, Lyons has been on a mission to help steer Christianity in a direction that makes it more humble, hopeful, and attractive, a vision he describes in his forthcoming book The Next Christians: The Good News About the End of Christian America.

The Q cadre has its work cut out. Around the time of their late-April gathering, the news outside was menacing. The storylines about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were changing from "problem" to "disaster." Anger was boiling over the just-passed immigration law in Arizona. A would-be terrorist almost succeeded in wreaking carnage with a Times Square car bomb.

But in their presentations and intermittent table conservations, the young Christian idealists seemed undaunted. They plotted ways to use social media more effectively to collaborate on projects. They made commitments for serious action that they would take over the next year. They saw opportunities to take immediate action -- and did. Such was the case with one foursome who, when asked for a few coins by an African-American homeless man on their way to a nearby sandwich shops, did him one better and invited him to dinner. What followed was 45 minutes of intense listening, prayer, and, at the urging of their homeless guest, a quick burst of gospel-singing on the street corner.

If this is what the end of Christian America looks like, it portends good things for Christianity. Not to mention the rest of that "post-Christian" society sharing space and time with these galvanized young Jesus followers.

Ahhhhhhh.....

James MacMillan's "A New Song"

I really love this piece - we sang it not long ago - and have found a beautiful version on the web, below.  The text is from Psalm 96, vv 1-2:

1 Oh, sing to the LORD a new song!
Sing to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Sing to the LORD, bless His name;
Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.

Our choirmaster told us that the five- and six-note slurry runs are from Scottish folk singing originally - which is pretty interesting, because it all sounds quite new and on the edge of things to me!

The First Step: Surrender (continued)

After re-reading the previous post on this topic, I've begun to think the key might be in this paragraph:

"As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington. Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all. I had commenced to drink as carelessly as thought the cocktails were ginger ale. I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self- knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was the crushing blow.

I bolded what seem to me to be the important sentences in the paragraph above. And these sentences reminded me just now of something else that Rowan Williams has written - here, in his 1998 response to John Spong's "12 Theses." He's referring here to Spong's Thesis #6: "The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed." Williams writes:

The cross as sacrifice? God knows, there are barbaric ways of putting this; but as a complex and apparently inescapable metaphor (which, in the Bible, is about far more than propitiation) it has always said something sobering about the fact that human liberation doesn’t come cheap, that the degree of human self-delusion is so colossal as to involve ’some total gain or loss’ (in the words of Auden’s poem about Bonhoeffer) in the task of overcoming it. And that human beings compulsively deceive themselves about who and what they are is a belief to which Darwinism is completely immaterial.

Again I'm bolding the key section.

And surely Rowan Williams means to say that the "colossal degree of human self-delusion" is across-the-board and universal - and so the First Step really can and does apply to non-alcoholics? That "strange mental blank spots" exist in every human mind? It must be true; it seems completely clear to me that this is a fact. This is why people get (and need) therapy, after all: they cannot see themselves and their motivations clearly. It must be literally impossible to do so, given the "blank spots" we all have when it comes to our earliest years - years which are formative and during which we build up formidable defenses and psychic armor in our attempts to deal with the world we inherit. We also have "blank spots" simply because we grew up in this kind of family, and not that kind, and so think this sort of thing is "normal" and that sort isn't. Right?

Does anybody know any theologians who've written things along these lines? I'm interested in where Rowan Williams gets his notion of the "colossal degree of human self-delusion." Is it from simple observation? Could be, surely! Or is there a Christian theologian/psychologist out there someplace who's actually researched this sort of thing?

I'd be grateful for any leads in this area - but I think I'm satisfied that at least part of Step 1 does indeed contain a "universal principle" and can translate outside of A.A. (No doubt I'll have second thoughts about this shortly, but it's good to come to a conclusion now and then! And then I can get on to Step 2....)

A.A., Luther, and humility

I was reminded by this post at Mockingbird.com of something that happened to me when I first came to A.A. It's a little story with a moral and everything. (And of all things, I'm quoting myself now! How did it ever come to this?)

I was told something early on in A.A. that has forever changed my life and my perspective.

I was complaining one day about somebody else and something they'd done - maybe to a sponsor, but actually I can't remember who it was, now, interestingly - that I considered wrong and beyond the pale.

"I would never do that," fumed I, indignantly.

The woman looked me straight in the eye and responded: "You mean, you haven't done that yet."

A simple sentence - and an even simpler idea - that changed my whole outlook on living. Goes to simul iustus et peccator, I think - and to the understanding of humility, big time.

Really, I can't begin to say how huge an influence this one moment has been for me; it's a perfect example of the "ego deflation at depth" that's central to the A.A. experience. All the air went out of me immediately - and that condition, I've found, is the best possible approach to the world (even though it's awfully hard to manage it most of the time!).

I began to understand a simple truth: I, too - given the right circumstances - am capable of just about anything. IOW: I'm a sinner, through and through. And then, I can't possibly get superior about my very wonderful self, can I? Which is why, maybe, I was drawn to Rowan Williams' stuff from the book Where God Happens, and in particular this section:

We have put aside the easy burden, which is self-accusation, and weighed ourselves down with the heavy one, self-justification.

It takes a long time to get to this, if we ever can, of course. But it's a surprising statement just by itself, isn't it?

Humility is a very, very important idea in A.A.; we're "egomaniacs with inferiority complexes," as I heard fairly often in those days, too. And neither one of those extremes is accurate, of course; both descriptions make us the center of the universe - a really, really bad place for an alcoholic to spend any time.

But of course, "humility" is the topic of Step 7, and I'm getting a bit ahead of myself....

(For those who may not know - I didn't, until pretty recently - simul iustus et peccator is from Luther's writings. I'm actually not sure where it comes from, but it's a really important idea. The Latin translates to "justified and a sinner at the same time.")

The First Step: Surrender

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

So: what's happening here, anyway? It seems simple enough, doesn't it? The process involves an admission - and that word implies that there is some reluctance involved, I think, or some difficulty in arriving at this statement - of one's inability to control one's drinking, and a recognition of the reality of the utter mess one's life has become. And at this point I think I need to discuss something that underlies the way this Step is constructed: the concept of "denial" (something that's discussed in A.A. meetings all the time, but is not defined very well and is sometimes - in my own opinion - merely a sort of folk-wisdom bit of rationalization that's designed to cover a multitude of sins).

"Denial" is used in several different ways. In one case, it refers to the inability of the active alcoholic to see himself clearly; it seems to mean that the alcoholic doesn't recognize himself as an alcoholic, and refuses to acknowledge the damage that drinking is causing in his life. In another case, it refers to a particular "mental block" around alcohol and drinking - a sort of "blackout of reason" when the alcoholic considers having a drink even when she acknowledges her own alcoholism. This second usage is best illustrated by two examples from the book "Alcoholics Anonymous." First, this:

What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon. Why does he? Of what is he thinking?

Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim. This man has a charming wife and family. He inherited a lucrative automobile agency. He had a commendable World War record. He is a good salesman. Everybody likes him. He is an intelligent man, normal so far as we can see, except for a nervous disposition. He did no drinking until he was thirty-five. In a few years he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed. On leaving the asylum he came into contact with us.

We told him what we knew of alcoholism and the answer we had found. He made a beginning. His family was re- assembled, and he began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking. All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession. On each of these occasions we worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened. He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in a serious condition. He knew he faced another trip to the asylum if he kept on. Moreover, he would lose his family for whom he had a deep affection. Yet he got drunk again. we asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the brass, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive to the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.

"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but I was reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."

Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!

Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?

Ah, yes - milk! That's the ticket! I've always loved that story, and that particular excuse. (Truth be told, I loved the Big Book immediately! It's so 1930s, and I adore the stories.)

From the same page, here's another example; the story is similar and begins as the above story does, with the explanation of "how it happened again":

"I was much impressed with what you fellows said about alcoholism, and I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again. I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned. I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed. I felt I had every right to be self- confident, that it would be only a matter of exercising my will power and keeping on guard.

"In this frame of mind, I went about my business and for a time all was well. I had no trouble refusing drinks, and began to wonder if I had not been making too hard work of a simple matter. One day I went to Washington to present some accounting evidence to a government bureau. I had been out of town before during this particular dry spell, so there was nothing new about that. Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.

"I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner. As I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner. That was all. Nothing more. I ordered a cocktail and my meal. Then I ordered another cocktail. After dinner I decided to take a walk. When I returned to the hotel it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed, so I stepped into the bar and had one. I remember having several more that night and plenty next morning. I have a shadowy recollection of being in a airplane bound for New York, and of finding a friendly taxicab driver at the landing field instead of my wife. The driver escorted me for several days. I know little of where I went or what I said and did. Then came the hospital with the unbearable mental and physical suffering.

"As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington. Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all. I had commenced to drink as carelessly as thought the cocktails were ginger ale. I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self- knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was the crushing blow. "

At any rate, this is the condition addressed by the first clause of Step 1: an "admission of powerlessness over alcohol." And the "powerlessness" referred to here is much stronger than a simple recognition that one shouldn't drink anymore; it's got to be stronger than that in the case of a person afflicted with this "subtle insanity" around drinking.

I'm discussing "denial" because it seems to me that it's an important condition in the construction of this Step.  If "denial" didn't exist - if the alcoholic didn't have "strange mental blank spots," this Step would be written differently.  We're talking about "compulsion" here, I think, and the peculiar way it operates on one's conscious mind. 

Leaving aside - because we have to - the actual cause of the "strange mental blank spots" illustrated above, two things seem clear:

1. It's acknowledged by at least some people who have a strong interest in stopping their own destructive drinking that "will power and self-knowledge do not help," and that
2. Somehow, at least for some people, the A.A. program and its "spiritual angle" do help.

So:  how do these things stack up as general principles?  Are there non-drinkers out there suffering from compulsions of their own, for which they may need spiritual help?  Surely there must be; alcoholism is only one kind of self-destructive problem (although it's a very stark one).  Are there others faced with very difficult problems not of their own making for which spiritual help is also a comfort and a very present help in trouble?  Yes, no doubt.

What about the rest?  Is there a large group of people who see no need for spiritual comfort and aid?  It would seem so, given that (as I say often on this blog) the fastest-growing segment of the population is the "unchurched."   What about things like the high divorce rate?  It does seem that we hear every other day about some high- (or low-!) profile marriage breaking up, many times due to infidelity.

In re the last point:  one thing I've thought about when considering the era of the Big Book as compared with our own is that women have so much more power today.  It was hard for a woman to live on her own in 1939, but women do it all the time today - so would Lois Wilson have thrown Bill out and forced him to come to terms with his alcoholism sooner?   Would he even have started the crazy, heavy drinking in the first place, knowing that his position might become unstable pretty quickly?  Women don't put up with drunk husbands today as they mostly had to 70 years ago - nor do they put up with philanderers any longer. Are things getter better - or worse? Surely better, in some ways, for women, no?

In any case, there are certainly lots of men in A.A. meetings today - young men, too, and some must be married.  And people still drink and take drugs in reckless ways.  But there is always a cultural aspect to these questions that makes them more difficult problems than they would be otherwise.

So:  is "surrender" a key to finding help for one's problems?  In some way, it must be:  the First Step really is the first step.  You have to acknowledge that a problem exists first, and then recognize that you can't handle it alone, right?  Even if the help is not to come from God, it has to come from someplace outside oneself:  a counselor, a friend, a priest.  Right?

So is this a key step, then, that could apply to everybody when they need help?  And is it necessary for somebody to "hit bottom" before they become willing to ask for help - particularly spiritual help?  I've been using the word "repentance" lately, thinking it's an important step on the way to "Grace" - but here's Calvin, apparently, on the topic:

"Yet when we refer to the origin of repentance to faith, we do not imagine some space of time during which it brings it to birth; but we mean to show that a man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God's grace....No one will ever reverence God but him who trusts that God is propitious to him. No one will gird himself willingly to observe the law but him who will be persuaded that God is pleased by his obedience. This tenderness in overlooking and tolerating vices is a sign of God's fatherly favor" (Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.2).

This seems to say clearly that grace precedes repentance - and actually in the case of A.A. I think that might be entirely right. The First Step is not really about repentance at all - is it? It's about "asking for help" and "surrender" - isn't it? And surely this is where Grace happens in the life of any alcoholic recovering in A.A. So maybe I'm completely wrong; perhaps "Grace" is actually an important step on the way to "repentance"?

Or perhaps "repentance" is exactly the right word? And the thing a person is "turning from" is the notion that she can solve her own problems using her own unaided will? Which means that "self-will" (or "pride"?) is the sin referred to, and "asking for help" is in fact a form of repentance?

Where does "Grace" come into it, then? I'm asking because I'm completely clear about the fact of "Grace" in my A.A. life - but I don't really seem to feel the same thing when I think about religious faith.

So I'm not sure, exactly. What do you think?

More later, I think.

"Gay? Whatever, Dude"

In the NYT today:

Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:

1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)   
2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.

I warned you: stunning.

There is no way to know for sure what’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue because Gallup didn’t ask, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate. To help me do so, I called Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and the author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.

Here are three theories:

1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gay men and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.

2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.” The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, “The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they’ve been proved the other way.”

3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. (This week, Haggard announced that he was starting a new “inclusive” church open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short,” but no same-sex marriages. Not “God’s ideal.” Sorry.) Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.

These sound plausible, but why aren’t women seeing the same enlightening effects as men? Professor Savin-Williams suggests that there may be a “ceiling effect,” that men are simply catching up to women, and there may be a level at which views top out. Interesting.

"Forgiveness and baseball"

An amazing story, and a great post from Mockingbird:

For those of you who missed it, the baseball world is in an uproar from the one-hit shutout pitched last night by Detroit Tigers' Armando Galarraga. Jim Joyce, 22 year veteran umpire made history by blowing the major call of his career.

Galarraga had just pitched 9 innings and was one out away from pitching a perfect game. For those of you who don't follow baseball, this is pretty much never happens- in a perfect game, no opposing team members reach a base at all. In the past 100 years, this has happened 20 times. The 21st was going to happen last night.

Then, the unthinkable. A hit to right field, scooped up by the first-basemen, a throw to the pitcher who picked up first base, and the umpire calls "safe." One out away from baseball history, and the opposing team gets a hit. Not only was this call devastating and disappointing, it was also wrong.

Galarraga, the pitcher, was robbed of a perfect game by a blown call from a veteran umpire.

Joyce, the umpire, went straight to the clubhouse after the game and reviewed the play, and had a mockingbird moment. He realized that he blew the call and broke down. "This isn't a call... this is a history call... and I kicked the [explative] out of it" he told the press afterwards. Nothing like blowing the call of your baseball career to bring you down, huh?

But we like this story as much for the confession as we do the forgiveness. After the thrashing that Joyce got from the national media, the internet, and the general sports world, the Detroit Tigers anger had turned to sympathy for the repentant and broken umpire. Here's a quote from the Tigers' general manager:

"I got texts from some people from ESPN that said [it was] disgraceful and it made me sick. I just can't feel that way. I know most people feel I'm an old grumpy [person], but I'm not. But I just can't feel that way. I feel bad for him. But I feel bad for Galarraga, too. Don't get me wrong, that's history. This is not a light thing. This is history. I'm not trying to downplay it. But what's the saying, 'Cast the first stone.'

'"We just aren't the type of society that beats people up. We are a very forgiving society. What the heck? The guy felt worse than anybody in this room. I'm just not going to get into it. I'm not going to do it. Do I feel bad? Did he miss the call? Yes. But this is a very forgiving country. When you are dealing with the human elements, just like a manager making a mistake, or a writer writing a bad story or a player making a mistake, that's just the way it is."

While we here at mockingbird might disagree that our society is a forgiving one, I'm sure glad that we get glimpses of it every now and then. The Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers are playing again today, and Joyce is back as umpire. Click here to watch the beginning of the game: while the entire stadium boos when Joyce's name gets announced as umpire, in an act of reconciliation, the Tigers send their robbed pitcher, Galarraga, out to the mound to deliver him the Tigers' lineup. Like the woman at the well, Joyce is forgiven and all is well again.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

And watch this incredible video to see Galarraga giving Joyce the lineup card the very next day. It's not only these two involved, pretty obviously; Jim Leyland, the Tigers manager, sent Galarraga to hand Joyce the lineup card.

A lovely act of wisdom and - yes - of grace. A "thin place," for sure, and God is moving somehow....

While I'm thinking....

A friend pointed me to this article today, "Rebooting the Episcopal Church". It's by an apparently big-time historian, Walter Russell Mead (never heard of him, myself, but here's something about him, including photo):

People like me will be in a tough spot. I think Bishop Glasspool’s election and consecration were ill-advised, but that is by no means the same thing as denying the possibility that in due time and with due order and deliberation, such a step could be taken without harm to Christian faith and morals. Those who elected her and those who have struggled for many years to open the doors for lesbian and gay people to share equally in the life and work of the church are doing so out of a deep vision of radically Christian love that is very much at the heart of New Testament spirituality. It is impossible not to admire, appreciate and be grateful for the spirit behind this determination to show God’s unconditional love for a group in the human family who have too often been cruelly oppressed. There are people all over the world who feel a little more hopeful, a little less lonely as a result of the consecration. If in my view this step was taken without the kind of deliberation and reflection in the wider church that something so consequential deserves, that takes nothing away from the courage and the dignity of those who brought matters to this point, nor does it in any way diminish my personal appreciation of the spirit displayed.

And those who criticize this step most bitterly need to reflect that earlier steps to desegregate Episcopal churches and ordain African Americans were once bitterly fought as well. When I was a kid there was a priest in our town who was basically driven out of his home and parish in Alabama because he dared to support Martin Luther King and the Montgomery bus boycott. Americans frequently mistake cultural conditioning for Biblical teaching; none of us should be so sure that our intuitive sense of right and wrong provides an infallible guide to God’s will.

And yet. It’s also impossible to avoid the reflection that the Episcopal church is unilaterally imposing its own vision of the church on a worldwide communion. Whatever one thinks of the matter on a personal basis, the New Testament as well as the Old specifically condemns homosexual behavior as contrary to the will of God. Myself, I think St. Paul’s condemnation of what was long known as ‘peccatum illud horribile non nominandum inter Christianos‘ (that horrid crime not even to be named among Christians) should be read as a condemnation of gratuitous sexual experimentation in a culture fundamentally deformed by widespread slavery and of Greco-Roman permissiveness towards what we would now call child sexual abuse and even rape rather than as an attack on the idea that some people are by the laws of their own nature drawn to members of their own sex. But that is one man’s opinion, and the institutional church with centuries of tradition and theological reflection cannot be expected to embrace radical new ideas overnight. This is not just a question about homosexuality; it is a question about how the church among other issues understands the nature of revelation and tradition. What does it mean, for example, to say that St. Paul didn’t know what was and wasn’t sinful, but that modern psychology can straighten him out? And to the degree that homosexual behavior and the meaning of that behavior changes from culture to culture, how should the different ideas and perceptions of people coming from different cultures be handled?

These are not easy questions and a person doesn’t need to be a homophobe or unthinking fundamentalist to continue to accept traditional Christian teaching on this subject. And when both the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches continue to embrace traditional ideas, it is unreasonable to expect the Anglican Communion to move at warp speed to accommodate the ideas of American Episcopalians (less than 5 percent of the Anglicans worldwide) on a topic this controversial.

Even if the mind of the church ultimately comes round to the Episcopal view of homosexuality, the Episcopal church has made a profound and historic error in attempting to force this choice on the Anglican Communion as a whole. A great deal more reflection and discussion is needed before a step this significant can be taken by a worldwide body, and the Episcopal insistence that all the world should march to the beat of an American drum and an American timetable on this issue violates the plain duty of members in a common fellowship.

It seems to me that both the American Episcopalians and their bitterest critics in some of the African branches of the Anglican Communion are making similar theological errors: all sides are turning cultural preferences and habits into religious mandates without an adequately critical theological examination of their own biases. If American society is so permissive, sexually and in other ways that we should all think twice before we assume that our changing cultural norms reflect eternal law, sub-Saharan Africans are also not without their quirks and their blind spots. Neither conservative Nigerians nor liberal Americans come to this fight with clean hands; however the church at large ultimately resolves these issues both sides might do better to review and correct their own shortcomings rather than hurl anathemas at their enemies. Until time, reflection and the Holy Spirit show us the way forward I would like to see us all go on quarreling bitterly in the same house as high and low church Anglicans have been doing for centuries and I’m sorry that both sides have taken provocative steps that make this unlikely.

I’ll let the Nigerians and their allies analyze their shortcomings. Looking at the Americans, the failure of the Episcopal church is primarily a failure of leadership. There were not enough grown ups in the room to fashion and impose the kinds of compromise that historically have kept Anglicans together. More generally, the lack of strong institutional leadership and adult supervision in the Episcopal Church has taken its toll. Over the years, the leadership of the American Episcopal church has gradually lost credibility and authority in the Anglican Communion as a whole. Episcopalians have the reputation not simply of being theologically liberal, but of not being theologically serious. It is not just that people disagree with conclusions that we have reached; they don’t think we take these matters seriously enough. We have acquired the reputation of being flighty, feather-headed seekers after theological novelty who uncritically import the latest fads of secular culture into our religious doctrine and life. That is not a fair description of the full life of the Episcopal church, but our bishops, theologians, seminaries and others have done a poor job of making the case that we are grave and deliberative people who don’t do things lightly.

Honestly, I stopped paying any attention to any of this long ago. I still hold that it's utterly absurd to fixate on consecrating American Bishops when ordinary gay people are being murdered all over the world; it's completely and typically myopic and self-absorbed (typical of 2010 America), in my opinion. I don't care about it in even the tiniest amount.

But apparently it's the big thing right now. Well, the truth is great and shall prevail when none care whether it prevail or not.

In other words: God is in charge, and everything will happen as it is supposed to. I have little loyalty to the church in any case; it wasn't the church that set me free.

Deconstructing the 12 Steps: Part I

Alcoholics Anonymous derives pretty directly from the Oxford Group (originally called "A First Century Christian Fellowship"), an evangelical organization begun by Frank Buchman, a American Lutheran pastor, in 1921. Interestingly:

The group was unlike other forms of evangelism in that it targeted and directed its efforts to the "up and outers": the elites and wealthy of society. It made use of publicity regarding its prominent converts, and was caricatured as a "Salvation Army for snobs." Buchman's message did not challenge the status quo and thus aided the Group's popularity among the well-to-do. Buchman made the cover of Time Magazine as "Cultist Frank Buchman: God is a Millionaire" in 1936. For a U.S. headquarters, he built a multimillion-dollar establishment on Michigan's Mackinac Island, with room for 1,000 visitors. From Caux to London's Berkeley Square to New York's Westchester County layouts, Buchman and his followers had the best. In response to criticism, Buchman had an answer: "Isn't God a millionaire?" he would ask.

A.A. founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith were both Oxford Groupers; Wilson was a New York stockbroker and Smith an Akron physician - and no doubt the "up and outer" group appealed to them. The Oxford Group focused on personal sinfulness and personal redemption:

Buchman, who had little intellectual interest or interest in theology, believed all change happens from the individual outward, and stressed simplicity. He summed up the Group's philosophy in a few sentences: all people are sinners , all sinners can be changed, confession is a prerequisite to change, the change can access god directly, miracles are again possible, the change must change others.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous (AKA "The Big Book") was written in 1939 as an effort to spread the word about recovery from alcoholism - remember that until this time, alcoholics were mostly thought of as "hopeless" - in an inexpensive way; the 12 Steps were introduced for the first time in this volume. Again from Wikipedia:

After the third and fourth chapters of the Big Book were completed, Wilson decided that a summary of methods for treating alcoholism was needed to describe their "word of mouth" program. The basic program had developed from the works of William James, Dr. Silkworth, and the Oxford Group. It included six basic steps:

1. We admitted that we were licked, that we were powerless over alcohol.
2. We made a moral inventory of our defects or sins.
3. We confessed or shared our shortcomings with another person in confidence.
4. We made restitution to all those we had harmed by our drinking.
5. We tried to help other alcoholics, with no thought of reward in money or prestige.
6. We prayed to whatever God we thought there was for power to practice these precepts.

Wilson decided that the six steps needed to be broken down into smaller sections to make them easier to understand and accept. He wrote the Twelve Steps one night while lying in bed, which he felt was the best place to think. He prayed for guidance prior to writing, and in reviewing what he had written and numbering the new steps, he found they added up to twelve. He then thought of the Twelve Apostles and became convinced that the program should have twelve steps. With contributions from other group members, including atheists who reined in religious content--such as Oxford material--that could later result in controversy, by fall 1938 Wilson expanded the six steps into the final version of the Twelve Steps, which are detailed in Chapter Five of the Big Book, called "How It Works."

The modern version of the 12 Steps are pretty well-known by now, but here they are again:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So, I'm going to try to look at these Steps and work in the opposite direction; I'm going to shrink them down into their component parts to see actually what's happening here. Maybe this will give some clues as to "what the church can learn from A.A.," even here in 2010? I hope so.

And I suppose this will probably take me a while, won't it? Well, then: the next post as soon as possible, but I'm not sure it's going to be tomorrow....