Even During Quarantine...

To forget the world’s abundance, even briefly and in a moment of spiritual penury, is to lose one’s toehold on the ladder.

Robert M. Cotes and E.B.White, New Yorker, November 20, 1952.

During our moment in history, the one NO ONE ever wished for, Pete and I have chosen to embrace the principles embedded in The Serenity Prayer. We are accepting what we cannot change and changing the things we can. We have shut off our television. Instead of sitting around longing for missed sporting events and every single bit of information about COVID-19, we have chosen to embrace our freedom from tv. Our schedule sounds like something you post on a dating app! Long walks at sunset, sitting by a cozy fire with hot cocoa, staring deeply into each other eyes with accusatory glares during competitive games of all sorts.

We are choosing to look for the abundance, not from a perspective of positivity - because that would require the two of us to both get lobotomies! What we can and choose to do is look for what is real, now, today, that is an expression of abundance. We have seen an owl sitting in the middle of the road. I swear we have had time to see every leaf burst forth on our trees this year. Every Spring I promise myself - this year, this year I will see the leaves burst forth in all their glory. Every year, until this one, my head has been down, looking at my feet as I run toward some duty - whether real or imagined, who can say? More mundane but still abundant - we are amazed at what you can order online and have it show up on your doorstep….eventually.

We have marveled at the number of friends and family who have checked on us. We have thanked God for the hospital staff who allowed my sister-in-law access to her baby sister during her final hours of life on planet earth. We have marveled at the capacity for creative problem solving all around us. So much abundance!

It is possible to see the abundance and acknowledge the suffering. This is that grand both/and that we have been learning at NSC. Who knew it would serve us so well during an unprecedented pandemic! (Yes. I know. I know who. Just checking to see if you are paying attention!!)

The Powerful, but Under-Achieving Pray Posture of Step 11

My Christian friends sometimes question the completeness of the eleventh step. “My grandmother has cancer! Does the eleventh step prevent me from praying for her?” No. It doesn’t. Pray away for grandma!

The eleventh step is quite specific; it is not intended to limit our prayers. It suggests (for the purpose of our recovery journey) that we keep two objectives in mind:

1. One goal is to improve our conscious contact with God (as we understand him).

2. We pray ONLY for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

I have discovered that this step appears fairly straight forward until I try to practice it every single day of my life.

My first stumbling block with the 11th Step came from a total lack of understanding about prayer as a practice that is not trying to get God’s attention, meet my demands or mitigate my disasters. Or pray from grandma. Somewhere stuffed in the back of a closet is a box full of prayer notebooks from my early, pre-recovery days as a baby Christian. They are filled with requests and bargains and pleas and demands.

Between my multiple meetings a week at church, worship, Sunday School, small group and missionary work, I really didn’t have much time to think, much less sit. But I sure found time to ask. The Eleventh Step was a relief. I could give up and give in to this nagging knowing that haunted me during my brief moments when I was not performing for Jesus. I could keep it simple. God was NOT waiting on me to get up at 4 a.m. every day to tell him what to do with his time. And as I worked my program I had less need for desperate bargains for God to get me out of my messes.

Have you also wondered about the purpose of prayer?

Have you wondered what God does with all our pleas?

Again, stay tuned. I cannot answer those questions, but I can suggest some ways to shift our own prayer life!

Good News and Minor Miracles

The most amazing thing happened to me when I read a negative book review of one of my books on Amazon. I did not mind. This is truly evidence that miracles happen! After the review was pointed out to me I made note of my reaction during my daily inventory. Of course, no one EVER said, “Gee, I hope I get a negative book review today!” But I inventoried myself. I listened. I looked deep into my soul and what did I see? Gratitude.

Even as he was telling me about the review, I was swept up by the moment, not the negative message. My friend was upset by the review. I believe he said something like, “It hurts my heart.” Nothing is more precious to me than having a friend whose heart is willing to hurt on my behalf. Never ever in a million years will I begrudge the reviewer’s opinion for it gave me the opportunity to feel the kindness of a dear friend.

This is the gift of recovery made possible through working all 12 of the steps, not just the ones I prefer to attend to. Step Ten (daily inventories with necessary follow up repairs) reordered my life and my mind and even my heart. I cannot explain it but over time I have become less invested in the opinion of others and more committed to developing my own character. The process has certainly supported behavioral changes in me but even better - it has drained my energy for being overly concerned about the behavior of others. Sometimes I am a bit kinder, less impatient, and a titch more helpful because I know that later on I will stare all my deeds down during my daily inventory.

But it is this next step - Step Eleven: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood him - that has brought springs of living water to my thirsty soul. It offers freedom and a promise and a practice that cannot be described - only experienced.

In Step Eleven we practice prayer and meditation for ONLY two reasons: to improve our conscious contact with God AND for the knowledge and strength to carry out his will for my life.

Clear. Simple. Direct. Life-altering. And we are going to talk about it for awhile. Stay tuned.

Learning...

What I have learned in my sobriety, from the men and women who help keep me sober, is how to pray. Blind drunks who get sober get a kind of blind faith - not so much a vision of who God is, but who he isn’t - namely, me.

Thomas Lynch, “The Way We Are”

In a few hours I will hop on a zoom call (yes, writing in the midst of a pandemic) and church leaders will share ideas about how to help their community and congregation re-emerge from the quarantine that COVID-19 has required of us. They’ve asked me to prepare a few talking points and I’ve gladly obliged.

What strikes me as I ponder this question is how much I have learned about the meaning of church from the recovery community. In recovery, we may roll in late but will receive welcoming smiles and sometimes a happy clap. In recovery, we make a LOT of mistakes, so we focus on embracing messy people - including accepting ourselves. In recovery, often for a long long time, we may get sober but still feel shaky - we keep expectations low. In recovery, we have few metrics for measuring success, because in many cases, this drive to succeed has just about killed us. In recovery, we work on realizing there is a God and we did not get the job. In recovery, we don’t think big picture, we focus on moment-by-moment decisions. In recovery we have issues; our issues are so life-threatening that we cannot play around with them.

These lessons are hard fought ones. They spring from an acute and loudly claimed reality taught to us by our. Our self-seeking, selfishness, dishonesty and fear - the four biggies - have encouraged false beliefs that have led to questionable life choices. We must be rigorously honest with ourselves in order to get well. If you were looking to find a television equivalent - we are the show Survivor. Kind of grungy, beat up, ragged but fighting for our lives as faithfully as we can.

We come to faith from this perspective. And this informs how we construct church. So during the age of quarantine, our community has not lost much because we weren’t much of a church to begin with! We continue to find ways to serve and ‘see’ each other because these are two core values that, if not lived out in real time, could kill us. We miss being with each other; the hugs and handshakes, the lingering after a meeting to catch up. We miss physically being with our brothers from The Healing Place (our local treatment facility for men) - who cannot zoom with us. But when I zoom with pastors from communities across the country today, I hope I can bring a word of encouragement. Your choir can rest; your handbell group can do some bicep curls to keep in shape. You, dear pastors, can take some naps in the middle of the day and eat dinner with your family at night - something most pastors rarely have time for. Because we know who God is, and he is not us. We know that church is NOT about what we know, teach, preach, or perform. It’s two or more gathering together - on zoom, via phone call, sitting in a big empty parking lot with appropriately sociable distance and a sandwich talking to your friend. I hope some of these lessons that recovery folks know well will become more alive for church folks during this time of shut down because these are big truths that heal hurting people far more than any splashy service or four point message spoken with a lot of enthusiasm and pretty pictures on a big screen.

Intentions

...I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

Leslie Jamison, “The Empathy Exams”

The first nine steps gave us a structure for cleaning up the messes in our past. Step Ten gives us the opportunity to stay clear-eyed about our present day situation. In some ways, it is preventative medicine for living a reasonably happy and peaceful life. No matter how many steps we take, distress is not eliminated from our lives because life is inherently horrible and distressing at times. It does decrease our chances of more self-sabotage and the self-inflicted wounds we endure if we are not attending to and taking responsibility for our lives.

What do you need in order to live a more intentional life? I use a planner to help me stay intentional. It’s geeky but effective. I have a habit tracker I use to help me stay accountable. Each morning I do not have to get up and think, “What are my intentions today?” because I set my intentions for the month. I do look at my habit tracker and note the behaviors I chose to track that I chose to support my intentions for the month. I monitor, tweak, modify, reduce or expand my list as I learn more about myself and God. This is one way to work out intentions. What do you do?