I have spent the past week wading through my first case of Covid. In the space between naps, I found myself making some new connections.
When I first came into the rooms of recovery, I remember hearing people tell me, correctly, that this is a spiritual, not a religious program. For some of those folks, it also meant that any “religious” language was suspect. I was warned that if I told stories that sounded “religious” I didn’t understand spirituality, and I was unlikely to get the program. Other folks told me how lucky I was that, as an ordained person, I had already nailed the third step…as if. The truth, I suspected, lay somewhere in the middle.
In the early years of sobriety, I listened to countless stories of “God moments” from people who told me such moments were only to be found in the out-of-doors, or in downstairs church – but never, ever, in upstairs church. As a result, I spent a lot of energy avoiding religious language.
Gradually, though, I realized that this wasn’t true for me. One of my close friends occasionally reminds me that I am an “Old-School High Church Anglican cleric.” Besides “recovering addict,” this might be one of the most accurate labels for me. It didn’t make me special, or better-than. It simply made me…me.
Imagine what a blessing it was for me to discover RMEC and this blog. Finally, a place where I could express myself with images that didn’t quite fit in either upstairs church or downstairs church. Most of the writing I do here looks at scripture stories through the lens of this addict’s recovery.
Today, I want to offer two intensely personal examples of how traditional religious language and ritual have guarded me until I found the grace to surrender and have guided my recovery ever since.
The first is an ear worm. I have strong memories of wandering around Hell’s Kitchen (subtle, right?) in the middle of the night, in search of my next fix and/or companion. There were times I paused and asked myself what the hell I was doing. Given what you’ve read so far, you won’t be surprised that the answer came as a fragment of an Advent hymn: Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding. All those nights, the message from my Higher Power was, cast away the works of darkness, O ye children of the day. Even in the places of deepest despair, even when I knew I wasn’t yet ready to cast away the works of darkness, I was being reminded who I really was…a child of the day. A hymn that I had sung since boyhood kept me company.
The second is a liturgical gesture. Those who celebrate Rite I Eucharists are familiar with the phrase (this is from Prayer II, p. 342 of the BCP), “, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies.” I was taught, when I got to that phrase, to place my hands, palms up, on the altar – an embodiment of offering.
In the years before recovery, this was always a moment of cognitive dissonance. There I was, with hands upturned, while mentally crossing my fingers. When I was still using, I knew that I wasn’t offering myself, or my soul, or my body…just bits of them. I wanted to. I didn’t know how, yet. But there was that little bit of willingness acknowledged in my crossed fingers.
Today, that moment of oblation is one of joy and gratitude, and my fingers are crossed no more. Perhaps people wonder why the priest is smiling. Because God has restored me to sanity.
Does anyone else experience these kinds of God Moments, couched as they are in traditional religious language and ritual? I couldn’t possibly say. It’s clear that not everyone does. But I wonder if some of you who read these blog posts do. Maybe you, too, have been told not to talk churchy. That if you do so, you don’t really get the program. So, you keep many of your stories to yourself. Stories that could help others who find themselves in the same place.
If that sounds like you, we would all love to hear those stories. My experience is that the more stories you tell, the more you will see … in your life and in the world around you. By sharing them, you learn that you don’t have to cross your fingers again either.
Happy Easter,
Paul J. in Muncie
