Positive-based emphasis on the 4th and 5th steps.
However, as we broach the topic on non-completed moral inventories, this is as good a place as any to emphasize that the inventory should not only be about looking at our negative qualities. Regardless of whether we were addicted or not, or were non-loving, impatient, dishonest or whatever, there are not many people who are totally devoid of any endearing qualities. I’ve met and heard of people who, in the midst of addictions, were still taking care of very sick and almost totally dependent parents, partners or loved ones. Of course we have to look at our negative qualities as they are blocking us off from the sunshine of God’s guidance and love, but that love never wavers and never stops shining. Perhaps when we keep that in mind -- and understand that as we look at these negatives we also realize and take heart in the fact that the Creator still loves us -- the work of the inventory becomes a gravitational, with-the-flow exercise. It becomes not a re-entry into the Creator’s kingdom, but more a realization we’d never left.
-----
But again -- we need to remember, as we enumerate these negative qualities, to also note the times when we were unselfish, were honest, or displayed love and/or courage at a difficult time. As we step out into the shattered ice of our seemingly non-connected life, clinging to the branch of the good that we did do regardless of how infrequent it was, we are really honoring and grasping the life-sustaining love of our Higher Power.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
charles de foucald
Step eleven - We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of our Destiny and the power to carry it out.
Charles de Foucald
In a little rural town called Otto, New York, about 25 of we members of a prayer organization called the Jesu Caritas Lay Fraternity, met the last weekend of June 2012 for our annual retreat. Early in August, a much larger meeting will take place in Bonn, Germany as people from all over the world will be in attendance. This year’s theme will be ‘daring to meet the other’. Our prayer life and activities try to mirror the spirituality of a turn-of-the-20th century French monk and mystic named Charles de Foucald.
Orphaned at a young age of 5 and growing up in the midst of the new secular-modernist era of mid-late 19th century France, Charles became a bon-vivant soldier and hedonist – far removed from worrying about anything like a destiny or God’s will for him. Going to and from Algeria and the desert as a soldier and a surveyor and witnessing the devotion of the Muslim’s prayer life was one of the many influences that led to an eventual conversion experience. Charles de Foucauld would change completely and would become overwhelmed with the love that Jesus had for him…and he wanted to return the love in kind. Perhaps as an inverse of sorts to the life he had led, simplicity became a central part of his being. Mesmerized by the simple, non-recorded Nazareth portion of Jesus’ life, after spending over 7 years in two different Trappist monasteries Charles went and lived in Nazareth for two years as a caretaker of sorts at a Poor Clare Monastery.
Eventually he went to a place deep in the Algerian desert called Tamanrasset because he wanted to be among the world’s most forgotten people. He lived the final sixteen years of his life there, converting no one and not having anyone come and join him. When he was gunned down and killed on December 1, 1916 on the outskirts of WWI, he likely considered himself a failure.
Alas, although while he was alive his dreams sure did not come to pass, thanks to the work, dutifulness and dedication of some very holy people, the legacy of Charles de Foucauld lived on. A devout Christian Frenchman named Louis Massignon who’d had a long correspondence with Charles throughout his life, commissioned a French writer named Rene Bazin to write de Foucauld’s biography. Several years later, the word of Charles’ life and of the rules for an order he'd wanted to initiate, were utilized by first a priest, Fr Rene Voillaume and then by a woman Madeleine Hutin, who became Little Sister Madeleine of Jesus. The Little Sisters and the Little Brothers of Jesus were formed. Those religious communities now live and work in South America, Central America, the darkest ghettos in North America, in Asia and Africa; they choose to work with the most forgotten. Again, as with their founder, conversion is not high on the agenda…care and love is. The Little Brothers and Sisters live like Jesus did more than talk about it.
Charles’ prayers to improve his conscious contact with a Higher Power exploded into a love story par excellence. One does not go to the earthly extremes this man did without really and genuinely finding Jesus in the face of all the ones he met – especially the forgotten or displaced. Hours on end, sitting in his little tent gazing upon the host-image of Jesus…some might find this overly austere, a waste of time – it most certainly was not for Charles. The oomph, the grace, the qi, the wherewithal to befriend the forgotten, to welcome his brothers and sisters at all times, to live the Spartan, barely sustainable existence he did – all this came from his beloved Jesus – the Source of all love. His dedication to touch, to imbibe and to receive that love was the driving force of his life.
---
Being that Otto, NY is only about two hours south of Niagara Falls, the day after the retreat, the very gracious wife/husband, hostess/host of the weekend then furthered their service work by taking me up there. And there, for the first time in my life, I saw a rainbow from above. With all the falls, and whirlpools, and gorges and rapids, I suppose it’s not that rare of an occurrence. But it was a beautiful and clear one also – the variant colors of the water spectrum were very distinguishable. And I thought about Charles looking down on us --- at our little gathering in the woods, at the rainbow coalition he’ll be seeing in August.
God’s will, our destiny. Logic begs me ask if the work of the Little Brothers and Sisters really makes any difference. Do they really change anything? The story is that their numbers, like with most all religious orders; are diminishing. 100 years later, as Charles views a world that near deifies the life he lead in his squandering, stuffing days, does he, even as he drinks in the beatific nectar of a life given to God, feel the pain of the forgotten worsening as the haves take more and more? As fanatics and the blood-curdling inequality hath turned many of his Muslim brothers into terrorists? The view of the world for one so dedicated to the forgotten is surely not rose-colored.
----
A few years back, a ‘little brother’ named Vishwas led a Jesu Caritas retreat we, had in Philadelphia, Pa. His ministry, among other things, was to wash out the stall between the countless showers of the street people who came to the shelter where he worked. His nickname became ‘the shower priest’ and he seemed damn proud of it. He was leaving our retreat to head to rural Mexico where the majority of the still living brothers were going to live in community.
But I thought of those individual homeless folk who felt just a tad better about themselves because they were able to shower in a spot that was not a sty. Did he make a difference?
My good God, yes, a thousand times yes. The little pockets of grace, of love, of caring are the milieu of our Destiny. When and if it flows back into the mainstream of our world, maybe someday in a generation far downstream, we will find a treasure at the rainbow’s end.
But until then, it is our Destiny to create those little pockets. In the end it is the connection behind those actions that live on and on. Charles realized this and the connection of he and his Jesus has spread to countless numbers of the worlds’ people most left out. Even in his most wayward days, the letters of prayer and camaraderie sent by a female cousin, likely kept his Higher Power connection alive. In like manner, perhaps for all of us who try, however tenuously to do as the Creator wills as we navigate through this valley of tears, it is our prayers and good works that keep us from going completely under.
Finding God’s will and doing it, the essence of the eleventh step- a magnificent Destiny indeed…keeping afloat as we try to turn those tears into laughter.
Daring to meet the other is what the 12th step is all about.
Charles de Foucald
In a little rural town called Otto, New York, about 25 of we members of a prayer organization called the Jesu Caritas Lay Fraternity, met the last weekend of June 2012 for our annual retreat. Early in August, a much larger meeting will take place in Bonn, Germany as people from all over the world will be in attendance. This year’s theme will be ‘daring to meet the other’. Our prayer life and activities try to mirror the spirituality of a turn-of-the-20th century French monk and mystic named Charles de Foucald.
Orphaned at a young age of 5 and growing up in the midst of the new secular-modernist era of mid-late 19th century France, Charles became a bon-vivant soldier and hedonist – far removed from worrying about anything like a destiny or God’s will for him. Going to and from Algeria and the desert as a soldier and a surveyor and witnessing the devotion of the Muslim’s prayer life was one of the many influences that led to an eventual conversion experience. Charles de Foucauld would change completely and would become overwhelmed with the love that Jesus had for him…and he wanted to return the love in kind. Perhaps as an inverse of sorts to the life he had led, simplicity became a central part of his being. Mesmerized by the simple, non-recorded Nazareth portion of Jesus’ life, after spending over 7 years in two different Trappist monasteries Charles went and lived in Nazareth for two years as a caretaker of sorts at a Poor Clare Monastery.
Eventually he went to a place deep in the Algerian desert called Tamanrasset because he wanted to be among the world’s most forgotten people. He lived the final sixteen years of his life there, converting no one and not having anyone come and join him. When he was gunned down and killed on December 1, 1916 on the outskirts of WWI, he likely considered himself a failure.
Alas, although while he was alive his dreams sure did not come to pass, thanks to the work, dutifulness and dedication of some very holy people, the legacy of Charles de Foucauld lived on. A devout Christian Frenchman named Louis Massignon who’d had a long correspondence with Charles throughout his life, commissioned a French writer named Rene Bazin to write de Foucauld’s biography. Several years later, the word of Charles’ life and of the rules for an order he'd wanted to initiate, were utilized by first a priest, Fr Rene Voillaume and then by a woman Madeleine Hutin, who became Little Sister Madeleine of Jesus. The Little Sisters and the Little Brothers of Jesus were formed. Those religious communities now live and work in South America, Central America, the darkest ghettos in North America, in Asia and Africa; they choose to work with the most forgotten. Again, as with their founder, conversion is not high on the agenda…care and love is. The Little Brothers and Sisters live like Jesus did more than talk about it.
Charles’ prayers to improve his conscious contact with a Higher Power exploded into a love story par excellence. One does not go to the earthly extremes this man did without really and genuinely finding Jesus in the face of all the ones he met – especially the forgotten or displaced. Hours on end, sitting in his little tent gazing upon the host-image of Jesus…some might find this overly austere, a waste of time – it most certainly was not for Charles. The oomph, the grace, the qi, the wherewithal to befriend the forgotten, to welcome his brothers and sisters at all times, to live the Spartan, barely sustainable existence he did – all this came from his beloved Jesus – the Source of all love. His dedication to touch, to imbibe and to receive that love was the driving force of his life.
---
Being that Otto, NY is only about two hours south of Niagara Falls, the day after the retreat, the very gracious wife/husband, hostess/host of the weekend then furthered their service work by taking me up there. And there, for the first time in my life, I saw a rainbow from above. With all the falls, and whirlpools, and gorges and rapids, I suppose it’s not that rare of an occurrence. But it was a beautiful and clear one also – the variant colors of the water spectrum were very distinguishable. And I thought about Charles looking down on us --- at our little gathering in the woods, at the rainbow coalition he’ll be seeing in August.
God’s will, our destiny. Logic begs me ask if the work of the Little Brothers and Sisters really makes any difference. Do they really change anything? The story is that their numbers, like with most all religious orders; are diminishing. 100 years later, as Charles views a world that near deifies the life he lead in his squandering, stuffing days, does he, even as he drinks in the beatific nectar of a life given to God, feel the pain of the forgotten worsening as the haves take more and more? As fanatics and the blood-curdling inequality hath turned many of his Muslim brothers into terrorists? The view of the world for one so dedicated to the forgotten is surely not rose-colored.
----
A few years back, a ‘little brother’ named Vishwas led a Jesu Caritas retreat we, had in Philadelphia, Pa. His ministry, among other things, was to wash out the stall between the countless showers of the street people who came to the shelter where he worked. His nickname became ‘the shower priest’ and he seemed damn proud of it. He was leaving our retreat to head to rural Mexico where the majority of the still living brothers were going to live in community.
But I thought of those individual homeless folk who felt just a tad better about themselves because they were able to shower in a spot that was not a sty. Did he make a difference?
My good God, yes, a thousand times yes. The little pockets of grace, of love, of caring are the milieu of our Destiny. When and if it flows back into the mainstream of our world, maybe someday in a generation far downstream, we will find a treasure at the rainbow’s end.
But until then, it is our Destiny to create those little pockets. In the end it is the connection behind those actions that live on and on. Charles realized this and the connection of he and his Jesus has spread to countless numbers of the worlds’ people most left out. Even in his most wayward days, the letters of prayer and camaraderie sent by a female cousin, likely kept his Higher Power connection alive. In like manner, perhaps for all of us who try, however tenuously to do as the Creator wills as we navigate through this valley of tears, it is our prayers and good works that keep us from going completely under.
Finding God’s will and doing it, the essence of the eleventh step- a magnificent Destiny indeed…keeping afloat as we try to turn those tears into laughter.
Daring to meet the other is what the 12th step is all about.
June 17, 2012
Father’s Day 2012
As fate would have it, on the day before Father’s Day 2012, I found myself at a picnic at the same place where, when I was in early grade school, our church had a big picnic each year. It was an event I really loved and one of the highlights for me was watching my dad play in the men’s softball game they had. Watching him smoothly make all the plays at second base and sling in a hit or two really made me proud.
The 50’s were ‘happy days’ for us actually. Dad was doing well in his floor covering sales job and a new Ford every two years and a week or two down the shore were parts of our life. Unfortunately things changed pretty drastically when dad’s company went under in the recession of ’62. Raising a family of six when shopping from one job to the next can really hurt.
By that time, the school/church picnic was long gone. During one of those softball games there was an outfield collision so bad that the smaller of the two bangers was carted off on a stretcher. The picnic lost its charm after that and I really think that was the last one. And looking back on it that outfield crash was like a metaphor for the crash of values and structure the era brought in. Fidelity, morality, monogamy and family values were smashed out of the mainstream by our dedication to the Colossus of a stuffed appetite.
For sure there was a need for some revolutionary spirit in the era. The closed minds of the American Dream-ers could justify anything we did as long as it was in the interest of the U S of A. We had a natural baddie called communism, and their tenant of godlessness was more than enough for us to totally muffle their call for a more equitable sharing of the goods. As good and moral a man as was my dad, when it came to communism or anti-war activity, his mind was closed tight as a drum. I remember him calling Phillip Berrigan a ‘GD traitor’.
I walked a similar pro-Vietnam walk through my high school years, and a nice high draft lottery number kept me from the fray. And while I shifted considerably to the left in college, I was more a drunken apathetic than any kind of standard bearer. I’d be out of school almost 20 years before I’d tackle the addiction demon. Reconnecting with my Higher Power via the 12 steps of AA did the trick.
------
They had us light a candle and write a name on a card before mass today. I wrote down my dad, his dad, and his grand dad. And at the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ prayer we sing, inviting all the angels in heaven to join us in praise of God, I lost it big time thinking of all of them and the All of so many others who walked this earth and who at least tried to get it right.
Picnics. Dads, baseball, a kinder gentler time…may their grace keep us moving forward.
Father’s Day 2012
As fate would have it, on the day before Father’s Day 2012, I found myself at a picnic at the same place where, when I was in early grade school, our church had a big picnic each year. It was an event I really loved and one of the highlights for me was watching my dad play in the men’s softball game they had. Watching him smoothly make all the plays at second base and sling in a hit or two really made me proud.
The 50’s were ‘happy days’ for us actually. Dad was doing well in his floor covering sales job and a new Ford every two years and a week or two down the shore were parts of our life. Unfortunately things changed pretty drastically when dad’s company went under in the recession of ’62. Raising a family of six when shopping from one job to the next can really hurt.
By that time, the school/church picnic was long gone. During one of those softball games there was an outfield collision so bad that the smaller of the two bangers was carted off on a stretcher. The picnic lost its charm after that and I really think that was the last one. And looking back on it that outfield crash was like a metaphor for the crash of values and structure the era brought in. Fidelity, morality, monogamy and family values were smashed out of the mainstream by our dedication to the Colossus of a stuffed appetite.
For sure there was a need for some revolutionary spirit in the era. The closed minds of the American Dream-ers could justify anything we did as long as it was in the interest of the U S of A. We had a natural baddie called communism, and their tenant of godlessness was more than enough for us to totally muffle their call for a more equitable sharing of the goods. As good and moral a man as was my dad, when it came to communism or anti-war activity, his mind was closed tight as a drum. I remember him calling Phillip Berrigan a ‘GD traitor’.
I walked a similar pro-Vietnam walk through my high school years, and a nice high draft lottery number kept me from the fray. And while I shifted considerably to the left in college, I was more a drunken apathetic than any kind of standard bearer. I’d be out of school almost 20 years before I’d tackle the addiction demon. Reconnecting with my Higher Power via the 12 steps of AA did the trick.
------
They had us light a candle and write a name on a card before mass today. I wrote down my dad, his dad, and his grand dad. And at the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ prayer we sing, inviting all the angels in heaven to join us in praise of God, I lost it big time thinking of all of them and the All of so many others who walked this earth and who at least tried to get it right.
Picnics. Dads, baseball, a kinder gentler time…may their grace keep us moving forward.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Background Noise
The background noise of the demonstrating against fracking – a process extracting natural gas that is polluting our waterways.
I sit in the jury box waiting for Treatment Court to begin…’black hole’ time I once heard someone call these moments of just waiting around for the world to start moving again
My mood, my time, my life these days…seems polluted and misused….
I sit in the jury box waiting for Treatment Court to begin…’black hole’ time I once heard someone call these moments of just waiting around for the world to start moving again
My mood, my time, my life these days…seems polluted and misused…. Here I want not to be
But at the demonstration – I’d get bored pronto - I’ve never been much of an activist
All the dedicated people – where do they all come from?
And how do they bear the lack of change their efforts do bring on?
Stuck in a court room….in a job but mostly in a head that is cluttered and confused.
All is well, all is well…even though everything is all a mess…all is really well.
Is on the opening page of a book that’s called Awareness…
and that is called by me my own personal Bible
I get the mess part but struggle with the ‘well’
----
Interrupted by applause for a client doing well a slab of plus and progress in his small and troubled world
The ‘loud’ from outside ratchets up a notch…a ‘good’ speech apparently as the cheers from the crowd are now muddled not as much
Big ideas big words – important words for sure… but to a single soul trying to muddle through…words aimed at him…attaboys all around…are as big and important as any might be heard.
Where they are really at:
is not in the pitchness of the black…or the tan or not of the white or Hispanic It’s more in the face, the demeanor, the hold of oneself…
For sure there are some so trained, so devious even That his tells do not do much telling at all
But these treatment court-ees seem not that so versed at such dup-li-ci-ty
A very thin, med-yum black with a Muslim-ish beard hands out his ‘relapse’ essay to all who are there. His weekend at Options is over and done.
He seems compliant, not defiant…is he now on his way? Funny I wonder the same about me…near each’n’ev-er-y day…...
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Praying with Hope, Parts 1 & 2
February, 2004
It brought tears to my eyes when my sponsor once told me that after I’d come back again and asked for his prayers. Nicky whose relapse runs have been even more lengthy and severe than were mine, is now sober over six months…and Anthony’s who’s were worse yet, just passed 100 days. I think of all the rosaries that I said remembering them among my intentions.
Then there is Don C – sober now 42 years and a graduate of Sister Ignatia’s Rosary Hall in Cleveland. “Try praying for yourself, too” she advised him when he went to her, six months clean, looking for prayers and about to go in front the judge who could have tossed him in jail for a LONG time. “God likes to hear from people he’s not heard from in a while,” she added. The judge laid the verbal rap on Don pretty hard. “You deserve much worse than this, Mr. C. But I’ll not send you to jail. But you’re paying back has to start right away and better not ever get delayed. You should thank your lucky stars that you have a very powerful friend who spoke in your behalf.” The judge was among the huge legion of people who loved and respected the 95-lb giant of a woman they called Sister I. Perhaps no one did so more than AA’s co-founder, one Robert Holbrook Smith who, in 1938, teamed up with her to turn a semi-broom closet in Akron’s St. Thomas Aquinas Hospital, into the first real AA ‘alcoholic ward’. Rosary Hall Solarium is what she called the larger ward she created when in 1953 she was transferred to Cleveland. RHS in honor of the man she knew and loved so well.
It took Don near 20 years to do all his paying back, but pay it he did. When on Labor Day weekend 2002 he let me hold the miraculous medal Sister I gave to each person who left that RHS, I was close to tears again. The deal was you had to give the medal back if you drank. My man Don went through some very stormy seas these last 40+ years, but never did he drink.
---
It is cold but not bitter here in Philly-town this mid-February night. My friend Johnny Z called last night fresh off his latest relapse. I said “no” to his request for a loan to pay his landlady part of his 2-week past due rent. My friend Steve, to whom I’d introduced John last Christmas Eve, is perhaps a bit more compassionate (and a bit more flush money wise!), did buy Johnny a transpass and an Acme food card for $20. But Johnny (and Nicky and Ant-ny) were all among the intentions remembered as I just took a little rosary walk. Perhaps per the example of Don C and Sister Ignatia, John will maybe pray for himself with a bit more zeal…perhaps he’ll even heed James’ advice – and will pray with some real faith and hope. Nicky and Anthony AND ME were all folk a lot of people thought would never get it.
I missed my weekly rosary group tonight as I spoke at a group across town for a friend celebrating nine years of sobriety. But even though the place is called the Methodist Hospital and Nursing Home, a statue of Mary stared down on me as I spoke. As always, Mary was part of my recovering story. A member came up to me after the meeting and gave me a holy card with a prayer to Mary on it. He told me of a son who as an infant was called incurable by the doctors, but who recovered after he anointed him with oil that he had blessed at St Rita’s Church right on Broad Street. The son is 36 years old now. Irony of ironies, poor beaten down Johnny grew up right across the street and was baptized at old St. Rit’s. I guess this story is pretty much for him.
------------
February, 2012
A lot of players and info in this little story I wrote eight years ago. This winter has had almost no bitter nights in its wake – in fact it’s had very few cold ones. As the crow flies, I just left a meeting with ‘poor beaten down John’ and I guess he is about a month removed from his latest relapse. He does not know that he has the capability to not fall again, but that is not really important. What is important is that he keeps in the day/moment and that he consistently asks and thanks God for help AND that he does not pick up when he really wants to.
Alas among the other players in the story, Don C is just about hanging on out in Cleveland…severe senility has set in. Addiction killed Nicky. Anthony has about 8 years sober now. And alas in the summer of ’04, Steve R passed on also…somehow, 19 years after he’d given up the dope, he developed cirrhosis of the liver and his body just never took to the transplant he’d gotten. Next to Sister I (and I guess James, the author of the Book of James) Steve was easily the best man in this story. God and our human bodies work in strange ways sometimes.
Which brings us to a new player in this extended tale. His name is Tom and he was a client of mine in the drug/alcohol clinic where I work. When he came in last August, the bloated stomach and gray skin were dead giveaways of his cirrhosis. Eventually a few drainings and a lot of water pills got the swelling down, but after an initial ‘we hope it is not too far gone to regenerate itself’ speck of hope, he was told it was too diseased to heal. We even went so far as writing a positive review of his admission to the transplant team social worker, as he was placed in the waiting list that was his only hope. Alas a few weeks back, Tom was told the liver had begun to heal itself. God and our human bodies work in strange ways sometimes indeed!
So it goes. Tom went so far in his recovery efforts that we even went through most of the 12 steps this fall. I really don’t remember if I’d asked him to remember Steve and their cirrhosis connection in his prayers, but I know that I sure did. Stevo loved to be involved with stuff and I’m sure that was not a trait that dispersed when he crossed over to the other side of mortality. I sometimes think that ‘other side’ is chock full of folk wishing we mortals would utilize their particular graces in our efforts to squeeze more happiness and meaning out of our complicated little lives.
So God willing Tom will continue to heal. Johnny Z will also – and will finally permanently avoid the relapses. And may we all embrace and encase the Great All that will guide us to the Promised Land of fulfilling God’s will for us. Unity forever Amen
At church today they read from the Book of James. “If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God…and it will be given him. But when he asks he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.” James practical “faith without works is dead” spirituality was such a cornerstone of early AA,"the James Group” was one of the names considered for the fledgling fellowship. I think of all the prayers said on my behalf for the near 5 years I struggled with relapse. “I pray for you every night, I pray for Nicky, for Anthony and a lot of people.”
 |
| Praying with Hope |
Then there is Don C – sober now 42 years and a graduate of Sister Ignatia’s Rosary Hall in Cleveland. “Try praying for yourself, too” she advised him when he went to her, six months clean, looking for prayers and about to go in front the judge who could have tossed him in jail for a LONG time. “God likes to hear from people he’s not heard from in a while,” she added. The judge laid the verbal rap on Don pretty hard. “You deserve much worse than this, Mr. C. But I’ll not send you to jail. But you’re paying back has to start right away and better not ever get delayed. You should thank your lucky stars that you have a very powerful friend who spoke in your behalf.” The judge was among the huge legion of people who loved and respected the 95-lb giant of a woman they called Sister I. Perhaps no one did so more than AA’s co-founder, one Robert Holbrook Smith who, in 1938, teamed up with her to turn a semi-broom closet in Akron’s St. Thomas Aquinas Hospital, into the first real AA ‘alcoholic ward’. Rosary Hall Solarium is what she called the larger ward she created when in 1953 she was transferred to Cleveland. RHS in honor of the man she knew and loved so well.
It took Don near 20 years to do all his paying back, but pay it he did. When on Labor Day weekend 2002 he let me hold the miraculous medal Sister I gave to each person who left that RHS, I was close to tears again. The deal was you had to give the medal back if you drank. My man Don went through some very stormy seas these last 40+ years, but never did he drink.
---
It is cold but not bitter here in Philly-town this mid-February night. My friend Johnny Z called last night fresh off his latest relapse. I said “no” to his request for a loan to pay his landlady part of his 2-week past due rent. My friend Steve, to whom I’d introduced John last Christmas Eve, is perhaps a bit more compassionate (and a bit more flush money wise!), did buy Johnny a transpass and an Acme food card for $20. But Johnny (and Nicky and Ant-ny) were all among the intentions remembered as I just took a little rosary walk. Perhaps per the example of Don C and Sister Ignatia, John will maybe pray for himself with a bit more zeal…perhaps he’ll even heed James’ advice – and will pray with some real faith and hope. Nicky and Anthony AND ME were all folk a lot of people thought would never get it.
I missed my weekly rosary group tonight as I spoke at a group across town for a friend celebrating nine years of sobriety. But even though the place is called the Methodist Hospital and Nursing Home, a statue of Mary stared down on me as I spoke. As always, Mary was part of my recovering story. A member came up to me after the meeting and gave me a holy card with a prayer to Mary on it. He told me of a son who as an infant was called incurable by the doctors, but who recovered after he anointed him with oil that he had blessed at St Rita’s Church right on Broad Street. The son is 36 years old now. Irony of ironies, poor beaten down Johnny grew up right across the street and was baptized at old St. Rit’s. I guess this story is pretty much for him.
------------
February, 2012
A lot of players and info in this little story I wrote eight years ago. This winter has had almost no bitter nights in its wake – in fact it’s had very few cold ones. As the crow flies, I just left a meeting with ‘poor beaten down John’ and I guess he is about a month removed from his latest relapse. He does not know that he has the capability to not fall again, but that is not really important. What is important is that he keeps in the day/moment and that he consistently asks and thanks God for help AND that he does not pick up when he really wants to.
Alas among the other players in the story, Don C is just about hanging on out in Cleveland…severe senility has set in. Addiction killed Nicky. Anthony has about 8 years sober now. And alas in the summer of ’04, Steve R passed on also…somehow, 19 years after he’d given up the dope, he developed cirrhosis of the liver and his body just never took to the transplant he’d gotten. Next to Sister I (and I guess James, the author of the Book of James) Steve was easily the best man in this story. God and our human bodies work in strange ways sometimes.
Which brings us to a new player in this extended tale. His name is Tom and he was a client of mine in the drug/alcohol clinic where I work. When he came in last August, the bloated stomach and gray skin were dead giveaways of his cirrhosis. Eventually a few drainings and a lot of water pills got the swelling down, but after an initial ‘we hope it is not too far gone to regenerate itself’ speck of hope, he was told it was too diseased to heal. We even went so far as writing a positive review of his admission to the transplant team social worker, as he was placed in the waiting list that was his only hope. Alas a few weeks back, Tom was told the liver had begun to heal itself. God and our human bodies work in strange ways sometimes indeed!
So it goes. Tom went so far in his recovery efforts that we even went through most of the 12 steps this fall. I really don’t remember if I’d asked him to remember Steve and their cirrhosis connection in his prayers, but I know that I sure did. Stevo loved to be involved with stuff and I’m sure that was not a trait that dispersed when he crossed over to the other side of mortality. I sometimes think that ‘other side’ is chock full of folk wishing we mortals would utilize their particular graces in our efforts to squeeze more happiness and meaning out of our complicated little lives.
So God willing Tom will continue to heal. Johnny Z will also – and will finally permanently avoid the relapses. And may we all embrace and encase the Great All that will guide us to the Promised Land of fulfilling God’s will for us. Unity forever Amen
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Stepping into Our Savior’s Will
November 14 2010
The little tiny lady sitting outside of church waiting for her daughter to pick her up said she was 96. Little Lilly, who sat behind me during mass, looked to be about five. Her little sister, who looked just like her was about 4 years younger. She was a bit vocal during mass. Very little crying but letting her voice be heard – like everyone else was doing I guess she figured.
And between 96 and one were folk of all ages, shapes, sizes and colors at the 160th anniversary mass for good old St. Malachy’s.
The day before the Jesu Caritas prayer group that meets there the 2nd Saturday of each month, turned our annual retreat into a one-day 12-step workshop/class. We actually did the steps during the retreat. First off we admitted we were powerless at making our lives all that we want them to be; secondly we expressed our belief that a Power Greater than ourselves could get us closer to our ideal. For step three we decided to ally our will with that Power; in four and five we identified and then shared with our assigned sharing partner, the character defects that were keeping us from a more intimate connection with that Power. In six and seven we were ready to have those defects removed and asked God to do it. In eight we listed the people we’d resented or harmed with our actions; we then agreed to do step nine by going out to make amends to those people. We professed to do step ten in the future – making amends immediately if we got off track. And having cleared a lot of the blocks between us and God by doing this moral housecleaning, our step eleven prayer for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out, will be more likely to get through. And in step 12, we said we’d take this message to another human being.
The 12 steps really are that simple.
And so St Malachy’s heads into her 160th year. Our mission statement includes helping others in need. By being willing to go through these steps, my friends from the prayer group were open enough to try something a bit different in their acting out on that particular mission. Father Lawrence was good enough to allow us to try something that maybe has never been done before…a dedicated crew of non-addicted people working the 12 steps of recovery.
Grace abounded on much of the St M campus this weekend. May all of us find a way to achieve the mission of God’s will for us as we go about the nuts and bolts of living in a world that seemingly takes us in the opposite direction. May we continue to cherish and respect our elders and the wisdom they impart, and may we guide our young to ingest the grace, love and guidance of a church and a parish that is a beacon for us all.
Information about Jim McGovern’s book (12 Steps to Change Your World) and step class can be found at ‘12stepsforall.com’.
The little tiny lady sitting outside of church waiting for her daughter to pick her up said she was 96. Little Lilly, who sat behind me during mass, looked to be about five. Her little sister, who looked just like her was about 4 years younger. She was a bit vocal during mass. Very little crying but letting her voice be heard – like everyone else was doing I guess she figured.
And between 96 and one were folk of all ages, shapes, sizes and colors at the 160th anniversary mass for good old St. Malachy’s.
The day before the Jesu Caritas prayer group that meets there the 2nd Saturday of each month, turned our annual retreat into a one-day 12-step workshop/class. We actually did the steps during the retreat. First off we admitted we were powerless at making our lives all that we want them to be; secondly we expressed our belief that a Power Greater than ourselves could get us closer to our ideal. For step three we decided to ally our will with that Power; in four and five we identified and then shared with our assigned sharing partner, the character defects that were keeping us from a more intimate connection with that Power. In six and seven we were ready to have those defects removed and asked God to do it. In eight we listed the people we’d resented or harmed with our actions; we then agreed to do step nine by going out to make amends to those people. We professed to do step ten in the future – making amends immediately if we got off track. And having cleared a lot of the blocks between us and God by doing this moral housecleaning, our step eleven prayer for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out, will be more likely to get through. And in step 12, we said we’d take this message to another human being.
The 12 steps really are that simple.
And so St Malachy’s heads into her 160th year. Our mission statement includes helping others in need. By being willing to go through these steps, my friends from the prayer group were open enough to try something a bit different in their acting out on that particular mission. Father Lawrence was good enough to allow us to try something that maybe has never been done before…a dedicated crew of non-addicted people working the 12 steps of recovery.
Grace abounded on much of the St M campus this weekend. May all of us find a way to achieve the mission of God’s will for us as we go about the nuts and bolts of living in a world that seemingly takes us in the opposite direction. May we continue to cherish and respect our elders and the wisdom they impart, and may we guide our young to ingest the grace, love and guidance of a church and a parish that is a beacon for us all.
Information about Jim McGovern’s book (12 Steps to Change Your World) and step class can be found at ‘12stepsforall.com’.
The Intolerance Antidote
August 29, 2010
On September 25 of this year, as many as 10,000 walkers and supporters will descend on Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing for the 5th annual Recovery Walk. The television network A & E is a co-sponsor this year and they will be sponsoring delegates from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each of these delegates will have over ten years since they stopped imbibing a substance that was making their lives unmanageable. We hope to have a total of 500 over ten year sober folk in what we are calling the Honor Guard. This Guard will rim the path of the walkers, encouraging them as they start the brief walk from Front to 5th and Market St.
Among the glories of the 12 step fellowships is their insistence that the Higher Power that can and does deliver us from the tombs of our addictions be one of our own understanding. A Muslim, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, Hindu…even an atheist or an agnostic can sit side-by-side in a 12 step meeting without any cause or reason for dissension about belief systems. The eminently practical spiritually inspired modifications of behavior the program suggests, not only delivers us from lives of torment and dysfunction, but also to lives of happiness and fulfillment. And there is absolutely no reason one has to have an addiction problem to work the 12-step program. Being powerless over a substance and/or how our individual world was going was the incentive most of us in recovery had to take this spiritual path. But as I look at our world bereft with suicide bombings and the vandalizing and protesting the building of houses of worship, of a cab driver being stabbed merely because of his faith, of a rally in Washington where as many as 10,000 people go to support a fanatically proud and vocal proponent of divisiveness and intolerance, it seems our world collectively is approaching the individual bottom the addict must hit before he is willing to change.
So what of these steps? Where did thy come from? Well ironically enough as this huge throng of recovering people are about to descend on Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love, 102 years ago a Lutheran minister from Allentown, Pa. found himself in a church in England where a female descendant of William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, was giving a sermon on the cross of Christ. This minister named Frank Buchman heard those words and knew he had resentments in his life that he had to give up…that they stood between him and He who was hung from that cross.
So to the six board members who had pulled the plug on his wonderful projects for the poor and homeless of Philadelphia, Frank Buchman sent apology letters. His realization that in order to change or help others, one must first purge himself thus became a cornerstone of a vibrant, active spirituality that really would change the lives of people from all over the world. The self-cleansing was necessary in Buchman’s scheme so that the flow of God-given guidance would not be blocked. Daily quiet time and guidance would become something near as central to his life as was breathing. And very early on, his guidance told him it was necessary to work one-on-one with people - that the time had come for the preacher man to come down from the pulpit. A la Francis from Assisi and John Wesley from England, Buchman knew that it was people and not congregations who had to experience the wonder and love of Christ.
Buchman’s program began to grow in popularity and numbers and by the mid-20’s they would finally get a name – they’d be called the Oxford Group. That was their name when, in 1931, a wealthy New Englander named Roland Hazzard with a crippling alcohol addiction, after having relapsed after being treated for near a year by his psychiatrist, Carl Jung was told that he was hopeless unless he had a life-changing spiritual experience. Hazzard joined the Oxfords because that was exactly what they were selling. That was still their name when in 1934 a drunk named Ebby Thatcher was spared a jail sentence if he agreed to go through the Oxford Group program Hazzard and a friend laid out for him. Ebby then followed the same Oxford suit they had - that to keep this thing you have to take the message to another - and the other that he found was a New York drunk named Bill Wilson. On December 11, 1934, Wilson took his final drink.
Near 6 months later, Wilson’s first success in helping get someone else sober would take place in Akron, Ohio. The second drunk was named Bob Smith and although he’d been in the Oxford Group for a couple of years, until a fellow who shared the same affliction wrapped the Oxford program around the admission of powerlessness to that bottle, it had done him no good. By the late 30’s, the alcoholics would break from the Oxfords and they took the essence of the program they were leaving and would make it the more concrete and workable 12 steps. And as Wilson and Smith and their followers would take to the byways and highways pulling drunks out of the gutter, the Oxfords would become Moral Rearmament. As MRA tried to instill in the politicos of their time the necessity to re arm morally, though his efforts were hailed by many as positive, his fellowship began to slip in popularity.
Still Buchman and his group had great successes. They were the main player in resolving a crippling miners strike in England in the late 1940’s. Same was true for a railroad strike in Germany. Their concept was that in practicing absolute, honesty, purity, unselfishness and love in our dealing with the other, optimal outcomes would be achieved. But perhaps his greatest triumph was his influence on a lady named Madame Irene Laurie who had been one of the fiercest French resistance fighters in WW II. As she was about to walk out of a post-war peace talk because she heard someone speaking German there, Buchman stopped her and begged the question of what would happen to any chance of peace if she were to leave. The story has it she went to her room for two days to pray and meditate. She then opened her speech by telling the German people she apologized for her hatred of them. Willy Schmidt, the first post WW II prime minister of France said her speech more than anything else, opened the way for the post war peace in Western Europe.
Funny the difference in the speeches coming out of Lower Manhattan. On the news last Sunday night they had about five minutes of coverage of the people protesting the Manhattan mosque and then an almost parenthetic mention and 20-second stop of the pro-mosque crowd protesting about a block away. The medium is the message indeed. It is political now. All over right wing zealots are taking primary spots from less radical Republicans. Doubtless even more of the already waning progressiveness will be seeping out of the Democrats. One has to read the wind that is being inherited by the intolerant if he wants to keep his seat. When keeping that seat, hoarding what we have, and blindly stuffing our appetites became more important than honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, the fabric of our government and our society began to unravel.
The world was a different place 60 years ago as the 12-step movement, especially Alcoholics Anonymous, was spreading to every corner of the globe. And even though Buchman’s group’s influence and effectiveness that had been so effective that he was on the cover of Time magazine in the mid-50’s, by the late 60’s it was practically gone. His major failing, had to do again, with that ever present evil called pride. Buchman did not set up a system like AA’s 12 traditions so the fellowship would lose their dependence on their leaders. Some bad policy decisions in the 60’s and the unfortunate premature death of his hand-picked successor, a brilliant British author named Peter Howard, had MRA almost disappear from the map.
However a lot of MRA work was still being done and around 2000 the group re-emerged as Initiatives of Change. They are now headquartered in Washington DC and Richmond, Va. and are doing great interfaith work all over the world.
Among the reasons AA outlived MRA was precisely because they avoided politics and outside issues. But the essential aim of the steps and the program is to discern and then do as the Creator wills. What is going on in Lower Manhattan and the Middle East and a lot of other places in the world is for certain far removed from the will of God. To utilize a proven method to effect freedom, love, honesty and open-mindedness in a world in such desperate need for exactly those things, is certainly the will of a Higher Power of my own understanding.
----
Recovery. For a person, for a world.
In a little sightseeing brochure I put together for the delegates to the Recovery Walk I mention Penn Treaty Park where William Penn, in 1682 signed a treaty with the Delaware Indians. Under Penn’s statue is the following quote.
He, who is not governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants.
The tyrants of greed, prejudice, fanaticism, intolerance, hate, ignorance, inequity, poverty, disillusion, and addiction govern far too much of America and our world in this third century after Christ.
There is a better way. Please God that we find it.
James F McGovern Jr.
Jim McGovern’s website 12stepsforall.com has information regarding a 12 step class for addicts and non-addicts. His book Twelve Steps to Change a World is available on the site.
On September 25 of this year, as many as 10,000 walkers and supporters will descend on Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing for the 5th annual Recovery Walk. The television network A & E is a co-sponsor this year and they will be sponsoring delegates from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each of these delegates will have over ten years since they stopped imbibing a substance that was making their lives unmanageable. We hope to have a total of 500 over ten year sober folk in what we are calling the Honor Guard. This Guard will rim the path of the walkers, encouraging them as they start the brief walk from Front to 5th and Market St.
Among the glories of the 12 step fellowships is their insistence that the Higher Power that can and does deliver us from the tombs of our addictions be one of our own understanding. A Muslim, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, Hindu…even an atheist or an agnostic can sit side-by-side in a 12 step meeting without any cause or reason for dissension about belief systems. The eminently practical spiritually inspired modifications of behavior the program suggests, not only delivers us from lives of torment and dysfunction, but also to lives of happiness and fulfillment. And there is absolutely no reason one has to have an addiction problem to work the 12-step program. Being powerless over a substance and/or how our individual world was going was the incentive most of us in recovery had to take this spiritual path. But as I look at our world bereft with suicide bombings and the vandalizing and protesting the building of houses of worship, of a cab driver being stabbed merely because of his faith, of a rally in Washington where as many as 10,000 people go to support a fanatically proud and vocal proponent of divisiveness and intolerance, it seems our world collectively is approaching the individual bottom the addict must hit before he is willing to change.
So what of these steps? Where did thy come from? Well ironically enough as this huge throng of recovering people are about to descend on Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love, 102 years ago a Lutheran minister from Allentown, Pa. found himself in a church in England where a female descendant of William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, was giving a sermon on the cross of Christ. This minister named Frank Buchman heard those words and knew he had resentments in his life that he had to give up…that they stood between him and He who was hung from that cross.
So to the six board members who had pulled the plug on his wonderful projects for the poor and homeless of Philadelphia, Frank Buchman sent apology letters. His realization that in order to change or help others, one must first purge himself thus became a cornerstone of a vibrant, active spirituality that really would change the lives of people from all over the world. The self-cleansing was necessary in Buchman’s scheme so that the flow of God-given guidance would not be blocked. Daily quiet time and guidance would become something near as central to his life as was breathing. And very early on, his guidance told him it was necessary to work one-on-one with people - that the time had come for the preacher man to come down from the pulpit. A la Francis from Assisi and John Wesley from England, Buchman knew that it was people and not congregations who had to experience the wonder and love of Christ.
Buchman’s program began to grow in popularity and numbers and by the mid-20’s they would finally get a name – they’d be called the Oxford Group. That was their name when, in 1931, a wealthy New Englander named Roland Hazzard with a crippling alcohol addiction, after having relapsed after being treated for near a year by his psychiatrist, Carl Jung was told that he was hopeless unless he had a life-changing spiritual experience. Hazzard joined the Oxfords because that was exactly what they were selling. That was still their name when in 1934 a drunk named Ebby Thatcher was spared a jail sentence if he agreed to go through the Oxford Group program Hazzard and a friend laid out for him. Ebby then followed the same Oxford suit they had - that to keep this thing you have to take the message to another - and the other that he found was a New York drunk named Bill Wilson. On December 11, 1934, Wilson took his final drink.
Near 6 months later, Wilson’s first success in helping get someone else sober would take place in Akron, Ohio. The second drunk was named Bob Smith and although he’d been in the Oxford Group for a couple of years, until a fellow who shared the same affliction wrapped the Oxford program around the admission of powerlessness to that bottle, it had done him no good. By the late 30’s, the alcoholics would break from the Oxfords and they took the essence of the program they were leaving and would make it the more concrete and workable 12 steps. And as Wilson and Smith and their followers would take to the byways and highways pulling drunks out of the gutter, the Oxfords would become Moral Rearmament. As MRA tried to instill in the politicos of their time the necessity to re arm morally, though his efforts were hailed by many as positive, his fellowship began to slip in popularity.
Still Buchman and his group had great successes. They were the main player in resolving a crippling miners strike in England in the late 1940’s. Same was true for a railroad strike in Germany. Their concept was that in practicing absolute, honesty, purity, unselfishness and love in our dealing with the other, optimal outcomes would be achieved. But perhaps his greatest triumph was his influence on a lady named Madame Irene Laurie who had been one of the fiercest French resistance fighters in WW II. As she was about to walk out of a post-war peace talk because she heard someone speaking German there, Buchman stopped her and begged the question of what would happen to any chance of peace if she were to leave. The story has it she went to her room for two days to pray and meditate. She then opened her speech by telling the German people she apologized for her hatred of them. Willy Schmidt, the first post WW II prime minister of France said her speech more than anything else, opened the way for the post war peace in Western Europe.
Funny the difference in the speeches coming out of Lower Manhattan. On the news last Sunday night they had about five minutes of coverage of the people protesting the Manhattan mosque and then an almost parenthetic mention and 20-second stop of the pro-mosque crowd protesting about a block away. The medium is the message indeed. It is political now. All over right wing zealots are taking primary spots from less radical Republicans. Doubtless even more of the already waning progressiveness will be seeping out of the Democrats. One has to read the wind that is being inherited by the intolerant if he wants to keep his seat. When keeping that seat, hoarding what we have, and blindly stuffing our appetites became more important than honesty, unselfishness, purity and love, the fabric of our government and our society began to unravel.
The world was a different place 60 years ago as the 12-step movement, especially Alcoholics Anonymous, was spreading to every corner of the globe. And even though Buchman’s group’s influence and effectiveness that had been so effective that he was on the cover of Time magazine in the mid-50’s, by the late 60’s it was practically gone. His major failing, had to do again, with that ever present evil called pride. Buchman did not set up a system like AA’s 12 traditions so the fellowship would lose their dependence on their leaders. Some bad policy decisions in the 60’s and the unfortunate premature death of his hand-picked successor, a brilliant British author named Peter Howard, had MRA almost disappear from the map.
However a lot of MRA work was still being done and around 2000 the group re-emerged as Initiatives of Change. They are now headquartered in Washington DC and Richmond, Va. and are doing great interfaith work all over the world.
Among the reasons AA outlived MRA was precisely because they avoided politics and outside issues. But the essential aim of the steps and the program is to discern and then do as the Creator wills. What is going on in Lower Manhattan and the Middle East and a lot of other places in the world is for certain far removed from the will of God. To utilize a proven method to effect freedom, love, honesty and open-mindedness in a world in such desperate need for exactly those things, is certainly the will of a Higher Power of my own understanding.
----
Recovery. For a person, for a world.
In a little sightseeing brochure I put together for the delegates to the Recovery Walk I mention Penn Treaty Park where William Penn, in 1682 signed a treaty with the Delaware Indians. Under Penn’s statue is the following quote.
He, who is not governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants.
The tyrants of greed, prejudice, fanaticism, intolerance, hate, ignorance, inequity, poverty, disillusion, and addiction govern far too much of America and our world in this third century after Christ.
There is a better way. Please God that we find it.
James F McGovern Jr.
Jim McGovern’s website 12stepsforall.com has information regarding a 12 step class for addicts and non-addicts. His book Twelve Steps to Change a World is available on the site.
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