“Miracles are nothing other than God’s ordinary truth seen with surprised eyes.” — Gerald May, Addiction and Grace
I read a few ‘teaching’ books related to my coursework in spiritual direction. Once I’ve finished with a book, I try to sum up the gifts received. But Addiction and Grace did not really lend itself to this particular exercise. Instead I was left with a few questions, like, what has this book made of me? Am I an addict?
It’s not easy to think of myself as “addict”, though I do acknowledge that I once suffered from a work addiction, a very long time ago. Over lunch yesterday — when I was telling my family about what I was learning in this book — my husband surprised me by saying that I still have a work addiction — that the only thing that has changed is the work itself. I’m still trying to make sense of his words, wondering if I’m blind to the truth that my husband so apparently sees.
What I do know is that I didn’t share my thoughts about the book at this evening’s group discussion; instead, I listened or sometimes nodded my head when someone said something that felt true to my experience. Had I shared, I would likely have confessed that the book has left me sad and edgy — that it made me recall — more than one — that favorite T.S. Eliot quote of mine: “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
I have returned to all those underlined words that ‘hit home’ as I read them. Quotes that assert that we all suffer from addiction and that we are never totally free of our addictions. May asserts that if we become free of one — and by free, May talks about the addiction as if it is in remission rather than cured — another swings into the open parking spot to take its place. Addiction is defined broadly:
“The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things.”
Of course, as I’m reading these words, and many more like them, part of my mind is engaged in coming up with a list of my own ‘addictions’. That chocolate pudding I was craving last week, perhaps? The books that I must buy and not check-out from the library? God forbid — this blog?
It’s ironic that my reasons for purchasing and reading this book have turned out to be only ancillary after it’s all said and read. It was not to primarily help others that I read this book, though I believe the lessons learned will allow me to do so, in a very indirect supportive way. Rather, this book invites me to name my own addictions so that, with God’s help, I can become “free” of their power in my life. And who but God knows what miracles of ordinary truth this may mean to my surprised eyes.
an everyday life 
One of the saddest tendencies of our time is to use the medical model of understanding to undermine what used to be considered virtues.
Is it addiction? Or is it commitment? Passion? Creative Drive? Is it addiction? Or is it an inability to turn away from beauty? An unwillingness to leave the search for truth? A commitment to endeavors which run counter to social and culturally accepted norms?
That addictions exist is undeniable. That many of them are life-destroying is certain. But everything in life has been labeled an addiction by one or another of these experts and I’m alternately angered and bored by it all. Our society is full of people trying to turn others into addicts or victims. Ostensibly the point is then to “help” them, when in fact these experts seem intent on “homogenizing” them – turning them into just one more bland bit in the great stew of life.
During the past year, I heard it myself. “You really shouldn’t spend so much time on your writing. I’m afraid you’ve become addicted to it.” And what, I asked, were the signs of that addiction? I’d given up television. I didn’t like to go shopping any more. I didn’t seem to want to spend evenings over drinks. I’d rather stay home and write.
Well, yes.
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is one of my real pet peeves. I’m never going to be an Annie Dillard, William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor – all of whom could be made to fit the addictive profile, often by the witness of their own words. But if I have priorities in my life, goals that require singular commitment, so be it. As long as I meet my other responsibilities, do no one harm and am happy, Dr. May can call it anything he wants. I’m not going to worry about it 😉
Well. Eventually, I suppose we all have that wonderful experience called “OMG ,did I really post that?” This is mine. Not very diplomatic, was I?
I thought in the middle of the night of another example of the dynamic that concerns me here: labeling school children “hyper-active” and then medicating them, when if fact they may simply be bright and curious and bored by a dismal educational environment. It’s often easier to treat a “disease” that to confront more complicated realities.
In any event, I hope you’ll take the comments in the spirit in which they were offered – a spontaneous response from someone who’s become comfortable enough at your blog to be completely honest.
Linda,
Rest easy. I am not bothered a bit by your comments — no, I’m still resting in the words of Gerald May — a little more easier than last night, though nothing has changed regarding my intention to look closely at what fills my life. The examen — which began this morning amidst blue morning light and orange candlelight and the soft yellow lighting of my chair lamp — was a prayer that God shine his own light on the truth of my occupations.
Then as is my wont to do, I looked for comfort in Rilke’s words and found just what I was looking for — humor me as I share my great treasure with you — taken from his eighth letter to “a young poet”:
“Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent. That almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing becaause we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered in our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason, the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more, — is already in our blood.”
And so it is — I am no longer sad though I am more awake, trying to “test the spirits” of this heartfelt practice I call writing. As well as other great pastimes of my life.
I did Gerald May a disservice by perhaps reacting rather than reviewing his great work. And I do find it great — because it has entered into my blood and invited me to explore and discover my own truth. Even now, I hear one say to me: “The truth shall set you free.”
And as for your truth that you shared so openly last night, that you fear may have caused upset or hurt — well, my friend, think nothing more of it. The only thing I cannot abide is a lie. My children heard this often enough in their growing up years to be able to mumble it unthinkingly in their sleep. And I am glad that you felt comfortable in sharing your truth with me. You have honored me more than I can express.
Janell
I grew up in a family whose “addictions” were to non physcial things: sports, which is still one even now, to play and to watch and to the completion of tasks to impossible standards of perfection.
I don’t think that what some may term addictions are actually anything more than pushing the limits of something. How far can I go with this?
I know I gave up writing for many years because the by-product of that, the stress and the failures, were too much for my psyche to bear and stay whole. I risk fragmentation by continuing…but (and this is a big but) I feel that to stop again risks total stagnation and which of the two is more destructive?
Can you stop what you do and what takes it’s place if you do stop?
Viv,
I always appreciate it when another shares their story. I’m glad you came to peace with it all — it’s worthy of the struggle, to figure out what is the truth behind the doiings that we do.
The truth does seem to come when it is sought. Amidst candlelight, I’ve been having some good morning contemplative time. And for now, I don’t think it’s the writing per se — but maybe it’s all the blog baggage that comes with the writing venue I’ve chosen — all the ‘stat’ stuff and ‘blog award’ stuff that can so easily distract me so that I forget why it is that I began this blog writing adventure in the first place.
We are in the season of awards — the Golden Globes Sunday night–one that I was sad to miss for a greater need of reading my “Addiction & Grace” book assignment. Here in Oklahoma, we have blogs awards — in addition to those that happen at the national level — and the sponsors of the award board encourage us to nominate ourselves for awards — but I’ve resisted that lure. What’s the point of that? And I ask myself: Is that the reason I began to write in this blog? Well…. no. I write because it gives me life in a way that nothing else quite can. And I feel the presence of God in it — most of the time.
I sense the holy in your words — as I do in the blogs that I make a ‘habit’ of visiting most days — and it is this keeping company with the holy, as it flows through the words of another, that keeps me coming back for more.
Blessings on your holy work. I’ll be by later.
Janell
A big thank you for what you say. I do feel at times that what I am doing, with writing generally not just blogging, is doing a kind of holy work. A case in point is the book that I shall be launching(shhhh! It’s still a secret!) at the end of this month, that I feel(and this is borne out by comments from thoise who have read it) that it is a book for healing, tho’ a novel and nothing set out to be “holy” or instructive.
I’ve never noticed, except at the periphery of vision, the whole awards thing that some blogs seem to go in for. I’ve never thought about it much, to be honest. I have won prizes occasionally in my life for poetry and writing and they’ve never meant much to me before. The words of my readers do though. And stats, I look at those with astonishment, that so many(it may be few to some of the bigger blogs) people come and read my words and so many stop to comment and come back.
Bless you!
Viv,
Congratulations on the completion of your project. I look forward to hearing more about it when you are able to share it.
Sounds like your reading is steeped in humility — a safe and sacred place for creation and all of life.
Janell
I think of addictions as idols. I’m reading in the Bible, thinking, “Oh, I don’t have any idols.” All prideful and such, because I don’t have a statue of something in my living room. And then I realize an idol is money. Or status. Or popularity. Or whatever weakness we hold up as important.
So when I say, “Oh, I don’t have any addictions,” all prideful and such, I’m not noticing the things that have a stronghold in my life: sugar (which sounds laughable until I realize it controls me, not the other way round), books, and, dare I say it? Blogging.
Sigh. Grace sufficient for the day, that’s what I need from Him. Along with forgiveness.
Bellezza,
I smiled at some of your words, as if sitting with a comfortable old friend: “all prideful and such, because I don’t have a statue of something in my living room…”
Two mornings into my discernment process, I’m gaining comfort that it’s not the blogging itself, but the looking at the stats every time I hit the dashboard. Yesterday, I just minimized this screen so that the information is no longer there to distract me from the writing itself. And… what do you know… yesterday’s writing session dragged endlessly without the ‘stimulant’ of encouragement I receive from the feedback of blog hits. The fact that some drug users call their fix a ‘hit’ is not lost on me. Anyway….
This morning I hit on these words of Gerald May, and there for now, I find comfort: “If we do not fill our minds with guilt and self-recriminations, we will recognize our incompleteness as a kind of spaciousness into which we can welcome the flow of grace. We can think of our inadequacies as terrible defects, if we want, and hate ourselves. But we can also think of them affirmatively, as doorways through which the power of grace can enter our lives.”
I thought you might resonate with May’s image of a doorway of grace, as you use the doorway image in your own blog.
Peace and Grace,
Janell