Anderson, South Carolina
An oft quoted verse in the Old Testament, one meant to offer encouragement to haggard parents is “Train up a child in the way He should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The good intentions of those quoting it is to offer conservative parents in moral conflict with the larger secular culture the hope their spiritual and ethical values will ultimately hold sway over their children’s lives. Alas, this is true in ways undreamed of, ways we perhaps wouldn’t wish on anyone.
In the past several decades the environmental influence of parents on emotional and physical health of their children has been proven nearly limitless, for good and for ill. The youngest infants are prodigious students, learning from their parents or caregivers about the friendliness or hostility of the world, the rules of engagement insuring the arrival of food, clean diapers, and emotional presence. Even with abundant food and clean clothes, infants often die or at best are emotionally shipwrecked if parents or caregivers don’t provide emotional nurture and presence. The emotional wreckage suffered by children in orphanages operated by totalitarian states is legendary.
Children learn all too well what is acceptable behavior. Fear of rejection often drives them to compensatory behavior rendering them unable to function well in society. Self-denying self-protective behavior in childhood can lead to a lifetime of tentative reclusive non-engagement with others. Loners often live unhappy disconnected lives, starved for a sense of belonging.
Ancient Jewish writings provide unsettling promises. “That will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” Another suggests bad karma will pass down through the generations, even to an entire city. “Because for our sins, and for the inequities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people have become a reproach to all that are about us.” Traditionally, interpretation of these declarations has typically been theological in nature, indicating some kind of sin contract which must be paid off. The insights of John Sandford in his The Transformation of the Inner Man and Gabor Mate’s ongoing work suggest there’s far more to it than this. Spiritual realities give rise to psychoneuroimmunological realities often manifesting in destructive behaviors and emotional and physical disease.
Reading the work of Sandford, Mate, and others suggests there’s almost an immutable determinism for which there is no recourse. Mate states “Whatever affected one generation but has not been fully resolved will be passed on to the next.” Some years ago I read Lance Morrow’s Heart. This unsettling and forthright account of his journey through catastrophic cardiovascular disease declares in non-theological terms the curse of the generations. “The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandfather’s violence, and inside that box (I suspect but do not know), you will find another box with some such black, secret energy – stories within stories, receding in time.”
Mate adroitly states: “Blame becomes a meaningless concept if one understands how family history stretches back through the generations.” He cites John Bowlby, a noted British psychiatrist who observed dryly, “Recognition of this quickly dispels any disposition to see the parent as villain.” Our parents and grandparents whom we tend to blame are merely caught up in a stream of Morrow’s black secret energy going back into the dim recesses of time.
There’s been a tendency in recent decades to assign our griefs to genetic bad luck, medicalizing our circumstances, behaviors, and propensity to contract catastrophic disease. Medicalizing our lives absolves us of personal responsibility, suggesting we are victims of a bad hand in life. Mate comes up against this directly in his view of the Genome Mapping Project. “Contrary to the genetic fundamentalism that currently informs medical thinking and public awareness, genes alone cannot possibly account for the complex psychological characteristics, the behaviors, health or illness of human beings. Genes are merely codes. They act as a set of rules and as biological template for the synthesis of the proteins that give each particular cell its characteristic structure and functions. They are, as it were, alive and dynamic architectural and mechanical plans. Whether the plan becomes realized depends on far more than the gene itself ... Genes are turned on or off by the environment. For this reason, the greatest influences on human development, health, and behavior are those of the nurturing environment.”
A crack in the determinism? More than a crack. Mate and Sandford didn’t spend lifetimes doing research and clinical work just to tell us we are toast. They suggest we don’t have to remain victims of genetic bad luck or unpaid spiritual sin contracts. Mate pushes further. “The genome hype is not only poor science, it is also suspect as theology. In the Book of Genesis creation story, God fashions the universe first, then nature, and only afterwards does He shape humankind from the substance of the earth. He knew, even if Bill Clinton did not, that from their earliest beginnings humans could never be understood apart from their environment.”
The century-earlier work of Williams James in his Varieties of Religious Experience and James Lawson in his Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians clearly indicates spiritual interventions in our lives can override any possibility of genetic or spiritual determinism in our lives. No matter how challenging our environments of origin may have been, there is a way out if we seek it. Those of us who never had fathers, never experienced emotional attunement from a parent, and were subjected to all manner of abuse can rise above our circumstances.
As Mate articulates, “Fortunately, human experience and the ever-unfolding potential of human beings ensure that the biology of belief, though deeply physiologically engrained, is not irreversible.” What we came to believe about the world as infants does not have to hold sway over our lives any longer. We are able to have what Carl Jung called a vital spiritual experience. Such an experience was had by all of the subjects in Lawson’s work, usually in the context of severely challenging life circumstances. James suggests there are many ways one can arrive at such an experience. What I can be certain of from evidence revealed in many lives around me is that Jung, Lawson, James were not writing works of fiction. Neither was the Apostle Paul.
“Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Thursday, October 27, 2011
What Do You Do? 10-25-11
Anderson, South Carolina
We are a society of great pretenders, actors on stage directing our own plays, acting out roles of great wealth and influence. Multi-level marketing schemes thrive in cultures of ‘fake it till you make it.’ We’re told Diamond Directs garner incomes of $100,000 a month, if they get enough people below them selling soap. We pretend to be selling mountains of soap. Ultimately someone has to actually sell soap rather than cheap promises. Millions have become disillusioned with multi-level marketing, once thinking it the fast track to financial Nirvana. Several times I’ve tried this financial Eight-Fold Path, only to end up with a garage full of over-priced inventory.
Hans Selye, the bestselling author of several self-help books, once wrote “Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.” We lease $150,000 cars with large up-front deposits and poor reliability ratings to convince those around us of our financial wherewithal. More than fifteen million Americans buy new cars every year, knowing these ‘investments’ will rapidly depreciate, wanting to project an image of prosperity. Tens of millions bought into far more house than they could ever afford. The party ended and a third of American houses are awash in unmanageable debt and the auto industry was bought up by the Federal government. Entire communities have washed away in the housing debt crisis, leaving behind ghost towns but five years old. We buy fake Rolexes to reinforce our holographic image of prosperity. Some of us chase prestigious careers.
As a secular consumer culture in a post-Christian era, we keep score almost exclusively by our accumulation of consumer goods. Hugely profitable self-storage facilities suggest hoarding of consumer detritus has gotten entirely out of hand. In my regular visitation to many homes, I’m always astounded at the sheer amount of ’stuff’ in these places. In the 1990s the Sierra Club published a coffee table book containing a single photograph from each of fifty countries depicting the typical contents of the average house, arrayed in the front yard. The mountain in front of the American house made the other piles look like tiny ant hills.
We’ve become tyrannized by the opinions of others, even those of total strangers. “What would the neighbors think” was long a mantra used to contain aberrant behavior. We kept perfect lawns and had to be the first on the block to have the newest consumer gadget. Homeowners associations now enforce acceptable behavior and an ambience of prosperity.
Family expectations are perhaps most toxic of all. Gabor Mate has a rewarding career studying the consequences of being stressed by the expectations of everyone from our neighbors to our siblings, parents, and in-laws. “Emotionally draining family relationships have been identified as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and auto-immune disease.” He further states “It is not other’s expectations and intentions but the perception we have of them that serves as the stressor.” Merely what we think others think of us is the actual emotional toxin that can set us up for a journey through catastrophic emotional and physical illness.
It was made very clear to me in childhood and adolescence that practicing medicine was the only acceptable occupation for me. For decades I chased after that goal, only to learn twenty years too late it was someone else’s expectation for me. I lost thirty years, experiencing no small measure of Mate’s emotionally draining family relationships, only to end up in work for which I was ill suited. The stress of fulfilling others’ expectations led me to a catastrophic diagnosis of degenerative neurologic disease.
The emotional baggage we carry is perhaps a heavier yoke, a greater burden than the mountains in our storage facilities and houses. It takes herculean strength to go to high stress jobs for decades, just to finance a way of life we think others will find acceptable. It may take more strength than we have to walk from them. Many of us, especially men, find identity in our jobs. At retirement, for those surviving that long, the resulting existential crisis can be profound. A large number of men die within a year of retiring; so much of our self-esteem and other people’s opinions of us are tied into our work. The first question usually asked in social encounters is “What do you do?” How much money we earn at that job is nearly as important, allowing us to gain higher scores by accumulating more.
Letting go of a high-profile position in a large hospital was not an easy thing at all. Letting go of robust income, prestige, socializing with colleagues, publishing, and presenting papers at international conferences took several years to accept. For at least two years I was disoriented by the lack of context and structure to my days. Strangers kept asking “What do you do?” I didn’t yet have a clear answer. What was I going to do with seventeen years of medical training? I had no idea.
A foundational truth learned by those embarked on a recovery journey is liberating: a right dependence on God rather than the acquisition of money for financial independence is key to a serene and useful existence. I didn’t have to sell soap. As we grew our dependence on God “money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us.” We learned trusting God for our needs and life purpose liberated us from the tyranny of being number one, of ranking first “in the heart-breaking struggle for money, romance, or self importance.” I no longer had to act out roles of great wealth and influence.
Perhaps it’s time to give up pretending; to embrace our own powerlessness, our inability to have it all, to be all. Giving up socially-mandated goals to have the most toys and prestige at death actually liberates us to embrace life this side of the tombstone. It takes less strength and wherewithal to live a spiritually-grounded life than it does to go to a hated job, to lose thirty years of one’s life, to spend years paying off school loans training for ill-suited work. When we transcend what other people think of us we have the possibility of becoming empowered in astounding ways. “Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy.”
Better yet is this reality: I get His best when I let him do the choosing, even thirty years late.
“I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. And you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.”
We are a society of great pretenders, actors on stage directing our own plays, acting out roles of great wealth and influence. Multi-level marketing schemes thrive in cultures of ‘fake it till you make it.’ We’re told Diamond Directs garner incomes of $100,000 a month, if they get enough people below them selling soap. We pretend to be selling mountains of soap. Ultimately someone has to actually sell soap rather than cheap promises. Millions have become disillusioned with multi-level marketing, once thinking it the fast track to financial Nirvana. Several times I’ve tried this financial Eight-Fold Path, only to end up with a garage full of over-priced inventory.
Hans Selye, the bestselling author of several self-help books, once wrote “Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.” We lease $150,000 cars with large up-front deposits and poor reliability ratings to convince those around us of our financial wherewithal. More than fifteen million Americans buy new cars every year, knowing these ‘investments’ will rapidly depreciate, wanting to project an image of prosperity. Tens of millions bought into far more house than they could ever afford. The party ended and a third of American houses are awash in unmanageable debt and the auto industry was bought up by the Federal government. Entire communities have washed away in the housing debt crisis, leaving behind ghost towns but five years old. We buy fake Rolexes to reinforce our holographic image of prosperity. Some of us chase prestigious careers.
As a secular consumer culture in a post-Christian era, we keep score almost exclusively by our accumulation of consumer goods. Hugely profitable self-storage facilities suggest hoarding of consumer detritus has gotten entirely out of hand. In my regular visitation to many homes, I’m always astounded at the sheer amount of ’stuff’ in these places. In the 1990s the Sierra Club published a coffee table book containing a single photograph from each of fifty countries depicting the typical contents of the average house, arrayed in the front yard. The mountain in front of the American house made the other piles look like tiny ant hills.
We’ve become tyrannized by the opinions of others, even those of total strangers. “What would the neighbors think” was long a mantra used to contain aberrant behavior. We kept perfect lawns and had to be the first on the block to have the newest consumer gadget. Homeowners associations now enforce acceptable behavior and an ambience of prosperity.
Family expectations are perhaps most toxic of all. Gabor Mate has a rewarding career studying the consequences of being stressed by the expectations of everyone from our neighbors to our siblings, parents, and in-laws. “Emotionally draining family relationships have been identified as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and auto-immune disease.” He further states “It is not other’s expectations and intentions but the perception we have of them that serves as the stressor.” Merely what we think others think of us is the actual emotional toxin that can set us up for a journey through catastrophic emotional and physical illness.
It was made very clear to me in childhood and adolescence that practicing medicine was the only acceptable occupation for me. For decades I chased after that goal, only to learn twenty years too late it was someone else’s expectation for me. I lost thirty years, experiencing no small measure of Mate’s emotionally draining family relationships, only to end up in work for which I was ill suited. The stress of fulfilling others’ expectations led me to a catastrophic diagnosis of degenerative neurologic disease.
The emotional baggage we carry is perhaps a heavier yoke, a greater burden than the mountains in our storage facilities and houses. It takes herculean strength to go to high stress jobs for decades, just to finance a way of life we think others will find acceptable. It may take more strength than we have to walk from them. Many of us, especially men, find identity in our jobs. At retirement, for those surviving that long, the resulting existential crisis can be profound. A large number of men die within a year of retiring; so much of our self-esteem and other people’s opinions of us are tied into our work. The first question usually asked in social encounters is “What do you do?” How much money we earn at that job is nearly as important, allowing us to gain higher scores by accumulating more.
Letting go of a high-profile position in a large hospital was not an easy thing at all. Letting go of robust income, prestige, socializing with colleagues, publishing, and presenting papers at international conferences took several years to accept. For at least two years I was disoriented by the lack of context and structure to my days. Strangers kept asking “What do you do?” I didn’t yet have a clear answer. What was I going to do with seventeen years of medical training? I had no idea.
A foundational truth learned by those embarked on a recovery journey is liberating: a right dependence on God rather than the acquisition of money for financial independence is key to a serene and useful existence. I didn’t have to sell soap. As we grew our dependence on God “money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us.” We learned trusting God for our needs and life purpose liberated us from the tyranny of being number one, of ranking first “in the heart-breaking struggle for money, romance, or self importance.” I no longer had to act out roles of great wealth and influence.
Perhaps it’s time to give up pretending; to embrace our own powerlessness, our inability to have it all, to be all. Giving up socially-mandated goals to have the most toys and prestige at death actually liberates us to embrace life this side of the tombstone. It takes less strength and wherewithal to live a spiritually-grounded life than it does to go to a hated job, to lose thirty years of one’s life, to spend years paying off school loans training for ill-suited work. When we transcend what other people think of us we have the possibility of becoming empowered in astounding ways. “Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy.”
Better yet is this reality: I get His best when I let him do the choosing, even thirty years late.
“I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. And you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.”
Prayer – Spot Welding for the Soul 10-20-11
Anderson, South Carolina
A first-line treatment for retinal detachment consists of burning them with lasers. If it were not for the possibility of frying my retinas with argon gas lasers, I would have gone blind decades ago. A genetic curse in my family tree endowed many of us with retinas as stable as wilted lettuce. Lattice degeneration of our retinas causes the appearance of small holes which are eventually penetrated by vitreous humor in the eyeball. The result is spontaneous retinal detachment followed by darkness. Repair constitutes a surgical emergency of the highest order to avoid blindness.
I was in Russia two years ago when I ‘popped’ my retinas for the third time. I experienced much angst in figuring out what to do about my urgent dilemma. Visa challenges and other contingencies forced me to the higher-risk decision of waiting until I got home three weeks later to have surgery. I made it a point to take lots of photographs; it might be the last time I could do so. I had surgery the day I arrived home.
When a carefully-guided laser burns into a retina the result is formation of adhesions. The scar tissue resulting from the heat acts as an effective spot weld, holding the retina firmly in place. There are at least a thousand of these little spot welds all over both my retinas. I’ve had the good fortune to visit ten countries in the intervening two years since my last welding job, taking twenty thousand photographs of everything from the pyramids of antiquity to the most sublime of natural phenomenon.
For nearly four decades I’ve had this genetic eight ball in my life. For the same amount of time argon gas lasers have kept me seeing many of the things that matter most in life; the face of a dear friend, the ignition of a fiery sunset, the shimmering of a platinum moon, where to place my foot on a five-thousand foot granite wall.
In recent years another form of spot welding has proven far more important in my life. Life circumstances far more challenging than my wilted-lettuce eyeballs brought me to embrace the tenets of twelve step recovery, a journey on which I’ve gained life-saving knowledge of how to spot weld my soul.
Evidence is ever mounting for the primary role of unmitigated anger and repressed emotions in the genesis of diverse catastrophic disease and premature death. Seventy-five years ago a group of alcoholics got together and wrote a book on the spiritual aspects of alcoholism, drug addiction, and many maladies of life. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with its declaration that stuffed anger, resentments, is the number one killer of alcoholics has sold untold millions of copies. Extensive work in the seventy-five years since this declaration was made suggests it’s a small leap to declare resentments to be the number one killer of all people.
Stuffed emotion, especially anger in the form of smoldering resentment is more corrosive and threatening to our state of being than any kind of physical disease. Those enlightened post-Depression alcoholics of the 1930s went on to state emphatically “From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mental and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically ... this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit ... If we were to live we had to be free of anger.”
These alcoholics quickly found that repressed emotions gave power to the people around them. “We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill.” Seventy-five years later psychoneuroimmunologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists have well proven the lethal power of resentment, clearly demonstrating the neurophysiology of it.
“How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered but how?” Medical experts have for decades been declaring the immutable consequences of genetics, the inexorable outcomes of bad childhoods, the curse of toxic parenting, and the hazards of bad environments. Could a bunch of drunks have found the answer, one eluding experts? Time suggests they did.
“This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, ‘This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done’.”
It really is this simple. It’s essentially impossible to hate other individuals while praying for their well being. Recovery is entirely about learning new ways of thinking. From new ways of thinking we learn new ways of behaving. Our emotions line up with our new thoughts and actions. No longer tyrannized by repressed untended emotions, we enter into new ways of living. Rather than harboring corrosive resentments we ask for the blessing of those who would offend us. It’s that simple.
In recovery we often speak of having a simple program for complicated people. As emerging medical research finds out just how extraordinarily complicated we are, how unresolved emotions can generate catastrophic disease, we learn the simple way to spot weld the holes corroded into our souls by anger and resentment. Twenty centuries ago the same message in as many words was written down in Greek.
“Do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do no turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy’, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It just might be the most clarifying thing you ever do.
A first-line treatment for retinal detachment consists of burning them with lasers. If it were not for the possibility of frying my retinas with argon gas lasers, I would have gone blind decades ago. A genetic curse in my family tree endowed many of us with retinas as stable as wilted lettuce. Lattice degeneration of our retinas causes the appearance of small holes which are eventually penetrated by vitreous humor in the eyeball. The result is spontaneous retinal detachment followed by darkness. Repair constitutes a surgical emergency of the highest order to avoid blindness.
I was in Russia two years ago when I ‘popped’ my retinas for the third time. I experienced much angst in figuring out what to do about my urgent dilemma. Visa challenges and other contingencies forced me to the higher-risk decision of waiting until I got home three weeks later to have surgery. I made it a point to take lots of photographs; it might be the last time I could do so. I had surgery the day I arrived home.
When a carefully-guided laser burns into a retina the result is formation of adhesions. The scar tissue resulting from the heat acts as an effective spot weld, holding the retina firmly in place. There are at least a thousand of these little spot welds all over both my retinas. I’ve had the good fortune to visit ten countries in the intervening two years since my last welding job, taking twenty thousand photographs of everything from the pyramids of antiquity to the most sublime of natural phenomenon.
For nearly four decades I’ve had this genetic eight ball in my life. For the same amount of time argon gas lasers have kept me seeing many of the things that matter most in life; the face of a dear friend, the ignition of a fiery sunset, the shimmering of a platinum moon, where to place my foot on a five-thousand foot granite wall.
In recent years another form of spot welding has proven far more important in my life. Life circumstances far more challenging than my wilted-lettuce eyeballs brought me to embrace the tenets of twelve step recovery, a journey on which I’ve gained life-saving knowledge of how to spot weld my soul.
Evidence is ever mounting for the primary role of unmitigated anger and repressed emotions in the genesis of diverse catastrophic disease and premature death. Seventy-five years ago a group of alcoholics got together and wrote a book on the spiritual aspects of alcoholism, drug addiction, and many maladies of life. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with its declaration that stuffed anger, resentments, is the number one killer of alcoholics has sold untold millions of copies. Extensive work in the seventy-five years since this declaration was made suggests it’s a small leap to declare resentments to be the number one killer of all people.
Stuffed emotion, especially anger in the form of smoldering resentment is more corrosive and threatening to our state of being than any kind of physical disease. Those enlightened post-Depression alcoholics of the 1930s went on to state emphatically “From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mental and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically ... this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit ... If we were to live we had to be free of anger.”
These alcoholics quickly found that repressed emotions gave power to the people around them. “We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill.” Seventy-five years later psychoneuroimmunologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists have well proven the lethal power of resentment, clearly demonstrating the neurophysiology of it.
“How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered but how?” Medical experts have for decades been declaring the immutable consequences of genetics, the inexorable outcomes of bad childhoods, the curse of toxic parenting, and the hazards of bad environments. Could a bunch of drunks have found the answer, one eluding experts? Time suggests they did.
“This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, ‘This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done’.”
It really is this simple. It’s essentially impossible to hate other individuals while praying for their well being. Recovery is entirely about learning new ways of thinking. From new ways of thinking we learn new ways of behaving. Our emotions line up with our new thoughts and actions. No longer tyrannized by repressed untended emotions, we enter into new ways of living. Rather than harboring corrosive resentments we ask for the blessing of those who would offend us. It’s that simple.
In recovery we often speak of having a simple program for complicated people. As emerging medical research finds out just how extraordinarily complicated we are, how unresolved emotions can generate catastrophic disease, we learn the simple way to spot weld the holes corroded into our souls by anger and resentment. Twenty centuries ago the same message in as many words was written down in Greek.
“Do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do no turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy’, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
It just might be the most clarifying thing you ever do.
A Cure for Loneliness: Telling our Stories 10-17-11
Pickens County, South Carolina
Throughout much of humanity’s unwritten history, collective wisdom was archived in oral tradition. Stories containing their imperatives for better living were shared frequently with most members of the community present. Many indigenous societies built their culture around the telling of story.
In recovery we often hear reminders to share experience, strength, and hope with each other. We gather daily to share story. Telling stories provides a form of healing sometimes astounding in its efficacy. We share stories of shipwrecked lives, spiritual transformations, and the good, productive, and purposeful lives we now live. Often slack-jawed in awe, we embrace the possibility life can get better, inspiring us to not give up a day before the miracle.
Yesterday I was climbing a thirty-two-hundred-foot granite outcropping of rock here on the Blue Ridge Escarpment. On an expansive October Sunday, Mary and I spent seven hours covering about eight horizontal miles and two thirds of a vertical mile. We saw a happy collection of Sunday afternoon hikers with a fine assortment of grand dogs and large cameras people were not quite sure how to use. As we progressed on our journey the crowds thinned considerably along with the thready light found in mountain valleys at dusk. In dim light Mary noticed a curious tree root on the trail, with diamond patterns on it, wondering if autumn leaves had fallen to create this pattern.
Tree roots with diamond patterns on them, able to move of their own volition don’t make for happy endings. These mountains are replete with copperheads and rattlesnakes. Some nearby logs cut in trail management proved efficacious in prodding this snake to move on. The last crowd we had seen earlier was a platoon of fifteen rescuers heading up-mountain to take off a woman injured three miles above. They did not need to be stepping on sluggish rattle snakes in total darkness.
Mary’s story was at least as interesting as that of mountain rescues and rattlesnakes. It contains a profoundly important imperative of the wisdom in waiting for the miracle, not taking matters into our own hands. We get God’s best when we let Him do the choosing. When we take matters into our own hands we often exile ourselves in decades of empty living, devoid of purpose.
At a young age Mary met Jerry and enjoyed eleven years of happy marriage, little money, and two fine children. As was the case sixty years ago, young couples learned to have rich happy lives despite the absence of money, credit cards, and SUVs filled with consumer goods from gray box retailers. Mary described happy moments when a fistful of ordinary wildflowers said it better than vast arrangements from a florist. Alas, this happy chapter came to an abrupt end when Mary was barely thirty. One May evening after making a fine meal, Jerry took their nine-year-old son and his younger sister to the lake for a brief swim. The spring waters proved surprisingly cold. In short order Mary found her husband and son floating face down in the small lake. Mary entered into the darkest possible of human experiences.
Time healed, sort of.
Two years later Mary met Bill and they were soon married. For the next two miles of our ascent she described an empty loveless marriage spanning thirty years offering little more a roommate, a difficult one at that.
Incredulous, I asked her what Bill had or said that enticed her to say “I do”.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“He brought nothing to our marriage.”
In his immensely successful The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm described our desperate bid to ‘belong to the herd’, to achieve union, to avoid the acute anxiety which derives from separation. Separation is seen as a great existential evil, one to be avoided at all costs. Loneliness is the great bane of an individualistic competitive consumer society.
Mary described having no meaningful opportunity to meet men, no opportunity to rejoin the herd. Fearful of never meeting another man, when Bill came along on a chance encounter, she decided any man was better than no man. As she was to discover, “There’s no loneliness like the loneliness one has inside an empty marriage.” Eventually Bill died after decades of self-induced bad health. How I wished I had three decades in my pocket and could offer them to Mary with the imperative “Let God show you how to use these well.” She gave up the best years of her life.
I hardly know Mary, having only seen her twice previously in the context of two formal events which afforded little opportunity for conversation. What proved wondrous was her willingness to share story with a near stranger as we literally made an uphill journey through life. Somehow Mary’s sharing her story made our mountain journey much easier, even with its snakes and snares.
In recovery rooms we luxuriate in stories, even those that don’t have happy endings. So often these provide a needed measure of caution, temperance, reminder. We speak of forgetting those things we need to remember. Even here in the autumn paradise of the Blue Ridge, caution and temperance embedded in story imparts wisdom. Those of us on recovery journeys embrace the concept of learning hard lessons from others who have already paid often exorbitant tuition. Under the first crimson and cadmium leaves of a newly crisp fall, I find myself grateful for the wisdom Mary offered me, wisdom which cost her dearly. It’s my choice to learn from her experience or to pay the high tuition myself. I was powerfully reminded that when we let God be the foundation of our lives, when we turn our lives and will over to His care, we get His best.
Interestingly, after seven hours of story, we were no longer near strangers and I found myself forgetting my loneliness. Regularly sharing our stories and God’s story make us part of the herd, never required to be truly lonely again.
“I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. And you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.”
Throughout much of humanity’s unwritten history, collective wisdom was archived in oral tradition. Stories containing their imperatives for better living were shared frequently with most members of the community present. Many indigenous societies built their culture around the telling of story.
In recovery we often hear reminders to share experience, strength, and hope with each other. We gather daily to share story. Telling stories provides a form of healing sometimes astounding in its efficacy. We share stories of shipwrecked lives, spiritual transformations, and the good, productive, and purposeful lives we now live. Often slack-jawed in awe, we embrace the possibility life can get better, inspiring us to not give up a day before the miracle.
Yesterday I was climbing a thirty-two-hundred-foot granite outcropping of rock here on the Blue Ridge Escarpment. On an expansive October Sunday, Mary and I spent seven hours covering about eight horizontal miles and two thirds of a vertical mile. We saw a happy collection of Sunday afternoon hikers with a fine assortment of grand dogs and large cameras people were not quite sure how to use. As we progressed on our journey the crowds thinned considerably along with the thready light found in mountain valleys at dusk. In dim light Mary noticed a curious tree root on the trail, with diamond patterns on it, wondering if autumn leaves had fallen to create this pattern.
Tree roots with diamond patterns on them, able to move of their own volition don’t make for happy endings. These mountains are replete with copperheads and rattlesnakes. Some nearby logs cut in trail management proved efficacious in prodding this snake to move on. The last crowd we had seen earlier was a platoon of fifteen rescuers heading up-mountain to take off a woman injured three miles above. They did not need to be stepping on sluggish rattle snakes in total darkness.
Mary’s story was at least as interesting as that of mountain rescues and rattlesnakes. It contains a profoundly important imperative of the wisdom in waiting for the miracle, not taking matters into our own hands. We get God’s best when we let Him do the choosing. When we take matters into our own hands we often exile ourselves in decades of empty living, devoid of purpose.
At a young age Mary met Jerry and enjoyed eleven years of happy marriage, little money, and two fine children. As was the case sixty years ago, young couples learned to have rich happy lives despite the absence of money, credit cards, and SUVs filled with consumer goods from gray box retailers. Mary described happy moments when a fistful of ordinary wildflowers said it better than vast arrangements from a florist. Alas, this happy chapter came to an abrupt end when Mary was barely thirty. One May evening after making a fine meal, Jerry took their nine-year-old son and his younger sister to the lake for a brief swim. The spring waters proved surprisingly cold. In short order Mary found her husband and son floating face down in the small lake. Mary entered into the darkest possible of human experiences.
Time healed, sort of.
Two years later Mary met Bill and they were soon married. For the next two miles of our ascent she described an empty loveless marriage spanning thirty years offering little more a roommate, a difficult one at that.
Incredulous, I asked her what Bill had or said that enticed her to say “I do”.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“He brought nothing to our marriage.”
In his immensely successful The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm described our desperate bid to ‘belong to the herd’, to achieve union, to avoid the acute anxiety which derives from separation. Separation is seen as a great existential evil, one to be avoided at all costs. Loneliness is the great bane of an individualistic competitive consumer society.
Mary described having no meaningful opportunity to meet men, no opportunity to rejoin the herd. Fearful of never meeting another man, when Bill came along on a chance encounter, she decided any man was better than no man. As she was to discover, “There’s no loneliness like the loneliness one has inside an empty marriage.” Eventually Bill died after decades of self-induced bad health. How I wished I had three decades in my pocket and could offer them to Mary with the imperative “Let God show you how to use these well.” She gave up the best years of her life.
I hardly know Mary, having only seen her twice previously in the context of two formal events which afforded little opportunity for conversation. What proved wondrous was her willingness to share story with a near stranger as we literally made an uphill journey through life. Somehow Mary’s sharing her story made our mountain journey much easier, even with its snakes and snares.
In recovery rooms we luxuriate in stories, even those that don’t have happy endings. So often these provide a needed measure of caution, temperance, reminder. We speak of forgetting those things we need to remember. Even here in the autumn paradise of the Blue Ridge, caution and temperance embedded in story imparts wisdom. Those of us on recovery journeys embrace the concept of learning hard lessons from others who have already paid often exorbitant tuition. Under the first crimson and cadmium leaves of a newly crisp fall, I find myself grateful for the wisdom Mary offered me, wisdom which cost her dearly. It’s my choice to learn from her experience or to pay the high tuition myself. I was powerfully reminded that when we let God be the foundation of our lives, when we turn our lives and will over to His care, we get His best.
Interestingly, after seven hours of story, we were no longer near strangers and I found myself forgetting my loneliness. Regularly sharing our stories and God’s story make us part of the herd, never required to be truly lonely again.
“I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. And you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.”
Finding God, Finding Ourselves 10-13-11
Anderson, South Carolina
By the time we arrive in kindergarten our brains and nervous systems are nearly finished works. Extensive evidence suggests by the age of five our personalities, coping mechanisms, and ways of relating to the universe are not unlike clay subjected to the high temperatures of a ceramic kiln, fixed and immutable.
Legions of professionals have made careers of exploring the ways troubled childhoods create legacies none of us would want to inherit. Maladaptive coping skills, compromises to our immune systems, the advent of catastrophic disease are nearly part and parcel to growing up in troubled families. It would seem those of us raised in toxic environments are doomed, consigned to a constellation of consequences making for a mid and late adulthood colored by significant emotional and physical challenges. The work of many investigators strongly suggests many cancers, degenerative neurological diseases, arthritis, and dementia find their advent in individuals who experienced profound emotional challenges early in life.
Years ago, those who wear starched white coats at their day jobs told me I would never get better. A physician, my best friend for decades, even suggested I might consider going into a group home, perhaps making crafts a couple days a week. He went on to be chief-of-staff of a great medical center; I haven’t heard from him in years. The emotional and physical challenges of mid and late adult life which are almost de rigueur for those of us passing through turbulent families of origin seemed to be coming to pass for me in a powerful way. For a season I was even unable to live in my own house.
Little was offered to me by medical professionals other than assorted forms of chemical restraint which nearly killed me. So often the stock-in-trade psychotropic drugs of the Walgreens and CVS’s of America made me wish I were out of this world. I already was nearly out of my mind.
At the insistence of a dear friend I joined a YMCA during the worst part of my journey. Leaving the illusions of safety on the east end of my couch in a darkened house, I went to the gym and spent an hour on a Stair Climber, every day. I then walked an hour on the indoor track, wondering about the vibrant healthy people around me. They had no concept of the darkness I walked in.
For some days I was entranced, watching a 6’8” giant of a man tending to the rehab of young man catastrophically injured in an auto accident. Small tentative efforts on my part to make conversation eventually led to our sharing #6 combination plates at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Over a few weeks I was exposed to some extraordinary wisdom; to not give up a day before the miracle, to believe it could get better, to believe God could restore me to sanity, to believe the toxic realities of my origins don’t have to be a life sentence.
Bill soon invited me to join him in a small dumpy cinder-block building in town where dozens were assembled, individuals buying into the same ideas he shared with me, to not give up a day before the miracle, to believe it could get better, to believe God could restore me to sanity, to believe the toxic realities of my origins don’t have to be a life sentence. Was it possible these people had something to offer me, something more than ‘modern’ medicine? They showed me how to leave the darkness behind. I left behind my psychotropic poisons and entered into the sunlight of the spirit.
Some two hundred forms of twelve-step recovery believe it possible to enter into the sunlight of the spirit, to have a radical change of life. Carl Jung, the father of modern psychiatry, went so far as to suggest individuals previously declared hopeless could in fact be restored to good health by virtue of having what he called a ‘vital spiritual experience.’ He described individuals having huge emotional displacements and rearrangements, so large as to completely alter their emotions, ideas, and attitudes. The possibility I could break free of my childhood legacy was captivating. After being told I’d never get better, of being hopeless, the possibility of having a huge emotional displacement for the better was enough to ignite the luminous wonder of hope in my darkness.
In 1902 William James, a distinguished psychologist articulated in his Varieties of Religious Experience, the myriad ways individuals come into contact with God. Some have instantaneous life transformations, so called burning bush encounters. Most of us have slowly developing spiritual experiences of what are called the educational variety. Often these are grounded in what many have described as the dark night of the soul.
In his Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, James Lawson in 1911 described radical transformation bringing men and women into places of great spiritual effectiveness and influence, in turn guiding millions of others into effective spiritual experiences for themselves. In nearly every case, great spiritual transformation took place in seasons of great despair, at times when these individuals had hit bottom.
One only has to read Story of a Soul, short autobiographic writings of Saint Therese of Lisieux, to be in wonderment at the spiritual power manifested in a cloistered young nun who suffered a long struggle with tuberculosis before dying at the severe age of twenty-four. Since 1899 her words have given evidence of a life lived far above circumstance. One can only wonder if Lawson had opportunity to read of her life while assembling his biographies of famous Christians.
The possibility I could leave a drug-induce stupor and torment behind and embrace a life of confidence and usefulness was nearly more than I could imagine. I wondered how Lawson’s dusty old text from 1911 could so fully inform my life; informing me with hope. Williams in 1902 provided assurance through his lectures there’s no one magic way to have spiritual transformations. Therese spoke from the late 19th century of living above life’s circumstances, of trust and acceptance of God’s care despite life’s turbulence.
The past several years have proven the veracity of Jung, James, Lawson, and Therese’s writings, their ability to fully inform my life here in the distant future. Their message is the same simple one millions have found in recovery. If we seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will and the ability to carry it out, we find ourselves living lives beyond imagination.
“I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.”
By the time we arrive in kindergarten our brains and nervous systems are nearly finished works. Extensive evidence suggests by the age of five our personalities, coping mechanisms, and ways of relating to the universe are not unlike clay subjected to the high temperatures of a ceramic kiln, fixed and immutable.
Legions of professionals have made careers of exploring the ways troubled childhoods create legacies none of us would want to inherit. Maladaptive coping skills, compromises to our immune systems, the advent of catastrophic disease are nearly part and parcel to growing up in troubled families. It would seem those of us raised in toxic environments are doomed, consigned to a constellation of consequences making for a mid and late adulthood colored by significant emotional and physical challenges. The work of many investigators strongly suggests many cancers, degenerative neurological diseases, arthritis, and dementia find their advent in individuals who experienced profound emotional challenges early in life.
Years ago, those who wear starched white coats at their day jobs told me I would never get better. A physician, my best friend for decades, even suggested I might consider going into a group home, perhaps making crafts a couple days a week. He went on to be chief-of-staff of a great medical center; I haven’t heard from him in years. The emotional and physical challenges of mid and late adult life which are almost de rigueur for those of us passing through turbulent families of origin seemed to be coming to pass for me in a powerful way. For a season I was even unable to live in my own house.
Little was offered to me by medical professionals other than assorted forms of chemical restraint which nearly killed me. So often the stock-in-trade psychotropic drugs of the Walgreens and CVS’s of America made me wish I were out of this world. I already was nearly out of my mind.
At the insistence of a dear friend I joined a YMCA during the worst part of my journey. Leaving the illusions of safety on the east end of my couch in a darkened house, I went to the gym and spent an hour on a Stair Climber, every day. I then walked an hour on the indoor track, wondering about the vibrant healthy people around me. They had no concept of the darkness I walked in.
For some days I was entranced, watching a 6’8” giant of a man tending to the rehab of young man catastrophically injured in an auto accident. Small tentative efforts on my part to make conversation eventually led to our sharing #6 combination plates at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Over a few weeks I was exposed to some extraordinary wisdom; to not give up a day before the miracle, to believe it could get better, to believe God could restore me to sanity, to believe the toxic realities of my origins don’t have to be a life sentence.
Bill soon invited me to join him in a small dumpy cinder-block building in town where dozens were assembled, individuals buying into the same ideas he shared with me, to not give up a day before the miracle, to believe it could get better, to believe God could restore me to sanity, to believe the toxic realities of my origins don’t have to be a life sentence. Was it possible these people had something to offer me, something more than ‘modern’ medicine? They showed me how to leave the darkness behind. I left behind my psychotropic poisons and entered into the sunlight of the spirit.
Some two hundred forms of twelve-step recovery believe it possible to enter into the sunlight of the spirit, to have a radical change of life. Carl Jung, the father of modern psychiatry, went so far as to suggest individuals previously declared hopeless could in fact be restored to good health by virtue of having what he called a ‘vital spiritual experience.’ He described individuals having huge emotional displacements and rearrangements, so large as to completely alter their emotions, ideas, and attitudes. The possibility I could break free of my childhood legacy was captivating. After being told I’d never get better, of being hopeless, the possibility of having a huge emotional displacement for the better was enough to ignite the luminous wonder of hope in my darkness.
In 1902 William James, a distinguished psychologist articulated in his Varieties of Religious Experience, the myriad ways individuals come into contact with God. Some have instantaneous life transformations, so called burning bush encounters. Most of us have slowly developing spiritual experiences of what are called the educational variety. Often these are grounded in what many have described as the dark night of the soul.
In his Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, James Lawson in 1911 described radical transformation bringing men and women into places of great spiritual effectiveness and influence, in turn guiding millions of others into effective spiritual experiences for themselves. In nearly every case, great spiritual transformation took place in seasons of great despair, at times when these individuals had hit bottom.
One only has to read Story of a Soul, short autobiographic writings of Saint Therese of Lisieux, to be in wonderment at the spiritual power manifested in a cloistered young nun who suffered a long struggle with tuberculosis before dying at the severe age of twenty-four. Since 1899 her words have given evidence of a life lived far above circumstance. One can only wonder if Lawson had opportunity to read of her life while assembling his biographies of famous Christians.
The possibility I could leave a drug-induce stupor and torment behind and embrace a life of confidence and usefulness was nearly more than I could imagine. I wondered how Lawson’s dusty old text from 1911 could so fully inform my life; informing me with hope. Williams in 1902 provided assurance through his lectures there’s no one magic way to have spiritual transformations. Therese spoke from the late 19th century of living above life’s circumstances, of trust and acceptance of God’s care despite life’s turbulence.
The past several years have proven the veracity of Jung, James, Lawson, and Therese’s writings, their ability to fully inform my life here in the distant future. Their message is the same simple one millions have found in recovery. If we seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will and the ability to carry it out, we find ourselves living lives beyond imagination.
“I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.”
Let This Circle Represent What We Can’t Do Alone 10-7-11
Anderson, South Carolina
It would be painful elaboration of the obvious to describe the profound impact to physical and emotional health deriving from social disconnection and loss of supporting and nurturing relationships. The dark side of living in a very large country with high levels of mobility is a growing pandemic of social disconnection. Millions of us find ourselves living as economic refugees in strange cities, hoping to strike it rich. As America’s economy moves into a discomfiting ‘new normal’ the loss of entire cities to financial implosion has driven this pandemic to unprecedented levels. We abandon our histories, neighbors, family, sense of place; reliving the images of the Great Depression. We are little more than 21st century hobos without the luxury of barns to sleep in or the hospitality of a good meal at the back door of a farm house.
Those who’ve survived a common peril experience a bond unlike any other. The lifelong friendships arising out of the trench warfare of WW I are legendary. Those surviving the assault of Normandy’s beaches have experienced levels of camaraderie unknown to the civilian population. Sailors returning for their ship reunions bask in a relational cohesion most of us will never enjoy.
Men and women who’ve become refugees from larger society because of their struggles with alcohol and drug addiction are at especially high risk for losing emotional, financial, and physical ground. As America adapts to its ‘new normal’ social safety nets for addicts and alcoholics are fast fraying. Detox programs, shelter homes, food programs, retraining programs, and jobs become ever scarcer. The economical and relational perils of the present day put those at war with their addictions at special risk. There are no ticket tape parades or celebrations at airports for those coming home. So often, many just get turned out from prison gates at midnight to find their way into an unwanting society with $25 in their pocket and little else.
Strangely, as my own street transitions from a once-vibrant social fabric of friendship, potluck dinners, shared child rearing, and play to a collage of anonymous economic refugees from states with burst housing markets, I become ever more grateful to the small islands of shared support and encouragement I find myself on. Paradoxically, addicted souls scrambling onto the safe shores of recovery experience camaraderie and bonding unlike any other. There’s great celebration for those gaining important beachheads in their journeys towards sobriety and re-integration into larger society.
As dissimilar people found themselves on the battlefields of Europe or Afghanistan, unlike people find themselves on the battlefields of addiction. People who’d never cross paths find themselves sharing in a mission-critical journey towards sobriety. “We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness, and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.”
Gabon Mate in his seminal survey work on the role of emotional isolation in the genesis of catastrophic disease, When the Body Says No, cites countless studies highly suggestive of the great health hazards deriving from social and emotional isolation. In one definitive study, he describes the role of pseudo-independence or compensating hyper-independence in the genesis of rheumatoid arthritis. One could spend a lifetime reading studies offering evidence of the hazards of being self-sufficient, stoic, and emotionally isolated from others. As we become a nation of wandering economic refugees, these risks increase exponentially. For a culture in a painful economic transition with long-standing reverence for self-sufficiency and independence, hazards for pandemic disease abound.
For a mere dollar a day, and that’s optional, those struggling with alcoholism and addictions are able to join in a friendliness and camaraderie not found in larger society. In the culture of recovery, one’s successes and failures are celebrated and mourned with an emotional presence that’s sometimes astounding. The intensity of community to be found in intensive care waiting rooms as we say farewell to one who’s lost her battle is dumbfounding. The intensity of joy to be found when someone celebrates his first year of sobriety is often overwhelming. The realities of on-going life and death struggles in addiction’s recovery in a society awash in alcohol and drugs promotes a bonding not unlike that found in soldiers, flyers, and sailors returning from war.
In a consumer society that’s lost its spiritual and economic bearings, we find ourselves among uncounted millions struggling through the harsh realities of foreclosure, unemployment, forced mobility, even existential crises of life purpose. Wondering why so many of us are so sick, Gabon Mate could easily come back and say “I told you so” or “What did you expect?” but his good manners would keep him from this. In some respects we’ve set ourselves up for the perfect storm, the consequences of which may not become fully evident for some years. As a society we may pay personal costs in our physical and emotional health reaching far beyond those of losing our high-paying jobs or McMansions. For the foreseeable future health care will probably remain the one viable growth industry in America.
At the end of recovery meetings it’s traditional for participants to hold hands, say the Lord’s Prayer out loud and then declare “Let this circle represent that which we can’t do alone we can do together.” Those who find ongoing success in their recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction know they cannot do it alone. It’s a shared effort bringing together those from all strata of economic, educational and spiritual walks of life. Almost daily we get harsh reminders from those who thought they could fly solo on their journey.
Perhaps there’s a powerful message in the recovery world for those in larger society who wish to recover from the harsh realities of the American Dream which proved to be little more than a waking nightmare. In recovery we learn to turn our lives and will over to the care of God. We get His best when we let Him do the choosing for us. We also learn to hold hands with each other and look both ways before crossing the street.
We might even avoid being subjects in Mate’s case studies.
It would be painful elaboration of the obvious to describe the profound impact to physical and emotional health deriving from social disconnection and loss of supporting and nurturing relationships. The dark side of living in a very large country with high levels of mobility is a growing pandemic of social disconnection. Millions of us find ourselves living as economic refugees in strange cities, hoping to strike it rich. As America’s economy moves into a discomfiting ‘new normal’ the loss of entire cities to financial implosion has driven this pandemic to unprecedented levels. We abandon our histories, neighbors, family, sense of place; reliving the images of the Great Depression. We are little more than 21st century hobos without the luxury of barns to sleep in or the hospitality of a good meal at the back door of a farm house.
Those who’ve survived a common peril experience a bond unlike any other. The lifelong friendships arising out of the trench warfare of WW I are legendary. Those surviving the assault of Normandy’s beaches have experienced levels of camaraderie unknown to the civilian population. Sailors returning for their ship reunions bask in a relational cohesion most of us will never enjoy.
Men and women who’ve become refugees from larger society because of their struggles with alcohol and drug addiction are at especially high risk for losing emotional, financial, and physical ground. As America adapts to its ‘new normal’ social safety nets for addicts and alcoholics are fast fraying. Detox programs, shelter homes, food programs, retraining programs, and jobs become ever scarcer. The economical and relational perils of the present day put those at war with their addictions at special risk. There are no ticket tape parades or celebrations at airports for those coming home. So often, many just get turned out from prison gates at midnight to find their way into an unwanting society with $25 in their pocket and little else.
Strangely, as my own street transitions from a once-vibrant social fabric of friendship, potluck dinners, shared child rearing, and play to a collage of anonymous economic refugees from states with burst housing markets, I become ever more grateful to the small islands of shared support and encouragement I find myself on. Paradoxically, addicted souls scrambling onto the safe shores of recovery experience camaraderie and bonding unlike any other. There’s great celebration for those gaining important beachheads in their journeys towards sobriety and re-integration into larger society.
As dissimilar people found themselves on the battlefields of Europe or Afghanistan, unlike people find themselves on the battlefields of addiction. People who’d never cross paths find themselves sharing in a mission-critical journey towards sobriety. “We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness, and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.”
Gabon Mate in his seminal survey work on the role of emotional isolation in the genesis of catastrophic disease, When the Body Says No, cites countless studies highly suggestive of the great health hazards deriving from social and emotional isolation. In one definitive study, he describes the role of pseudo-independence or compensating hyper-independence in the genesis of rheumatoid arthritis. One could spend a lifetime reading studies offering evidence of the hazards of being self-sufficient, stoic, and emotionally isolated from others. As we become a nation of wandering economic refugees, these risks increase exponentially. For a culture in a painful economic transition with long-standing reverence for self-sufficiency and independence, hazards for pandemic disease abound.
For a mere dollar a day, and that’s optional, those struggling with alcoholism and addictions are able to join in a friendliness and camaraderie not found in larger society. In the culture of recovery, one’s successes and failures are celebrated and mourned with an emotional presence that’s sometimes astounding. The intensity of community to be found in intensive care waiting rooms as we say farewell to one who’s lost her battle is dumbfounding. The intensity of joy to be found when someone celebrates his first year of sobriety is often overwhelming. The realities of on-going life and death struggles in addiction’s recovery in a society awash in alcohol and drugs promotes a bonding not unlike that found in soldiers, flyers, and sailors returning from war.
In a consumer society that’s lost its spiritual and economic bearings, we find ourselves among uncounted millions struggling through the harsh realities of foreclosure, unemployment, forced mobility, even existential crises of life purpose. Wondering why so many of us are so sick, Gabon Mate could easily come back and say “I told you so” or “What did you expect?” but his good manners would keep him from this. In some respects we’ve set ourselves up for the perfect storm, the consequences of which may not become fully evident for some years. As a society we may pay personal costs in our physical and emotional health reaching far beyond those of losing our high-paying jobs or McMansions. For the foreseeable future health care will probably remain the one viable growth industry in America.
At the end of recovery meetings it’s traditional for participants to hold hands, say the Lord’s Prayer out loud and then declare “Let this circle represent that which we can’t do alone we can do together.” Those who find ongoing success in their recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction know they cannot do it alone. It’s a shared effort bringing together those from all strata of economic, educational and spiritual walks of life. Almost daily we get harsh reminders from those who thought they could fly solo on their journey.
Perhaps there’s a powerful message in the recovery world for those in larger society who wish to recover from the harsh realities of the American Dream which proved to be little more than a waking nightmare. In recovery we learn to turn our lives and will over to the care of God. We get His best when we let Him do the choosing for us. We also learn to hold hands with each other and look both ways before crossing the street.
We might even avoid being subjects in Mate’s case studies.
When the Body Says No 10-3-11
Anderson, South Carolina
A dear friend in British Columbia sent me a recommendation for a book written by a Canadian physician working in palliative care. The book makes a convincing argument for the idea that unresolved emotional issues will typically find release as physical disease, especially cancer and degenerative autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis. Reading this book gave me a near epiphany.
One of my great torments for a long time has been the exclusion I’ve always felt from family members. In part I think this derives from my unwillingness to keep family skeletons in the closet; the realities of drug addiction, alcoholism, and a universal pattern of marital failure across three generations. As we head into the holiday season once again I’m reminded of this reality.
In his book When the Body Says No, Gabon Mate cites the life of Betty Ford in her struggles with alcoholism and breast cancer. Mate makes astute observations about Betty Ford’s early life. He’s able to easily deduce from her autobiography an inclination to see her childhood through rose-colored glasses. He describes Betty as repressing her own feelings to preserve a sense of idyllic relationship with a parent. He suggests unresolved emotional issues were players in her future use of pain killers, tranquilizers, and alcohol.
Betty in her own words describes an ever-increasing existential crisis, losing sight of who she was as a person, despite being the First Lady. “I couldn’t accept that people liked me for myself ... I was measuring myself against impossible ideals – Martha or my mother – and coming up short. That’s a good recipe for alcoholism.” Mate makes the assertion that Betty was blind to emotional realities in her own life. “She does not see that surrendering herself to her husband’s needs and expectations – becoming a ‘doormat’ – resulted from childhood conditioning. The emotional repression, the harsh self-judgment and the perfectionism Betty Ford acquired as a child, through no fault of her own, are more than a ‘good recipe for alcoholism.’ They are also a ‘good recipe’ for cancer of the breast.”
In the past year both my brothers turned up with life-threatening cancers requiring urgent treatment of the highest order. Both my brothers have had at least two kinds of cancer show up in their lives. Despite being raised in an alcoholic drug-addicted environment my twin brother has often wondered what my adjustment problems are, citing a perfectly normal childhood. Attempts to get my siblings to merely own that childhood did not work for me has consistently invoked a defensive posturing tinged with anger in one case and emotional absence in the other. My twin clearly displays unconscious Level II emotional expressions of strong anger wrapped in defensiveness. My older brother simply has made himself quite inaccessible to me for more than four decades. Extreme wealth and distance has made this easy for him to accomplish. He needs nothing whatever from me, especially the message that childhood did not work and that it’s taking me a lifetime to clean up the mess. Such messengers don’t get invited to parties.
Years ago I embraced the blessed twelve steps of recovery for a variety of reasons. One of the greatest prizes to be had in recovery is the opportunity for authentic release of toxic emotions. In recovery rooms and with trusted friends and sponsors one is free to have true emotional ‘dumps’ and to ‘get it off one’s chest.’ The culture of recovery insists on honest expression of one’s feelings, especially negative ones, believing their expression leads to immediate relief, soon followed by true healing and growth. Such has been my repeated experience. I can’t but wonder in light of Mate’s observations if getting emotional burdens off one’s chest in a recovery room might not mitigate the need to engage a surgeon to get it off our chests in the case of breast cancer. Extensive research suggests our bodies finally do say no and will find ways to offload our emotional burdens in ways not necessarily to our liking.
My mother turned up with catastrophic breast cancer. She finally got her long standing resentments ‘off her chest’. My twin brother found many people to be a ‘pain in the butt’, even recently telling me he hated a class of people as much as Hitler hated Jews. A few months ago he had a good chunk of his colon resected for invasive cancer. My older brother may well have been ‘pissed off’ at our alcoholic mother and repressed his feelings. He turned up with aggressive prostate cancer. In recovery we are told resentments are the number one killer. Resentments are nothing more than fatal repressed emotions, a ‘luxury’ we can ill afford.
I can’t say for certain my mother and brothers turned up with cancer because of unresolved emotions but when researchers are able to use interview instruments with 96% accuracy to predict the advent of cancer in people with unresolved emotions, one does wonder. It’s not likely I will ever have the authentic communication with my brothers that I enjoy in recovery but I can certainly take their experiences as cautionary; being reminded resentments and unresolved emotions are not something I can afford.
Perhaps recovery has saved me from far more than the scourge of painkillers, tranquilizers and alcohol. So far I’ve not turned up with cancer. Colonoscopy and lab tests tell me I have a daily reprieve at present. This could change at any time. I don’t yet know if the God of my understanding in recovery has granted me deferral or complete pardon from the malignant consequences of unresolved emotions and resentments. Time will tell.
What time has told me is recovery has granted me at least a twenty-year deferral from the scourges of degenerative autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis. Twenty-two years ago I sat in front of a neurologist’s desk to be told I had MS. It also looked like I was headed into an early journey with arthritis, just like Mom. A leave of absence from my medical training and a radical life detour allowed me to explore the cesspools of resentment and unresolved emotional issues in my life. Twenty-two years later I have no evidence of MS or arthritis and the strongest drugs I take are fish oil and vitamins.
For certain, there’s no graduation from a life of recovery, only promotion. Also certain is the granting of a daily reprieve based on my spiritual condition. As long as I make an honest attempt to own my dark side and get it off my chest in a healthy manner; to avoid the emotional constipation deriving from harbored resentments, I might just find my body instead saying ‘Yes!” to the wonders of living a joyous good life.
A dear friend in British Columbia sent me a recommendation for a book written by a Canadian physician working in palliative care. The book makes a convincing argument for the idea that unresolved emotional issues will typically find release as physical disease, especially cancer and degenerative autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis. Reading this book gave me a near epiphany.
One of my great torments for a long time has been the exclusion I’ve always felt from family members. In part I think this derives from my unwillingness to keep family skeletons in the closet; the realities of drug addiction, alcoholism, and a universal pattern of marital failure across three generations. As we head into the holiday season once again I’m reminded of this reality.
In his book When the Body Says No, Gabon Mate cites the life of Betty Ford in her struggles with alcoholism and breast cancer. Mate makes astute observations about Betty Ford’s early life. He’s able to easily deduce from her autobiography an inclination to see her childhood through rose-colored glasses. He describes Betty as repressing her own feelings to preserve a sense of idyllic relationship with a parent. He suggests unresolved emotional issues were players in her future use of pain killers, tranquilizers, and alcohol.
Betty in her own words describes an ever-increasing existential crisis, losing sight of who she was as a person, despite being the First Lady. “I couldn’t accept that people liked me for myself ... I was measuring myself against impossible ideals – Martha or my mother – and coming up short. That’s a good recipe for alcoholism.” Mate makes the assertion that Betty was blind to emotional realities in her own life. “She does not see that surrendering herself to her husband’s needs and expectations – becoming a ‘doormat’ – resulted from childhood conditioning. The emotional repression, the harsh self-judgment and the perfectionism Betty Ford acquired as a child, through no fault of her own, are more than a ‘good recipe for alcoholism.’ They are also a ‘good recipe’ for cancer of the breast.”
In the past year both my brothers turned up with life-threatening cancers requiring urgent treatment of the highest order. Both my brothers have had at least two kinds of cancer show up in their lives. Despite being raised in an alcoholic drug-addicted environment my twin brother has often wondered what my adjustment problems are, citing a perfectly normal childhood. Attempts to get my siblings to merely own that childhood did not work for me has consistently invoked a defensive posturing tinged with anger in one case and emotional absence in the other. My twin clearly displays unconscious Level II emotional expressions of strong anger wrapped in defensiveness. My older brother simply has made himself quite inaccessible to me for more than four decades. Extreme wealth and distance has made this easy for him to accomplish. He needs nothing whatever from me, especially the message that childhood did not work and that it’s taking me a lifetime to clean up the mess. Such messengers don’t get invited to parties.
Years ago I embraced the blessed twelve steps of recovery for a variety of reasons. One of the greatest prizes to be had in recovery is the opportunity for authentic release of toxic emotions. In recovery rooms and with trusted friends and sponsors one is free to have true emotional ‘dumps’ and to ‘get it off one’s chest.’ The culture of recovery insists on honest expression of one’s feelings, especially negative ones, believing their expression leads to immediate relief, soon followed by true healing and growth. Such has been my repeated experience. I can’t but wonder in light of Mate’s observations if getting emotional burdens off one’s chest in a recovery room might not mitigate the need to engage a surgeon to get it off our chests in the case of breast cancer. Extensive research suggests our bodies finally do say no and will find ways to offload our emotional burdens in ways not necessarily to our liking.
My mother turned up with catastrophic breast cancer. She finally got her long standing resentments ‘off her chest’. My twin brother found many people to be a ‘pain in the butt’, even recently telling me he hated a class of people as much as Hitler hated Jews. A few months ago he had a good chunk of his colon resected for invasive cancer. My older brother may well have been ‘pissed off’ at our alcoholic mother and repressed his feelings. He turned up with aggressive prostate cancer. In recovery we are told resentments are the number one killer. Resentments are nothing more than fatal repressed emotions, a ‘luxury’ we can ill afford.
I can’t say for certain my mother and brothers turned up with cancer because of unresolved emotions but when researchers are able to use interview instruments with 96% accuracy to predict the advent of cancer in people with unresolved emotions, one does wonder. It’s not likely I will ever have the authentic communication with my brothers that I enjoy in recovery but I can certainly take their experiences as cautionary; being reminded resentments and unresolved emotions are not something I can afford.
Perhaps recovery has saved me from far more than the scourge of painkillers, tranquilizers and alcohol. So far I’ve not turned up with cancer. Colonoscopy and lab tests tell me I have a daily reprieve at present. This could change at any time. I don’t yet know if the God of my understanding in recovery has granted me deferral or complete pardon from the malignant consequences of unresolved emotions and resentments. Time will tell.
What time has told me is recovery has granted me at least a twenty-year deferral from the scourges of degenerative autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis. Twenty-two years ago I sat in front of a neurologist’s desk to be told I had MS. It also looked like I was headed into an early journey with arthritis, just like Mom. A leave of absence from my medical training and a radical life detour allowed me to explore the cesspools of resentment and unresolved emotional issues in my life. Twenty-two years later I have no evidence of MS or arthritis and the strongest drugs I take are fish oil and vitamins.
For certain, there’s no graduation from a life of recovery, only promotion. Also certain is the granting of a daily reprieve based on my spiritual condition. As long as I make an honest attempt to own my dark side and get it off my chest in a healthy manner; to avoid the emotional constipation deriving from harbored resentments, I might just find my body instead saying ‘Yes!” to the wonders of living a joyous good life.
Lying – Does Perception Trump Reality? 9-13-11
Anderson, South Carolina
Surveys and opinion polls suggest lying and cheating have become endemic in American culture, even normalized as acceptable behavior. An astounding majority of students have admitted to cheating on examinations. Universities often lie about the rate of job placement success among their graduates. Substantial numbers of athletes are found covertly using illegal performance-enhancing drugs to gain unfair advantage over competitors. Misrepresentation and manipulation of clinical data in drug research trials is scandalous. America’s economy was nearly destroyed by misrepresentation of risk and quality in mortgage-backed investments. Millions of individuals lie to their spouses as to their whereabouts, ending up in divorce court. Perhaps a majority of political campaigns are driven by empty sound bites and unfulfilled promises.
I presently live in South Carolina because of a big lie. Twenty years ago a professional position was advertised in newspapers nationally. Responding to display ads, I was led to believe I’d be an equity partner in a medical research group being spun off from a large community hospital, to be relocating to an appealing nearby city where I would participate in commissions on outside sales. I moved several states to take this opportunity, giving up a long-standing history and satisfying social network. My contacts made with hospital systems in other states generated sufficient revenues to fund a stand-alone company doing business in another state. I was not invited to join the research group when it formed in a distant city. I was never anything but an ordinary salaried employee in the local community hospital, never participating in revenues from outside sales, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. Twenty years later nothing promised has come to pass.
A prestigious university hospital in the southeast contacted me, asking me to travel to a distant city and make formal presentations of my work to the medical staff, promising to underwrite my expenses and provide a substantial audience of physicians and administrators in a large auditorium. Instead I found a small acrimonious group of a dozen individuals in a small conference room disinterested in my academic work, giving me but a few hurried minutes. My travel expenses were never taken care of and I was never offered speaker’s compensation.
In the mid-nineties my medical informatics work was considered rather novel, even useful. Sharing methodologies and research protocols was standard practice in academic medicine. Was it standard practice for hospitals to see my work at medical conferences and then make clones of it for their own use? Years after the fact I would find hospitals in distant states using identical clones of my work, not even offering acknowledgements. I once found an academic article in a prestigious peer-review medical journal about my work. Much of the text in that article was from my own hand, having been lifted en bloc from other sources. Even my graphics were unaltered. I left the medical world eleven years ago with no regrets.
A well-known university in the southeast invited me to participate in a summer institute as guest faculty. Within an hour of arriving on campus I had occasion to careen down two flights of marble stairs in the dining commons and break my leg, leaving me in a wheel chair for some months. The dining facility director immediately promised full assistance of the university, including payment of any medical and surgical expenses. University risk management staff intervened, refusing to consider my claims, never making good on the promises of its director. The possibility of compensation would have required acrimonious long-distance litigation. I opted out, declining later opportunities to teach there.
In recent years photography has become a source of great satisfaction. More so has been the willingness of patrons to actually buy my work, or at least promise to do so. Not satisfying are empty requests from wealthy individuals to produce large format photo prints in custom gallery frames. Individuals promising to purchase them do not return phone calls and months later I have unsold inventory accreting in my house. I’ve not yet learned a man is only as good as his word, not yet requiring full payment in advance.
Special order furniture also accumulates in my garage. I receive requests from long-standing friends to produce very specific cabinets, only to have them back away when the work is completed. Some of us are very slow learners. Do I really want to enter into agreements based on mistrust, requiring 100% payment up front to force them to perform? Not really. Do I need to? Really.
What constitutes truth? When do good intentions become empty promises? When does a life-long pattern of empty over-promising and under-delivering become little more than fraud? When does it become just a pack of lies? Perhaps the hardest thing to prove in a court of law is intent or pre-meditation. Do individuals with habitual good intentions know they are offering nothing but hollow promises, even lies? Even the jury will never know.
A decade ago I was a candidate in a four-day spiritual retreat. On the last day the lay rector knowingly lied to the candidate class, saying we would have to immediately leave the large comfortable conference hall we had been enjoying for three days; indicating a corporate group paid substantial rent, pre-empting us. I found myself secretly enraged our very expensive experience was being truncated in the interests of revenue enhancement. Later in the day this proved to be nothing more than a guise to get us out of the hall so it could be prepared for a lavish closing ceremony. In the meantime some of us fumed and fussed greatly over the belief we had been pre-empted for a profit opportunity. I nearly left the retreat early in agitated fashion. A fellow candidate talked me into staying. The deception was revealed. Perception trumped reality for a season.
Do white lies ever operate for the better good? Do we deceive in order to get a group to do what we want? Do we pad the numbers to create a perception? Does a priest’s knowingly inflating attendance numbers in his church ever achieve a greater good? Does a temporary perception ever really trump reality?
Having someone look you in the eye and tell you a set of facts is true is most disquieting when irrefutable evidence proves otherwise. Have we so normalized our manipulation of perception as to create a reality in which people can tell bold-faced lies while looking another directly in the eye? Yes, we seem to have found a ‘new normal’ in American culture.
For if I do wish to boast I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth; but I refrain from this, so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.
Surveys and opinion polls suggest lying and cheating have become endemic in American culture, even normalized as acceptable behavior. An astounding majority of students have admitted to cheating on examinations. Universities often lie about the rate of job placement success among their graduates. Substantial numbers of athletes are found covertly using illegal performance-enhancing drugs to gain unfair advantage over competitors. Misrepresentation and manipulation of clinical data in drug research trials is scandalous. America’s economy was nearly destroyed by misrepresentation of risk and quality in mortgage-backed investments. Millions of individuals lie to their spouses as to their whereabouts, ending up in divorce court. Perhaps a majority of political campaigns are driven by empty sound bites and unfulfilled promises.
I presently live in South Carolina because of a big lie. Twenty years ago a professional position was advertised in newspapers nationally. Responding to display ads, I was led to believe I’d be an equity partner in a medical research group being spun off from a large community hospital, to be relocating to an appealing nearby city where I would participate in commissions on outside sales. I moved several states to take this opportunity, giving up a long-standing history and satisfying social network. My contacts made with hospital systems in other states generated sufficient revenues to fund a stand-alone company doing business in another state. I was not invited to join the research group when it formed in a distant city. I was never anything but an ordinary salaried employee in the local community hospital, never participating in revenues from outside sales, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. Twenty years later nothing promised has come to pass.
A prestigious university hospital in the southeast contacted me, asking me to travel to a distant city and make formal presentations of my work to the medical staff, promising to underwrite my expenses and provide a substantial audience of physicians and administrators in a large auditorium. Instead I found a small acrimonious group of a dozen individuals in a small conference room disinterested in my academic work, giving me but a few hurried minutes. My travel expenses were never taken care of and I was never offered speaker’s compensation.
In the mid-nineties my medical informatics work was considered rather novel, even useful. Sharing methodologies and research protocols was standard practice in academic medicine. Was it standard practice for hospitals to see my work at medical conferences and then make clones of it for their own use? Years after the fact I would find hospitals in distant states using identical clones of my work, not even offering acknowledgements. I once found an academic article in a prestigious peer-review medical journal about my work. Much of the text in that article was from my own hand, having been lifted en bloc from other sources. Even my graphics were unaltered. I left the medical world eleven years ago with no regrets.
A well-known university in the southeast invited me to participate in a summer institute as guest faculty. Within an hour of arriving on campus I had occasion to careen down two flights of marble stairs in the dining commons and break my leg, leaving me in a wheel chair for some months. The dining facility director immediately promised full assistance of the university, including payment of any medical and surgical expenses. University risk management staff intervened, refusing to consider my claims, never making good on the promises of its director. The possibility of compensation would have required acrimonious long-distance litigation. I opted out, declining later opportunities to teach there.
In recent years photography has become a source of great satisfaction. More so has been the willingness of patrons to actually buy my work, or at least promise to do so. Not satisfying are empty requests from wealthy individuals to produce large format photo prints in custom gallery frames. Individuals promising to purchase them do not return phone calls and months later I have unsold inventory accreting in my house. I’ve not yet learned a man is only as good as his word, not yet requiring full payment in advance.
Special order furniture also accumulates in my garage. I receive requests from long-standing friends to produce very specific cabinets, only to have them back away when the work is completed. Some of us are very slow learners. Do I really want to enter into agreements based on mistrust, requiring 100% payment up front to force them to perform? Not really. Do I need to? Really.
What constitutes truth? When do good intentions become empty promises? When does a life-long pattern of empty over-promising and under-delivering become little more than fraud? When does it become just a pack of lies? Perhaps the hardest thing to prove in a court of law is intent or pre-meditation. Do individuals with habitual good intentions know they are offering nothing but hollow promises, even lies? Even the jury will never know.
A decade ago I was a candidate in a four-day spiritual retreat. On the last day the lay rector knowingly lied to the candidate class, saying we would have to immediately leave the large comfortable conference hall we had been enjoying for three days; indicating a corporate group paid substantial rent, pre-empting us. I found myself secretly enraged our very expensive experience was being truncated in the interests of revenue enhancement. Later in the day this proved to be nothing more than a guise to get us out of the hall so it could be prepared for a lavish closing ceremony. In the meantime some of us fumed and fussed greatly over the belief we had been pre-empted for a profit opportunity. I nearly left the retreat early in agitated fashion. A fellow candidate talked me into staying. The deception was revealed. Perception trumped reality for a season.
Do white lies ever operate for the better good? Do we deceive in order to get a group to do what we want? Do we pad the numbers to create a perception? Does a priest’s knowingly inflating attendance numbers in his church ever achieve a greater good? Does a temporary perception ever really trump reality?
Having someone look you in the eye and tell you a set of facts is true is most disquieting when irrefutable evidence proves otherwise. Have we so normalized our manipulation of perception as to create a reality in which people can tell bold-faced lies while looking another directly in the eye? Yes, we seem to have found a ‘new normal’ in American culture.
For if I do wish to boast I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth; but I refrain from this, so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.
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