Columbia, South Carolina
While in a distant city for a series of meetings I had opportunity to meet a volunteer involved with a feeding ministry, one offering free meals to about three hundred and fifty of Columbia’s destitute on Sunday mornings. I was invited to show up in the morning to see the program underway; even to eat with ‘them.’ Intentionally waiting towards the end of the appointed serving hours, I drove six miles to the cathedral offering hot breakfast. Expecting to find a mostly empty venue where I could easily park, go in and get a bite to eat, and then go next door to the elegant cathedral for a Sunday service, I instead found hundreds of men on site, lined up out the door waiting to get a ticket for a free meal.
In a nano-second I discovered my ego had not yet been right-sized despite working with destitute alcoholics and addicts daily for more than five years. There was no way I was going to stand in that line with ‘them.’ In a fraction of a second, my sense of haughty superiority and privilege was revealed in full measure. Sitting there in my car I looked for excuses to not get out, to get in line, to be among the people; legitimate excuses were found wanting. I even considered just skipping the whole matter, starting the car and driving the three hours home. Fooling with my phone, doing a bit of reading, being self-important, squirming, I finally got out and walked over, hoping to not have to stand outside in that line and be seen. It mattered little that I was in a city new to me and knew no one whatever. Ego and the tyranny of people’s opinion are hard taskmasters.
My wait in line was brief as the serving process was rather efficient. Sitting at a round table with a group of men from the street and a nearby shelter, I was given a lesson in humility by these august teachers. They clearly described needing to be given an opportunity to learn how to fish, not to just be given a hot plate of it and sent on their way. These men expressed powerful motivation to gain employment. One of them had a clear vision for empowering other men on the mysteries of setting up free e-mail accounts and applying on line for jobs using public library computers. One made the acerbic observation that a good number of people driving around town were only one or two paychecks away from joining the group in the soup line. These men were thinking about ways to empower and help each other to stay clean and sober, to gain jobs, to break out of their dependencies. In front of me they admitted worrying about their inclinations to spend what money they get a hold of on cheap hotels, crack, alcohol, and women; owned their need for accountability. I was worrying about what strangers might think of me if they saw me standing in this soup line with my Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on.
In recovery we’re taught clearly the only way to live successfully is to be totally honest with ourselves, to work a thorough program, avoiding half measures, to trust God entirely. In a moment of self-honesty, while listening to these teachers I quickly realized much of my life motivation has been nothing short of insipid. In front of me, a stranger, these men were owning out loud their fundamental character flaws and weaknesses. Hiding alone in my car, I was afraid a stranger might wonder why the well-dressed guy was standing in the soup line.
I have to be honest in admitting some relief at much of the crowd of ‘them’ clearing out, the hired police going back to where hired police come from, the fresh cut flowers being put back on the tables in preparation for the well-heeled and educated of Columbia who would come into the great hall for their coffee and cookies between services. I also have to admit in many respects the crystalline transparency of these men with doctorates in survival made it much easier being with them than a building full of well-dressed people wanting to be self-important, people just like me.
"My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”
It’s often stated, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Sometimes a table full of them shows up. I can only pray I might be ready for what they have to say to me. As it is, I have no recollection whatever of what was said from the magnificent highly-polished pulpit by any of the five officiating priests in their embroidered vestments. I remember exactly what several barely-articulate destitute men spoke into my life with great clarity. I took notes during their lecture.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
On Higher Ground 2-16-12
Anderson, South Carolina
One of the most staggeringly beautiful of phenomenon is found in the center of one of nature’s most terrifying phenomenon. The eye of a hurricane is one of the most peaceful places imaginable. Low barometric pressure and virtual absence of any wind give a sense of tranquility belying the terror in the near distance. Under clear cerulean skies one has unobstructed views of spectacular towering cloud formations making up the inner eyewall of the hurricane’s structure.
In those beautiful clouds peak winds can easily exceed 210 miles per hour. Hurricane Camille raked across Biloxi, MS in 1969 with sustained winds of 205-210 miles per hour. In 1995 Wilma's minimum central pressure reached 882 mb, the lowest pressure ever recorded for an Atlantic tropical cyclone. This storm maintained winds of 175 MPH. When those winds rake across anything constructed by mankind, all is scoured off as so much soap scum.
The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the most lethal hurricane to ever hit the United States, causing as many as twelve thousand deaths. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed as many as eighteen hundred and fifty people, destroying most of a venerable city in the process. Katrina made United States landfall at three different locations, first at the Miami-Dade/Broward county line in Florida, dropping ten to fourteen inches of rain, just after reaching hurricane status. After traversing Florida it strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico making landfall near Buras, Louisiana and again near the Louisiana/Mississippi border as a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina’s highest storm surge of 25 to 28 feet occurred along the Mississippi coast while dropping eight to twelve inches of rain inland from the northern Gulf coast, spawning thirty-three tornadoes.
Theoretical limits of hurricane wind speeds indicate maximum sustained winds are around 200 MPH with peak gusts not much higher, perhaps 215 MPH. On the gas giant Jupiter, sustained winds exceed 1,200 MPH, lasting for years. The staggeringly beautiful phenomenon of Jovian planetary banding and red spotting are the result of intense wind. One can only imagine the scouring effect of a twelve hundred mile per hour blast of liquefied methane and ammonia.
On earth we can take heart in knowing hurricanes have short life cycles and eventually fade away as do dancing dust devils on autumn days. Paying attention to evacuation orders we can move inland to safety. Alas, some of the greatest hazards to life don’t come with evacuation routes and storm shelters. At the center of personal storms there’s no hauntingly beautiful eye where one can take rest or evacuation routes one can follow to safety. One cannot flee cancer by loading up the car and heading inland. Those caught in the utter blackness of alcoholism and addiction have no refuge from the battering consequences of active addiction. Those trapped in affective prisons of mental illness, often consigned to life-long confinement in psychotropic nightmares from the local pharmacy, can’t head to higher ground.
Life happens.
People get cancer. Companies downsize their best employees. Natural disasters destroy our cities. Relationships fail. Spirits break. Individuals taking pain killers for bad backs unwittingly enter into nightmares of iatrogenic drug addiction. Ten percent of American children suffer severe consequences from living with an alcoholic parent. Like many, I was given conventional wisdom, “It won’t get any better, live with it.” Some choose not to.
On Tuesday, a gray bleak day, a thousand of us gathered in the cemetery to take shovels and bury a thirty year old man, prosperous, attractive, well-respected. We watched in tentative silence as cemetery workers set the vault, lowered the coffin, sealed the vault, and handed out shovels. The officiating undertaker described the deceased as one desperately in need of being in control and when he felt his life had spiraled out of control, he saw only one option and took it. He took an escape route that did not lead to higher ground.
I have two long standing friends in dire circumstances now considering death as an option. It’s difficult to convince them hurricanes do eventually lose their strength and calm returns in God’s world. Another friend of mine is dealing with the consequences of his wife taking this same escape route. Fortunately, my friend is discovering a route taking him out of his grief onto Higher Ground.
Our culture is so about being strong, independent, and self-reliant, never letting on to our fears and weaknesses. If these we lost had done as we unceasingly exhort those in recovery to do, share feelings, talk about them, own their fears, they might have had a chance to decompress their pain to manageable levels until they could get a grip on their life circumstances, ones most of us would take on happily. By giving up illusions of control and admitting powerlessness, they might have done the one truly powerful thing that could have saved their lives. I can only pray my friends still above ground will choose the route to Higher Ground and let go.
Is it possible after all one can find evacuation routes away from the vortex of existential crisis, mental illness, addiction, cancer, divorce, unemployment? Five years after being told I had no evacuation route from my own affective cyclonic storms, I’ve found compelling evidence suggesting there’s a way to Higher Ground. My standing on it is all the proof I need. I have numerous friends and family hammered relentlessly by cancer, yet strong in spirit and quality of life, standing on Higher Ground, even if missing a lot of body parts. Another has endured seventy-five surgeries. Downsized friends speak of liberation from the tyranny of corporate culture and the wonder of simplicity. I find great joy working in an institutional kitchen for no pay, sometimes just peeling hard-boiled eggs.
In recovery we learn there’s a calm eye in the storms of our lives, if we but allow it to form around us. By owning our true powerlessness we become powerful in ways unimagined. An anonymous imperative suggests, “I will try to be unruffled, no matter what happens. I will keep my emotions in check, although others about me are letting their go. I will keep calm in the face of disturbance, keep that deep, inner calm throughout the experiences of the day.”
The Apostle Paul exhorts us to “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
And He might lead you to Higher Ground. Just ask.
One of the most staggeringly beautiful of phenomenon is found in the center of one of nature’s most terrifying phenomenon. The eye of a hurricane is one of the most peaceful places imaginable. Low barometric pressure and virtual absence of any wind give a sense of tranquility belying the terror in the near distance. Under clear cerulean skies one has unobstructed views of spectacular towering cloud formations making up the inner eyewall of the hurricane’s structure.
In those beautiful clouds peak winds can easily exceed 210 miles per hour. Hurricane Camille raked across Biloxi, MS in 1969 with sustained winds of 205-210 miles per hour. In 1995 Wilma's minimum central pressure reached 882 mb, the lowest pressure ever recorded for an Atlantic tropical cyclone. This storm maintained winds of 175 MPH. When those winds rake across anything constructed by mankind, all is scoured off as so much soap scum.
The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the most lethal hurricane to ever hit the United States, causing as many as twelve thousand deaths. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed as many as eighteen hundred and fifty people, destroying most of a venerable city in the process. Katrina made United States landfall at three different locations, first at the Miami-Dade/Broward county line in Florida, dropping ten to fourteen inches of rain, just after reaching hurricane status. After traversing Florida it strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico making landfall near Buras, Louisiana and again near the Louisiana/Mississippi border as a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina’s highest storm surge of 25 to 28 feet occurred along the Mississippi coast while dropping eight to twelve inches of rain inland from the northern Gulf coast, spawning thirty-three tornadoes.
Theoretical limits of hurricane wind speeds indicate maximum sustained winds are around 200 MPH with peak gusts not much higher, perhaps 215 MPH. On the gas giant Jupiter, sustained winds exceed 1,200 MPH, lasting for years. The staggeringly beautiful phenomenon of Jovian planetary banding and red spotting are the result of intense wind. One can only imagine the scouring effect of a twelve hundred mile per hour blast of liquefied methane and ammonia.
On earth we can take heart in knowing hurricanes have short life cycles and eventually fade away as do dancing dust devils on autumn days. Paying attention to evacuation orders we can move inland to safety. Alas, some of the greatest hazards to life don’t come with evacuation routes and storm shelters. At the center of personal storms there’s no hauntingly beautiful eye where one can take rest or evacuation routes one can follow to safety. One cannot flee cancer by loading up the car and heading inland. Those caught in the utter blackness of alcoholism and addiction have no refuge from the battering consequences of active addiction. Those trapped in affective prisons of mental illness, often consigned to life-long confinement in psychotropic nightmares from the local pharmacy, can’t head to higher ground.
Life happens.
People get cancer. Companies downsize their best employees. Natural disasters destroy our cities. Relationships fail. Spirits break. Individuals taking pain killers for bad backs unwittingly enter into nightmares of iatrogenic drug addiction. Ten percent of American children suffer severe consequences from living with an alcoholic parent. Like many, I was given conventional wisdom, “It won’t get any better, live with it.” Some choose not to.
On Tuesday, a gray bleak day, a thousand of us gathered in the cemetery to take shovels and bury a thirty year old man, prosperous, attractive, well-respected. We watched in tentative silence as cemetery workers set the vault, lowered the coffin, sealed the vault, and handed out shovels. The officiating undertaker described the deceased as one desperately in need of being in control and when he felt his life had spiraled out of control, he saw only one option and took it. He took an escape route that did not lead to higher ground.
I have two long standing friends in dire circumstances now considering death as an option. It’s difficult to convince them hurricanes do eventually lose their strength and calm returns in God’s world. Another friend of mine is dealing with the consequences of his wife taking this same escape route. Fortunately, my friend is discovering a route taking him out of his grief onto Higher Ground.
Our culture is so about being strong, independent, and self-reliant, never letting on to our fears and weaknesses. If these we lost had done as we unceasingly exhort those in recovery to do, share feelings, talk about them, own their fears, they might have had a chance to decompress their pain to manageable levels until they could get a grip on their life circumstances, ones most of us would take on happily. By giving up illusions of control and admitting powerlessness, they might have done the one truly powerful thing that could have saved their lives. I can only pray my friends still above ground will choose the route to Higher Ground and let go.
Is it possible after all one can find evacuation routes away from the vortex of existential crisis, mental illness, addiction, cancer, divorce, unemployment? Five years after being told I had no evacuation route from my own affective cyclonic storms, I’ve found compelling evidence suggesting there’s a way to Higher Ground. My standing on it is all the proof I need. I have numerous friends and family hammered relentlessly by cancer, yet strong in spirit and quality of life, standing on Higher Ground, even if missing a lot of body parts. Another has endured seventy-five surgeries. Downsized friends speak of liberation from the tyranny of corporate culture and the wonder of simplicity. I find great joy working in an institutional kitchen for no pay, sometimes just peeling hard-boiled eggs.
In recovery we learn there’s a calm eye in the storms of our lives, if we but allow it to form around us. By owning our true powerlessness we become powerful in ways unimagined. An anonymous imperative suggests, “I will try to be unruffled, no matter what happens. I will keep my emotions in check, although others about me are letting their go. I will keep calm in the face of disturbance, keep that deep, inner calm throughout the experiences of the day.”
The Apostle Paul exhorts us to “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
And He might lead you to Higher Ground. Just ask.
Just Enough is a Feast 2-13-12
Anderson, South Carolina
Circumstances worked out for me to participate in a three-day wedding extravaganza in Torino, Italy. The venue for this grand nuptial banquet was a wondrous sienna brick castle with its moat and draw bridge still intact. One can only wonder at the stories held in mute secrecy by those seven hundred year old walls.
At 3 PM we guests convened with the wedding party under marquees in the bottom of the drained and landscaped moat for assorted spirits and starters, lifting toasts to two lives reaching unity in love. About 4 PM we entered a grand ballroom from another world, decorated with epic battle paintings and inlaid parquet floors, illuminated by grandiose chandeliers, looking like something from the winter palaces of Russia. At 9 PM we slowly staggered out of the banquet hall having gained something on the order of five pounds or more, bloated into absolute misery.
Perhaps an hour or so into the main feast, wondering just how many courses there were to be, it seemed expedient to start writing down exactly what we were eating. It would make the stuff of great party conversation. Various platters of whole flaming things, feathered things, things still recognizable as once living beings, and dozens of side dishes filled out a full fifteen-course spread that effectively bankrupted the bride’s family. During those six hours I often wished we had Styrofoam coolers, dry ice and Tupperware. This one gut-wrenching feast would have fed me in opulence for two weeks. I think our collective post-prandial wretchedness was the equal or greater than the misery experienced during a forty-day religious fast. I nearly had an existential crisis, wondering if there wasn’t some middle ground, a Holy Grail of moderation.
Last night I dined from a plastic tray on a bedside table in a seventh floor hospital room. A dear friend attempting to qualify for lung transplant has spent much of the past year hospitalized. We have occasional dinner dates in Karen’s room and dream of making a road trip to the nearest transplant center; I’m appointed her medical guardian if she’s granted this chance at new life. I stop by the cafeteria to buy dinner, timing my arrival to match her meal service. My friend’s medical condition is such that eating much of anything makes her bloated beyond measure, creating breathless misery. Consequentially her four-ounce yogurt and fruit cocktail containers became my dessert course after I dispatched a vegetable plate and small salad.
Karen’s room faces the helipad, well illuminated with intense red and green landing lights. She commented how it always looks like Christmas when she gazes out the window at night. What an attitude. Someone suffocating with end-stage lung disease, confined for nearly a year, unable to walk to the bathroom, thinks the world looks like Christmas. I sat there thinking how good my vegetable plate tasted to me, enjoying a good friend’s upbeat attitude. I had a fine banquet, one from which I left feeling light of foot and spirit, not bloated with the misery that comes from trying to grasp too much from the world, from life itself. No one was bankrupted paying for this repast; $4.12, tax included.
A family nearly bankrupted itself trying to grasp for too much, pretending financial abundance, only to send guests away in the dark, miserable and burdened down. I had dinner last night in a world that looks like Christmas all year to one who needs the ultimate gift of life – new lungs – something another will offer as a supreme gift in death. No amount of money could buy such a gift. Karen knows that gift will come from the one who invented Christmas. She often dreams of a giant Christmas tree with pink lungs on it.
Sitting in a recovery meeting recently, one of our members was speaking about contentment and acceptance. Out of the mouth of this life-worn man came the most profound thing I’ve heard in a while, ‘enough is a feast.’ It took me a moment to grasp what he had just said; the theological implications offered the makings of several sermons.
Contentment and acceptance are mission-critical aspects of successful long-term sobriety. Without them, resentment fuels emotional pain more than capable of driving one back into catastrophic addiction. This newly-sober alcoholic was in wonder at having found the Holy Grail of moderation, not too much, not too little, enough, the fertile soil of contentment. In between too much and too little, he found by being average of station and resource he could be quite at peace with himself, God, and his world. He had grasped contentment, a prize nearly the equal of new lungs.
The Apostle Paul made a declaration of acceptance and contentment in his own life, one that’s been a foundational imperative for two millennia: rest in contentment, no matter one’s state of affairs. “I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.”
Those in recovery often speak of dealing with life on life’s terms. Sometimes we eat in castles. Sometimes we eat on plastic trays. Sometimes health is robust. At other times illness takes our breath away. We learn to turn our lives and will over to the care of God, asking only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. When we let him do the choosing, we get His best. Then we really have reason for the world to look like Christmas every day, no matter what.
Circumstances worked out for me to participate in a three-day wedding extravaganza in Torino, Italy. The venue for this grand nuptial banquet was a wondrous sienna brick castle with its moat and draw bridge still intact. One can only wonder at the stories held in mute secrecy by those seven hundred year old walls.
At 3 PM we guests convened with the wedding party under marquees in the bottom of the drained and landscaped moat for assorted spirits and starters, lifting toasts to two lives reaching unity in love. About 4 PM we entered a grand ballroom from another world, decorated with epic battle paintings and inlaid parquet floors, illuminated by grandiose chandeliers, looking like something from the winter palaces of Russia. At 9 PM we slowly staggered out of the banquet hall having gained something on the order of five pounds or more, bloated into absolute misery.
Perhaps an hour or so into the main feast, wondering just how many courses there were to be, it seemed expedient to start writing down exactly what we were eating. It would make the stuff of great party conversation. Various platters of whole flaming things, feathered things, things still recognizable as once living beings, and dozens of side dishes filled out a full fifteen-course spread that effectively bankrupted the bride’s family. During those six hours I often wished we had Styrofoam coolers, dry ice and Tupperware. This one gut-wrenching feast would have fed me in opulence for two weeks. I think our collective post-prandial wretchedness was the equal or greater than the misery experienced during a forty-day religious fast. I nearly had an existential crisis, wondering if there wasn’t some middle ground, a Holy Grail of moderation.
Last night I dined from a plastic tray on a bedside table in a seventh floor hospital room. A dear friend attempting to qualify for lung transplant has spent much of the past year hospitalized. We have occasional dinner dates in Karen’s room and dream of making a road trip to the nearest transplant center; I’m appointed her medical guardian if she’s granted this chance at new life. I stop by the cafeteria to buy dinner, timing my arrival to match her meal service. My friend’s medical condition is such that eating much of anything makes her bloated beyond measure, creating breathless misery. Consequentially her four-ounce yogurt and fruit cocktail containers became my dessert course after I dispatched a vegetable plate and small salad.
Karen’s room faces the helipad, well illuminated with intense red and green landing lights. She commented how it always looks like Christmas when she gazes out the window at night. What an attitude. Someone suffocating with end-stage lung disease, confined for nearly a year, unable to walk to the bathroom, thinks the world looks like Christmas. I sat there thinking how good my vegetable plate tasted to me, enjoying a good friend’s upbeat attitude. I had a fine banquet, one from which I left feeling light of foot and spirit, not bloated with the misery that comes from trying to grasp too much from the world, from life itself. No one was bankrupted paying for this repast; $4.12, tax included.
A family nearly bankrupted itself trying to grasp for too much, pretending financial abundance, only to send guests away in the dark, miserable and burdened down. I had dinner last night in a world that looks like Christmas all year to one who needs the ultimate gift of life – new lungs – something another will offer as a supreme gift in death. No amount of money could buy such a gift. Karen knows that gift will come from the one who invented Christmas. She often dreams of a giant Christmas tree with pink lungs on it.
Sitting in a recovery meeting recently, one of our members was speaking about contentment and acceptance. Out of the mouth of this life-worn man came the most profound thing I’ve heard in a while, ‘enough is a feast.’ It took me a moment to grasp what he had just said; the theological implications offered the makings of several sermons.
Contentment and acceptance are mission-critical aspects of successful long-term sobriety. Without them, resentment fuels emotional pain more than capable of driving one back into catastrophic addiction. This newly-sober alcoholic was in wonder at having found the Holy Grail of moderation, not too much, not too little, enough, the fertile soil of contentment. In between too much and too little, he found by being average of station and resource he could be quite at peace with himself, God, and his world. He had grasped contentment, a prize nearly the equal of new lungs.
The Apostle Paul made a declaration of acceptance and contentment in his own life, one that’s been a foundational imperative for two millennia: rest in contentment, no matter one’s state of affairs. “I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.”
Those in recovery often speak of dealing with life on life’s terms. Sometimes we eat in castles. Sometimes we eat on plastic trays. Sometimes health is robust. At other times illness takes our breath away. We learn to turn our lives and will over to the care of God, asking only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. When we let him do the choosing, we get His best. Then we really have reason for the world to look like Christmas every day, no matter what.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
My Creative Absence 2-11-12
Anderson, South Carolina
For decades I’ve been haunted by a dynamic I often have with other people. People upon first encounter with me wax enthusiastic about my sudden arrival in their lives. It seems I suddenly have new best friends. Almost invariably, as with the phases of the moon, a sudden waning takes place. Platinum enthusiasm gives way to dark indifference. This has happened so many times in church, workplaces, travel groups, even recovery rooms, so as to give me reason to seek professional counsel about the matter. Alas, I’ve never gained clarity on the obvious to others, but blind to me, defects of character that yields this reaction from uncounted people.
One of the great strengths of recovery communities is a strong ethos that includes non-judgment. For those who’ve torn the tracks out of their lives with drugs and alcohol, spawning immense collateral damage in the lives of those who love them most, there’s little room for the pot calling the kettle black. My five-year journey in recovery has indeed revealed a luxurious lack of such judgment, yet I find the very same dynamic of relational waxing and waning I find in wider society.
In the recovery world sponsorship is a relationship in which someone with years of consecutive experience provides experience, strength, and hope to newcomers. This precious relationship is often an admixture of coach, mentor, friend, drill instructor, even therapist. I’ve often had newcomers in the enthusiasm of their new-found sobriety seek me out to participate in a sponsorship role with them. Alas, I’ve consistently found them soon drifting away. Some have predictable catastrophic relapses and are lost to recovery and sobriety altogether. Yet, others staying true to the program drift away from me as well, sowing seeds of self-doubt about unseen character defects in my own life.
Recently this dynamic has been so clear as to have me wondering about my role in the recovery community, an admittedly very needy one with many challenging relational dynamics. In recent weeks it’s been necessary to summon police, set up severe boundaries around my life, even taking out one of my published phone lines. Even so, a self-assessment of my role in the community seems to have merit at present. There’s no better place to begin such a process than in my chapel at first light.
The beloved inspirational writer Henri Nouwen struggled greatly with the same sense of belonging, of perhaps being a square peg in a round hole in his own community. Like me, Henri Nouwen found himself in a very needy place with many challenging relational dynamics. His intense work with mentally challenged individuals living in community has many parallels to those in daily recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction. Reading Nouwen’s musings on the pain of uncertain place in community has long been helpful to me. He and I share the same angst. Even as one of the most successful spiritual writers of the twentieth century with vast demand for his presence at retreats and universities, he often struggled with finding his fit in community.
In the past few days I’ve been wondering about the specifics of my role in the community. Should I focus more on being of unseen service, taking care of group finances, buying supplies, keeping up the building, doing the necessary tasks of maintaining the infrastructure of a small fragile place where two thousand alcoholics and addicts visit each month? Should I leave it to others to be sponsors, to provide all the touchy feely relational dimensions which seem to elude me? So often I find myself in our facility alone, cleaning the floors, refilling sugar pots and coffee canisters, taking inventory of supplies, making up bank deposits, ad infinitum. It’s often a very lonely experience, having the building suddenly evacuated, being left alone in sudden silence as others go off for a bite to eat, or whatever it is newly clean and sober people in recovery go do after meetings. Almost daily someone asks me, “you locking up?” More often people are just gone. One of the dynamics of anonymous recovery communities is the reluctance to admit members into our private lives. People I’ve known for years often remain cardboard cutouts, giving little knowledge of their larger lives outside recovery. This only adds to a strange sort of alienation for me. Members freely talk about their last major relapse and how the shame felt, but I don’t know what kind of work they do or where they went on vacation.
Reading Nouwen’s words today gave me a very different spin on my role in community. During a dark night of the soul Nouwen adopted the practice of writing imperatives to himself. These found their way into print after his death, becoming an instant best seller. One of these entitled””Claim Your Unique Presence in Your community” offers a compelling concept. Perhaps my community does not need me as a constant presence. Perhaps it needs my creative absence. There are things I need in my life the recovery community is unable to give me. Henri tells me “This does not mean you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind. Do not be afraid to ask for these things. Doing so allows you to be faithful to your vocation and to feel safe. It is a service to those for whom you want to be a source of hope and a life-giving presence.”
Perhaps there are things I’m much better at than sponsoring people and going out with them and making small talk at the local diners, things like cleaning the floors, refilling sugar pots and coffee canisters, taking inventory of supplies, making up bank deposits, locking the door. In the recovery world we speak often of acceptance, of believing things are as they are supposed to be in God’s world. I might be doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, just a bit too much of it.
For years I’ve tended to over-responsibility with respect to the fragile world of recovery. I’ve been rightly accused by members of being the service-work wonder, doing too much. I can’t get people clean and sober and, even more certainly, I can’t keep them that way. Perhaps the best thing in the world for all of us is for me to simply walk from my responsibilities. But only for a season.
For decades I’ve been haunted by a dynamic I often have with other people. People upon first encounter with me wax enthusiastic about my sudden arrival in their lives. It seems I suddenly have new best friends. Almost invariably, as with the phases of the moon, a sudden waning takes place. Platinum enthusiasm gives way to dark indifference. This has happened so many times in church, workplaces, travel groups, even recovery rooms, so as to give me reason to seek professional counsel about the matter. Alas, I’ve never gained clarity on the obvious to others, but blind to me, defects of character that yields this reaction from uncounted people.
One of the great strengths of recovery communities is a strong ethos that includes non-judgment. For those who’ve torn the tracks out of their lives with drugs and alcohol, spawning immense collateral damage in the lives of those who love them most, there’s little room for the pot calling the kettle black. My five-year journey in recovery has indeed revealed a luxurious lack of such judgment, yet I find the very same dynamic of relational waxing and waning I find in wider society.
In the recovery world sponsorship is a relationship in which someone with years of consecutive experience provides experience, strength, and hope to newcomers. This precious relationship is often an admixture of coach, mentor, friend, drill instructor, even therapist. I’ve often had newcomers in the enthusiasm of their new-found sobriety seek me out to participate in a sponsorship role with them. Alas, I’ve consistently found them soon drifting away. Some have predictable catastrophic relapses and are lost to recovery and sobriety altogether. Yet, others staying true to the program drift away from me as well, sowing seeds of self-doubt about unseen character defects in my own life.
Recently this dynamic has been so clear as to have me wondering about my role in the recovery community, an admittedly very needy one with many challenging relational dynamics. In recent weeks it’s been necessary to summon police, set up severe boundaries around my life, even taking out one of my published phone lines. Even so, a self-assessment of my role in the community seems to have merit at present. There’s no better place to begin such a process than in my chapel at first light.
The beloved inspirational writer Henri Nouwen struggled greatly with the same sense of belonging, of perhaps being a square peg in a round hole in his own community. Like me, Henri Nouwen found himself in a very needy place with many challenging relational dynamics. His intense work with mentally challenged individuals living in community has many parallels to those in daily recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction. Reading Nouwen’s musings on the pain of uncertain place in community has long been helpful to me. He and I share the same angst. Even as one of the most successful spiritual writers of the twentieth century with vast demand for his presence at retreats and universities, he often struggled with finding his fit in community.
In the past few days I’ve been wondering about the specifics of my role in the community. Should I focus more on being of unseen service, taking care of group finances, buying supplies, keeping up the building, doing the necessary tasks of maintaining the infrastructure of a small fragile place where two thousand alcoholics and addicts visit each month? Should I leave it to others to be sponsors, to provide all the touchy feely relational dimensions which seem to elude me? So often I find myself in our facility alone, cleaning the floors, refilling sugar pots and coffee canisters, taking inventory of supplies, making up bank deposits, ad infinitum. It’s often a very lonely experience, having the building suddenly evacuated, being left alone in sudden silence as others go off for a bite to eat, or whatever it is newly clean and sober people in recovery go do after meetings. Almost daily someone asks me, “you locking up?” More often people are just gone. One of the dynamics of anonymous recovery communities is the reluctance to admit members into our private lives. People I’ve known for years often remain cardboard cutouts, giving little knowledge of their larger lives outside recovery. This only adds to a strange sort of alienation for me. Members freely talk about their last major relapse and how the shame felt, but I don’t know what kind of work they do or where they went on vacation.
Reading Nouwen’s words today gave me a very different spin on my role in community. During a dark night of the soul Nouwen adopted the practice of writing imperatives to himself. These found their way into print after his death, becoming an instant best seller. One of these entitled””Claim Your Unique Presence in Your community” offers a compelling concept. Perhaps my community does not need me as a constant presence. Perhaps it needs my creative absence. There are things I need in my life the recovery community is unable to give me. Henri tells me “This does not mean you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind. Do not be afraid to ask for these things. Doing so allows you to be faithful to your vocation and to feel safe. It is a service to those for whom you want to be a source of hope and a life-giving presence.”
Perhaps there are things I’m much better at than sponsoring people and going out with them and making small talk at the local diners, things like cleaning the floors, refilling sugar pots and coffee canisters, taking inventory of supplies, making up bank deposits, locking the door. In the recovery world we speak often of acceptance, of believing things are as they are supposed to be in God’s world. I might be doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, just a bit too much of it.
For years I’ve tended to over-responsibility with respect to the fragile world of recovery. I’ve been rightly accused by members of being the service-work wonder, doing too much. I can’t get people clean and sober and, even more certainly, I can’t keep them that way. Perhaps the best thing in the world for all of us is for me to simply walk from my responsibilities. But only for a season.
Turning Either to the Left or Right 2-8-12
Anderson, South Carolina
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, a driver made a wrong turn into a dead-end side street in Sarajevo. At approximately 10:45 am, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were killed by an assassin working for the Black Hand. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. This caused the Central Powers (including Germany, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary) and the allies of Serbia to declare war on each other, starting World War I. When the smoke cleared four and a half years later, 16,543,868 military and civilian deaths were recorded. 21,228,813 military wounded were recorded for twenty-two nations.
In recovery meetings alcoholics and drug addicts often quip about making wrong turns, ending up in liquor stores or crack houses. Tragically for many, the quips turn into catastrophic repeated realties. Recently a man I was working with made a left turn onto Gossett Street, driving to the scrap metal yard at the end of the road. There he was paid $400 from an automated ATM in exchange for the title to his perfectly fine car, worth thousands. The scrap metal yard proceeded to grind up the car for scrap metal, with my set of mechanics tools still in the trunk. He proceeded to ‘hire’ a cocaine prostitute and in mere hours destroyed his life, losing his place to live, his car, job, and a loving fellowship of men and women who were highly supportive of him over the previous months. He was confined to a psychiatric lock-up, where he experienced a nightmarish week. He was released only to again make a wrong turn, ending up in a place of incomprehensible demoralization; at the end of yet another crack cocaine run. We had to let him go.
One of our women left an evening recovery meeting several months ago on foot and immediately made a left turn on Murray Avenue to visit one of the conveniently located nearby crack houses. After a quick hard crack run in the house she re-crossed Murray Avenue only to be hit by a car going one direction at high speed. Catapulted across the four-lane roadway, she was run-over by a car going the other direction. Wrong turns produced a catastrophic result for her.
Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were on a humanitarian visit to a war hospital when they died as a result of their driver making an unintentional wrong turn into a dead end street, where an assassin spotted them. Cocaine addicts make intentional wrong turns and shred the fabric of their lives. One destroyed herself in seconds. In one scenario millions died, in two others but one was lost at a time. One cannot overstate consequences coming from making wrong turns, intended or not. Most of us can recall vivid memories of decision points in our lives, points we would pay dearly for the opportunity to revisit with the greater wisdom and knowledge of hindsight. Alas, we have no practice runs at life.
One of the on-going challenges in recovery work is allowing people to make wrong turns in their lives, not getting in the way of their bottoms. We learn quickly we cannot protect people from making wrong turns. No one can protect Archdukes from unintentional turns into blind alleys. No one can protect alcoholics and addicts from liquor stores and crack houses. They must learn to seek defense for themselves against their own demons. Assassins and drug dealers are inclined to get the same macabre results.
We can’t predict where assassins might show up but we can predict with total certainty the results of unmitigated alcoholic drinking and drug use. The insanity of addiction comes from its victims continuing their deadly turns, despite knowledge of near-certain extinction. Since the Armistice in 1918 that brought an end to World War 1, one can estimate somewhere between five and eight million citizens died in the United States alone from alcohol and drug abuse. Yet much of the American entertainment, hospitality, and sports industries are financed by producers of alcohol, a well-known gateway to other drugs. If one were to capture data from the thirty nations involved in World War 1, results would reveal more have died from intentional wrong turns into alcohol and drugs than died in the Great War to end all wars. Nearly a century later we fight an ongoing war with no Armistice in the works.
Last night after enjoying an early evening birthday dinner with thirty friends, I made a right turn onto Calhoun Street, ending up on the university campus. In the recital hall an accomplished pianist and a splendid lyric opera singer provided rapturous renditions of French arias and classical songs. As I sat there, feeling far removed from the nightmarish world of alcoholism and drug abuse, I thought about the turns these two finely synchronized musicians made in their lives. Not picking the easier softer way in life, they spent hours in tedious practice and study, preparing for effective careers as performers and professors. I thought of how they made turns giving affirmation and inspiration to their students, encouraging them to find life down Calhoun Street rather than on the other side of Murray Avenue. How very close these utterly different universes are to one another, yet so far.
As I walked across campus on an unusually warm winter evening, I wondered about turns the young idealistic students about me were going to make, how they would find the right turns to meaningful rewarding lives, avoiding the left turns leading to destruction. How would their decision-making skills work when faced with the inevitable turbulence that comes with life.
In my work with those recovering from alcoholism and addition, I stress the importance of seeking divine guidance in all the affairs of life. Life can be vexing and decision making very difficult, especially when emotions and objectivity have been distorted by addiction. The way alcoholics and addicts can achieve effective defense against the demons of alcohol and drugs is to press hard into the heart of God, seeking Him in all affairs of life, especially in the multitude of life’s decisions, be it to turn right on Calhoun Street and end up in the recital hall or to turn left, crossing Murray Avenue and ending up in death’s den.
The eleventh step in recovery declares “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” Eighty years of collective experience by millions in recovery underscore the vast benefits deriving from trusting God about where to make our turns in life. “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day, “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.”
We just might get across the street safely and enjoy a rapturous song.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, a driver made a wrong turn into a dead-end side street in Sarajevo. At approximately 10:45 am, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were killed by an assassin working for the Black Hand. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. This caused the Central Powers (including Germany, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary) and the allies of Serbia to declare war on each other, starting World War I. When the smoke cleared four and a half years later, 16,543,868 military and civilian deaths were recorded. 21,228,813 military wounded were recorded for twenty-two nations.
In recovery meetings alcoholics and drug addicts often quip about making wrong turns, ending up in liquor stores or crack houses. Tragically for many, the quips turn into catastrophic repeated realties. Recently a man I was working with made a left turn onto Gossett Street, driving to the scrap metal yard at the end of the road. There he was paid $400 from an automated ATM in exchange for the title to his perfectly fine car, worth thousands. The scrap metal yard proceeded to grind up the car for scrap metal, with my set of mechanics tools still in the trunk. He proceeded to ‘hire’ a cocaine prostitute and in mere hours destroyed his life, losing his place to live, his car, job, and a loving fellowship of men and women who were highly supportive of him over the previous months. He was confined to a psychiatric lock-up, where he experienced a nightmarish week. He was released only to again make a wrong turn, ending up in a place of incomprehensible demoralization; at the end of yet another crack cocaine run. We had to let him go.
One of our women left an evening recovery meeting several months ago on foot and immediately made a left turn on Murray Avenue to visit one of the conveniently located nearby crack houses. After a quick hard crack run in the house she re-crossed Murray Avenue only to be hit by a car going one direction at high speed. Catapulted across the four-lane roadway, she was run-over by a car going the other direction. Wrong turns produced a catastrophic result for her.
Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were on a humanitarian visit to a war hospital when they died as a result of their driver making an unintentional wrong turn into a dead end street, where an assassin spotted them. Cocaine addicts make intentional wrong turns and shred the fabric of their lives. One destroyed herself in seconds. In one scenario millions died, in two others but one was lost at a time. One cannot overstate consequences coming from making wrong turns, intended or not. Most of us can recall vivid memories of decision points in our lives, points we would pay dearly for the opportunity to revisit with the greater wisdom and knowledge of hindsight. Alas, we have no practice runs at life.
One of the on-going challenges in recovery work is allowing people to make wrong turns in their lives, not getting in the way of their bottoms. We learn quickly we cannot protect people from making wrong turns. No one can protect Archdukes from unintentional turns into blind alleys. No one can protect alcoholics and addicts from liquor stores and crack houses. They must learn to seek defense for themselves against their own demons. Assassins and drug dealers are inclined to get the same macabre results.
We can’t predict where assassins might show up but we can predict with total certainty the results of unmitigated alcoholic drinking and drug use. The insanity of addiction comes from its victims continuing their deadly turns, despite knowledge of near-certain extinction. Since the Armistice in 1918 that brought an end to World War 1, one can estimate somewhere between five and eight million citizens died in the United States alone from alcohol and drug abuse. Yet much of the American entertainment, hospitality, and sports industries are financed by producers of alcohol, a well-known gateway to other drugs. If one were to capture data from the thirty nations involved in World War 1, results would reveal more have died from intentional wrong turns into alcohol and drugs than died in the Great War to end all wars. Nearly a century later we fight an ongoing war with no Armistice in the works.
Last night after enjoying an early evening birthday dinner with thirty friends, I made a right turn onto Calhoun Street, ending up on the university campus. In the recital hall an accomplished pianist and a splendid lyric opera singer provided rapturous renditions of French arias and classical songs. As I sat there, feeling far removed from the nightmarish world of alcoholism and drug abuse, I thought about the turns these two finely synchronized musicians made in their lives. Not picking the easier softer way in life, they spent hours in tedious practice and study, preparing for effective careers as performers and professors. I thought of how they made turns giving affirmation and inspiration to their students, encouraging them to find life down Calhoun Street rather than on the other side of Murray Avenue. How very close these utterly different universes are to one another, yet so far.
As I walked across campus on an unusually warm winter evening, I wondered about turns the young idealistic students about me were going to make, how they would find the right turns to meaningful rewarding lives, avoiding the left turns leading to destruction. How would their decision-making skills work when faced with the inevitable turbulence that comes with life.
In my work with those recovering from alcoholism and addition, I stress the importance of seeking divine guidance in all the affairs of life. Life can be vexing and decision making very difficult, especially when emotions and objectivity have been distorted by addiction. The way alcoholics and addicts can achieve effective defense against the demons of alcohol and drugs is to press hard into the heart of God, seeking Him in all affairs of life, especially in the multitude of life’s decisions, be it to turn right on Calhoun Street and end up in the recital hall or to turn left, crossing Murray Avenue and ending up in death’s den.
The eleventh step in recovery declares “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” Eighty years of collective experience by millions in recovery underscore the vast benefits deriving from trusting God about where to make our turns in life. “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day, “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.”
We just might get across the street safely and enjoy a rapturous song.
Losing Our Moral Bearing: A Growing Economic Divide 1-25-12
Anderson, South Carolina
Protected by five thousand Swiss soldiers on the ground and restricted airspace, sixteen hundred economic and political leaders, including forty heads of state and government, are enjoying the life of luxury reserved for the gilded class as they converge at eastern Switzerland's upscale Davos resort in Graubünden for their 42nd annual five-day World Economic Forum. The costs of security measures shared by the Forum foundation and Swiss cantonal and national authorities have been frequently criticized in the Swiss national media. The foundation sponsoring the Forum is funded by a thousand member companies, the typical one a global enterprise with more than five billion dollars in turnover, although the latter can vary by industry and region. The majority of these privileged elite control empires worth billions.
Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the World Economic Forum declares "Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual. Capitalism in its current form has no place in the world around us. We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations”
This loss of confidence may have already taken place. Last month a New York Times poll found Congress' approval rating fell to an all-time low of 9 percent. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll found 11 percent of people found polygamy "morally acceptable." Additionally, 30 percent of Americans expressed approval of pornography. Another poll shows 11 percent of Americans in favor of communism.
Former White House economist Nouriel Roubini reminds us that today we are "back to the inequality of 1929 and the Great Depression." High unemployment and the failure of wages to keep pace with living costs are resulting in widespread unrest against elites. As much of the world struggles with increasing economic inequity and decreasing standards of living, rising discontent is powering waves of revolution. Many governments are toppling in the streets. More ominous for us is the potential toppling of the prevailing model of economics powering Western commerce for centuries – capitalism.
Evidence amasses daily suggesting Western models of industrial capitalism are creating increasing disparity. Many propose the middle class is disappearing from numerous nations. There is objective data to suggest this is becoming true in the United States. Political observers and sociologists find much agreement on the role of the middle class in creating and maintaining political, economic, and social stability. History is replete with staggering examples of national consequences when this role is ignored.
The inequity existing in the United States almost defies description. Robert Creamer, a political strategist, describes this in lucid fashion. In 2009 “the CEO of the average company in the Standard and Poor's Index made $10.5 million. That means that before lunch, on the first workday of the year, he (sometimes she) has made more than the minimum wage workers in his company will make all year. That translates to $5,048 per hour or about 344 times the pay of the typical American worker. Most people would consider a salary of $100,000 per year reasonably good pay. But the average CEO makes that much in the first half-week of the year. And that's nothing compared to some of the kings of Wall Street. In 2007, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged $588 million in compensation each -- more than 19,000 times as much as the average U.S. worker."
When a presidential candidate is willing to buy and tear down a $3.5 million house and build a $12 million palace in its place, something has gone amuck. Someone who makes $60,000 a day off investments earned from what has been described as ‘vulture capitalism’ might just have a hard time gaining credibility with rank and file voters in the street. “In the eyes of many workers, and especially young people, the business community has lost its moral compass,” trade union leader Sharan Burrow pointed out in opening day debate at the Forum in Davos. "We must redesign the model. We must reset it,” she urged. One can only wonder if a business leader who spent years dissecting corporations can guide a nation back onto a moral high road which includes fair economic opportunity for all.
I just spent a day roaming through the largest house in North America, all 175,000 square feet of it. Does it make moral sense for one individual to build a single house equivalent to one hundred average American houses, just to have a place for his gilded parties? I personally know a good number of people living four to a room in the ghetto, sleeping on small bunks made of two by fours; I see extremes of disparity most every day of my life, the disparity that topples governments and economic systems.
Has our ability to find acceptance and contentment in life been corrupted by our addiction to ‘just a bit more,’ sometimes immensely more. In my daily work with recovering alcoholics and addicts, I’m sometimes bewildered at the intensity of craving some of them experience, but no more so than by anyone believing they merit $588 million for doing essentially nothing but taking risk; no more so than by those willing to use pepper spray on fellow shoppers at a Wal-Mart holiday sale. The market for high-end luxury goods suggests addictions of all sorts are rampant. As drug lords and hedge fund managers accumulate inconceivable wealth I am reminded of the question once posed to the probate lawyer handling the Rockefeller fortune. “How much did Rockefeller leave?” The lawyer replied simply, “All of it.”
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Protected by five thousand Swiss soldiers on the ground and restricted airspace, sixteen hundred economic and political leaders, including forty heads of state and government, are enjoying the life of luxury reserved for the gilded class as they converge at eastern Switzerland's upscale Davos resort in Graubünden for their 42nd annual five-day World Economic Forum. The costs of security measures shared by the Forum foundation and Swiss cantonal and national authorities have been frequently criticized in the Swiss national media. The foundation sponsoring the Forum is funded by a thousand member companies, the typical one a global enterprise with more than five billion dollars in turnover, although the latter can vary by industry and region. The majority of these privileged elite control empires worth billions.
Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the World Economic Forum declares "Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual. Capitalism in its current form has no place in the world around us. We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations”
This loss of confidence may have already taken place. Last month a New York Times poll found Congress' approval rating fell to an all-time low of 9 percent. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll found 11 percent of people found polygamy "morally acceptable." Additionally, 30 percent of Americans expressed approval of pornography. Another poll shows 11 percent of Americans in favor of communism.
Former White House economist Nouriel Roubini reminds us that today we are "back to the inequality of 1929 and the Great Depression." High unemployment and the failure of wages to keep pace with living costs are resulting in widespread unrest against elites. As much of the world struggles with increasing economic inequity and decreasing standards of living, rising discontent is powering waves of revolution. Many governments are toppling in the streets. More ominous for us is the potential toppling of the prevailing model of economics powering Western commerce for centuries – capitalism.
Evidence amasses daily suggesting Western models of industrial capitalism are creating increasing disparity. Many propose the middle class is disappearing from numerous nations. There is objective data to suggest this is becoming true in the United States. Political observers and sociologists find much agreement on the role of the middle class in creating and maintaining political, economic, and social stability. History is replete with staggering examples of national consequences when this role is ignored.
The inequity existing in the United States almost defies description. Robert Creamer, a political strategist, describes this in lucid fashion. In 2009 “the CEO of the average company in the Standard and Poor's Index made $10.5 million. That means that before lunch, on the first workday of the year, he (sometimes she) has made more than the minimum wage workers in his company will make all year. That translates to $5,048 per hour or about 344 times the pay of the typical American worker. Most people would consider a salary of $100,000 per year reasonably good pay. But the average CEO makes that much in the first half-week of the year. And that's nothing compared to some of the kings of Wall Street. In 2007, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged $588 million in compensation each -- more than 19,000 times as much as the average U.S. worker."
When a presidential candidate is willing to buy and tear down a $3.5 million house and build a $12 million palace in its place, something has gone amuck. Someone who makes $60,000 a day off investments earned from what has been described as ‘vulture capitalism’ might just have a hard time gaining credibility with rank and file voters in the street. “In the eyes of many workers, and especially young people, the business community has lost its moral compass,” trade union leader Sharan Burrow pointed out in opening day debate at the Forum in Davos. "We must redesign the model. We must reset it,” she urged. One can only wonder if a business leader who spent years dissecting corporations can guide a nation back onto a moral high road which includes fair economic opportunity for all.
I just spent a day roaming through the largest house in North America, all 175,000 square feet of it. Does it make moral sense for one individual to build a single house equivalent to one hundred average American houses, just to have a place for his gilded parties? I personally know a good number of people living four to a room in the ghetto, sleeping on small bunks made of two by fours; I see extremes of disparity most every day of my life, the disparity that topples governments and economic systems.
Has our ability to find acceptance and contentment in life been corrupted by our addiction to ‘just a bit more,’ sometimes immensely more. In my daily work with recovering alcoholics and addicts, I’m sometimes bewildered at the intensity of craving some of them experience, but no more so than by anyone believing they merit $588 million for doing essentially nothing but taking risk; no more so than by those willing to use pepper spray on fellow shoppers at a Wal-Mart holiday sale. The market for high-end luxury goods suggests addictions of all sorts are rampant. As drug lords and hedge fund managers accumulate inconceivable wealth I am reminded of the question once posed to the probate lawyer handling the Rockefeller fortune. “How much did Rockefeller leave?” The lawyer replied simply, “All of it.”
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
My Epiphany 1-8-12
Anderson South Carolina
For some years I’ve attempted to wrap my head around the idea of Christmas as a spiritual state to which one seeks year round. Part of my efforts to do so include the less common practice of observing the Twelve Days of Christmas, doing readings through Advent, and marking the Epiphany as my observance of True Christmas – archeology aside which suggests Jesus was not born in winter at all. Another practice I’ve enjoyed is leaving all my Christmas decorations in place until at least this time of year and often much longer so as to see them under winter snow. Here on the Epiphany I have fourteen recycled Christmas trees in place whereas my neighbors sent theirs to be land filled ten days ago. This year it seems a good idea to send out cards and letters on the Epiphany instead of the old Roman holiday observed on Dec 25. Importantly, Christmas is extending in my spirit; I did not have that all-powerful sense of Christmas being suddenly over, just a blip on retail cash flow charts.
Going the other direction I put up decorations late in October and have lived in a colorful enchanted space for nearly three months. I suspect others would label me some sort of Christmas eccentric but there are certainly far worse things to be accused of; I do have a rudimentary theology in development to explain my aberrant behavior.
What’s not eccentric is trying to infuse the True Message of the holidays into the lives of those struck by the misfortunes of addiction, alcoholism, and other life adversities such as unemployment, divorce, homelessness, and perhaps worst, existential crisis. Is this all there is? What’s the point?
What had been a carefully compartmentalized chunk of my life for five years seems to have become a calling, a mission; something giving me a powerful sense of purpose and meaning. The pandemic of alcoholism and drug addiction washing over the lives of millions as a tsunami of angst and despair threatens the very foundations of our society. Finding myself a participant in the rebuilding of lives shattered by addictions is rewarding beyond measure. It’s also disheartening beyond measure. Watching a newly emerged life of recovery cut down by relapse is sometimes overwhelming. Journeys to hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral parlors to observe lives of great potential truncated by addiction are sobering, to say the least. Seeing estranged partners rebuild their marriages, regain custody of children, become gainfully employed, gain driver’s licenses, stay out of prison; this offers rewards greater than anything boxed, wrapped, and put under a Christmas tree.
Christmas Eve found me taking several recovering addicts with me to a High Christmas Mass. Watching them have eleventh step encounters with God on the kneelers during the Eucharist was the grandest of Christmas gifts. Following the Mass we indulged in a fine Italian feast prepared by the wife of one of these men, herself recovering from addiction. It’s also proven heartening to have several of them in tow with me at Sunday morning services the last several months, followed by Sunday dinner.
Many years the holidays were reminders of what I did not have. My origins in a broken alcoholic addicted family left a hole, one only filled in recent years by the broken alcoholic addicted men and women who have become part of my life seven days a week. There was no emptiness for me this year in my transit of the holiday season.
Thanksgiving Day proved epic. By my best count one hundred and five of the marginalized of society showed up for a feast lasting some twelve hours. Fifty pounds of turkey, a couple hams, and three dozen side dishes allowed the unwanted to feel wanted and welcomed in a place where they could be reminded liberation from their addictions is just a sincere prayer away. In the recovery message we are clearly told the ownership of one’s powerlessness is the portal by which one finds liberation and strength. “Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be the firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.” There was much to give thanks for in our crowded little meeting rooms.
Each year under the cover of night when no one is in or around our small cinder block building, I complete a covert operation of installing two decorated Christmas trees in the meeting rooms and stringing up lights on the store-front windows, making sure everyone knows Christmas is an all-inclusive event. Christmas Day included a menu of fifty pounds of ham and the appropriate side dishes for the eighty who showed up. For those exiting alcohol abuse, a dozen kinds of pies, cakes, and stollens was de rigueur. In a normal week I put out ten pounds of granulated sugar every three days. Cashiers in Wal-Mart often ask what I plan to do with one hundred pounds of sugar. I tell them I’m sweetening up lives and will be back for another hundred pounds in thirty days. Alcohol reduces to simple sugars and withdrawal from it produces astounding sugar cravings.
New Year’s Day is the most challenging of all for newcomers recently exiting their alcoholism and addictions. American culture and most of its holidays and sporting events are built around the copious consumption of alcohol. We had desperate men seeking refuge with us, afraid of losing their sobriety while watching the holiday bowl games. About seventy joined us on New Year’s Day to enjoy deli sandwiches and an assortment of cakes and pies I had scrounged up. Sadly, some let go of their life rings and were washed back into the hideous despair and darkness of addiction. Others stayed the course and with God’s help traversed the holidays and bowl games successfully. There is little more rewarding than to hold hands with those who observe their first holidays in solid sobriety. The hard part for me is knowing I can do little to protect these men and women, able to do little more than commit them to prayer and the care of God. Paradoxically, this is the most powerful thing I can do for them, and for myself.
Most of my days, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and now the Epiphany include hospital visitation, a million phone calls, hauling those without drivers licenses, chairing meetings, cleaning toilets, taking out the trash, hoping newly-leafed sobriety for these will include an interest in cleaning up after themselves.
It has been a grand year. It seems like a good time to go find a bit of breakfast and enjoy some of the Christmas trees that won’t ever see the landfill.
Blessings and good wishes for Christmas every day.
For some years I’ve attempted to wrap my head around the idea of Christmas as a spiritual state to which one seeks year round. Part of my efforts to do so include the less common practice of observing the Twelve Days of Christmas, doing readings through Advent, and marking the Epiphany as my observance of True Christmas – archeology aside which suggests Jesus was not born in winter at all. Another practice I’ve enjoyed is leaving all my Christmas decorations in place until at least this time of year and often much longer so as to see them under winter snow. Here on the Epiphany I have fourteen recycled Christmas trees in place whereas my neighbors sent theirs to be land filled ten days ago. This year it seems a good idea to send out cards and letters on the Epiphany instead of the old Roman holiday observed on Dec 25. Importantly, Christmas is extending in my spirit; I did not have that all-powerful sense of Christmas being suddenly over, just a blip on retail cash flow charts.
Going the other direction I put up decorations late in October and have lived in a colorful enchanted space for nearly three months. I suspect others would label me some sort of Christmas eccentric but there are certainly far worse things to be accused of; I do have a rudimentary theology in development to explain my aberrant behavior.
What’s not eccentric is trying to infuse the True Message of the holidays into the lives of those struck by the misfortunes of addiction, alcoholism, and other life adversities such as unemployment, divorce, homelessness, and perhaps worst, existential crisis. Is this all there is? What’s the point?
What had been a carefully compartmentalized chunk of my life for five years seems to have become a calling, a mission; something giving me a powerful sense of purpose and meaning. The pandemic of alcoholism and drug addiction washing over the lives of millions as a tsunami of angst and despair threatens the very foundations of our society. Finding myself a participant in the rebuilding of lives shattered by addictions is rewarding beyond measure. It’s also disheartening beyond measure. Watching a newly emerged life of recovery cut down by relapse is sometimes overwhelming. Journeys to hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral parlors to observe lives of great potential truncated by addiction are sobering, to say the least. Seeing estranged partners rebuild their marriages, regain custody of children, become gainfully employed, gain driver’s licenses, stay out of prison; this offers rewards greater than anything boxed, wrapped, and put under a Christmas tree.
Christmas Eve found me taking several recovering addicts with me to a High Christmas Mass. Watching them have eleventh step encounters with God on the kneelers during the Eucharist was the grandest of Christmas gifts. Following the Mass we indulged in a fine Italian feast prepared by the wife of one of these men, herself recovering from addiction. It’s also proven heartening to have several of them in tow with me at Sunday morning services the last several months, followed by Sunday dinner.
Many years the holidays were reminders of what I did not have. My origins in a broken alcoholic addicted family left a hole, one only filled in recent years by the broken alcoholic addicted men and women who have become part of my life seven days a week. There was no emptiness for me this year in my transit of the holiday season.
Thanksgiving Day proved epic. By my best count one hundred and five of the marginalized of society showed up for a feast lasting some twelve hours. Fifty pounds of turkey, a couple hams, and three dozen side dishes allowed the unwanted to feel wanted and welcomed in a place where they could be reminded liberation from their addictions is just a sincere prayer away. In the recovery message we are clearly told the ownership of one’s powerlessness is the portal by which one finds liberation and strength. “Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be the firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.” There was much to give thanks for in our crowded little meeting rooms.
Each year under the cover of night when no one is in or around our small cinder block building, I complete a covert operation of installing two decorated Christmas trees in the meeting rooms and stringing up lights on the store-front windows, making sure everyone knows Christmas is an all-inclusive event. Christmas Day included a menu of fifty pounds of ham and the appropriate side dishes for the eighty who showed up. For those exiting alcohol abuse, a dozen kinds of pies, cakes, and stollens was de rigueur. In a normal week I put out ten pounds of granulated sugar every three days. Cashiers in Wal-Mart often ask what I plan to do with one hundred pounds of sugar. I tell them I’m sweetening up lives and will be back for another hundred pounds in thirty days. Alcohol reduces to simple sugars and withdrawal from it produces astounding sugar cravings.
New Year’s Day is the most challenging of all for newcomers recently exiting their alcoholism and addictions. American culture and most of its holidays and sporting events are built around the copious consumption of alcohol. We had desperate men seeking refuge with us, afraid of losing their sobriety while watching the holiday bowl games. About seventy joined us on New Year’s Day to enjoy deli sandwiches and an assortment of cakes and pies I had scrounged up. Sadly, some let go of their life rings and were washed back into the hideous despair and darkness of addiction. Others stayed the course and with God’s help traversed the holidays and bowl games successfully. There is little more rewarding than to hold hands with those who observe their first holidays in solid sobriety. The hard part for me is knowing I can do little to protect these men and women, able to do little more than commit them to prayer and the care of God. Paradoxically, this is the most powerful thing I can do for them, and for myself.
Most of my days, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and now the Epiphany include hospital visitation, a million phone calls, hauling those without drivers licenses, chairing meetings, cleaning toilets, taking out the trash, hoping newly-leafed sobriety for these will include an interest in cleaning up after themselves.
It has been a grand year. It seems like a good time to go find a bit of breakfast and enjoy some of the Christmas trees that won’t ever see the landfill.
Blessings and good wishes for Christmas every day.
Getting From Here to There 11-21-11
Anderson, South Carolina
America is the most mobile society the world’s ever known. Distances Americans are willing to drive to their jobs are legendary. One man is known to drive 379 miles round trip every day from his ordinary house to an ordinary job. His commute is seven hours. He rarely sees his family or house in the light of day. A man I once worked with drove 142 miles one way every day to our office to work in an ordinary job. Each year some twenty percent of us actually move our households; disrupting long-standing friendships, neighborhood connections, ad infinitum. My own street has become an avenue of virtual strangers.
It’s hard to fathom why someone would be willing to drive seven hours to work, consuming all his free time and most of his earnings. Just paying for gasoline requires more than $1,100 a month, not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle nearly consumed in a year’s time. Does this man and millions of others trapped in long commutes ever really think about where they are going in life? Is an ordinary vinyl house in the suburbs worth the huge environmental, economic, and relational costs? Many of my friends are trapped in commutes reducing their discretionary income and time to the barest minimums.
Our car-based culture continues to be reflected in the physical landscape about us. In the early 1990s David Kunstler in his landmark The Geography of Nowhere described a bleak faceless landscape where we have no sense of place or belonging, one wholly car-dependent. Once-distinctive human-scaled townscapes have given way to identical franchised environments devoid of character. In the intervening twenty years since he wrote his sobering observations of American land use, we’ve progressed further into his science-fiction depiction of the world. Alas, it’s not science fiction. Bucolic places present in my small town two decades ago have long since been paved over. Pleasing pastoral two-lane roads in the country have morphed into vast five lane-highways congested with a plethora of retail businesses, mostly oriented towards cars, their sales and service, and the feeding of their drivers with a hundred drive-through windows. Presently four vast gas station/convenience complexes are being constructed on four highways coming into our modest town. There’s no way these facilities can cost less than $15 million and we already have far too many gas stations.
Since Kunstler described our world we’ve seen the advent of high-energy LED sign boards in front of many establishments, providing distracting multi-colored bids to get us to slow down long enough to leave deposits of our hard earned incomes in various establishments. They apparently work. Why else would a business spend up to $40,000 for such a display board? My town is looking ever more like a miniature Las Vegas at night with its main street a twinkling mass of high output LEDs.
My longest commute in decades consists of my present one, driving two miles to Meals on Wheels to pack hot meals for house-bound senior citizens. Even in this ultra-short commute I receive much ‘instruction’ about how to live life. One billboard informs me “Happiness begins here … Love, Peace … Anderson Mitsubishi.” Our car-based culture has hundreds of millions of us believing cars are magic carpets able to take us to Nirvana. Mitsubishi cars may be quality autos at fair prices but it’s unlikely they will bring me love and peace. There is no shortage of people who’ve found financial bondage with their new cars rather than happiness.
A short distance further along my commute another billboard tells me “It’s where you finish the night that counts.” Another version across town states “It matters only where you finish the night.” A local tavern believes my day will end better if it ends with me in a drunken stupor on one of its barstools. My daily work with alcoholics suggests days don’t end so well that end on barstools. I’ve had acquaintances tell me they’ve awakened in jail cells under $50,000 bond and have no idea why they are there. Invariably they describe having taken a seat on someone’s stool the night before. Perhaps these billboards unwitting speak a profoundly important truth. It really matters greatly where we finish the night.
In our mobile culture we have little concept of where our lives are going. If billboards and LED displays can provoke us into making imprudent impulsive decisions casting us into overwhelming debt for new cars, into staying on barstools until closing time and finding ourselves awaking on the cold cement floor of a cell perhaps we need to review our itineraries. A sound byte I’ve always found useful is “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” If one doesn’t have a life plan, it’s not likely one is going to end up at a favorable destination. Without goals and plans, one can arrive in the winter of life only to have bitter regrets at having wasted the vast opportunities life has to offer.
In John Trent’s Life Mapping, the reader is given life strategies, a map, a plan for traversing the sometimes torturous terrain of life. As a prominent family counselor with extensive insight into human nature, Trent has great understanding of the emotional obstacles making getting from here to there less than straightforward. He also understands where true wisdom comes from. It doesn’t come from LED message boards or billboards on the highway. As the cover of his book states, Life Mapping will help you get where you want to go regardless of where you’ve been.
When we seek the One Who is the Source of all wisdom and ask only for knowledge of His will for our lives and the power to carry that out, we set ourselves up for the possibility of grand journeys to places unimagined. We can awaken to Ectachrome moments of wonder rather than despairing moments of confusion in bankruptcy court or prison cells of our own making.
America is the most mobile society the world’s ever known. Distances Americans are willing to drive to their jobs are legendary. One man is known to drive 379 miles round trip every day from his ordinary house to an ordinary job. His commute is seven hours. He rarely sees his family or house in the light of day. A man I once worked with drove 142 miles one way every day to our office to work in an ordinary job. Each year some twenty percent of us actually move our households; disrupting long-standing friendships, neighborhood connections, ad infinitum. My own street has become an avenue of virtual strangers.
It’s hard to fathom why someone would be willing to drive seven hours to work, consuming all his free time and most of his earnings. Just paying for gasoline requires more than $1,100 a month, not to mention wear and tear on a vehicle nearly consumed in a year’s time. Does this man and millions of others trapped in long commutes ever really think about where they are going in life? Is an ordinary vinyl house in the suburbs worth the huge environmental, economic, and relational costs? Many of my friends are trapped in commutes reducing their discretionary income and time to the barest minimums.
Our car-based culture continues to be reflected in the physical landscape about us. In the early 1990s David Kunstler in his landmark The Geography of Nowhere described a bleak faceless landscape where we have no sense of place or belonging, one wholly car-dependent. Once-distinctive human-scaled townscapes have given way to identical franchised environments devoid of character. In the intervening twenty years since he wrote his sobering observations of American land use, we’ve progressed further into his science-fiction depiction of the world. Alas, it’s not science fiction. Bucolic places present in my small town two decades ago have long since been paved over. Pleasing pastoral two-lane roads in the country have morphed into vast five lane-highways congested with a plethora of retail businesses, mostly oriented towards cars, their sales and service, and the feeding of their drivers with a hundred drive-through windows. Presently four vast gas station/convenience complexes are being constructed on four highways coming into our modest town. There’s no way these facilities can cost less than $15 million and we already have far too many gas stations.
Since Kunstler described our world we’ve seen the advent of high-energy LED sign boards in front of many establishments, providing distracting multi-colored bids to get us to slow down long enough to leave deposits of our hard earned incomes in various establishments. They apparently work. Why else would a business spend up to $40,000 for such a display board? My town is looking ever more like a miniature Las Vegas at night with its main street a twinkling mass of high output LEDs.
My longest commute in decades consists of my present one, driving two miles to Meals on Wheels to pack hot meals for house-bound senior citizens. Even in this ultra-short commute I receive much ‘instruction’ about how to live life. One billboard informs me “Happiness begins here … Love, Peace … Anderson Mitsubishi.” Our car-based culture has hundreds of millions of us believing cars are magic carpets able to take us to Nirvana. Mitsubishi cars may be quality autos at fair prices but it’s unlikely they will bring me love and peace. There is no shortage of people who’ve found financial bondage with their new cars rather than happiness.
A short distance further along my commute another billboard tells me “It’s where you finish the night that counts.” Another version across town states “It matters only where you finish the night.” A local tavern believes my day will end better if it ends with me in a drunken stupor on one of its barstools. My daily work with alcoholics suggests days don’t end so well that end on barstools. I’ve had acquaintances tell me they’ve awakened in jail cells under $50,000 bond and have no idea why they are there. Invariably they describe having taken a seat on someone’s stool the night before. Perhaps these billboards unwitting speak a profoundly important truth. It really matters greatly where we finish the night.
In our mobile culture we have little concept of where our lives are going. If billboards and LED displays can provoke us into making imprudent impulsive decisions casting us into overwhelming debt for new cars, into staying on barstools until closing time and finding ourselves awaking on the cold cement floor of a cell perhaps we need to review our itineraries. A sound byte I’ve always found useful is “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” If one doesn’t have a life plan, it’s not likely one is going to end up at a favorable destination. Without goals and plans, one can arrive in the winter of life only to have bitter regrets at having wasted the vast opportunities life has to offer.
In John Trent’s Life Mapping, the reader is given life strategies, a map, a plan for traversing the sometimes torturous terrain of life. As a prominent family counselor with extensive insight into human nature, Trent has great understanding of the emotional obstacles making getting from here to there less than straightforward. He also understands where true wisdom comes from. It doesn’t come from LED message boards or billboards on the highway. As the cover of his book states, Life Mapping will help you get where you want to go regardless of where you’ve been.
When we seek the One Who is the Source of all wisdom and ask only for knowledge of His will for our lives and the power to carry that out, we set ourselves up for the possibility of grand journeys to places unimagined. We can awaken to Ectachrome moments of wonder rather than despairing moments of confusion in bankruptcy court or prison cells of our own making.
Sequence Failed Continuity 11-10-11
Anderson, South Carolina
The following link will take you to a fifteen-minute high-resolution film. Nothing will download to your computer. The film is compressed for instant viewing. It is an intensely compelling first person narrative by the American Airlines pilot originally scheduled to fly Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles on Sept 11, 2011. He challenges us to think about where we are going in life. My response to the film is pasted below the link.
http://www.youtube.com/user/peterscheibner#p/a/u/0/cLj4akmncsA
Sequence Failed Continuity
Anderson, South Carolina
A good friend of mine served as a captain on wide-bodied jets for several decades. One could easily describe him as a pilot’s pilot, a guy filled with class, technical acumen, and just the right measure of self confidence without being arrogant. If you’re trusting someone to carry you to the far side of the world eight miles above cold stormy North Atlantic waters at night, dodging level-five thunderstorms capable of squashing 747s like empty coke cans, it’s to your benefit to have one qualified with such character.
Yesterday my captain and I were in the gym talking. He often graces me with the most interesting tales of his storied career in aviation while I’m on the stair climber. He described a rather disquieting, perhaps dangerous phenomenon occurring on flight decks of commercial jets.
Newer generations of jets virtually fly themselves, relieving pilots of many tasks involved in getting three hundred people to their destinations safely. For those driving cars, it’s a bit like being relieved of clutches, gear shifts, front-end starter cranks, butterfly valves, and chokes. Those driving mini-vans and SUVs point the things and go, with seven kids in the back. Many newer Airbus and Boeing wide-bodies are capable of far more. Pilots can point them and go, with three hundred in the back, even letting go of the wheel for extended times. Stories are told of flight deck crews being sound asleep for hundreds of miles. Recently, attempts by air traffic control to hail a jet by radio failed; everyone was asleep at the wheel. The jet overshot its destination by hundreds of miles; yet landed safely.
Aviation safety is surreal. When one considers the thousands of large jets airborne at any time, the lack of accidents is truly astounding. Per mile, flight is more than a hundred times safer than family mini-vans. Automation of jets has contributed much to high levels of safety. It’s rare for pilots to fall asleep on the job or commit other faux pas, but when it happens it’s sometimes useful to have planes thinking for themselves.
Pilots ultimately earn their pay by having the right stuff when they encounter extraordinary conditions. Having the right stuff allows pilots to apply decades of experience to very fast thinking and countermand a set of potentially fatal events. The right stuff includes a powerful but subtle sense of how planes feel in all circumstances, having a sense of attitude, air speed, and dozens of other flight metrics. My friend wonders if too many years of flying automated planes can take the edge off vital skills. He cited an Air France wide-body lost over the Atlantic several years ago. He wondered if younger pilots lacking skills and experience of older pilots who learned how to use clutches, gear shifts, front end starter cranks, butterfly valves, and chokes failed to sense a deadly sequence of events leading to a power stall. Air France’s Airbus rode that power stall all the way to the stormy Atlantic waters eight miles below, with three hundred in the back.
Those of us living and working on the ground face decisions every day, ones requiring us to pay attention to dozens of life metrics. Failure to do so can leave us stranded on a deserted road, bankrupt, divorced, unemployed, depressed, facing catastrophic illness, dead. As a nation and as three hundred million individuals we are seeing daily the consequences of not paying attention to financial metrics in our individual and corporate lives. Millions inattentive to the metrics of alcoholism and addiction find themselves in hospitals, jails, and morgues. Metrics of physical health are ignored by millions more, leaving them imprisoned in bodies caught in fatal power stalls of obesity, chronic illness, and neoplastic nightmares. Perhaps most compelling is our widespread failure to pay attention to spiritual metrics, leaving millions of us in existential crisis, depressed and despairing, wondering “Is this all there is?” Many of us have never filed a flight plan with our intended destination. We don’t know where we are going or how to get there.
Steve Scheibner got up on September 10, 2001, went to his computer, logged on to his employer’s website, and requested a scheduling assignment for the following day. He asked for American Flight #11 from Boston’s Logan airport to Los Angeles. As a senior pilot he expected to be scheduled for the flight. The next morning about 8:30 AM he watched his TV with three hundred million others as American Flight #11 tore a smoking hole through the American psyche. He had what could be considered nothing short of an epiphany, just realizing ‘his’ flight had burned a wormhole through our national lassitude. He was ‘supposed’ to have flown that plane to LA, not watch it immolated on his TV.
Our national prosperity has long allowed us to feel like self-confident wizards behind the curtain in the Emerald City of Oz, pulling levers to make smoke and tell big stories. In rising stock markets we’re all financial geniuses. In times of low unemployment we’re all sought-after corporate wunderkind. With no money down we’re king of the hill in our McMansions. Who needs God? Foxhole prayers might help a bit when oncologists tell us we have cancer or “there’s nothing more we can do” or our boss informs us our services are no longer required. In many ways we have come to find in life that our “Sequence Failed Continuity;” a highly-veiled phrase in aviation for describing a flight’s failure to safely reach its destination. We find ourselves unable to countermand a set of potentially fatal events, without a plan.
Steve Scheibner had a flight plan filed years before he put in for American’s #11. He decided long ago the Kingdom of God was his destination of choice. His life goal was to live an exemplary life, guiding others into filing flight plans for themselves and making it to the Kingdom. When one has seen his own smoking hole on national TV, one quickly realizes there aren’t enough levers to pull to countermand a set of potentially fatal events. This wise American pilot knew to let go of his costly training and allow Another to fly in the left seat. Moving to the right seat, Scheibner was determined to allow the Pilot of his life to guide him though the turbulence of level-five thunder cells and even the progressive structural collapse of the World Trade Center, if it had come to that for him.
Good pilots know about the merits of situation avoidance. Sometimes it’s not possible. Scheibner had no way of predicting the scenario of 9-11. He simply followed His flight plan put in place centuries earlier. There are times when we have no idea why life takes its hairpin turns. Sometimes we are called to travel through smoking holes, other times we stay home and watch TV. We can trust that we will always optimize our journeys if we allow Another to file our flight plans.
In the 1930s a wise writer implored us “to fearlessly consider the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?” Do we believe God has the character qualifications to trust Him to carry us to our final destination even if the Sequence Failed Continuity?
At least one wise pilot decided to let The Pilot give him a life plan: “To seek, trust and glorify God through humble service and continual prayer. To raise up qualified disciples as quickly as possible so that one day I might hear God say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” This American pilot finds himself on a journey that will last all Eternity.
Have you filed your flight plan with Him?
The following link will take you to a fifteen-minute high-resolution film. Nothing will download to your computer. The film is compressed for instant viewing. It is an intensely compelling first person narrative by the American Airlines pilot originally scheduled to fly Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles on Sept 11, 2011. He challenges us to think about where we are going in life. My response to the film is pasted below the link.
http://www.youtube.com/user/peterscheibner#p/a/u/0/cLj4akmncsA
Sequence Failed Continuity
Anderson, South Carolina
A good friend of mine served as a captain on wide-bodied jets for several decades. One could easily describe him as a pilot’s pilot, a guy filled with class, technical acumen, and just the right measure of self confidence without being arrogant. If you’re trusting someone to carry you to the far side of the world eight miles above cold stormy North Atlantic waters at night, dodging level-five thunderstorms capable of squashing 747s like empty coke cans, it’s to your benefit to have one qualified with such character.
Yesterday my captain and I were in the gym talking. He often graces me with the most interesting tales of his storied career in aviation while I’m on the stair climber. He described a rather disquieting, perhaps dangerous phenomenon occurring on flight decks of commercial jets.
Newer generations of jets virtually fly themselves, relieving pilots of many tasks involved in getting three hundred people to their destinations safely. For those driving cars, it’s a bit like being relieved of clutches, gear shifts, front-end starter cranks, butterfly valves, and chokes. Those driving mini-vans and SUVs point the things and go, with seven kids in the back. Many newer Airbus and Boeing wide-bodies are capable of far more. Pilots can point them and go, with three hundred in the back, even letting go of the wheel for extended times. Stories are told of flight deck crews being sound asleep for hundreds of miles. Recently, attempts by air traffic control to hail a jet by radio failed; everyone was asleep at the wheel. The jet overshot its destination by hundreds of miles; yet landed safely.
Aviation safety is surreal. When one considers the thousands of large jets airborne at any time, the lack of accidents is truly astounding. Per mile, flight is more than a hundred times safer than family mini-vans. Automation of jets has contributed much to high levels of safety. It’s rare for pilots to fall asleep on the job or commit other faux pas, but when it happens it’s sometimes useful to have planes thinking for themselves.
Pilots ultimately earn their pay by having the right stuff when they encounter extraordinary conditions. Having the right stuff allows pilots to apply decades of experience to very fast thinking and countermand a set of potentially fatal events. The right stuff includes a powerful but subtle sense of how planes feel in all circumstances, having a sense of attitude, air speed, and dozens of other flight metrics. My friend wonders if too many years of flying automated planes can take the edge off vital skills. He cited an Air France wide-body lost over the Atlantic several years ago. He wondered if younger pilots lacking skills and experience of older pilots who learned how to use clutches, gear shifts, front end starter cranks, butterfly valves, and chokes failed to sense a deadly sequence of events leading to a power stall. Air France’s Airbus rode that power stall all the way to the stormy Atlantic waters eight miles below, with three hundred in the back.
Those of us living and working on the ground face decisions every day, ones requiring us to pay attention to dozens of life metrics. Failure to do so can leave us stranded on a deserted road, bankrupt, divorced, unemployed, depressed, facing catastrophic illness, dead. As a nation and as three hundred million individuals we are seeing daily the consequences of not paying attention to financial metrics in our individual and corporate lives. Millions inattentive to the metrics of alcoholism and addiction find themselves in hospitals, jails, and morgues. Metrics of physical health are ignored by millions more, leaving them imprisoned in bodies caught in fatal power stalls of obesity, chronic illness, and neoplastic nightmares. Perhaps most compelling is our widespread failure to pay attention to spiritual metrics, leaving millions of us in existential crisis, depressed and despairing, wondering “Is this all there is?” Many of us have never filed a flight plan with our intended destination. We don’t know where we are going or how to get there.
Steve Scheibner got up on September 10, 2001, went to his computer, logged on to his employer’s website, and requested a scheduling assignment for the following day. He asked for American Flight #11 from Boston’s Logan airport to Los Angeles. As a senior pilot he expected to be scheduled for the flight. The next morning about 8:30 AM he watched his TV with three hundred million others as American Flight #11 tore a smoking hole through the American psyche. He had what could be considered nothing short of an epiphany, just realizing ‘his’ flight had burned a wormhole through our national lassitude. He was ‘supposed’ to have flown that plane to LA, not watch it immolated on his TV.
Our national prosperity has long allowed us to feel like self-confident wizards behind the curtain in the Emerald City of Oz, pulling levers to make smoke and tell big stories. In rising stock markets we’re all financial geniuses. In times of low unemployment we’re all sought-after corporate wunderkind. With no money down we’re king of the hill in our McMansions. Who needs God? Foxhole prayers might help a bit when oncologists tell us we have cancer or “there’s nothing more we can do” or our boss informs us our services are no longer required. In many ways we have come to find in life that our “Sequence Failed Continuity;” a highly-veiled phrase in aviation for describing a flight’s failure to safely reach its destination. We find ourselves unable to countermand a set of potentially fatal events, without a plan.
Steve Scheibner had a flight plan filed years before he put in for American’s #11. He decided long ago the Kingdom of God was his destination of choice. His life goal was to live an exemplary life, guiding others into filing flight plans for themselves and making it to the Kingdom. When one has seen his own smoking hole on national TV, one quickly realizes there aren’t enough levers to pull to countermand a set of potentially fatal events. This wise American pilot knew to let go of his costly training and allow Another to fly in the left seat. Moving to the right seat, Scheibner was determined to allow the Pilot of his life to guide him though the turbulence of level-five thunder cells and even the progressive structural collapse of the World Trade Center, if it had come to that for him.
Good pilots know about the merits of situation avoidance. Sometimes it’s not possible. Scheibner had no way of predicting the scenario of 9-11. He simply followed His flight plan put in place centuries earlier. There are times when we have no idea why life takes its hairpin turns. Sometimes we are called to travel through smoking holes, other times we stay home and watch TV. We can trust that we will always optimize our journeys if we allow Another to file our flight plans.
In the 1930s a wise writer implored us “to fearlessly consider the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?” Do we believe God has the character qualifications to trust Him to carry us to our final destination even if the Sequence Failed Continuity?
At least one wise pilot decided to let The Pilot give him a life plan: “To seek, trust and glorify God through humble service and continual prayer. To raise up qualified disciples as quickly as possible so that one day I might hear God say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” This American pilot finds himself on a journey that will last all Eternity.
Have you filed your flight plan with Him?
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