Cutting the Heart Out of America 6-1-11

Anderson, South Carolina

Perhaps the most haunting images I’ve ‘collected’ in many journeys to Latin America are those from Mayan and Aztec worlds depicting human sacrifice. Many early cosmologies included beliefs that pantheons of Gods could be appeased only by sacrificing thousands of hapless victims, often young virgins and men in their prime. Standing on rims of sacred cenotes and vast plinths with their Chocmools I wondered about innocent lives violently surrendered by priests wielding their obsidian knives. On one occasion Aztec priests put some 80,000 victims to death; only possible because of prevailing beliefs among Aztecs that life was somehow stolen from the gods. The larger population would be allowed to continue enjoying life only if some substantial fraction was forfeited on a regular basis. Young girls in freshening adolescence could only tremble in fear, wondering if priests would soon cut their hearts out with their razor sharp edges. Those brutal cosmologies have eroded away with time, remembered only in the work of archeologists.

Ostensibly we’ve become more enlightened in the present era; organized religions giving up human sacrifice. Have we? Even if misguided, Mayans and Aztecs believed individual sacrifice, even if involuntary, somehow contributed to a higher good. Far more pointless voluntary individual sacrifices are being made in our own times, with no good forthcoming. The well being of half a dozen nations has been severely compromised by unwilling sacrifices on their parts, driven by American behavior.

A once beautiful young blond woman, perhaps now 33 years old, wears age lines of someone thirty years older. She relates eighteen years of addiction to powder cocaine followed by two years free of any intoxicants. Friday she met new ‘friends’ who introduced her to methamphetamine. From Friday night until Sunday night she took a ride on meth she could not even articulate the nature of. She sat before me lamenting the voluntary sacrifice of her drug-free life; describing how one goes about losing an apartment, a car, and life savings in a mere weekend. She could not articulate why she’d made such a severe sacrifice. It was evident methamphetamine had cut the heart out of her life, sans obsidian blades. I wonder how it will be for her this weekend.

Another very young man sitting before me, still quite attractive in his youthful masculinity, describes how he sacrificed his life to heroin. He made the sacrifice that keeps on taking, having contracted hepatitis C from dirty needles. Hepatitis C can be every bit as demanding as Pre-Columbian priests, only the priests did not exact as much long-term misery as cocaine, meth, and heroin. Alas, there are no cosmologies to explain the willing individual sacrifice of millions to the life-shattering realities of drug addiction.

There are those living around us who are priests of compassion, trying to create cosmologies of hope and faith, giving tortured addicts reasons to seek ways clear of their life-destroying sacrifices. In recent days these priests are being called on to make unplanned sacrifices. One can’t but wonder if they can sustain such unplanned giving.

A Catholic priest and a small cluster of lay people bought a building to provide a place for addicts, alcoholics, and the economically destitute unemployed to take showers, have their clothes washed and dried. Addresses and phone numbers are provided to homeless unemployed filling out job applications; the facility maintained and staffed by unpaid volunteers. Someone seeking his next sacrifice to cocaine took it upon himself to cut out the copper heat exchangers in the air conditioning unit. It takes little imagination to visualize what it feels like to have six showers operating in a small building without air conditioning here in the heat and humidity of summer in the American South. Repairs were $6000. The copper yielded perhaps $30 at the scrap yard, enough for one cocaine buzz.

A local business man here owns a restaurant and his generous heart has found room for recovering cocaine addicts and alcoholics on his staff. He and his fellow church members are in process of opening several recovery houses for addicts. Opening his establishment to twelve step recovery groups, he has become known in the recovery world as a priest of great compassion. Alas, four days ago he opened his establishment to find the heart cut out of his air conditioning unit. He was called on to make an involuntary sacrifice that did no good.

Our community theater is barely surviving because of ‘new normal’ fiscal realities in America. There’s uncertainty as to the future economic viability of this community asset, now unable to sustain itself economically. Three weeks ago one of our five-ton air compressors was found gutted. No obsidian fragments were found nearby, yet we do watch for dirty needles. A new five-ton commercial unit is more than $10,000. Word got around about the theater losing its AC. The community response has been to stay away from the theater and we are now suffering the worst attendance in my seventeen years of participation. Our sacrifice contributed nothing to the greater good.

A small volunteer music academy provides music lessons and performance opportunities for children. Are young restless children going to want to go to their piano lessons and stay on task in a building where the ambient air temperature is in three digits? In the tortured minds of too many addicts, the music academy’s mission ranks below the need for the next high. In addition to replacing an air compressor the costs of putting up fencing and barbed wire was exacted from the academy’s shoe-string budget.

A dumpy cinder-block building in our town provides about twenty five recovery meetings each week to hundreds of alcoholics and addicts. Those going through the tortures of detox and withdrawal are especially sensitive to heat, exacerbated by the emotional tsunami which are part and parcel with breaking free of addictive curses. One night I was passing behind the building and observed peculiar sounds from the air compressor. Closer inspection revealed little of it to be found except the cooling fan still running, writhing on the ground. A few days later the few remaining specks of copper were picked clean by unknown vultures. That little building with glass walls became an oven for weeks, resulting in collapsing meeting attendance.

Several struggling churches working in disadvantaged parts of town lost their air conditioning units in recent weeks. One installed a new one, only to have it cut out weeks later. These churches were called to share in involuntary sacrifices.

Police suggest net payment for copper stolen from these assorted places of compassion was about $200, less than one day’s lining on cocaine. Real costs to these organizations were probably more than $30,000 plus disruptions to their missions.

The very places offering messages of hope, a refreshing shower, safe places to find understanding, pleasing diversions; these were kicked in the teeth by an intensity of selfishness that is nearly unprecedented in our experience. An astounding selfishness comes from addiction; repeatedly I hear cravings for the next high, the next buzz override all other considerations in life. Those caught in the throes of addiction willingly steal from their mothers, destroy those they love the most, anything to get high.

In 1939 twelve steps were written down, transforming the lives of millions destroyed by the scourges of addition. The eleventh step implored those millions through prayer and meditation to improve their conscious contact with God as they understood Him, asking only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out. By admitting to our powerlessness over our addictions and burgeoning selfishness, by working these steps, we were able to experience a spiritual awakening which “revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, towards our fellows and toward God’s universe.” We stopped cutting the hearts out of those around us and became givers rather than takers.

The individualism and selfishness washing over a progressively more secular and consumption-driven culture has brought us to a place of national addiction to our ‘stuff’ and intense experiences, willing to destroy our own lives and the social fabric of our communities. As individuals and as a nation we willingly sacrifice our future economic and societal largesse on the altars of image, consumption, and entertainment. We’ve become addicted to games, entertainments, spectator sports, electronic gadgets, even our adrenalin rushes. We run no less threat of personal peril or risk for those we love by continuing in our collective national addictions than if we go to the ‘hood and buy cocaine processed in Peru, heroin made in Afghanistan, or marijuana grown in the high deserts of Mexico. Our national debt, personal debt, and trade imbalances put us in no less financial danger than squandering the paycheck on liquor and cocaine.

Perhaps it’s time for our nation to enter into recovery. Three thousand years ago another imperative was given to us, challenging us to seek God through prayer and meditation. “If my people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” As we say in recovery, “If you want what we have then you have to do what we do.”

Our nation’s welfare, even that of many other lands, is dependent on you wanting the right thing. It just might be the coolest thing you ever did.