A friend recently sent me an email with the subject line: Where is God? Help me on this one please. She then gave details of a friend who was drowning in pain over multiple and what seemed to her serial losses—all tragic and all related to alcohol dependency.
I wanted to preach 12-step recovery wisdom; instead I went for Christian wisdom and wrote.......
You of course are asking the $64-billion question theology has wrestled with for all time. It's called theodicy. Where is God in these situations? Why do the innocent suffer? I tend to ask people what God they are wondering about. Usually it is the deity they expect to intervene for the good and to save. But few consider what salvation means beyond mere rescue.
We pray for a rescuer and often we get a lover, a God who accompanies us, strengthens us from within, loves us in the midst of all kinds of tragedies but does not FIX it. It seems unfair I know but think about the fact that if God fixed everything for us we would never grow up and we would never access the enormous capacity God gave us to love one another, just as you are doing for your sweet friend.
With such a God we might feel cozy or spoiled but would be dependent and not free. (Think Alanon.) YOU are the presence of God to her as you listen, advise when you can, and mostly just be present gently until she grieves and begins to heal. (A good book on this question is Rabbi Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." )
God to me is a compassionate presence not a judge, a cosmic controller, or a rescuer—except through us. My nephew for example has been rescued many many time by the Salvation Army. The rest of his salvation is transformation and it's is up to him and God.
If God were to prevent or eliminate evil & suffering She would have done it for Jesus at the very least. Jesus spread good and healing around but he didn't heal everyone and God didn't stop the crucifixion but simply acted to restore Life in the Spirit forever, which Christians call resurrection.
God limits God's own powers for the sake of love—and for the sake of our freedom, including nature's.
Theologian William Pocher Dubose said something I remember: "God's will waits upon our willingness."
Demond Tutu, retired Anglican Archbishop of So. Africa said, "God without us will not, and we without God cannot ." Yup! Relationship/partnership/cocreatorship— not control is the way this kingdom is run.
I believe that God created us imperfect AND perfectly driven to yearn, strive, struggle, and question life as it comes. It's just that way. The amazing grace, when we can be aware, is that we recognize serenity in patches—patches so colorful and enchanting (and often nuts) that they remain embroidered on our souls forever and help us go on, no matter what.
Be the amazing grace, and I send you grit and prayers, and hope,
Lyn
P.S. It's OK too to rant and get mad at God who will listen, not condemn, and let you work through your powerlessness…. and God's as well :)
Showing posts with label Alanon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alanon. Show all posts
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
2012.04.25 The Gift of Alanon
When I went to my first Alanon meeting I was in the midst of my own midlife turmoil, getting things straightened out by messing them up first. You know the usual adolescent passage.
Anyway, all I could think as I sat quietly tense listening to many stories told by people who had lived with alcoholism, some all their lives, some only recently, and all of them stunned that they had never realized what was happening to them, was, “MY MOTHER WOULD KILL ME FOR BEING HERE!” (I was violating the tabu against narking or ratting. I was telling "classified" family info.)
The story tellers were mostly women, stunned, to varying degrees, that they had not realized what was happening to them because of what was obviously someone else’s problem.
Odd and crazy! I hated this meeting. Yet...... odd to find myself so utterly one of them. Odd too that I worried about my mother when wasn’t my father the alcoholic? He after all was the one with the tri-cornered martini glass twisting between his thumb and forefinger nightly.
Alanon, I read in the pamphlet, was initiated in the mid 1900s by Lois Wilson, wife of alcoholic Bill Wilson, founder of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous.) Lois realized that her own life was as affected by Bill’s addiction as his was. You don’t have to be the one vomiting to feel nauseous. You don’t have to be the one lying to feel blame. You don’t have to be the sleep-distrubed one to lose sleep.
AA and Alanon are siblings and, yes, they often rival but they have the same goal: to live sober, serene and happy lives. Transformation is the way out and it can not be done without the help and support of other people and God aka Higher Power.
The meeting went on around me as my mind smashed into its own fears and judgments. Why hadn’t I known and why hadn’t my mother known and done something about it? And why hadn’t my father loved me at least as much as his glass? And why did I fall in love with alcoholics?
But I sat and flinched because my mother would not want me to know or to tell. It was then that I first realized how ashamed and self-condemning she too must have felt at her helplessness. It was then that I began to understand my mother, avoid being “killed” by her, and understand her micromanaging as an effort to make things right not torture me. It was then I began to forgive her, just a little.
The meeting ended and the friendly women said to keep coming. All you need is the desire to live well and sane.
I left that first meeting vowing never to return. Too much truth blinds—and awakens.
Yes I went back. I kept on listening. I never was at a meeting that I didn’t hear in the shreds of another’s story something that was part of my story, something that enlightened me and helped me feel not so confused, hopeful that insight could bring healing. Sometimes I told my story, too.
What Alanon taught me: 1) You don’t have to drink to be alcoholic. All you have to do is be constantly/secretly anxious, engage in a life mission of controlling the uncontrollable, and alternate between anger (bullying and tempers,) passivity (cold withdrawal and secret scorn,) and micromanagement of your own and other’s lives— all strategies of control. 2) You can’t recover, transform, your life by yourself. 3) How you think about God, or the transcendent dimension of life, is crucial. It’s easy to give your heart to the wrong God or follow the wrong star. 4) Humility is the highest virtue. 5) How to take care of yourself, a little like coming home to your own integrity and worth and knowing that you matter. 6) How to detach with love: to love fully without losing yourself in the other, or abandoning the other to save yourself.
Alanon is like eastering.
Anyway, all I could think as I sat quietly tense listening to many stories told by people who had lived with alcoholism, some all their lives, some only recently, and all of them stunned that they had never realized what was happening to them, was, “MY MOTHER WOULD KILL ME FOR BEING HERE!” (I was violating the tabu against narking or ratting. I was telling "classified" family info.)
The story tellers were mostly women, stunned, to varying degrees, that they had not realized what was happening to them because of what was obviously someone else’s problem.
Odd and crazy! I hated this meeting. Yet...... odd to find myself so utterly one of them. Odd too that I worried about my mother when wasn’t my father the alcoholic? He after all was the one with the tri-cornered martini glass twisting between his thumb and forefinger nightly.
Alanon, I read in the pamphlet, was initiated in the mid 1900s by Lois Wilson, wife of alcoholic Bill Wilson, founder of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous.) Lois realized that her own life was as affected by Bill’s addiction as his was. You don’t have to be the one vomiting to feel nauseous. You don’t have to be the one lying to feel blame. You don’t have to be the sleep-distrubed one to lose sleep.
AA and Alanon are siblings and, yes, they often rival but they have the same goal: to live sober, serene and happy lives. Transformation is the way out and it can not be done without the help and support of other people and God aka Higher Power.
The meeting went on around me as my mind smashed into its own fears and judgments. Why hadn’t I known and why hadn’t my mother known and done something about it? And why hadn’t my father loved me at least as much as his glass? And why did I fall in love with alcoholics?
But I sat and flinched because my mother would not want me to know or to tell. It was then that I first realized how ashamed and self-condemning she too must have felt at her helplessness. It was then that I began to understand my mother, avoid being “killed” by her, and understand her micromanaging as an effort to make things right not torture me. It was then I began to forgive her, just a little.
The meeting ended and the friendly women said to keep coming. All you need is the desire to live well and sane.
I left that first meeting vowing never to return. Too much truth blinds—and awakens.
Yes I went back. I kept on listening. I never was at a meeting that I didn’t hear in the shreds of another’s story something that was part of my story, something that enlightened me and helped me feel not so confused, hopeful that insight could bring healing. Sometimes I told my story, too.
What Alanon taught me: 1) You don’t have to drink to be alcoholic. All you have to do is be constantly/secretly anxious, engage in a life mission of controlling the uncontrollable, and alternate between anger (bullying and tempers,) passivity (cold withdrawal and secret scorn,) and micromanagement of your own and other’s lives— all strategies of control. 2) You can’t recover, transform, your life by yourself. 3) How you think about God, or the transcendent dimension of life, is crucial. It’s easy to give your heart to the wrong God or follow the wrong star. 4) Humility is the highest virtue. 5) How to take care of yourself, a little like coming home to your own integrity and worth and knowing that you matter. 6) How to detach with love: to love fully without losing yourself in the other, or abandoning the other to save yourself.
Alanon is like eastering.
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