2017.07.16 Be a Seed Already!

The parable Jesus told about the sower who went out to sow seeds is a very familiar story and many people love it. Why? Because the sower is supposed to represent God, or Christ for Christians, this sower keeps on sowing seeds and more seeds and all different seeds— no matter what.

Jesus seizes all the authority and mastery he can summon, saying LISTEN! A sower went out to sow.  The farmers must have felt excited. Expectant. What would Jesus say? They knew that land was life. Maybe they’d get some hot agricultural tips.  I bet too they might have felt some anxiety, because this was Jesus and he had a habit of challenging them in odd ways.

LISTEN! he said, and listen they did, perhaps too hard, too eagerly, too selfishly.  

What happened to them, happens to us also. Because Jesus elaborated all the different kinds of soil—hard and dry, rocky, choking, no nutrients—and some good soil, they began to focus on the soil. No, obsess. What kind of soil are we, or literally if you were a farmer, do we have?  They, like we, quickly forgot about the faithful sower and the seeds. I’d bet that most interpretations of this parable focus on the soil alone. Is my soil, my church’s soil, good enough to receive, nourish and sprout more God’s seeds?

Let it go—for Christ’s sake.

Most of us develop such a toxic case of soil-angst that we forget about the seed with all its potential.

Still, being a seed isn’t easy. Seeds are tiny. They have no will of their own. They are scattered to and fro, and they don’t know what kind of soil they’ll hit. The destiny of a seed is vulnerable indeed. Yet, seeds have enormous potential—enormous potency. Seeds sprout. It is through seeds that Christ potentiates Life, if not Love.

Living in the city I am continuously amazed at how the tiniest of flowers and grass blades pop up between bricks and concrete stones. What resilience and strength these little seeds have to keep on growing toward light and air through thick concrete. They always sprout—no matter how much concrete we trowel on. Seeds are unstoppable. Just a few days ago, I saw three men on their hands and knees laboriously picking small green tufts of growth and tiny wild flowers out from between the concrete stones on a front sidewalk. They worked for a stone cutting outfit and had been hired to repave the area in front of the garage. But first…..they had to get rid of all the sprouted seeds. I laughed out loud. So you think those little seeds will never return to sprout, do you?

Contrary to all logic, tiny useless seeds sprout amidst concrete—real concrete as well as the concrete that forms around our hearts, the concrete that causes us to have rigid set attitudes and assumptions. God’s seeds always sprout.

When I feel sure that something is right, makes sense, or even is the way of God, I have to FORCE, yes, force, myself to stop and rethink things—not till after I’ve argued my case of course. I could be wrong, or the tradition, or my culture, or everything I learned in school, or what my parents taught me, or my church believed could be wrong. Or it all might need tilling or some more seeds. God the sower doesn’t cultivate wheat fields. God cultivates souls. God willingly and willfully without force, sows seeds and seeds and more seeds—many varieties of seeds over and over and over.

Years ago in Connecticut I worked as a chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation center. Many patients saw themselves  as “bad seeds” They were ashamed of themselves for their disease, and their relapses, their painful, painful addictive patterns. Oh, they readily condemned themselves—bad seed, bad soil, bad God, bad religion, bad chaplain—everything. They did this all of course with raucous laughter and good humor, which I saw as a sign that they were God’s seeds and didn’t know it.

Violating the separation of church and state, I used biblical stories a lot to help them see that God wasn’t the vengeful judge they thought God was, and that they weren’t bad seeds. The sower story was very popular, second only to the prodigal son. The stories were seeds to re-potentiated them, give them hope.

I would say something like: Listen! You’re a seed and if you hit a rough patch God/Higher Power will sow you again, and again.” There was a hush. In that hush I would quietly add: “with your help.”

And so it is for us: God never stops sowing you, never stops potentiating you. No matter how much concrete has been slathered on your soul, you are a seed to be sown by God-in-Christ. So listen! Hey!………

Be a seed already.

2015.06.21 Addiction Awareness

I dedicate this post to all fathers, especially those in our family, who are clean and sober and a blessing, including my own dear dad, in heaven I'm sure.  Thank you. Happy Father's Day.

I also dedicate this post to the nine people who on June 17, 2015 were shot and killed in Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. in a senseless act of terrorism. I don’t know if drugs were involved in this act, but I’m am beginning to believe that our American-dream culture is addicted to guns and the power they represent.

                                                               
“What I am about to say will make some people angry.”

Bob Stutman, an experienced DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent for over 25 years, now a consultant on the issue, said the above sentence more than once during a talk he gave recently in Boston. His warning felt almost like a threat. He was right. At almost everything he said, some heads bobbed assent and some heads swiveled negation. No one was neutral—a clear sign of the importance of this issue.

I chuckled inwardly, thinking about Paul the apostle’s preaching in Athens. Paul gave these men, and they were all men, no such warning when he harangued about this Holy One God in whom “we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said.” (Acts 17:28) Some men felt angry, some hopeful, none neutral about such divine encompassment.

Do we think we can keep Divinity transcendent and conveniently far away?

Clergy were invited to attend Stutman's talk, because the current addiction crisis affects all stakeholders, and churches have a stake in the common good. I too have a stake, both personal and professional.  I grew up with alcoholism. I worked as a chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation center for six years: inpatient for 4 weeks, followed by several weeks of partial hospital aftercare. Such luxury today is costly and rare. It needs resurrection.

Why?  Addiction is of epidemic proportions; first-use age is 12, and 4th grade is the grade most at risk for recreational alcohol use; the latest killer drugs are opioids (synthetic drugs prescribed by medical doctors for pain,) and  kids get them out of the medicine chest at home, not from drug traffickers! The only thing that made me feel angry was this: WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Drug addiction is a disease. Our silence is a sin. 

 Bullets
    -Opioids, such as oxycontin, are synthetic drugs. Opiates, such as heroin, are natural drugs. 
    -The leading cause of death by accident, automobile accidents, is now #2, replaced by death by overdoses of pharmaceutical drugs.
    -Don’t blame pharmaceutical companies and don’t blame the drugs themselves. Think regulated medical marijuana. For the biblically savvy, don’t blame the snake in Eden either! It’s us!
    -Kids say things like: “Hey dude, this s..t’s gotta be safe. It was prescribed by a nice doctor for dad (or mom.) I got it from our medicine cabinet!”
    -The feeling you get from an opiode is not a high, a charge. A man described it as: “being held in my mother’s arms.” Warmth and safety—primal.  
    -Any pharmaceutical drug is abusable. Pills get crushed. Imagine snorting all those extended release granules of a stimulant, like Adderall or Ritalin, prescribed and effective for some conditions, but also abusable. Stutman said: “You may know and trust your teen, but do you know her or his friends?”
    -We are winning the overall drug war, because drug use is down.
    -We are losing the drug war, because drug dependency and death from overdose are up.
    -WHY? Age of first use is lower than it was in 2007 when the stats for overall U.S. drug use went down by 30% 
    -68% of high schoolers interviewed described their “biggest stress” as DRUGS. It wasn’t drugs they feared; it was being approached to use, and being unable to say no. DARE, a police program of drug resistance education, has had little impact.
    -College drug use combines often with alcohol. Every day (all 365) a college student goes from campus to an emergency room because of a drug-related incident:alcohol poisoning or drug overdose, not to mention rape.
    -NO ONE CAN IDENTIFY AN OPIODE ADDICT!  Stutman, an expert undercover agent, could, on observation, pick out addicts, but not opioid addicts.They are successful in traditional ways. Rush Limbaugh, for instance, admitted to being oxycontin-dependent for 5 years. All that time he had a regular radio show. Never mind his politics, his condition was drug-impaired. No one knew.
    - White teens use 2-3 times more drugs than black kids. Think medicine chest.
    -Urban problem? Alaska and Montana have the highest percentages of drug addiction.
    - Sports are not a safe shelter, team sports being the most vulnerable, football the worst.
    -“WE (name any group, Jews, Catholics, Swedes, abstainers, etc.) don’t do drugs.” ALL kids are at risk.
   -The U.S. prescribes more opioides for pain than any other country in the world. #2 is Denmark.    
   -Pain responds just as well to other non-narcotic medications, such as physician-recommended combinations of acetaminophine and ibuprofen every 3 hours.
    -AA and other 12-step groups are support groups for the disease of addiction, NOT treatment. There are now medications that help control symptoms, like cravings, and even death by overdose. 

A dramatic story: Stutpen received a request from a woman in Florida who asked if she could deliver a very short message after his talk to parents. He checked her credentials and said yes. She had six sentences, with props.

1)   My name is XXX and I live in XXX, a wealthy suburban area.
2)   This is a photo of my son, XX, a 2001 graduate of Brown University.
3)   This is his law degree from Harvard University.
4)   This is his MBA degree from the University of Chicago.
5)   This is an empty bottle of oxycontin, his drug of choice in 2009.
6)   This is an urn containing his ashes, 2010.

A final story: The President of Marquette University in Milwaukee, a Jesuit institution, organized an evening talk on addiction and invited all parents. The invitation threatened parents:  RSVP required. If you can’t come to this evening we are recording it and will send you a video. If you don’t respond, your student will show up for classes and will not be admitted until we have a word from you. Amen!

What to do?

     Pray for people in bondage to addiction, out loud! —whether you know one or not. And don't let "those poor people"just meet in your church basements or be confined to your own innermost disdain. Bring the upstairs and the downstairs together. Bring the inside and the outside together.
     Understand your own codependent behaviors. Listen to your kids. Don't just talk to them.
     Read about what the Gloucester, Massachusetts Police Department’s initiative NOT to charge any individual who comes to the police department for help with addiction. Police Chief, Leonard Campanello, introduced the initiative in June, 2015  with a question: What is one life worth to you?

“Law enforcement,” Campanello wrote, does not have the right to judge that life. We believe in second chances, and third chances, and in starting over. Addiction is not a crime.” His site has over one million hits and counting.
    There have been many addicts who have responded; they have been assessed and treated, using any and all available resources. The people and the politicians are behind this effort.
    Connect with other citizens in your communities to have an evening discussion on this issue.

Chief Campanello is married and is a father. He has adopted many new "sons" and "daughters" thanks to this non-traditional, gracious, and, yes, godly, innovation. Happy Father's Day, Chief. 

 





   
   

2010.11.17 Profile in Courage

A woman recently told me a moving story—hers. It’s a story of mother/daughter love that comes from womb and know no bounds even when a painful relationship break happens.

Once upon a time a woman gave birth to a daughter, dearly beloved. Every day she loved this child with all her heart and did the best she could living with a difficult marriage and trying to manage her own decisions.

Every day the woman prepared meals for her daughter and other siblings, and every day the children ate well and grew up strong and healthy, until something began to go wrong. The daughter started the torturous route of addiction. It began slowly as it does with experimentation, adolescent stuff, maybe hanging out with friends that supported her growing habit rather than her health.

The mother’s response began slowly as it does with the usual parental warnings, hand wringings, and setting limits moving on to more desperate measures to try to control the uncontrollable. She offered advice, rescue and in time money, all good and obvious things to offer.

The daughter got sicker and sicker moving beyond alcohol. The drugs stole her personality, her sweetness, her intelligence, and her conscience. She became hard, unloving, a walled impenetrable brick house, containing terror.

The mother experienced about the same symptoms without the drugs—sick from worry, helplessness, grief, rage. All her way weren’t working to help her daughter. She didn’t stop loving her daughter.

The daughter was losing her life to addictions and the mother was losing her life to her daughter.

One day someone told the mother about AlAnon and she went. At meetings, as well as in therapy and with ongoing support from a steadfast and wise sister (not a nun sister) and her other children, the mother managed slowly to take back her own life and selfhood, which by now she had deeded to her daughter who occupied her mind,heart, soul, and body, leaving no room for herself.

The mother started to love herself as much as she loved her daughter. Years passed. The mother got well but couldn’t quite get the lost daughter off her mind. She wasn’t free.

It happened one day. It happened inspirationally. It happened because of a community of support and because of the grace of what 12-step recovery programs call Higher Power and some people call God, Buddha, Jesus, Allah,Universe, and many other names, all meaning Loving Mystery.

We pray for a rescuer and we got a lover.

Such Love has power in impotence. How odd. The woman connected with her own internal power fueled by her love for her daughter and drove unannounced to her daughter’s house where she encountered a cold hard woman she hardly could recognize, a woman facing a trial and a prison sentence, a much bigger limitation than her mother could ever manage.

Neither God nor mothers are very good jailers.

The woman made a simple statement to her daughter, one that told the daughter about her hurt. She told her “It hurts when........”

She didn’t tell her daughter “You hurt me when you......” The difference in language is subtle but the honest message is the same.

The mother told her daughter she had come to say good bye. I can’t imagine a more painful moment.

She also told the daughter she always had and always would love her.

Then she left. The door closed behind her and she drove away feeling free and weeping, the kind of tears you cry when you have labored long and finally a child pushes through to grab her own separate life. The umbilicus is severed usually by a doctor. This mother had to sever her own to give birth to herself.

Love, human or divine, is never severed however. Its power takes a long long slow time but one day it will show up.

Maybe, as it did for St. Paul, in jail .