Addiction

I sat down at my computer tonight with the intention of writing about addiction and the magnetism of addictive behaviors.  It was going to be my attempt to explain my grandmother's relapse into alcoholism after over 20 years of sobriety or my own history of "relapses" to smoking cigarettes, drunkenness, lust, and self-damage.

Everything I wrote seemed scattered, inaccurate, and, inadequate; like a 4 year old trying to describe the plot of a movie they just saw.

All I know is my addictions are keeping me from living as the man I truly want to be: the man of God's design.  I don't know what recovery looks like and am extremely discouraged by the idea of "Once an addict. Always an addict.".  I know to retreat into my addictions will only leave me unsatisfied and even more frustrated with myself and God. The only other option is to move forward, however impossible that may seem.

I'm battered and bruised from losing too many fights to be better, or at least different, this week. I'm exhausted.  All the "right answers" seem trite and useless.  I'm discouraged to say the least.  I know that as a Christian there should be something to be hopeful about, but I'm just not feeling it tonight. 

Suicide By Tiny Tiny Increments: A Lesson From High Fidelity

High Fidelity, like all of my favorite movies it has a great soundtrack and has little life lessons scattered throughout it.  To be honest I’ve been thinking about writing on this particular scene from the movie for quite some time but haven’t really found the heart to go through it and write my own story around it.

The entire movie is centered on the history of bad romantic relationships and hurtful break-ups, particularly the most recent one, of Rob Gordon (played by John Cusak).  Just under an hour and a half into the movie, after attending the funeral of his ex-girlfriend’s father, Rob is sitting at a bus stop in the rain and says this:

I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door and that prevented me from doing a lot of things. Like thinking about my future and…I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open and that’s suicide by tiny, tiny increments.

I have been guilty of suicide by tiny increments on many occasions. I too have committed to nothing and kept my options open only to strangle the opportunities that were right in front of me, waiting for me to seize them.  All too often I turn on the TV instead of reading a book that I know will inspire me.  Countless nights I’ve chosen to have another beer instead of calling a friend to see how they’re doing. I’ve settled for meaningless, unhealthy relationships instead of risking and fighting for romance.  I’ve supplemented fantasy with reality in order to numb the pain of my loneliness.  I haven’t voiced my opinion or shared my emotions, fearing the consequences of being exposed and known. All these things are suicide by tiny increments, safety in familiar, unsatisfying mediocrity.

As a man whose tried to take my life on two separate occasions during my youth this concept is even more harrowing.  When choosing to end life (to whatever degree) seems like a better option than continuing on, something is terribly wrong.

Paul Farmer, in his book Pathologies of Power, uses the formula Observe, Judge, Act when dealing with the issue of inequality in global health care.  The formula has merit here as well. I have observed and know my preferred methods of self-destruction and judged that their existence points to the fact that something has gone terribly wrong and needs to be corrected. That only leaves me to act, to change the state of heart, mind, and body.

HOW?

Stop. Stop choosing to sacrifice the true me in front of the idols of safety and pleasure. Stop expecting that my only outcome is failure. Stop forcing compliments glance off my hardened heart or dismissing them as ignorance while weaving criticism and deceit into my inner identity. Stop sabotaging myself. In short, stop killing myself daily.

Start. Start choosing to do the things that bring me life to the fullest. Start calling friends and actually caring about their struggles enough to pray for them. Start intentionally writing about things that matter, issues close to my heart, exposing the frightened little boy inside me. Start dreaming again, believing that miracles do happen, even to guys like me.  Start believing I’m actually loved and learning how to love others. START LIVING, LOVING, AND BEING KNOWN.

My Heart and The Wind

my heart

My heart is surrounded by layers…
    stinky like an onion or an ogre not fun like a parfait

Layers of make-shift armor set up to protect my heart from pain-givers
    miles of flimsy defenses encircle my broken and anguished heart

“I’ve been hurt too much before” I whisper to myself
    and throw another shopping cart or apple box a little bit farther out

Or is my heart more like a tree?
    year after year adding one more hard layer…23 rings that you can count

The hard shell protects what’s inside
    dry-rot and emptiness where there once was life

These conditions were caused by my defenses
    and seem to call for more and more of them farther and farther out

My defenses are now so far out
    that even those bringing nourishment and love cannot reach the real me

There is one thing I fear more than the pain-givers

THE WIND

The Wind blows…
    it rattles and displaces my defenses

The Wind blows…
it bends and twists my shell until I groan and creak on the verge of bursting

The Wind blows…
    it calls me to freedom and to restore that which was lost long ago

The Wind blows…
    it tells me He’s gentle and kind and won’t hurt me or leave me or forsake me

The Wind blows…
    it asks me to trust Him and to live without defenses or a shell

The Wind blows…
    it whispers “I love you. Come, follow Me” over and over

As much as I would like to, I can’t ignore the Wind
    it blows all the time these days

I have to let the Wind carry away all of my defenses even the ones I grip the tightest
trying to hold on to the last shred of the asylum I’ve built

I have to let the Wind burst my hard shell
    exposing the frightened me that I’ve learned to protect

The Wind has said that to love I must let myself be known and loved
    to have a life worth living I must let go of survival now

I’m afraid but I must listen to the Wind
    and let it work in my life

I know I will fail
    but the Wind will catch me and teach me how to soar

Rise from your ashes, burst to beautiful flame.

I love the myth of the Phoenix.  I have ever since I heard about the bird for the first time as a self-proclaimed pyromaniac adolescent.  As I’ve grown in character and stature, my love for this bird and the legend that surrounds it has matured as well.  To sum my understanding of it up in a sentence, a Phoenix is an emblazoned bird with a beautiful song that is reborn every thousand years or so from it’s own ashes.

There’re some obvious implications: renewal, immortality, resurrection, new life, etc. I think mythologists, writers, philosophers, and sermonizers have beaten all of these allegories to death.  So I really won’t bother with explaining the allegory, I’ll just let you know it’s happening: I’m resurrecting my blog. 

Now, I know the statement above will cause no one to run off, buy fireworks, and light them off in celebration.  But this is a pretty big deal for me, it scares me.  There’re a few reasons for my fear and hesitation starting to blog again.  First, I started this particular blog over 2 years ago and really haven’t done much with it.  I’m afraid the same thing will happen again: a few good posts written months apart only to be abandoned and forgot about.  Secondly, the name sets up a lot of expectation in my own mind.  I started a hungerforchange blog on xanga.com 3 years ago while living for a month on $30 worth of food.  It was an inspired time when I lived with a purpose, noticed things, and wrote about them.  I tried thinking up some new trendy blog name that I could be proud of and I couldn’t.  So, I'm simply resigning myself to add to this one: resurrecting it hoping it will blow on the burning coals of my soul and ignite something.  Lastly, I’m truly afraid to produce.  It’s a strange fear but one nestled in my own self-image of being an appreciator of the finer things of life: music, art, literature, coffee, cigars, etc.  The moment I produce something, anything I’m opening myself up for criticism.  There’s extra fear because what I write is simply an extension of who I am, how I see the world, and what I think of it all; for someone to criticize something I wrote would be to critique what makes me who I am.

I AM forging ahead despite all of that.  I’m doing so because there is a chance for great beauty, the kind that can only emerge of the ashes of an old life, from scar tissue, from memories that put a knot in your guts and bring tears to your eyes.  I’m not sharing the lessons my life is teaching me because they are unique nor because they’re universal.  I’m sharing them to produce, to contribute something to the world that surrounds me.  I’m forcing myself to care enough about something that I’ve written to edit and revise it then put it on display.  I hope the process of writing and revising will be introspective and enlightening.  I hope to find something within the ashes of life that’s been there all along but only needed a little coaxing to ignite and shine like crimson.

Arise oh Phoenix from your ashes, burst into beautiful flame.

My White Stone: It’s Way Sweeter than a Crack Rock

There’s been this Bible verse stuck in my head lately, Revelations 2:17, which says:

To he who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, ‘To him who overcomes I will give…a white stone and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it

This blows my mind. To me that stone, my stone, and the name written on it that only I will know, is the ultimate articulation of who I truly am meant to be. I believe that God stitched every one of us humans together for a very unique and specific purpose and that the name we receive written upon that rock is the ultimate and indisputable explanation of our identity and our destiny. How amazing is that? No more questioning, “Who am I and why does it matter that I exist?” We’ll know! We’ll have a constant reminder of it that only God and we will know.

The book of revelations is considered to be prophecy: a prediction of things to come. The weird thing for me is that when someone tells me something that will happen in eternity I have a hard time waiting for it in the future. Eternity already is it isn’t something we have to wait for to happen. In light of this verse that means that there is already a white stone with a name written on it and that the expression of ourselves written on that stone is already true about ourselves, RIGHT NOW. That means that I already have a specific identity and purpose in the Kingdom of God as I live my days on this earth.

That is an amazingly humbling thought for me. It seems to me as though I’ve never known my true identity and if I ever did I didn’t feel as though it was good enough or valuable. So, I tried “blinging-out” my white stone and the ME it was associated with: I tried to look really nice, be really smart, be caring compassionate ETC. None of these things are bad but what I was doing was trying to hot glue pearls onto my identity, which readily feel off and reinforced the idea that my identity wasn’t beautiful or precious.

Right now I’m in the process of finding, examining, and utilizing the white stone that God has given me that I’ve buried with self-contempt and defaced with posturing over the years. It’s a difficult process because some of the things I tried to convince myself and others were true about myself aren’t necessarily true no matter how much I’d like them to be.

I’m also discovering the deep festering wounds that were left in the wake of me trying to shape my identity into something that it wasn’t. It is one of the most painful processes I have ever encountered, but it’s worth it. In my short time free from the prison of self-contempt and posturing I have grown too large to fit back into my old cell and my heart is no longer hard enough to withstand the anguish of projecting something about myself that I know is untrue of my identity.

Great Quote From Gandhi

The grinding poverty ans starvation with which our country (and world) is afflicted is such that it drives more and more men every year into the ranks of the beggars, whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensible to all feelings of decency and self-respect. And our philanthropists, instead of providing work for them and insisting on their working for bread, give them alms.
-Page 391 "The Story of My Experiments with Truth"

The Love We All Need

Compassionate love is the axis of the Christian moral revolution and the only sign ever given by Jesus by which a disciple would be recognized.
--Brennan Manning "Ragamuffin Gospel"

When I read this statement recently it struck a deep and resounding chord in my heart. Since then my mind has been mulling over the phrase "axis of the...revolution" trying to grasp its profound implications. It makes me think of a bike wheel which revolves around its axle, the wheel's center-point. The Christian moral revolution then is centered around this idea of compassionate love. Love is essential for the movement have traction and build momentum.

Sadly love has become an abstraction in our culture, a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and a misnomer for emotion. None of these modern definitions of love grasp the revolutionary lifestyle of love that Jesus was calling His disciples to. He tells them to "love each other like He's loved them". Jesus sets the standard for love among His disciples through His own actions. Since the time of Jesus' time on earth people have called His love the Gospel or "Good News". It was fresh, original, and above all GOOD! Being a disciple of Jesus, how do I love others like He has loved me and make my love Good News to them? The simple answer is to follow His example.

I appreciate Manning using the adjective compassionate in the quote above because it unfolds one amazing aspect of the depth of Jesus' love for me and all human beings. In his account of Jesus' life the disciple Matthew recounts a conversation Jesus had with the religious bourgeois of the time in which Jesus tells them to learn the meaning of the prophet Hosea's words "the Lord desires compassion not sacrifice". Again Christ, calls people to a standard which He has set through His own actions and here He is calling people to compassionate love. The Greek word Matthew used here was eleos a word more commonly translated into English as "mercy". In W.E. Vine's New Testament dictionary eleos is defined as "an outward manifestation of pity toward an offender and assumes need on the part of the recipient and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of the person who shows it".

Coming back to my question: how can I make my love Good News? What makes love the distinguishing mark of Christians in a world of philanthropists like Gandhi and Princess Diana (both of whom I have an amazing amount of respect for)? If I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I am wholly inadequate to compassionately love people at the level that they truly need. My sparse and tarnished resources are not sufficient to consistently fulfill the needs and desires of anyone; much less start a "moral revolution".

Christian love is unique in the fact that it doesn't rely on the resources of Christians themselves but on an outside source: Yaweh whose resources cannot be exhausted. The only reason Christians can give from God's storehouse of love is because they have recieved love from the same place. In other words they can love only because He has loved them first. Christian's love for others is an unavoidable result of God's love for them.

I've come to the conclusion that theories are fairly easy to develop and agree with but are worthless without their application. Love, compassionate love, fueled by God's love for me is extremely hard to put into practice. When the love I do give is abused the last thing I want to be is loving and merciful (remember compassion shown to an offender?). When a girlfriend hurts me, a roommate doesn't do his dishes, or when a friend borrows money from me and doesn't repay me I want to demand justice, claim my rights, and deal out retribution. Once again, knowing is one thing and doing is another, knowledge isn't practice. A wheel accomplishes nothing and collects dust unless it spins around its axis and starts to move. Likewise the lives of Jesus followers will be unfulfilling, hypocritical, and irrelevant until everything revolves around compassionate love for others that relies 100% on the love God has for us.