"Geel's ancient community cares for the mentally ill"

Really interesting article by Mike Jay in Aeon.   I knew, when I started reading, that the church was somehow involved in this; I knew, right away, that it could only have been the church, in fact.  Outcasts, the oppressed, the tormented and afflicted:  these are the constituents of the Crucified.

Some excerpts (my bolding):

Half an hour on the slow train from Antwerp, surrounded by flat, sparsely populated farmlands, Geel (pronounced, roughly, ‘Hyale’) strikes the visitor as a quiet, tidy but otherwise unremarkable Belgian market town. Yet its story is unique. For more than 700 years its inhabitants have taken the mentally ill and disabled into their homes as guests or ‘boarders’. At times, these guests have numbered in the thousands, and arrived from all over Europe. There are several hundred in residence today, sharing their lives with their host families for years, decades or even a lifetime. One boarder recently celebrated 50 years in the Flemish town, arranging a surprise party at the family home. Friends and neighbours were joined by the mayor and a full brass band.


Among the people of Geel, the term ‘mentally ill’ is never heard: even words such as ‘psychiatric’ and ‘patient’ are carefully hedged with finger-waggling and scare quotes. The family care system, as it’s known, is resolutely non-medical. When boarders meet their new families, they do so, as they always have, without a backstory or clinical diagnosis. If a word is needed to describe them, it’s often a positive one such as ‘special’, or at worst, ‘different’. This might in fact be more accurate than ‘mentally ill’, since the boarders have always included some who would today be diagnosed with learning difficulties or special needs. But the most common collective term is simply ‘boarders’, which defines them at the most pragmatic level by their social, not mental, condition. These are people who, whatever their diagnosis, have come here because they’re unable to cope on their own, and because they have no family or friends who can look after them.

The origins of the Geel story lie in the 13th century, in the martyrdom of Saint Dymphna, a legendary seventh-century Irish princess whose pagan father went mad with grief after the death of his Christian wife and demanded that Dymphna marry him. To escape the king’s incestuous passion, Dymphna fled to Europe and holed up in the marshy flatlands of Flanders. Her father finally tracked her down in Geel, and when she refused him once more, he beheaded her. Over time, she became revered as a saint with powers of intercession for the mentally afflicted, and her shrine attracted pilgrims and tales of miraculous cures.

In 1349, a church was built on the outskirts of the town around Saint Dymphna’s memorial, and in 1480 a dormitory annex was added to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims. When the stream of visitors overflowed the allotted space, townspeople started to house them in their homes, farms and stables. During the Renaissance, Geel became famous as a place of sanctuary for the mad, who arrived and stayed for reasons both spiritual and opportunistic. Some pilgrims came in hope of a cure. In other cases, it seems that families from local villages took the chance to abandon troublesome relatives whom they couldn’t afford to keep. The people of Geel absorbed them all as an act of charity and Christian piety, but also put them to work as free labour on their farms.

Today, the system continues along much the same lines. A boarder is treated as a member of the family: involved in everything, and particularly encouraged to form a strong bond with the children, a relationship that is seen as beneficial to both parties. The boarder’s conduct is expected to meet the same basic standards as everybody else’s, though it’s also understood that he or she might not have the same coping resources as others. Odd behaviour is ignored where possible, and when necessary dealt with discreetly. Those who meet these standards are ‘good’; others can be described as ‘difficult’, but never ‘bad’, ‘dumb’ or ‘crazy’. Boarders who are unable to cope on this basis will be readmitted to the hospital: this is inevitably seen as a punishment, and everyone hopes the stay ‘inside’ will be as brief as possible.

The people of Geel don’t regard any of this as therapy: it’s simply ‘family care’. But throughout the town’s long history, many both inside and outside the psychiatric profession have wondered whether this is not only a form of therapy in itself, but perhaps the best form there is.

However we might categorise or diagnose their conditions, and whatever we believe their cause to be — whether genetics or childhood trauma or brain chemistry or modern society — the ‘mentally ill’ are in practice those who have fallen through the net, who have broken the ties that bind the rest of us in our social contract, who are no longer able to connect. If these ties can be remade so that the individual is reintegrated with the collective, doesn’t ‘family care’ amount to therapy? Even, perhaps, the closest we can approach to an actual cure?

Modern psychiatry was born in the 19th century, and for the first generation of psychiatrists, ‘the Geel question’ was central to the revolution they were attempting to bring about. For many, the system was a dismal relic of the Middle Ages, where the mad were condemned to a life of drudgery and neglect under the lax oversight of the Church. Shut away from the modern world in quasi-feudal isolation, they were denied the benefits of new medical expertise, and with it, any chance of proper treatment.

For others, however, Geel was a beacon of the progressive ideas that came to be known as ‘moral management’. Freeing the insane from their chains and madhouses, providing them with fresh air, occupational therapies and the chance to patch themselves back into normal life — this was treatment in itself. Philippe Pinel, the founding father of French psychiatry who was legendary for ‘striking the chains off the mad’ at the Salpetrière asylum in Paris, declared that ‘the farmers of Geel are arguably the most competent doctors; they are an example of what may turn out to be the only reasonable treatment of insanity and what doctors from the outset should regard as ideal’. His student Jean-Étienne Esquirol, who became the next generation’s leading reformer of mental hospitals, visited Geel in 1821 and was astonished by the sight of hundreds of lunatics wandering freely and calmly around the town and countryside. He praised the tolerance of a system where ‘the mad are elevated to the dignity of the sick’.
....

Today, there are around 300 boarders in Geel: less than a tenth of its pre-war peak and falling fast. While many locals believe family care will endure, it has become a markedly smaller part of town life, and others suspect that this generation will be the last to maintain it. Why is this deeply rooted and universally praised system suddenly on the point of disappearing?

The limiting factor is not demand but supply. Few families are now able or willing to take on a boarder. Few now work the land or need help with manual labour; these days most are employed in the thriving business parks outside town, working for multinationals such as Estée Lauder and BP. Dual-income households and apartment-living mean that most families can no longer offer care in the old-fashioned way. People remain proud of the tradition, and credit it with giving Geel a broad-minded and tolerant ethos, one that has made it attractive to international businesses and visitors (these days it is probably best known for its annual reggae festival). But the town is no exception to the march of modernity and the irreversibly loosening social ties that come in its wake.

Modern aspirations — the increasing desire for mobility and privacy, timeshifted work schedules, and the freedom to travel — disrupt the patterns on which daily care depends. Increasing wealth is also a disincentive: most of the burden of care always fell on the poorer families, who counted on the supply of free labour and state payments to lift them above subsistence. The state now pays around €40 ($55) per day for boarders, of which only half is passed on to the families: hardly a financial incentive for most, these days.

.....

At the same time, Geel’s story does suggest that psychiatry’s role could be limited, perhaps dramatically so: not at the centre of mental healthcare but on its periphery, as a backstop to the community. In an ideal world, might not the modern psychiatric clinic shrink back towards the size of the 19th-century hospital: a discreet ‘inside’, as remote from the majority of patients’ lives as possible?Yet this would demand a reform not simply of medicine but of society itself. It’s ironic but probably not coincidental that the need for a community response to mental illness is becoming obvious just as the structures that might provide it are failing. The boarder who celebrated 50 years in residence is by no means exceptional: another, recently deceased at the age of 100, had spent 80 years with the same family, in the care of successive generations to whom she had been first like a daughter, then a sister and finally an aunt. Who would not wish to live in a community where such extraordinary resources of time, attention and love were available to those who needed them — but who these days can imagine being in a position to offer them?

This is, in yet another form, the tragedy of the commons: our liberation as individuals to create lives of our own choosing places unsustainable pressures on the type of society that most of us would choose to live in. We might define mental ill-health in medical terms, but this is not enough to confine its treatment within the medical frame. If it is in practice a condition that has exhausted the capacity of the individual and the social support available, it’s bound to manifest more intensely in an atomised society where insoluble problems devolve onto the sufferer alone. To take up these problems on behalf of others demands, all too often, more than their own loved ones can give or the state can provide. As mental illness proliferates and outpaces the psychiatric resources available to manage it, Geel’s story offers a vision, in equal parts sobering and inspiring, of what the alternative might look like.

Just a very interesting piece, I think, about some of what we've lost amid some of our gains.

More at the link

"Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Brings Lasting Benefits through Self-Knowledge"

From the APA website; it's an article from 2010.  My bolding below:

WASHINGTON—Psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective for a wide range of mental health symptoms, including depression, anxiety, panic and stress-related physical ailments, and the benefits of the therapy grow after treatment has ended, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Its hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient’s life. Its goal is not only to alleviate the most obvious symptoms but to help people lead healthier lives.

“The American public has been told that only newer, symptom-focused treatments like cognitive behavior therapy or medication have scientific support,” said study author Jonathan Shedler, PhD, of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. “The actual scientific evidence shows that psychodynamic therapy is highly effective. The benefits are at least as large as those of other psychotherapies, and they last.”
To reach these conclusions, Shedler reviewed eight meta-analyses comprising 160 studies of psychodynamic therapy, plus nine meta-analyses of other psychological treatments and antidepressant medications. Shedler focused on effect size, which measures the amount of change produced by each treatment. An effect size of 0.80 is considered a large effect in psychological and medical research. One major meta-analysis of psychodynamic therapy included 1,431 patients with a range of mental health problems and found an effect size of 0.97 for overall symptom improvement (the therapy was typically once per week and lasted less than a year). The effect size increased by 50 percent, to 1.51, when patients were re-evaluated nine or more months after therapy ended. The effect size for the most widely used antidepressant medications is a more modest 0.31. The findings are published in the February issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association.

The eight meta-analyses, representing the best available scientific evidence on psychodynamic therapy, all showed substantial treatment benefits, according to Shedler. Effect sizes were impressive even for personality disorders—deeply ingrained maladaptive traits that are notoriously difficult to treat, he said. “The consistent trend toward larger effect sizes at follow-up suggests that psychodynamic psychotherapy sets in motion psychological processes that lead to ongoing change, even after therapy has ended,” Shedler said. “In contrast, the benefits of other ‘empirically supported’ therapies tend to diminish over time for the most common conditions, like depression and generalized anxiety.”

“Pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies have a financial incentive to promote the view that mental suffering can be reduced to lists of symptoms, and that treatment means managing those symptoms and little else. For some specific psychiatric conditions, this makes sense,” he added. “But more often, emotional suffering is woven into the fabric of the person’s life and rooted in relationship patterns, inner contradictions and emotional blind spots. This is what psychodynamic therapy is designed to address.”

Shedler acknowledged that there are many more studies of other psychological treatments (other than psychodynamic), and that the developers of other therapies took the lead in recognizing the importance of rigorous scientific evaluation. “Accountability is crucial,” said Shedler. “But now that research is putting psychodynamic therapy to the test, we are not seeing evidence that the newer therapies are more effective.”

Shedler also noted that existing research does not adequately capture the benefits that psychodynamic therapy aims to achieve. “It is easy to measure change in acute symptoms, harder to measure deeper personality changes. But it can be done.”

The research also suggests that when other psychotherapies are effective, it may be because they include unacknowledged psychodynamic elements. “When you look past therapy ‘brand names’ and look at what the effective therapists are actually doing, it turns out they are doing what psychodynamic therapists have always done—facilitating self-exploration, examining emotional blind spots, understanding relationship patterns.” Four studies of therapy for depression used actual recordings of therapy sessions to study what therapists said and did that was effective or ineffective. The more the therapists acted like psychodynamic therapists, the better the outcome, Shedler said. “This was true regardless of the kind of therapy the therapists believed they were providing.”

Article: “The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” Jonathan K. Shedler, PhD, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine; American Psychologist, Vol. 65. No.2.

The important thing there, to my mind, is that the benefits are lasting.  Also important is the simple recognition that "emotional suffering is woven into the fabric of the person’s life and rooted in relationship patterns, inner contradictions and emotional blind spots."

This is not, of course, to say that individuals can't benefit from both psychodynamic psychotherapy and, say, antidepressant medication.    Many people, including me, have found this to be a very beneficial combination.  Lasting change, however, seems to me to be the most important aspect of any kind of therapy, and the one thing likely to lead to the attainment of finding a way to live in serenity - without which the entire endeavor seems pointless.

"The Way of the Warrior"

Derek's most recent post, "Behind Liturgical Spirituality," has helped me think again about indirection as one of the keys to the spiritual life - and something important has just fallen into place for me.  His post is part of his work on Prayer Book spirituality, and this particular piece is called "Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing."  It's kind of an introduction to what the Prayer Book (and liturgical spirituality in general) is up to - especially in terms of its practices, and their effect on "mature faith."

I've been chewing over the apparent contradiction between "grace" and "work" for at least 3 or 4 years now, mainly because I came into contact with Reformation - specifically Lutheran - ideas.   As I mentioned at Derek's, it seems to me that the tension between these two things is somehow at the heart of Christian faith (and perhaps at the heart of other faiths, too, although I don't know any others in much depth).  It seems clear to me that both are integral to the living-out of faith - but I haven't been able to make much sense of this thus far.

There is also the problem of self-righteousness; how can we avoid it, if "sanctification" is the goal of the life of faith?  Well, emphasizing grace is one way; it's the recognition that we do not (and cannot)  earn or deserve what God freely bestows.  But a contradiction arises: it seems at that point that work becomes, of necessity, anathema.

It's always seemed totally clear to me that, certainly,"grace" is at the heart of the A.A. experience; the First Step, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable," is another way of saying "We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves" (AKA, "There is no health in us").

But most of the rest of the Steps most certainly involve work!  Steps 4-9 are "action steps," by means of which "we clear away the wreckage of the past."   We are asked to do all kinds of things:  take a personal inventory, confess our faults to another, pray for help, and make amends.

• Step 10 is this:  "Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it."   A "work" step, most definitely.
• Step 11:  "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" - clearly a mix of "grace" and "work" in itself!  
• Step 12:  "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs." Again, "grace" and "work" together.

For a long time, I've had a hunch that there was an indirect method at work here, at the heart of it all - that the life of faith wasn't something that could be sought after for itself.  This was straightforwardly true in my own case; nobody ends up in A.A. because they want to become holy, or because they're seeking enlightenment!  We're there to stay alive; all the rest is an undeserved gift.  And the way to stay alive, it turns out, is by following a set of practices that focus primarily on one's own faults and character defects - and it seems the "undeserved gift" of faith also follows from this.

It seems true to me now that faith may always be about putting aside one's own ideas and trusting in a process - a process that does its work by the same kind of indirect means that happens in A.A.  So at the end, the life of faith is, indeed, always a gift bestowed; it can't be grasped after or worked for directly.  It's clear, for instance, that nobody can begin loving their neighbor (let alone their enemies!) on command -or even because they want to.  And who can actually attain any of "Faith, hope, and love"?

A.A. shows, though, via the 12 Steps, that we can indeed do something:  we can look to our own faults and defects.  We can't "strive for spiritual success," or keep track of "progress," or even "seek  enlightenment."   None of that is actually possible; it can't be done.   That's what's fallen into place for me.  "Sanctification" isn't a goal; it's a description of what happens to people when they learn how to deal directly with failure - and accept it as a normal part of living, with equanimity.

We can't at any time "measure our progress in the spiritual life" - because there is nothing to measure; we aren't directly seeking "the spiritual life."   Instead, we seek out our own flaws and character defects; instead, we're keeping a running track of failure.   That, of course, is what Confession actually is and does - and I suspect this is exactly why it's one of the Church's sacraments.   "Repent and return to the Lord" is certainly one of the central Biblical themes as well; it's there from start to finish.    John the Baptist preached it, and so did Jesus: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Moses the Black makes makes the process itself even clearer:  "A monk must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all in any way whatsoever" and "If you are occupied with your own faults, you have no time to see those of your neighbor."    Surprisingly, the important part of this statement isn't the "don't judge" part; it's the being "occupied with your own faults" part!   (Of course, Jesus had a little something to say about that, too:  "Judge not, lest ye be judged.")

In other words:  getting (and staying) hip to and aware of our own defects is the very thing that makes "spiritual progress" possible.  (I think perhaps "prayer without ceasing" could also do the trick - but that, too, is impossible for most of us.)   This is the Christian sleight-of-hand; we really can't "measure our own spiritual progress" - and we shouldn't try to.  The key is to keep in mind - as Moses the Black says - where we have gone wrong.  And therein, too, lies humility.

A.A. notes that humility is at the center of its program; it had to be, because it believed that "the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot" and also that "ego deflation at depth" was an alcoholic's only real chance at survival.  Humility, though, can't be attained or achieved, either; it can only be bestowed - see Step 7 for more on this - or else learned, via failure.  (Per the latter:  Step 10 puts it this way:  "Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress.")

Christianity simply picked up on all this and systematized it.   (I will be interested to investigate other faiths to see how they look at this!)

So, why "The Way of the Warrior"?   Well, obviously, because Worf understands his own destiny - and his own struggle - that way.  When a compatriot asked him, "Against whom do you test yourself?  Against what enemy do you charge into battle?", he answered:

"My brother, it is you who does not see; you look for battles in the wrong place.  The true test of a warrior is not without; it is within.  Here, here [pointing to his own chest] is where we meet the challenge.  It is the weaknesses in here a warrior must overcome."

(I've been watching old TV shows on Netflix lately.  And doesn't this describe the "Way of the Jedi," too, BTW?  Interesting that popular culture picks this up as a central theme, romanticizing it for modern audiences.  Is it actually coming from bushido, I wonder?   Why is this?   How did that happen?  And why do modern audiences find it romantic - and then totally ignore it?  I guess that's something for the next post.)

In any case:  if we are looking to give people a challenge:  here's one....

"Why Gregorian Chant Rocks"

Just for the sake of pure enjoyment, here's a nice article by Judy Keane, in The Catholic Exchange:

Today we can scarcely go to a clothing store, a health club or even a gas station without being besieged by a variety of thumping, agitating and jarring music blasting from speakers above. While I appreciate a variety of music, I have found that Gregorian chant stands in stark contrast to the fatigue of today’s popular tunes which tends to dominate music charts across the globe. By its very nature, Gregorian chant supersedes the entertainment value of music by allowing us to step out of our fast-paced world and instead focus on the sacred. Standing the test of time, this early Christian song continues to enrich our Catholic culture and rouse the soul with holy inspirations. Originating as a form of plainchant, this great treasure of the Church began under the auspices of Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) who referred to it as “the song of Angels.” Early art depicts Pope Gregory as a music loving saint who received the gift of chant from a dove, representing the Holy Spirit, who came to sit upon his shoulder and began to sing in his ear. Born in the Church, its lyrics come from the Latin Vulgate, Mass ordinaries, divine office hymns, antiphons, and responsories. For centuries it has been sung in Latin as pure melody in unison without musical accompaniment, meter or time signature. It is music composed for the soul in which the words of God are lovingly sung back to him.

Gregorian chant continues to be kept alive in monasteries, convents, and some cathedrals while also remaining a subject of study among a small group of dedicated academics. Over the past few decades, the world has seen a resurgence of chant. In the 1990’s, an album aptly named Chant, performed by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos (Spain) became the best-selling record of Gregorian chant ever. Emerging in 1994 as an antidote to the stress of modern life, Chant peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. Similarly, the Cistercian Viennese Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz, also shot to the top of classical music charts with their #1 selling album which also hit number nine on the pop charts!

So why does Gregorian chant rock? One reason is that it conveys the sacred to the secular. Contrary to the agitating sounds of hip hop, hard rock and heavy metal, Gregorian chant is instead a soothing balm for weary souls and a source of comfort for unsettled hearts. Inspiring and edifying, simple and poignant, this music of paradise slows our racing minds, renews our vigor, and eases the tensions of a harried world. It ethereal quality elevates us from the temporal and transports us to the spiritual.

Dr. Alan Watkins, a senior lecturer in neuroscience at Imperial College London noted that “the musical structure of chant can have a significant and positive physiological impact,” and that chanting has actually been shown to “lower blood pressure, increase levels of DHEA and also reduce anxiety and depression.” Similar studies also suggest that Gregorian chant can aid in communications between the right and left hemispheres of the brain more effectively, therefore creating new neural brain pathways.

Benedictine nun, Ruth Stanley, head of the complementary medicine program at Minnesota’s St. Cloud Hospitals also says she’s had great success in easing the chronic pain of patients by having them listen to chant. “The body can move to a deeper level of its own inherent, innate healing ability when you play chant. It’s quite remarkable.” In a 1978 documentary called “Chant,” French audiologist, Dr. Alfred Tomatis, related how he was called upon to help the monks of a Benedictine monastery who suffered from fatigue, depression, and physical illness. He found that they usually took part in six to eight hours of chanting per day but due to a new edict, their chanting was halted. When Tomatis succeeded in re-establishing their daily chanting, the monks regained their well-being and were again full of life. His conclusion was that Gregorian chant is capable of charging the central nervous system along with the cortex of the brain thus having a direct effect on the monk’s overall happiness and health.

Aside from noted physical, spiritual and metal benefits, Gregorian chant may even aid in the conversion of hearts. It is believed that well-known author and philosophy professor, Peter Kreeft listed the angelic chant music of Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina as one of the reasons he is Catholic today. Beyond this, Gregorian chant inspires and instructs. It allows us to regain our strength, our clarity and our focus on what is truly important in life. In his letter read at the 100^th anniversary of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, Emeritus Pope Benedict spoke about the vital role Gregorian chant has played in Church history along with countering the argument that Chant is a thing of the past. Instead he praised Gregorian chant as being “of huge value to the great ecclesial heritage of universal sacred music,” and that “Mass must convey a sense of prayer, dignity and beauty.” The Second Vatican Council also noted that Gregorian chant should be given “pride of place” in liturgical music. Unfortunately, finding a church where chant is still sung is a daunting task.

On a personal level, I listen to Gregorian chant regularly at home, at work and while driving. I’ve found the more I listen to it, the more I recognize its spiritual and mental benefits. It calms me and lifts my mind from the challenges of the day to what is above. I even noticed my pets are calmer and more relaxed when chant fills my home! A friend of mine says it peacefully lulls her baby to sleep. Still others find playing it at home creates a tranquil family atmosphere in which to converse, eat, pray and live. Like the rhythm of a calm heartbeat, Gregorian chant fosters peace within ourselves and those around us. It is not music for the sake of music – but rather prayer that inspires prayer.

If you’ve not yet had the opportunity to enjoy the many benefits of Gregorian chant, there are some great CD’s and downloads available including those mentioned in this article. Why not give it a try! In comparison to much of today’s music, Gregorian chant is music that aims for heaven, the greatest goal of all! And because of that – it rocks!

Not to toot our own horns, but we've talked about the health benefits of chant and the psychological benefits of worship before!

Hmmmm....

I've come to realize lately that in fact what's wrong with the church is that it doesn't have a program.

I went through the whole "deconstructing the 12 Steps" thing awhile back - I'm still not finished with it - but I'm beginning to see that it's a case of "not seeing the forest for the trees." It isn't a case of what the church does that's like the 12 Steps; it's a case of what the 12 Steps do that the church doesn't.

And that's this:  they give people a discipline to work through in an orderly fashion.  The church doesn't do this at all; it doesn't say to its newcomers:  "Listen, we found this group of principles that works really well in helping people 'lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in their fellows.'"  (That's another quote from A.A.)

No, the Church, lamely, doesn't do anything, really.  It hires a weekly speaker and a musician, and asks people to fork over some money.  Not really a formula for success, I'd say; no wonder it's losing members right and left and going extinct. 

Well, it's time to develop a program, I'd say.  And I think I should do it in reverse:  see how the 12 Steps can best be adapted to what the church is doing.  We know they work (although I'm a little worried the whole concept might be debased at this point, after 40 years of "self-help" industry promotions).

So that's what I'm going to do.  I think the "deconstructing" series might help - got to finish that - but I was really looking at the whole thing backwards....

Step 3: The abandonment of will (Last post on this, I promise!)

It seems as if I really can't shut up when it comes to Step 3! Here it is again:

"3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."

I searched on my own keywords above - "abandonment of will" - and found some pretty interesting and varied references: to the mystic Marguerite Porete; to the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; to Epictetus; to "critical literary thinking"; to St. Clare; to the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Here's the reference to Porete, from a 1994 book titled Mystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael Anthony Sells:

The first relation between the performance of apophasis and its context centers upon will. Porete's Dame Amour speaks of the soul-annihilated-in-love as giving up her will entirely. She no longer wills to do or refrain from doing anything for God. The context of that statement is the transition from the fourth stage, the stage of works, to the fifth and sixth stages of mystical union. The seven-stage pattern of ascent is kataphatic and directional. Each stage leads to a higher stage, and no stage can be skipped. The abandonment of will takes place in the context of the striving to do good works and to follow the divine will. It is from within that striving that the soul realizes the apophatic aporia of desire, that even the desire to do good works or follow the divine will contains an egoism that must be given up in order to arrive at the fifth station of annihilation. At the moment of abandonment of the self, of will, and of works, Dame Amour tells us, the deity (as trinity, Dame Amour, or FarNear) will work within the soul.

I've posted before about Porete on this blog; she was a Flemish mystic - perhaps a "Beguine," a lay sister - born in the 13th Century, and burned at the stake for heresy by the Church in 1310.

"The soul-annihilated-in-love"! Well, maybe it's a good thing that this Step is only about "making a decision," then; my soul at that point was in a state of annihilation, all right - but definitely not from love! Interesting, actually, that the "abandonment of will" for A.A.s comes very soon in the Step program - and quite far along in the "seven stages of mystical union" (where one would actually predict it might come, in fact). I'm sure that's because A.A. can't afford to be just messing around; it's an emergency situation, and "abandonment of will" is not something that can be allowed to just "happen" someplace down the road - a start has to be made right away.

IOW, we have to come to a decision about this fairly soon in sobriety, and begin the process of "turning our will and life" over to God.

Here's the introduction to the "long version" of this Step, from the little book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions":

Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: "This is the way to a faith that works." In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflection. We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we also perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action; they required only acceptance. Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God--or, if you like, a Higher Power--into our lives. Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents our first attempt to do this. In fact, the effectiveness of the whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." To every worldly and practical-minded beginner, this Step looks hard, even impossible. No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? Fortunately, we who have tried it, and with equal misgivings, can testify that anyone, anyone at all, can begin to do it. We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more. Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.

Clearly, clearly: "Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God--or, if you like, a Higher Power--into our lives. Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing."

Self-will is the problem, and willingness is the solution. Developing willingness, that is; action. The next part of the Step (you can read the whole thing here) is this:

Maybe this all sounds mysterious and remote, something like Einstein's theory of relativity or a proposition in nuclear physics. It isn't at all. Let's look at how practical it actually is. Every man and woman who has joined A.A. and intends to stick has, without realizing it, made a beginning on Step Three. Isn't it true that in all matters touching upon alcohol, each of them has decided to turn his or her life over to the care, protection, and guidance of Alcoholics Anonymous? Already a willingness has been achieved to cast out one's own will and one's own ideas about the alcohol problem in favor of those suggested by A.A. Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the foundering vessel he has become. Now if this is not turning one's will and life over to a newfound Providence, then what is it? But suppose that instinct still cries out, as it certainly will, "Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintain my independence. Nothing is going to turn me into a nonentity. If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut." This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development. The trouble is that this kind of thinking takes no real account of the facts. And the facts seem to be these: The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are. Therefore dependence, as A.A. practices it, is really a means of gaining true independence of the spirit.

So: can the church learn something from all this? It seems to me that accommodation has been made here especially for alcoholics; abandonment of will needs to come quite early in the process, because otherwise the alcoholic will die. It's an extreme measure for people who are sick; for mystics, it's a "stage" on the way to "union."

Which says something, doesn't it?  First, that "abandonment of will" is possible earlier than mystics may suppose; second, that A.A. makes this a matter of conscious effort - something on which the alcoholic must "take action."

I don't think the Church says much about this at all, in fact - let alone making it a key part of the life of faith.  We are told, instead either that the Christian life is about "good works" or that it's about being "justified by grace through faith."  Neither of which really addresses the issue that Step 3 attempts to address, which is (in A.A's memorable phrase) the problem of "self-will run riot."  And both of which actually may encourage the Christian in her "I'm the center of the universe" thinking - exactly the problem in the first place!

Suppose the church did start to discuss "abandonment of will," though?  It's a thought, isn't it?

Step 3: The abandonment of will (Part III)

So, OK.  Caelius, in a comment in the last post, writes this:

Such a heavy matter this business about the will. The Office is on Romans these days as you know, where Paul is trying to come to grips with this in his daily life.

I'm tempted to say that the problem is distinguishing the exercise of the will as an event (I became blind and decided to go along with the crazy heretic who was trying to help me; or I feared for my life so much that I went to an AA meeting; or an angel told me I would become pregnant through the agency of God and I decided to go along with it as best I could.) from the exercise of the will as a continuous struggle. The person arguing for the bound will, monergism, or irresistible grace has an easy time arguing that the "righteous" continuous exercise of the will being a matter for God alone. Day after day, we screw up. We cannot become perfect.

But that doesn't matter, it is the act of the will in the event that is the beginning and therefore the whole of salvation, for we are not perfected in the here and now. Or so I always thought. AA seems to admit this. "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God." That's what Paul did in the city of Damascus. That's what Mary did in Nazareth. Many of the prophets resisted, but finally thery said, "Here I am. Send me."

Such a smart boy, our Caelius; I always trust his thinking.

"Monergism" was a new one on me, though. That's this:

Monergism states that the regeneration of an individual is the work of God the Holy Spirit alone, as opposed to synergism, which, in its simplest form, argues that the human will cooperates with God's grace in order to be regenerated. To the synergist, faith may arise from unregenerated human nature. Salvation is not complete until the individual performs some action(s). According to monergism, faith in Christ only springs from a heart first renewed by God. Among various arguments, proponents believe 1 Corinthians 12:3 to mean that no one can possibly confess Jesus as Lord apart from the Holy Spirit's prompting and conviction.

Since faith is infinitely beyond all the power of our unregenerated human nature, it is only God who can give the spiritual ears to hear and eyes to see the beauty of Christ in the gospel. God alone disarms the hostility of the sinner turning his heart of stone to a heart of flesh. It is God, the Holy Spirit, alone who gives illumination and understanding of His word that we might believe; It is God who raises us from the death of sin, who circumcises the heart; unplugs our ears; It is God alone who can give us a new sense, a spiritual capacity to behold the beauty and unsurpassed excellency of Jesus Christ. The apostle John recorded Jesus saying to Nicodemus that we naturally love darkness, hate the light and WILL NOT come into the light (John 3:19, 20).

I have to say that if faith can't "arise from unregenerated human nature" - well, we are all destroyed. There was barely a speck of God in me when I began my A.A. life - and that condition lasted for quite awhile. I had no faith at all - only fear. My heart was stone.

Listen: I get the point. We really can't save ourselves - but God can't save us, either, unless we go along.

There's a fissure along these same lines, actually, in A.A. itself, too. I wasn't aware of it - and I don't think it's universal - but here's an example. One day I went to a meeting in a part of town I didn't ordinarily visit - but I'd been to this meeting before and vaguely knew a few of the people. I can't remember exactly what the topic was, but I know I raised my hand and said something like: "What's so amazing is that compulsions and obsessions that once ruled my life - they are all gone now. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, of course - but I mean other things, too. My deep, all-pervading and everlasting sense of guilt: gone. My terrible shyness and fear of other people: gone. My obsessive projection into the future and rehashing of the past: gone. I'm better now, really better; I'm so amazed and grateful at this."

Somebody came up to me afterwards and surprised me by congratulating me for saying this - which indicates, of course, that it's a taboo in that neighborhood. The takeaway for me that day was that saying that you're better isn't done - which could be for several reasons. For instance: one isn't supposed to "brag" about being better - which I really wasn't doing! I was just talking about facts evident to me, and trying to tell others how good sobriety could get. Another reason, and the one I think is at work in "monergism" (and in the versions I'm seeing, this is its error): we don't get better at all, actually. We always return - as I read someplace just today, actually! - like dogs, to our own vomit.

But no. There is, in fact, linear progress. We get better - and this is made very clear right in the Big Book, matter of fact, in a group of statements known as "the Promises" (this section immediately follows the enumeration of the Steps):

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

Well, there it is: if we work for them. Yet we are told that we can do nothing to help ourselves. I break with the Reformation idea right here; it simply doesn't jibe with my experience - and it doesn't follow from A.A. principles, either.

I'm trying to understand why it might be that the "passive" idea gains hold. I do, truly, understand that God is the prime mover here - and that I couldn't get myself sober. Still, I can do something. The "promises" above are nothing to sneeze at - and I don't think they constitute "works righteousness," either. I don't consider myself "righteous" for having gotten sober; I consider myself "lucky" and "amazed" and "thankful." I freely admit it wasn't my own doing in any way - yet I needed to do the Steps.

Why isn't that a good way to look at it? I wasn't trying to earn brownie points with God by doing the Steps; I was trying to stay alive and keep my head above water. The first is "works righteousness," I'd think; the second is surely something else, isn't it? I don't think the argument holds here - and I don't see why it should hold in the life of Christian faith, either. I don't think people are trying, in the modern world, to "earn their salvation" with works of charity or by following "the law"; that's not the motivation today.

I do acknowledge, too, that "justification by grace through faith" is a valid (and certainly Scriptural) idea. But Paul was - as usual - talking to a particular group of people about a particular issue, and I don't think Romans necessarily needs to become Law, either.

I'm certainly not the first to say this, but there are seven Atonement theories, and each seems inadequate in some way by itself. Something happened on the cross, we know - but I'm not sure we can make a simple equation here. Paul's entire theology hangs on one obscure reference in Deuteronomy; "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." This is not, as far as I know, a major theme in Torah or Tanakh as a whole. It is Pauline rhetoric; it's great rhetoric, I completely agree, but it is something that only a Pharisee would be aware of!

Paul developed an entirely new theology from this one obscure statement in Jewish Law - and good on 'im, I say. "Christ who knew no sin was made sin for us." It's an amazing leap, another of those things arising from a source you'd never expect.

But it's not the end of the story, I don't think. And this is not the end of Step 3, either, from which I've wandered far and wide. I'll post this, and sum up next, really....

Step 3: The abandonment of will (continued)

OK, let's just go with Wikipedia's version, because I want to talk about the Step.  Please, dear theologians and philosophers, be kind; to me it doesn't much matter if the following is inaccurate (although I do encourage correction - oh, indeed by golly, yes), because I can still talk about the ideas, can't I?  I mean, Yoga as it's done all over the United States today doesn't seem to have much to do with Hinduism, does it?  (Weird analogy, I know, but I've been thinking about this recently, because I've gotten interested in - of all things! - "speaking in tongues."  I discussed this topic with a friend a few weeks ago, and then picked up a book about it; the writer's argument so far - I'm only halfway through - is that glossolalia in the New Testament clearly refers to the speaking of a foreign language one has never learned, and not - as American Pentecostalism has it - to "a tongue of one's own," or to an ecstatic language put into one's mouth by God.  The writer makes a good case, but then I recently talked with this friend - somebody who does practice the Pentecostal version in private prayer - and she made a good case for that, too.  I'll tell you about it sometime - maybe during Step 11!)

So, like I say:  things give rise to other things, even when the new things don't seem to have much to do with the original.  There's nothing illegal about it - and in fact there's something really intriguing about it, I think.  Anyway, Wikipedia on Luther's "Bondage of the Will":

On the Bondage of the Will (Latin: 'De Servo Arbitrio', literally, "Concerning Bound Choice"), by Martin Luther, was published in December 1525. It was his reply to Desiderius Erasmus's De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio or On Free Will, which had appeared in September 1524 as Erasmus's first public attack on Luther, after being wary about the methods of the reformer for many years. At issue was whether human beings, after the Fall of Man, are free to choose good or evil. The debate between Luther and Erasmus is one of the earliest of the Reformation over the issue of free will and predestination.

Luther maintained that sin incapacitates human beings from working out their own salvation, that they are completely unable to bring themselves to God. In this treatise, he begins by examining Erasmus's argument. He then discusses the power and complete sovereignty of God and lays out his own argument. His conclusions are that unredeemed human beings are dominated by Satan: Satan as the prince of this world never lets go of what he considers his own unless he is overpowered by a stronger power, i.e. God. When God redeems a person, he redeems the entire person, including the will, which then is liberated to serve God.

So I guess Erasmus fired the first shot, then, eh? Well, maybe I'll read that someday, too - but Luther got way too caught up in the personal stuff and just irritated the heck out of me. Hopefully I'll finish his thing sometime.

Well, the thinking here above, at least, is concerned not merely with "free will" or not, but "free will" as it relates to the life of faith.  It presumes that the human being wants to "work out his salvation," in the first place.   And that is definitely a question these days, because "Salvation" is not a clearly-defined concept in the modern church and in the modern world; it's just not.  Nobody much thinks about burning in hell (or not) anymore, do they?  I don't know many who do, anyway - and I don't think many people really know how to define "salvation" if not in these terms.  I think this is something we do need to work on today.

And I'm seeing now that this little snippet is really not enough after all; I don't know enough about the concepts being referred to here to even try to relate them to what's in the air (or not) today.  I think I'm going to have to abandon this tack and try another. 

How about this:  "Is everything foreordained?  Or can a person actually choose freely?"  Do these make more sense as simple questions?  In the case being discussed here:  can a person choose to get sober?  Does a person "choose" to get sober, or is it God's will and grace that accomplishes this?  Maybe these questions will get me someplace.

Here's my experience, for what it's worth.  One night 26 years ago, I had a little epiphany:  I understood in a flash and for the first time that my addiction problem was serious - that that was the problem - and that I couldn't do anything about it on my own, and that I was going to die if I didn't stop.  I'd had some previous experience with A.A. - attending meetings "for somebody else," long story but that's the gist - and somehow knew what to do at that moment, even though it was something I'd literally never done before.  I got on my knees and prayed to God for help - and that was the last time I ever had a drink or took a drug (without it being prescribed for something real, I must add).

The next day I found a meeting to go to and I went, and then I went the next day, and then the next - and that turned into months and years and a way of life.

Did I "choose" this?  Well, I chose to stay alive.  I chose to be involved with the person I attended A.A. meetings with, years before this moment - and I guess I even chose to listen at some of them.  I chose to go to a meeting (two, for quite a while, actually) every day for years.  I chose "not to pick up a drink" - but it was because I was afraid, at least at first.  (Later, when you start to get better and - as people describe it, a real experience! - "fall in love with your first streetlight," which means you're coming back to the world and finding this incredible beauty in the simple fact of being alive again - well, then, later you really start to see the life as something to be desired.  But fear is the first motivator; at least, it was for me.)

I want to ask:  does a person have a "destiny"?  And can she break out of it by choice?  My answers are, somehow:  No - and Yes!

I'm not sure I'm on any kind of real thread here.  "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him," though, really does seem to involve choice.   Doesn't it?

I'm just working out my salvation here, folks; feeling my way inch by inch.  I'm not sure where I am right now, but I'm going to post again later on this Step, I think.  I'm not done yet.

P.S.  The cake is chocolate, and the frosting - this mocha one - is delicious!

Step 3: The abandonment of will

"3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."

I've been trying to read an online copy of Luther's "Bondage of the Will before writing this post. I really have - but the man won't get to the point.  Every time I think he's about to say something important, it turns into another "You're such a moron, Erasmus" rant - and ya know, I'm really, really sick of this theme by now.  Anybody got a Cliff's Notes of this damn thing?

I'm giving up - but here's the Conclusion, and I hope that's enough for now (I'm reading it for the first time as I'm posting this):

Sect. CLXVII. - I SHALL here draw this book to a conclusion: prepared if it were necessary to pursue this Discussion still farther. Though I consider that I have now abundantly satisfied the godly man, who wishes to believe the truth without making resistance. For if we believe it to be true, that God fore-knows and fore-ordains all things; that He can be neither deceived nor hindered in His Prescience and Predestination; and that nothing can take place but according to His Will, (which reason herself is compelled to confess;) then, even according to the testimony of reason herself, there can be no "Free-will" - in man, - in angel, - or in any creature!

Hence:- If we believe that Satan is the prince of this world, ever ensnaring and fighting against the kingdom of Christ with all his powers; and that he does not let go his captives without being forced by the Divine Power of the Spirit; it is manifest, that there can be no such thing as - "Free-will!"

Again:- If we believe that original sin has so destroyed us, that even in the godly who are led by the Spirit, it causes the utmost molestation by striving against that which is good; it is manifest, that there can be nothing left in a man devoid of the Spirit, which can turn itself towards good, but which must turn towards evil!

Again:- If the Jews, who followed after righteousness with all their powers, ran rather into unrighteousness, while the Gentiles who followed after unrighteousness attained unto a free righteousness which they never hoped for; it is equally manifest, from their very works, and from experience, that man, without grace, can do nothing but will evil!

Finally:- If we believe that Christ redeemed men by His blood, we are compelled to confess, that the whole man was lost: otherwise, we shall make Christ superfluous, or a Redeemer of the grossest part of man only, - which is blasphemy and sacrilege!

Sect CLXVIII. - AND now, my friend Erasmus, I entreat you for Christ's sake to perform what you promised. You promised 'that you would willingly yield to him, who should teach you better than you knew.' Lay aside all respect of persons. You, I confess, are great and adorned with many, and those the most noble, gifts of God; (to say nothing of the rest,) with talent, with erudition, and with eloquence to a miracle. Whereas I, have nothing and am nothing, excepting that, I glory in being almost a Christian!

In this, moreover, I give you great praise, and proclaim it - you alone in pre-eminent distinction from all others, have entered upon the thing itself; that is, the grand turning point of the cause; and, have not wearied me with those irrelevant points about popery, purgatory, indulgences, and other like baubles, rather than causes, with which all have hitherto tried to hunt me down, - though in vain! You, and you alone saw, what was the grand hinge upon which the whole turned, and therefore you attacked the vital part at once; for which, from my heart, I thank you. For in this kind of discussion I willingly engage, as far as time and leisure permit me. Had those who have heretofore attacked me done the same, and would those still do the same, who are now boasting of new spirits, and new revelations, we should have less sedition and sectarianism, and more peace and concord. - But thus has God, by the instrumentality of Satan, avenged our ingratitude!

But however, if you cannot manage this cause otherwise than you have managed it in this Diatribe, do, I pray you, remain content with your own proper gift. Study, adorn, and promote literature and languages, as you have hitherto done, to great advantage, and with much credit. In which capacity, you have rendered me also a certain service: so much so, that I confess myself to be much indebted to you: and in that character, I certainly venerate, and honestly respect you. But as to this our cause:- to this, God has neither willed, nor given it you, to be equal: though I entreat you not to consider this as spoken in arrogance. No! I pray that the Lord may, day by day, make you as much superior to me in these matters, as you are superior to me in all others. And it is no new thing for God to instruct a Moses by a Jethro, or to teach a Paul by an Ananias. And as to what you say, - "You have greatly mist the mark after all, if you are ignorant of Christ." - You yourself, if I mistake not, know what that is. But all will not therefore err, because you or I may err. God is glorified in His saints in a wonderful way! So that, we may consider those saints who are the farthest from sanctity. Nor is it an unlikely thing, that you, as being man, should not rightly understand, nor with sufficient diligence weigh, the Scriptures, or the sayings of the Fathers: under which guides, you imagine you cannot miss the mark. And that such is the case, is quite manifest from this:- your saying that you do not assert but collect. No man would write thus, who was fully acquainted with and well understood his subject. On the contrary I, in this book of mine, have collectedthing, but have asserted, and still do assert: and I wish none to become judges, but all to yield assent. - And may the Lord, whose cause this is illuminate you, and make you a vessel to honour and to glory. - Amen!

Well, that doesn't really help, does it? I guess I'll have to find a summary of this book someplace if I ever want to write on this Step with the "Bound Will" in mind - and I think I do.

Give me a few hours. I just baked a cake and now must go frost it; then I'll speed-read some of the previous chapters in this book and see if I can get anything from it.

Perhaps I'm not meant to, and must do this another way, though. It could be as simple as that.

To be continued....

Deconstructing the 12 Steps: Part I

Alcoholics Anonymous derives pretty directly from the Oxford Group (originally called "A First Century Christian Fellowship"), an evangelical organization begun by Frank Buchman, a American Lutheran pastor, in 1921. Interestingly:

The group was unlike other forms of evangelism in that it targeted and directed its efforts to the "up and outers": the elites and wealthy of society. It made use of publicity regarding its prominent converts, and was caricatured as a "Salvation Army for snobs." Buchman's message did not challenge the status quo and thus aided the Group's popularity among the well-to-do. Buchman made the cover of Time Magazine as "Cultist Frank Buchman: God is a Millionaire" in 1936. For a U.S. headquarters, he built a multimillion-dollar establishment on Michigan's Mackinac Island, with room for 1,000 visitors. From Caux to London's Berkeley Square to New York's Westchester County layouts, Buchman and his followers had the best. In response to criticism, Buchman had an answer: "Isn't God a millionaire?" he would ask.

A.A. founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith were both Oxford Groupers; Wilson was a New York stockbroker and Smith an Akron physician - and no doubt the "up and outer" group appealed to them. The Oxford Group focused on personal sinfulness and personal redemption:

Buchman, who had little intellectual interest or interest in theology, believed all change happens from the individual outward, and stressed simplicity. He summed up the Group's philosophy in a few sentences: all people are sinners , all sinners can be changed, confession is a prerequisite to change, the change can access god directly, miracles are again possible, the change must change others.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous (AKA "The Big Book") was written in 1939 as an effort to spread the word about recovery from alcoholism - remember that until this time, alcoholics were mostly thought of as "hopeless" - in an inexpensive way; the 12 Steps were introduced for the first time in this volume. Again from Wikipedia:

After the third and fourth chapters of the Big Book were completed, Wilson decided that a summary of methods for treating alcoholism was needed to describe their "word of mouth" program. The basic program had developed from the works of William James, Dr. Silkworth, and the Oxford Group. It included six basic steps:

1. We admitted that we were licked, that we were powerless over alcohol.
2. We made a moral inventory of our defects or sins.
3. We confessed or shared our shortcomings with another person in confidence.
4. We made restitution to all those we had harmed by our drinking.
5. We tried to help other alcoholics, with no thought of reward in money or prestige.
6. We prayed to whatever God we thought there was for power to practice these precepts.

Wilson decided that the six steps needed to be broken down into smaller sections to make them easier to understand and accept. He wrote the Twelve Steps one night while lying in bed, which he felt was the best place to think. He prayed for guidance prior to writing, and in reviewing what he had written and numbering the new steps, he found they added up to twelve. He then thought of the Twelve Apostles and became convinced that the program should have twelve steps. With contributions from other group members, including atheists who reined in religious content--such as Oxford material--that could later result in controversy, by fall 1938 Wilson expanded the six steps into the final version of the Twelve Steps, which are detailed in Chapter Five of the Big Book, called "How It Works."

The modern version of the 12 Steps are pretty well-known by now, but here they are again:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. 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.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So, I'm going to try to look at these Steps and work in the opposite direction; I'm going to shrink them down into their component parts to see actually what's happening here. Maybe this will give some clues as to "what the church can learn from A.A.," even here in 2010? I hope so.

And I suppose this will probably take me a while, won't it? Well, then: the next post as soon as possible, but I'm not sure it's going to be tomorrow....

A.A. and the Church, Part 2

A continuation of my previous post on this topic. I was talking about how I got involved in the church - against my own will and better judgment, for the most part - and what my current influences are. I was talking about my experience with A.A., and relating that, as I have done pretty frequently on this blog over the past 6 years, to my experiences with the church.

And I come, basically, to this:

• I'm in this now - the church, I mean - willingly or unwillingly; it seems that I'm being "called" to something here, and I'm going with it even though I don't know where I'm going;
• I've been on a spiritual path in A.A. for a quarter of a century now - and A.A. is actually among the best spiritual paths I've ever had contact with;
• The church continues to lose members;
• Many believe it to be boring and irrelevant at best; many think it has nothing to offer except bigotry, "fairy tales," and worn-out attitudes;
• I believe that my very life depends upon my spiritual condition - that if I don't at least attempt to maintain conscious contact with God I could lose everything, including my life and/or sanity;
• It seems to me (and this is the penultimate step of the proof - and where the proof might in fact break down, unfortunately!) that the difference between me and anybody else is one of degree, and not of kind.  IOW, that alcoholism/addiction is just an extreme example of the brokenness and distress of the human condition; that everybody is broken in some way or ways, small or large - and that, therefore, all people need to attempt to maintain conscious contact with God in order not to lose everything.
  
  This I suppose is a bit controversial - but honestly I don't see why it should be.  Yesterday I was crucifer at one of the Sunday services; I don't usually do this job, but lots of people were out yesterday and I took it because I was there.  Anyway, I held the cross very high; that's my style, because I think of the words of the hymn, and because I want it to be very obvious and the most prominent thing in the room.  I should say this is a fairly new development in my personal theology, too, although I'm not sure why it wasn't immediately obvious that the cross should always be presented this way.  Well, I'm dense, that's all.
  
  Anyway, it made me think again of something I'd read a few years ago - that "the traumatic truth of human history is a tortured body." Surely this is obvious to everybody, isn't it? That human beings can get up to all kinds of horrific things - things (we say) we find unbelievable later but that were accepted as normal at the time?  Surely it's obvious that, as John Huston put it in the movie "Chinatown," playing the hideous Noah Cross (!): "Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything!"
  
  Surely that's clear, isn't it? Think of what the church itself has done in the past - and what it continues to do when it thinks it can get away with it. Think of Western Imperialism - and Eastern Communism. Think of Rwanda. Think of the Trail of Tears. Think of the Bataan Death March. Think of My Lai.
  
  Remember Arendt's "banality of evil." (Although that idea is currently being questioned, it doesn't seem at all controversial to this gay person. I'm sure it doesn't seem controversial to anybody who grew up black in the United States during most of its history, either.  And it won't seem controversial to the people whose lives we're currently ruining by our actions or by our neglect, either way.)

OK.  So, while the last bullet above is something of a leap that needs more justification, what I'm saying is that human beings, by definition, are all in need of rehabilitation - you and me both.  And as in A.A. (where this is accepted as completely uncontroversial) it's not a one-off, either; it's a continuing process that needs to occur over the course of a person's lifetime.  And since A.A. is not for everybody, nor was it meant to be, some other organized group needs to take charge of this problem.

But, wait!  Another organized group has, in fact, addressed this very problem!  Religion has!  Including the religion we're involved with now, Christianity!  What do you know about that!  For more than two thousand years now, Christianity has been claiming that we and the world are broken and in need of salvation.

I submit that perhaps it's actually true.  I submit, too, that most people know this anyway; everybody in New York, for instance, is in therapy - and this has been true for a long time.  They are in therapy for the same reason that everybody in Biloxi, Mississippi goes to church:  because that's the fashion locally.

But, as posters to the Mockingbird blog often note, the church does not do a very good job of addressing the sickness of the human condition.  In fact, it becomes sick itself - it decides that nobody outside its circle has done or can do anything right - then tries to push that off as health.   Here's Mockingbird again:

By way of contrast, the Christian church often creates an environment where people cannot really be open and honest about their struggles. It can appear that Christians have no besetting struggles, just “victory,” and the occasional assaults of the devil, but very few inwardly generated liabilities or recidivistic tendencies. The person in AA who denies these things is nothing more than a liar. To quote 1 John 1: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves.”

Imagine walking into a church where all who entered were asked to sign a waiver at the door that said: “I’m a sinner and by stepping into the room today I acknowledge that fact.” Ministry and church life would be tremendously more effective. Unfortunately, you can come into church these days and sign up for any number of identities: Easter/Christmas type, fanatic/Pharisee, sinner, middle-of-the-road, or whatever. In AA there is only the option of sinner.

I'm sure it's clear to you by now where I'm going with this. The church offers, by way of ancient spiritual texts and interpretation of what's contained in those texts, a way for human beings to live and be saved. Ancient spiritual texts are so interesting in their own right (at least for me) because it's clear that people had need of spiritual sustenance in times and places that were lots less "safe" than our Western experience is today. And those people needed to find that sustenance on their own - without the aid of chemicals or technology. They are, in other words, addressing at depth and directly the facts of the human condition - which, it seems to me, makes them more or less timeless. Or, at least, applicable until the next great evolutionary change occurs in the species homo sapiens - and I really don't think we're there yet.

IOW, all ancient texts are in some way "Wisdom Literature." They continue to have many, many things to say to us - and when you attend a great Bible study class, for instance, you realize this immediately. And when this is paired with a view of Grace such as the one you find in A.A. - that hopeless people (AKA "sinners") are given the free gift of life and sanity completely undeserved and unasked-for - it becomes a startlingly clear path towards healing.

And that is where the church misses the boat, from Evangelicals to liberal Episcopalians; "Grace" and "healing" have been utterly forgotten. That is where our focus needs to be, and isn't.

Maybe more later.....

A.A. and the Church

As I've been posting here recently, I've started to follow a blog written by an organization called "Mockingbird Ministries."

The reasons are several; one is that I've come into strong contact recently with the Reformation idea that "Grace" is the key to the faith life and to "salvation." Another is Mockingbird's explicit drawing from the literature and example of Alcoholics Anonymous. You might notice on the blog that the first link in their "Churches/Sermons/Resources" section is to Calvary/St. George's in New York City - a church where A.A. has deep roots. I think some of the founders of Mockingbird, or writers on the blog, have been connected with Calvary in some way.

Keep in mind that my experience with Christianity has been almost completely experiential; I have had very little contact at all with systematic - or formal in any real way - theology. I've just had a particular experience and have been putting one foot in front of the other ever since, because I felt "called" in some basic way - "obligated" is how I've put it in my more sardonic moments, because I was never really looking for it. And actually, I'm in a number of ways almost totally unwillingly involved in all this.

This is to say that my relation to faith is not intellectual, but emotional, really, I guess. I certainly feel that I'm being swept up into something that I have been completely unfamiliar with - and highly resentful of even at the best of times.

So, anyway: what I'm interested in now - and this has been a theme for me for years, actually - is how religion - Christianity in particular - can create health. Don't forget: I have been intimately involved in that particular experience via A.A. for more than 25 years now - and A.A. is explicitly "spiritual." I know from my own life experience the difference between extreme illness and health - and I owe my life to this difference even now. And almost everybody in A.A. acknowledges - after we get a little better, anyway - that we did absolutely nothing to deserve - or effect - the second chance at life we're getting. We were not in control of our lives or our resurrection from the dead; it was a free gift from God.

And of course, this is the exact definition of "Grace" as taught by Luther and other Reformers.

And the more I read the gospels, the more I realize that "health" is really a central idea there. People come to Jesus for healing - all kinds of people with all kinds of problems. Nothing has worked, as long as they've lived, to solve these problems: the invalid at the Sheep Gate was lame for 38 years, and could never get into the Pool first for its healing effects; the woman had had the hemorrhage for more than 12 years and no doctor had ever been able to help her; the paralytic at Capernaum had been seeking to be healed for a long time, and needed the help of his four friends to get him to see Jesus. These stories are completely familiar to people who get sober in A.A.; many have tried everything - but could never get better until they "surrender" and admit complete defeat, asking God for help. (This is notwithstanding the many anti-A.A. attitudes currently in fashion. Here's an interesting recent example of one; this particular argument claims at once that A.A. keeps people from obtaining necessary care for their desperate problem - and also that alcohol abuse isn't really that serious, but something that most people simply outgrow naturally. Interesting contradiction there, don't you think?)

So, OK. This is a long-winded introduction to my major point, which is that if A.A. can succeed at changing people's lives in such a dramatic way - why can't the church take a few lessons from it? I've talked about this many, many times on this blog - and am finding that this is what Mockingbird argues, too, quite often.

There are definitely distinctions to be drawn; I've been drawing some, as I see them, at their blog lately. (Funny thing is, nobody's responded to me yet, not even when I wish them the best as they move their organization from New York to Virginia! Whenever that happens, I always suspect it's because people have linked to my blog and seen posts I've written on gay-related topics and decided I'm not really that welcome. Who knows if that's really true? But there's no question that they are coming from an Evangelical perspective, and of course we've all written volumes about that whole relationship.) These distinctions are actually quite important, in my view - and need to be drawn in order to understand how to work this problem out for the general (non-addict/alcoholic, that is) population.

More later; this post is growing too long at this point. Do check out, though, their Memorial Day post; it's a stunning and fascinating video of the "Honor Guard Inspection" portion of the Changing of the Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. Better yet, here's the video itself.