This essay was inspired by Center for Action and Contemplation meditations on the theme of Awe and Amazement from the week of December 3rd through 9th 2023. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/willing-to-be-amazed/
“Don’t we all feel like poets when we try to speak of the beauty and wonder of this creation? Don’t we share a common amazement about our cosmic neighborhood when we wake up to the fact that we’re actually here, actually alive, right now?…” Brian D. McLaren December 8 2023, from We Make the Road by Walking: A Year Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation
No. we don’t. Maybe because we don’t all “wake up to the fact that we’re actually here, actually alive.” Isn’t that why we are here, on this blog to reach for our poetic self, the one who is in awe of the beauty and wonder of creation? The one who feels truly and fully alive, right now? Not after the next hit, not after the next accomplishment or acquisition or acting out. Not after your loved one is in recovery. Not after you “process grief”. Now. Depression, addiction, trauma, and being stuck in grief, anger and the insistence life be fair can all separate us from awe.
“Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to every created thing comes into focus. In sacred awe, we are a part of the story.” Arthur Riley December 7, 2023, from This Here Flesh
If we are still living out of our trauma that triggered our addiction this may be hard to imagine, hard to welcome as a good thing. If we are consumed by sorrow, anxiety, anger, and or fear regarding an addicted loved one, joy and awe may seem impossible. Feeling myself acutely connected to the sunrise, bird song, and scamper of a lizard as I sit on my porch embracing the breeze and the rain or whatever nature brings me, I also feel my sorrow. But then I focus on awe as a healing practice. I want to marvel at the hydraulics of a Granddaddy Long Legs and how the second set of legs reach out ahead to sense the environment. I want to feel a part of it all. I want my sorrow to feel smaller in this larger world.
If your trauma is front and center and all you can do is step on the tarantula and wish the birds weren’t so loud, if you are missing awe, you will stay trapped in your addiction. If you love an addict you may become stuck in sorrow or in seeking fairness. This is why a higher power is needed, a bigger thing if you will. Something more important than me. Your addiction is huge, give it a bigger and better container so it can seem small.
God language is tricky, some folks just say “translate it to what you are comfortable with if God language doesn’t work for you”. Sure, some folks have worked that out but the folks who haven’t need us to not be lazy. It can be difficult to find your translation. It can be a moving target, maybe it is love as a verb in one God discussion or simply the good in the world. The creative force in the universe and us all often works for me. In my writing I try not to be lazy and just say God since that leaves me feeling like we need to discuss exactly “what is this God?” so the reader can follow along. Big guy, beard, white robe, brown shoes? Finger hovering over the smite key? That isn’t working for me.
My God will have radical amazement every time we fall. Not because I have a romantic notion that we are all beautiful all the time or even meant to be (a useful notion I suppose) but because radical amazement at our falls and our follies will lead to deep contemplation of how such a thing could happen which will I hope lead to recovery. If I am made in God’s image, I will know you are also and I will have radical amazement when you fall which will then lead to me paying closer attention. This will lead to deeper understanding which can prevent me from enabling and allow me to help. Compare this to disgust which leads one to turn away. Does your higher power turn away when you fall short?
When I read this week's meditations I was struck with my reaction, my surprise that radical amazement was only discussed about a sunset or mountain top and not about a beautiful child of God stealing from his grandmother to feed his addiction or a kind and loving husband neglecting his wife due to a pornography addiction. I am radically amazed at how far we can fall. Most people I suppose would simply react in disgust and throw away the misbehaving member of creation. I am a scientist and healer and I can’t walk away. If I were easily disgusted I couldn’t be a healer, I have to run toward the bleeding wound.
“Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe.” December 6, 2023 Abraham J Heschel from Who Is Man
My curiosity about the gaping wound will lead me to answer my questions about it, explore all the possibilities for healing it. Find and remove all dirt until it is cleansed. A very practical beginning, stop the bleeding, clean and assess the wound. This gives way to awe as I witness the body's ability to stitch itself back together, skin cells approaching each other across the gap, knowing when to stop, how much scar is needed for strength, the marrow refilling the blood supply, awe at the miracle of simply being alive in such a body.
“Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight.” December 6 2023 Abraham J Heschel from Who Is Man.
Thus the people trapped in the pornography industry become “actors” or “models' ' not people suffering, your grandmother's grocery money a chance to buy drugs. Seeing people in their full humanity can be your higher power, your bigger than me thing that keeps you in recovery.
“A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom” December 6 2023 Abraham J Heschel Who Is Man
It doesn’t have to be a mountain top, it can be the smooth feel of a clean dish, the way the soap bubbles reflect the kitchen, the aroma of fresh coffee or anything I see off my porch, the lizard, the oak leaf, the complaining chickadee when I am too close to her nest. Whatever your acting out is, look for reverence buried over there. Alcohol? Find reverence for how clearly you see the world when sober. If you haven’t been sober long you may be seeing the world through withdrawal and craving not the clear mind of a sober person; be patient, have faith. Keep looking.
The phrase “worthy of faith” in this series of meditations was lost on me until this moment. Early in recovery you may need to remember you are “worthy of faith” and have faith in your recovery, in your helpers, in your ability to find helpers at a 12 step meeting or in counseling or in family members with healthy boundaries. Allow yourself to feel and know the faith they have in your ability to heal. Find reverence for the humanity of people you objectified to fuel a sex addiction, find reverence for rest if you are a workaholic.
One way to participate in the “goodness and beauty” is to approach the evil and ugly and help restore it to goodness and beauty. We all do this every day I hope. A flat tire can bring out the worst in us. You might find yourself on the side of the road wishing you could find the jack or bemoaning the spare is also flat when suddenly you are confronted with the kindness of a stranger, the beauty of a sunset, or the miracle of a cell phone and you shift from bad and ugly to gratitude and beauty. With addiction the shift may need more deliberate and long term effort and professional or collegial help. This blog is an attempt to walk with you as you approach the brokenness and mend it, to create awe in the ability of people to heal, to forgive, to grow. To bend the radical amazement that one can fall so far away from into a radical amazement that one can climb up to wisdom from such depths. That we can regain a sense of awe at the beauty of creation where before we could only see sorrow and worry or the need for a fix.
“...the purpose of existence isn’t money or power or fame or security or anything less than this: to participate in the goodness and beauty and aliveness of creation” Brian McLaren December 8 2023
Re and I are here to help you find your way to “goodness and beauty and aliveness of creation”. Wherever you are, look for the helpers as Mr Rogers might say.
"Here is the mistake we all make in our encounters with reality—both good and bad. We do not realize that it wasn’t the person or event right in front of us that made us angry or fearful—or excited and energized. At best, that is only partly true. If we had allowed a beautiful hot air balloon in the sky to make us happy, it was because we were already predisposed to happiness. The hot air balloon just occasioned it—and almost anything else would have done the same. How we see will largely determine what we see and whether it can give us joy or make us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see and are predisposed to see in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time. Most of the time, we just do not see at all, but rather operate on cruise control.” December 4, 2023 Father Richard Rohr from Just This.
Cruise control has settings. If none of this really made any sense to you, please know my default setting is to look at people with a generous forgiving heart that hopes all can heal. I also know how often fear and sorrow stand between me and joy. If your cruise control is set in such a way that healing seems impossible, find ways to cope and work to understand how your cruise control landed on hopeless. Finding out how much of your own brain/mind/approach to life is hard wired and how much was installed by life events can be a rewarding journey. Once you realize who put the negative voice in your head you can forgive them or at least evict them. Find people well versed in all of the above; they can help you reread this with a generous heart. If you have ungenerous thoughts about yourself, it will be hard to find beauty anywhere. Who taught you to see only ugly and who can help you see beauty?
Keep reading and searching and growing and trying...until awe, joy and gratitude have a place in your recovery. You are worthy of faith.