CCC Blog

A Path Forward

I’ve always known there were addiction issues in my family of origin.  My father didn’t share much about his upbringing or his relationship with his father, but I knew my grandfather was a heavy drinker for many decades of his life.  Somehow, he stopped around the time I was born, so I never new him as anything but sober.  But I’ve always felt there was more my father could have told me about his feelings regarding his own father than he ever did.  My father himself battled weight issues his whole life (keeping weight off), and I have two close family members who have struggled with eating disorders (keeping weight on).  Another relative has dealt with addiction to narcotics.  And I myself have always had my own compulsions.  For a few years in my early 20s, I was a pretty heavy smoker.  When I stopped smoking, I switched back to dipping smokeless tobacco more for several more years – a habit I picked up in college.  I am still pretty compulsive about (or addicted to) exercise.  And for many decades I was a social drinker.  But over in the last several years, as I have examined my own personal life – and who I am as a member of my wider family - I decided to cut alcohol out of my lifestyle completely.  That has not stopped me, however, from continuing think about – and read about –  addictions in general (and alcohol in particular).  Addiction is a common theme in the conversations I have with the therapist I see (virtually) every month.

While I understand that each situation involving addiction is different, and while I don’t pretend to be an expert, I do believe that all addictions are relationship substitutes of some sort.  That is, something is missing in the addict’s life which is most likely causing pain and hurt.  Whatever it is that is missing and/or causing hurt and pain is also most likely emotional in nature.  We’ve been hurt or traumatized by some relationship – or we’re not getting relationally what we’re really longing for in a place deep inside us – and so we soothe the hurt, pain, or emptiness from something else – drugs and alcohol are the easy ones to recognize, but exercise can also be where we turn.  So can seeking to control others, or even denying our own comfort to serve the comfort needs of others.  All can be substitutes for the real relational healing we need at our most basic level.

And I have come to have great compassion and empathy for those battling addictions.  James 1 implies that temptations are things we can all face and are things we may spend our whole life learning to endure.  And that bears out in

the statistics.  Neil Anderson, in his book Freedom from Addiction, cites that the majority of alcoholics don’t drink every day.  In other

words, they may come across as highly functioning in may ways, but their alcohol use is disrupting their life.  Furthermore, 15 million Americans report as being alcoholics, of which 25% are teenagers and 33% are also active in their local church.  I have learned – over the last several years – to say more boldly than I ever have before, “There is no shame in addiction (whatever it may be).”  The mind often convinces the addict that no one is like them; that they are    special in this regard and have to handle their problems alone (that no one could understand them).  This is a lie, because all it is does is further drive the addict away from the relationships the addiction is taking the place of in the first place! 

All that is to say that when I came back from my month off in July, I received  information from Alcoholics Anonymous in the mail.  It shared the weekly schedule of all AA meetings in and around our area.  That mailing from AA sat on my desk all week as I prepared the message for this past Sunday – a message in which I spoke about how the path forward may be right in front of us, but without divine help, we may not recognize it for what it is.  I took it as a sign to share these words with you here.  If you – or someone you love – is battling an addiction of whatever kind, please know that I, your pastor, am here for you.  I will not judge you.  And I will offer you whatever support I can.  

Blessings – Michael

Grief and Hope

I wasn’t expecting to be moved like I was when I visited the memorial to 9/11 in lower Manhattan last month.  The memorial wasn’t even the focal feature of our trip, and we only viewed the outside portion of the memorial complex without visiting the museum adjacent to it.  But after walking the Brooklyn Bridge and continuing on past Wall Street to Battery Park, walking northward to the 9/11 memorial on the way back to our hotel near Times Square seemed like a logical “next step.”  

If you have not visited the memorial (and as you can see from the picture), it consists of a rectangular hole in the ground spanning the exact footprint of the original building  (there are actually two identical memorials – one for each building – but as one of them was being repaired, we were only able to stand before one).  At the center of that hole in the ground is another hole – the bottom of which is not visible from any vantage point around the perimeter.  It is an abyss – dark, stark and hollow. Water then runs down the walls of the larger hole, across its floor and then again down into the abyss, as if pulled relentlessly and inevitably into darkness.  Regularly and rhythmically the water flows from light into darkness – over and over again, without pause or hesitation, while we – the onlookers – watch; intimately close and yet at the same time impossibly and helplessly far away.  The way the water falls, passing over the descending walls and reflected by the sunlight, creates a lattice effect, reminiscent of the twin towers’ original construction.  And all along the outside of that massive hole in the ground are etched the names of all who lost their lives because of what happened there that day.  

What struck me most was how this was exactly the kind of memorial that symbolizes grief – whether the grief associated with that day or the grief any one of us experiences when the equivalent of the twin towers in our own lives have come crashing down.  Grief feels like an abyss; a chasm – an empty void of nothingness.  Like a a giant hole has been ripped into your life because something or someone you love very greatly has been ripped out of it.  And all you can do is watch – seemingly helpless – as though you were an onlooker standing far off, outside yourself, as tears – the waters of the heart - fall relentlessly into a nothingness the bottom of which you will never reach.  Maybe the hardest thing about grief – and what, in fact, makes grief what it is – is the out-of-control-ness of it all.  Sometimes you can’t stop the tears from flowing, because you can’t stop the hole in your heart and your life from being there.  Nothing you could have done changes the fact that the hole is there – and nothing you can do now is going to make it go away.  And its size will always be in direct proportion to the size of the thing you lost that isn’t coming back.

And yet we are never helpless.  We may not be in control of the flow of tears nor the place that hole in the world now occupies and all that it represents.  But we are in control of something.  We are not helpless onlookers and too-distant passersby.  We can do something.  We can remember what was lost.  We can recall their names; the names of those things and those ones swallowed by that hole.  Hannah Arendt said that what makes us who we are are two things – the fact that we have a body and the fact that we have a name.  The body represents our physicality.  The name signifies our soul.  When the body is no longer with us, we can remember the name – the soul that never dies nor swallowed by an abyss or chasm no matter how strong the pull toward it may be.  

And perhaps this helps us move forward.  Because that is also something we can do.  We can build a new life – around and alongside the void grief causes – a life that acknowledges the pain of what has happened without being held captive by it.  You see right next to the 9/11 memorial is a new tower; One World Trade Center.  It doesn’t take the place of the two that came down 23 years ago.  Nor does it look exactly like them.  But it is tall.  It is majestic.  And it is a reminder that not even the worst of our losses need prevent us experiencing a future in front of us.  

Grief and hope.  They forever exist side by side.  Maybe they are forever meant to.  Which is what I love best about the 9/11 memorial.  It depicts this side-by-side nature of grief and hope.  All around the memorial are signs of progress and productivity; future possibility and hope.  But here, in this garden concrete, steel and water, we allow ourselves to grieve.  We acknowledge – and do not run from – the reality of grief in our lives so that we don’t one day get swallowed up by it. 

As I stood there, mesmerized by the water running into that abyss, I didn’t grieve for the names etched in metal before me.  Nor did I simply grieve for all that happened on 9/11; all that led up to it and all that has resulted from it.  But I grieved.  And the memorial allowed that grief to find its rightful voice and expression – even for just as few moments.    

                                                        Blessings – Michael 

Red-Letter Days

When something important is coming up on the calendar, a commonly-used metaphor labels that a Red-Letter Day.  Maybe it’s an interview of some kind; or an important meeting with a co-worker, client or school administrator; or perhaps a task that would seem insignificant to many, but to you it means everything.  With the upcoming football season getting closer each passing day, fans of all variety of teams know which games on their team schedule are red-letter ones; the games so important they could make or break the season.  Red-letter days are the most influential ones in determining what kind of journey we will have.    

In the bible, the red-letter words are the ones that Jesus spoke.  That is, some versions of the bible have printed the words of Jesus in literal red letters.  In the Gospel of John, many of them are spoken in the second person (whether singular or plural), as though Jesus is speaking them directly and personally to us.  His red-letter words are not ones of criticism, shame and judgment, but ones of encouragement, support and grace; words only able to be spoken by a loving inner-parent whose purpose it is to help us accept the gift of God that we are to the world.  But they are also words of challenge.  They inspire us to imagine the Kingdom of God dwelling among us and to participate in the   building of it. In this sense, the red-letter words are not just for us, but for the world through us.

For the month of August, we will explore some of Jesus’ red-letter words and days we are calling Red-Letter Days.  The information we cover on these August Sundays are meant to start us off on the right foot as we kick-off another academic and church-program year.  

August 4

There’s No Such Thing as a Dumb Question

John 1:35-41

Memory Verses – John 1:38-39a

August 11

Enough is Enough

John 2:1-11

Memory Verses – John 1:50-51

August 18

The Commandment of Greatness

John 10:11-16

(the Great Commandment from another perspective)

Memory Verses: John 10:11, 16

August 25

Oh Freedom!

John 11, 12, 15 (selections)

Memory Verses (John 12:24; 15:2b)

Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary

In yesterday’s message, we focused on the figure of Lydia (Acts 16:11-15).  One of our take-aways was that the sensational is a often a by-product of the ordinary.  That is, God can break into the midst of our doing ordinary things and reveal something extra-ordinary.  But if we are not in the habit of doing those ordinary things – with eyes, ears and hearts open – we might miss that extra-ordinary gift from God when it comes.  What follows is a reflection on Psalm 1 I wrote last summer during my sabbatical that echoes this same theme.

Every day we have a choice.  We get to decide what kind of people we want to become.  What kind of parents, spouses, children, siblings, friends, colleagues and neighbors we want to be.  Do we want to reflect more of God’s character in the many different roles we play?  Or not?  If we do, God stands ready to work with us, as v. 6 says, “… the Lord watches over the way of the righteous.” 

It has been said by different leading theologians throughout history that every day is a mini-Easter for us.  Each day is a chance to “die” to the people we don’t want to be and “rise to live” as the people we do.  At the end of every day, we can review the day, hour by hour and examine how we fared.  But regardless of how well or poorly we performed, we arise the next day with that same choice in front of us.

This is the essence of Psalm 1.  There are two paths to take in life.  One that leads toward God and one that does not.  The way toward God must be        consciously chosen.  The path away from God is the one that takes hold of us if we do nothing.  Clearly, the desirable path is the first one.  Psalm 1 calls the end result of this path “Happiness,” which is not an emotion as much as it is the state of someone who is firmly attached to God.  It is a path of slow growth, but the only one that endures.  Mighty trees with deep root systems don’t spring up overnight. 

The path away from God is one of fleeting-ness.  It is the path of quick-fixes, and treating the symptoms of the problem and not its deeper cause.  For a brief  moment there may be relief, but once that moment is gone what is left are new problems to go along with the original problem that existed in the first place.  That is what “chaff which the wind drives away” (v. 4) looks like.  

Very few people in their right mind want to take the path that sinners tread (v. 1), but we find ourselves on that path if we do nothing consciously that avoids it.  According to Psalm 1, the most important thing we can do to stay on the path that leads to God is “meditate on his Word day and night” (v. 2).  Spending time in God’s Word on a regular basis matters.  God may not reveal some grand insight every day.  God’s voice may never be booming or heard as clearly as a person’s standing a few feet away.  But in the practice of reading God’s Word, over and over again, we will hear God speaking to us.  We will learn more of God’s will for our lives and how we can be part of the life-giving goodness God desires for our world.

Prayer: God of wisdom, guide me by your Holy Spirit to seek your scripture every day.  Every time I open your Word, open my eyes at the same time to see, learn and understand what it is you would have me receive that will lead me to greater attachment with you.  Amen.