When you're really sad or something has really hurt you, we call that a broken heart. The image that's always been conjured for me in the idea of a "broken" heart is one of being shattered or smashed. When thinking about a "broken" heart, the metaphors I draw are to dishes or windows - things that are whole and then are shattered. When those things are broken, it takes a very long time to fix them, if you even can. You don't ever want them to be broken - their brokenness is always a negative thing. Nothing about the purpose of a plate or a window is better served by being broken. You don't ever want to break these things, you want to protect them from brokenness, because if they are broken, it is always negative because those things are now far less useful and far less valuable. That's the image I get of a broken heart. It's always a bad thing, it messes things up, it makes you less useful and less valuable, it is something to be fixed and undone. All of this is just like broken dishes. That's my metaphor.
But I thought recently - what is that's the wrong metaphor? There are other things, not at all like dishes, that have to be broken in order to ever be useful. Their purpose is to be broken and it's actually a desirable thing. I know there are more, but the only thing I can think of right now is a walnut. A walnut is just fine if it remains intact. It is kinda pretty, might look good in a nice harvest-themed decoration of some sort. It's fine. But a walnut's real purpose is to either A. be a seed and grow a new tree, or B. be eaten. And this walnut can never be purposeful, it can't accomplish either one of these purposes, if it isn't broken. It has to be broken open if it is ever going to have any potential and if it doesn't it is always just a walnut that was more comfortable but that didn't ever really do anything and then it rots and that's the end. Because see, sometimes, broken doesn't mean shattered. Sometimes broken means opened. And for things where "broken" means, broken open, that breaking open is usually totally necessary for the successful function of that thing.
My thought it - maybe our hearts are a lot more like the walnut than they are like the plate. We fear brokenheartedness - I know I do - and I think we worry that it's a terribly negative thing to be protected against and avoided, because it "ruins" our heart, at least for a time, and makes our heart far less useful and we need to fix this situation as quick as we can. That's the fear. But what if our hearts, in brokenness, are actually broken open? What is brokenheartedness is actually our time of greatest potential usefulness and value? That doesn't make it hurt less - being cracked open but a nutcracker isn't pleasant for the walnut, no sir - but not all things that hurt us are bad (I'm thinking, shots, grad school, some breakups, dissertations) and not all things that are bad, immediately hurt us (I'm thinking, cocaine.) There's a reason why being made into the image of God is called the refiner's FIRE. We are freaking burned and melted before we're any better. When a refiner refines gold, he melts it until the impurities float to the top and then he scrapes those off and repeats that process over and over until the gold is really pure. The way he can see that it is really good and pure is that he can see His face reflected in it. Awesome metaphor, right? This gold has to be burned and melted (broken, in it's own way) before it is any good. We as a culture (maybe just as people, who knows) have done ourselves a great disservice and we have liked hurtfulness and badness inextricably together. That's why we get people doing terribly unwise things and justifying with a "something that feels this right can't be wrong." that improper linking, in my opinion, has caused us to naturally make brokenheartedness a negative thing.
But as I said, maybe we aren't shattered. Maybe we are broken open like the walnut. Maybe brokenness is an enviable time of vulnerability, of a little less guardedness, of really being able to identify with someone else's pain, of openness and empathy to others, of openness and malleability to God.
I know when I was brokenhearted over Michael, I was the saddest I'd ever been but I was also talking to God more than I ever had and I was, more than ever, acutely aware of the fact that if I got ANYTHING done, He had helped me. I was depressed, and so if I had been left on my own, I would not have gotten up, or showered, or gone to class, or eaten. But I did do all those things, and I prayed for the strength to do every one of them, and I was very aware that I hadn't done them by myself, because I couldn't have. The image I had of myself was one of a little child in her dad's lap, face buried in his arms, crying and crying over what has hurt her. Is the dad sad that she's hurting? No. But is he happy that something occurred that caused her to put down her toys and frivolous business and simple little luxuries and sit so close to him in his lap for a while and beg for his help? No, I don't think he's too sorry over that. If she were happy and strong and seemingly self-sufficient, she would be off somewhere, doing something else, farther from him. I remember saying one time that I had never been closer to God or more aware and thankful for how much He takes care of me than I was during this time, and that, even though I was so sad, I would do it all again if that's what it took for that time of closeness with Him.
Maybe brokenheartedness is a thing to be accepted, even desired. Maybe it is a time to be treasured. Maybe we are broken open, instead of shattered.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Editing
I'm writing all of these things down just for myself, and I'm not sharing them with anyone. I like to think this is so I can speak freely and all that. I guess that's true, but it's mostly because I don't want to edit. If I knew other people were going to read this, I would go back through, re-read, check for typos, try to make it funnier, spend MUCH more time trying to be much more impressive and say things much better than all of this. Mostly I know, if people were going to read this, it wold be stressful, take way more time, and I'd quit doing it. This makes me ask two questions:
1. Why do I feel like I'm wasting my time when I do something that is not for anyone else? Why, as I write these entries, do I feel like this is a waste since no one will see them but me? Why isn't doing something for no one else but myself good enough? Why isn't just wanting something, just for me, just because I want it, a good enough reason to do it?
2. If I knew someone would read it, why would I suddenly feel such an urge to edit? Why is just speaking what I think, without trying to be funny, without a read-over, typos and all - why do I feel like that is good enough for me but not for anyone else? Why would someone else's involvement make what I have here suddenly not good enough? Why the sudden need to gloss and edit and reframe and perfect?
I don't really have a lot to say other than to ask the question and wonder about it, but I do wonder, how much of my time and my efforts are spent editing everything? One of the delightful things about children is that they just blurt out their exact evaluation of the situation - no apology, no hedging, no diplomacy. I'm not suggesting that a better society is one with no filters at all because there is obviously a great deal to be said for wisdom and tact, but there is something lovely about being able to show exactly who you are and what you think indiscriminately. I also think that we often use the words "kindness" and "wisdom" and "diplomacy" and "tact" to justify behaviors that are really only hiding and pleasing and image-management. I know that's true of me. In the name of being a "peace-maker," I just indulge my own cowardice and refuse to challenge or confront.
In Galatians 2, Paul says,
"It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."
The part I love is "It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion ... Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?" I see in myself a bad tendency to do just that - to work things out so that I appear righteous, have people's good opinion, practice peer-pleasing religion, and what's worse is that when the Spirit or some other loving person tries to challenge me on that, I brush away the conviction by packaging the behavior as "being all things to all people" or "being a light" or "limiting myself for the weaker brother" - all things that are good when they're actually true, but that are just excuses when what you're really doing is image-management.
Like I said before, I probably couldn't write these things down and just post them like I do if I thought lots of people would read them, because I would need there to be no typos (what if they think I'm an idiot?) and I would need the have more jokes and cleaner points and better metaphors (they need to know I'm a good writer, right?) and with all of that, it would take way too much time to do this and I'd let it fall by the wayside. Something good that I was doing for myself would be lost because I just couldn't stomach the thought of presenting anything imperfect, rough, flawed, or unedited to anyone who might be forming an opinion about me. Can't have that.
How many things do we have no time for because all of our time is taken up editing and making sure everything is coming off right? How much of our freedom is Christ is wasted because we don't take advantage of it because we're afraid of whom that freedom might offend?
I do not mean to say we can always do exactly whatever we want. There is definitely something good to be said for making sure that we're being good examples for Christ and for limiting our own freedom to help the weaker brother and all of that. But what I am saying is that I think we should be honest about how much we're actually doing those things for the sake of the kingdom and how much we're just managing our images and reputations, and we just happen to be smart enough to give it a more palatable name.
1. Why do I feel like I'm wasting my time when I do something that is not for anyone else? Why, as I write these entries, do I feel like this is a waste since no one will see them but me? Why isn't doing something for no one else but myself good enough? Why isn't just wanting something, just for me, just because I want it, a good enough reason to do it?
2. If I knew someone would read it, why would I suddenly feel such an urge to edit? Why is just speaking what I think, without trying to be funny, without a read-over, typos and all - why do I feel like that is good enough for me but not for anyone else? Why would someone else's involvement make what I have here suddenly not good enough? Why the sudden need to gloss and edit and reframe and perfect?
I don't really have a lot to say other than to ask the question and wonder about it, but I do wonder, how much of my time and my efforts are spent editing everything? One of the delightful things about children is that they just blurt out their exact evaluation of the situation - no apology, no hedging, no diplomacy. I'm not suggesting that a better society is one with no filters at all because there is obviously a great deal to be said for wisdom and tact, but there is something lovely about being able to show exactly who you are and what you think indiscriminately. I also think that we often use the words "kindness" and "wisdom" and "diplomacy" and "tact" to justify behaviors that are really only hiding and pleasing and image-management. I know that's true of me. In the name of being a "peace-maker," I just indulge my own cowardice and refuse to challenge or confront.
In Galatians 2, Paul says,
"It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."
The part I love is "It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion ... Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?" I see in myself a bad tendency to do just that - to work things out so that I appear righteous, have people's good opinion, practice peer-pleasing religion, and what's worse is that when the Spirit or some other loving person tries to challenge me on that, I brush away the conviction by packaging the behavior as "being all things to all people" or "being a light" or "limiting myself for the weaker brother" - all things that are good when they're actually true, but that are just excuses when what you're really doing is image-management.
Like I said before, I probably couldn't write these things down and just post them like I do if I thought lots of people would read them, because I would need there to be no typos (what if they think I'm an idiot?) and I would need the have more jokes and cleaner points and better metaphors (they need to know I'm a good writer, right?) and with all of that, it would take way too much time to do this and I'd let it fall by the wayside. Something good that I was doing for myself would be lost because I just couldn't stomach the thought of presenting anything imperfect, rough, flawed, or unedited to anyone who might be forming an opinion about me. Can't have that.
How many things do we have no time for because all of our time is taken up editing and making sure everything is coming off right? How much of our freedom is Christ is wasted because we don't take advantage of it because we're afraid of whom that freedom might offend?
I do not mean to say we can always do exactly whatever we want. There is definitely something good to be said for making sure that we're being good examples for Christ and for limiting our own freedom to help the weaker brother and all of that. But what I am saying is that I think we should be honest about how much we're actually doing those things for the sake of the kingdom and how much we're just managing our images and reputations, and we just happen to be smart enough to give it a more palatable name.
Chair Introduction
In class today, Dr. Hook (my human sexuality professor) asked us to discuss questions in small groups. One of the questions he posed was, "how did your father impact or maleness or femaleness?" ... I raised my hand and I asked him why he had asked about our father's impact but not our mother's. I'm no feminist, so I wasn't militant for the equal inclusion of mothers. I just found it interesting that, per the omission of a question about mothers, Dr. Hook seemed to think that a father had more impact on his children's healthy general (and for this conversation, sexual) development than did their mother. He answered me and said that he didn't want to get into all the reasons why in the short time that we had left, but that he could say that most of the time, people's major woundedness comes from their fathers, and that he hypothesized that everyone has wounds from their father. To access these and help intentional healing begin, he does this exercise with his clients:
(This works especially well in group counseling settings)
You (the client) stand up with a chair in front of you. You then pretend that you are sitting in the chair, and, in the voice of your father, you introduce yourself to the room. You act as though you are your own father, and you are telling this room full of people about your child (which is you.) So in my case, I would stand behind the empty chair and say, "Hi everyone, my name is Larry Ray, and this is my daughter Rainey. Let me tell you about her. ..." And then you commence to say to the room what you think your father would say about you. You can say, "this is how I feel about Rainey," "this is what I'm proud of," "this is what I'm not proud of," "this is something I'd like to apologize for," ... anything. You say anything that you think your father would think/feel/say about you. He said that when he does this, people almost all the time will start crying. For some reason, he said, this format is disarming, and so it ends up hitting things that aren't accessed quite as well if you just have the clients speak as themselves as tell you about their dad. For some reason, people are more ready for that and so they are prepared to deal better with it. But in this exercise, changing the format of thinking about your father is different enough that clients are able to access wounds that they are normally able to cover.
I don't think I need to tell you. I LOVE THIS. I want to do this with a client as soon as I can.
I also want him to tell me the reasons why your dad shapes you so much more. Maybe it's because God acts primarily as our father, some of the primary imagery with which He paints Himself in Scripture is that of "Father." So maybe, we connect with and are shaped by our fathers so much more powerfully because they were engineered by God to model for us how we should think about and feel about and trust God. I know that my picture of God is a strong and healthy one largely because it isn't hard for me to imagine. I had a strong, dependable, trustworthy, loving father figure, so it isn't a stretch to buy into another one. So maybe, we know deep down that our father is the head of the household, our father is our leader, because he has been given the ultimate responsibility of teaching us in very large part how to think well about God. That is his divinely appointed commission. So when our father wounds us, it hurts that much more because now we have not only been hurt by a parent upon whom we were supposed to be able to count, but also had our image of God because a little more unstable. Maybe our father hurts us more because we then grieve on two fronts, even if we don't realize it.
It also makes you wonder just how much (definitely longterm, possibly irreparable) damage is being inflicted within a society where paternal neglect, disassociation, and abandonment are so permissible, maybe even normal, maybe even expected.
(This works especially well in group counseling settings)
You (the client) stand up with a chair in front of you. You then pretend that you are sitting in the chair, and, in the voice of your father, you introduce yourself to the room. You act as though you are your own father, and you are telling this room full of people about your child (which is you.) So in my case, I would stand behind the empty chair and say, "Hi everyone, my name is Larry Ray, and this is my daughter Rainey. Let me tell you about her. ..." And then you commence to say to the room what you think your father would say about you. You can say, "this is how I feel about Rainey," "this is what I'm proud of," "this is what I'm not proud of," "this is something I'd like to apologize for," ... anything. You say anything that you think your father would think/feel/say about you. He said that when he does this, people almost all the time will start crying. For some reason, he said, this format is disarming, and so it ends up hitting things that aren't accessed quite as well if you just have the clients speak as themselves as tell you about their dad. For some reason, people are more ready for that and so they are prepared to deal better with it. But in this exercise, changing the format of thinking about your father is different enough that clients are able to access wounds that they are normally able to cover.
I don't think I need to tell you. I LOVE THIS. I want to do this with a client as soon as I can.
I also want him to tell me the reasons why your dad shapes you so much more. Maybe it's because God acts primarily as our father, some of the primary imagery with which He paints Himself in Scripture is that of "Father." So maybe, we connect with and are shaped by our fathers so much more powerfully because they were engineered by God to model for us how we should think about and feel about and trust God. I know that my picture of God is a strong and healthy one largely because it isn't hard for me to imagine. I had a strong, dependable, trustworthy, loving father figure, so it isn't a stretch to buy into another one. So maybe, we know deep down that our father is the head of the household, our father is our leader, because he has been given the ultimate responsibility of teaching us in very large part how to think well about God. That is his divinely appointed commission. So when our father wounds us, it hurts that much more because now we have not only been hurt by a parent upon whom we were supposed to be able to count, but also had our image of God because a little more unstable. Maybe our father hurts us more because we then grieve on two fronts, even if we don't realize it.
It also makes you wonder just how much (definitely longterm, possibly irreparable) damage is being inflicted within a society where paternal neglect, disassociation, and abandonment are so permissible, maybe even normal, maybe even expected.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
My Own Addiction
Gerald May opens his book Addiction and Grace with the assertion that each of us is born with an innate desire for God, and I would have to agree with him. We do desire God; the only trouble is, we desire a great number of other things as well. Adam and Eve as our archetypal representatives showed us that, with the right application of bad peer pressure or just the wrong circumstance, we will choose other things (and ultimately, choose ourselves) over God. That desire for God is not crushed out, but rather buried underneath quilts of frivolous luxuries and simple ambitions, so that at best, it is muffled and at worst, it is forgotten. While it does, at times, find a way to peak through and, just for an instant, shine its full brightness into our lives and elicit a wrenching longing that C. S. Lewis called joy, most of the time this desire for God is stifled by things we have decided to want more. As we are often prone to do in relationships with people, so it is with our distractions, as we seek out one true love and throw ourselves fully into the pursuit of what we think will fill us up. Ironically, we are seeking to fill the emptiness left in the hole that we created when we said a “thank you but no thank you” to the one wonderful Thing that could have actually contented us. Amidst our armies of distractions, we often tend to find one that we hold particularly dear, one that just perfectly feeds our particular tendencies, and we happily commit to what we do not yet realize will addict us.
In Addiction and Grace, May deals with the problem of addictions and attachments, as well as the spiritual process of loosening one’s grip on that addiction. He does not, however, focus solely on traditional addictions like narcotics or alcohol, but rather allows for a full gamut, wide enough that most honestly introspective people could find a spot for themselves upon it. By making room on the spectrum of addiction for more subtle ones, such as stress or work addiction, May is able to make his assertion that each of us, in some way, suffers from addiction (3). This is particularly appropriate for me, because the true love I found, the one with whom I became infatuated and the one whom I trusted to satisfy me, was and is my own achievement. I can say that I am addicted to achievement and success. Not stress per se, because if my success can come easily down the path of least resistance with time to spare, so much the better. But however it comes, I see in myself a compulsive need, at all times, to be achieving a goal so that I have something to show for myself. My love of success is anchored in the hope of what I want it to provide for me. I am hoping that my success will give me value – the more I have to show for my day, the more I was able to accomplish, the more useful I was, the more I am worth.
The deep irony is that this provision of love and assignment of value that I seek for myself is exactly what God wants to give me for free, and inconceivably, I wouldn’t even have to do anything for it. But I daily choose to ignore that gift of value and instead to go out and fight for it myself. It might be that, if I were to allow someone else’s work, like God’s, to give me worth, that would be too dangerous a thing because, what if He couldn’t or wouldn’t or chose not to deliver? How devastated would I be then? No, I would much rather anchor something as fragile and deeply important as my own value to that which I can control. May puts it aptly when he asserts that these addictions are idols, displacing the worship that should be focused on God (4). Instead of trusting Him to provide this love and value that I need, I go after it myself, because my own work feels more trustworthy than His does. I can force myself to work things out, but I cannot ever force Him. So I would rather love that which I know, if worst comes to worst, I can control. If I am working and achieving and providing myself with value, then there is no need to trust anyone else. Much safer that way, it would seem.
Like Eve who so aptly represented me, I allow Satan to convince me that it would be much wiser to just take for myself than to let God provide. And with this dynamic in place, I work everyday to prove my own worth, and have become addicted to my own achievement. May asserts that an addict is making an attempt to control her own environment. This is most certainly descriptive of me. Aside from a twelve-step program during which members are required to simply sit and accomplish nothing, what I feel will help me to be honest about my own unhealthy and addicted priorities and will help me to begin to loosen that grip on control is the practice of contemplative spirituality.
I feel that this behavior is an addiction in my life because it has begun to interfere with my choices and healthy functioning. There have been many times in my life – this semester being no exception – when I have been stretched to capacity. I have maximized every second. I have grossly overscheduled myself and can only survive by using a weekly planner that is so meticulously detailed that I have even had to schedule in my own free time, or else I would not take any. Monday, 4:00-4:45: watch TV. Thursday, 3:00-3:30: read for pleasure. And that is it – that is the free time for my day. Nothing can spontaneously come up, no plans can be made at the last minute. I have six classes. I have three jobs, each of which has been described by others as the only extra thing anyone could possibly do in a semester. No minute is wasted.
The situation I have created is incredibly unhealthy. And yet, when Dr. Greener approached me last week and asked if I would like to be a leader on a team of people to start a new outreach program in North Chicago, I agreed without a pause. One more thing. When I realized that my church service on Sunday morning does not start until 10:30, I started lightly inquiring at Panera, to see if I could get hired for a short Sunday morning early shift. This is no exaggeration, I had this conversation not five days ago. I compulsively add jobs, achievements, and accomplishments into a life that is already full to bursting. For someone who equates usefulness and accomplishments with value and lovability, any down time is an unlovable minute. Any job that I choose not to take (nevermind that I already have three others) feels like a squandered opportunity to better myself and, by extension, make myself more valuable. I compulsively agree to tasks and jobs and projects, but the incredibly unhealthy situation I have created for myself bears no weight the next time someone asks if I would be interested in an opportunity. May was right when he called these addictions a 'counterfeit of religious presence' (13) because it an experience close to religious. I worship this work and, by that logic, myself.
May provides five characteristics of addiction, and I find them very apt and appropriate. He lists: tolerance, withdrawal, self-deception, loss of willpower, and distortion of attention. Tolerance is the dynamic of constantly needing more of an addictive behavior to feel satisfied. Withdrawal manifests as a stress reaction, as the system needs the behavior, and a backlash, as the person experiences the opposite of the addiction’s comfort. In self-deception, our mind creatively blocks every effort to control or admit the addictive behavior. Loss of willpower is a stage during which the will of the addict is divided. Part of him may truly want to be free, but another part finds comfort in the addiction and wants to continue. For a true addiction, the part that remains committed is the stronger of the two. Finally, the addict reaches distortion of attention, in which he focuses so much attention on the addiction that he finds it difficult to love anything else. His new god has his full attention, all his worship, and the idolatry is complete (26-29).
Personally, I see myself in the stage of having lost willpower. I cannot see a full distortion of attention, because I do have many other things in my life that I love and people with whom I connect. I do not only desire my accomplishments and they do not consume my thoughts to the exclusion of other loves, but I feel that I have displayed a loss of willpower. Several times this semester, I have felt the depth of my over-commitment – like butter scraped over too much bread. I have so much to do that I can barely give my all to even those things. And yet, as I mentioned before, opportunities have been presented to me and I have quickly, without any prayer or any thought, accepted them. I have added one more thing when I know well that I do not even have room for my current commitments. Like a glutton, I disregard my present state of fullness and can only see the potential of this thing now in front of me, and I have to have it too. I have wished, later, that I hadn’t agreed to anything more. I wish that I had been strong enough and had had the presence of mind to say, “Thank you, but no. I wisely know my own limits.” But weariness and wisdom are no match for the much stronger bullies of insecurity and desperation for value, and are promptly silenced. Except for the rare victory, usually occasioned by the intervention of someone else, weariness and wisdom are on a pretty steady losing streak: the Chicago Cubs of weaker wills. My true desire is for some rest, for some contented security, and mostly for the Lord’s assurance of my value, but I am compelled to give my energy to something else (14). I want to be made secure and valuable by His love, but I substitute Him for myself, so addiction exists for me. If I think an opportunity could benefit me and, in my eyes, make me better, I will take it. No matter that I haven’t slept since summer.
Not only is my addiction not condemned by the Church, but it is also reinforced. When I bring my addicted need for a goal to church, it is met with praise of hard work and the ever-lovely title of “servant.” Far from seen as problematic, my addiction is in fact upheld as virtuous. The fact that I want to undertake any necessary task makes me a willing servant in religious eyes. It makes me a giver of myself and shows willingness to put the things of God first, nevermind the ironic fact that I am doing these things to try and exclude that very God from my frantic, desperate clawing for self-worth.
My addiction is similarly reinforced by my culture. While I do not believe that every American suffers from this same addicted love of work, I do believe that this has been influenced and bred in some respects by American culture. In my opinion, we are a society that values hard work, personal achievement, and the ability to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps and go it alone on the pursuit of the goal, true to our roots of cowboys and rugged-individualists. We have a colloquialism for what we call “The American Dream” – so dear do we hold it that we have endowed it with a proper name – and we often hold this dream of working as hard as you can, to have as much to show for yourself as you can, up as the highest good. I thought for a while that this was simply the human experience. It is not. The Italian people have a term, il bel far niente, that simply means the beauty of doing nothing. While they are hard workers, the goal of their work is il bel far niente – finally creating a space for yourself to do a lovely bunch of absolutely nothing. It is something, for them, to be envied and valued. I know this to be true, and yet this idea, for me, is so inconceivable that I don’t really believe that anyone actually desires that, much less is fulfilled by it. Preposterous. How useless I would feel! I feel that American culture, with all of its priorities on strivings and accomplishments, has certainly created a platform for the growth of this addiction, largely because an addiction of hard work is reinforced and even praised here. If you can work harder and longer and faster than anyone else, that is an enviable and praisable virtue, not to be worried about until you are nearly dead. I feel that my addiction is not only acceptable, but rather is exalted.
But if American culture was the cultivating incubator of my addiction to achievement, my family was certainly its birthplace. We are all products of my great grandfather, Joe, an independent farmer who saw his children as unpaid staff and had the same tolerance for goofy, fun-loving ease as an English Puritan. Idleness was unacceptable. If you murdered someone, his biggest concern would be the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which you did it. Better to be productive than godly, if the choice ever came down to it. If you break an arm or a leg, find a job that one requires one leg and get to it while you heal up as quickly as possible. My family is full of can-do attitudes and unstoppable natures that have taught the next generation our family anthems of work. You need to contribute, and God forbid you should get uselessly underfoot and slow progress. Productivity is passed along like genes.
My time at school was no different. My parents had no time for my complaints that the only reason I was in trouble at elementary school was because my teacher was mean. My complaints met deaf ears, partially because they knew well that the real reason I was in trouble at school was because I bit everyone – including that teacher – but more importantly, because my task was to learn work hard, even at the simple tasks of children, and fulfill my purpose, and get my jobs done. Not on their watch would I be the child who could not contribute or did not progress.
As soon as I got my driver’s license, my father told me that anyone who was grown up enough to have a license was grown up enough to have a job. For anyone in our house, a license and a job came together. It was, in hindsight, a positive experience, and I am grateful to my family for instilling into each generation an incorrigible work ethic, just maybe not for the extents to which it has come into my own life. Since then, through all of high school and college, working with all my might has simply seemed self-evident.
My family values that which is useful and helpful, both in our surroundings and in each other, and we see hard work as the highest good. This dynamic has instilled in me a fairly constant – and now addictive – drive to prove myself and my own worth. If you don’t contribute and bring something to show for yourself, you may find yourself flattened or forgotten amongst the perpetual forward-movement of people who have no time for the weak or the useless. As I have grown older, I have realized that this dynamic has created in me a real fear of failure and uselessness. I know in my head that everyone needs rest and no one can do everything, but in my heart, I often feel that my failures and incapabilities mean that I am useless, and by extension, unlovable. It has created a dynamic in which it is very difficult for me to believe God when He says that He is the one who finishes and accomplishes things and that I am made valuable by His work. I know that I should be able to rest in the fact that His love is not contingent on what I am able to do or not do, but this is extremely challenging for me, when so many other places in my life have reinforced the message that I do have something to prove. I have been told so often by my family, my community, even the challenging schools I have always attended that ability, hard-work, and success are what is valuable, and so I have a difficult times transitioning into a relationship with a God who is not turned off by my inability or weakness.
I am in continuous prayer that God will help me to really believe that He values me for who I am, not what I am able to accomplish or offer to Him. I feel that this is vital to my counseling, because my biggest fear is that I will consider myself successful when and only when I have been able to “fix” every client. Because achievement is my addiction, I fear that I will be in danger of seeing clients as jobs that are either successful or not, and that I will hinge my own value on that success. I fear that I will want to impose my values – to figure out the best plan of action and to have little patience when the client does not immediately take the steps to make everything right, because I want to “get this job done” instead of “meet and know this person.” I fear that I will want to help the client take charge of his situation the way that I would and will take it as a personal failure when he does not. I know in my head that I can only do my best in working for the Lord and beyond that, I cannot hold myself responsible for a client’s choices. But I fear that my old family values will creep in and tell me that I should have done better, I should have been able to save this person, and that this will lead to the breakdown and burnout of my confidence and drive. I am working to trust God when He tells me that my value and success, as a person and a counselor, are found in Him, to believe that He makes me worthwhile despite inability, and to take one step towards freedom from a self-worshipping addiction.
In Addiction and Grace, May deals with the problem of addictions and attachments, as well as the spiritual process of loosening one’s grip on that addiction. He does not, however, focus solely on traditional addictions like narcotics or alcohol, but rather allows for a full gamut, wide enough that most honestly introspective people could find a spot for themselves upon it. By making room on the spectrum of addiction for more subtle ones, such as stress or work addiction, May is able to make his assertion that each of us, in some way, suffers from addiction (3). This is particularly appropriate for me, because the true love I found, the one with whom I became infatuated and the one whom I trusted to satisfy me, was and is my own achievement. I can say that I am addicted to achievement and success. Not stress per se, because if my success can come easily down the path of least resistance with time to spare, so much the better. But however it comes, I see in myself a compulsive need, at all times, to be achieving a goal so that I have something to show for myself. My love of success is anchored in the hope of what I want it to provide for me. I am hoping that my success will give me value – the more I have to show for my day, the more I was able to accomplish, the more useful I was, the more I am worth.
The deep irony is that this provision of love and assignment of value that I seek for myself is exactly what God wants to give me for free, and inconceivably, I wouldn’t even have to do anything for it. But I daily choose to ignore that gift of value and instead to go out and fight for it myself. It might be that, if I were to allow someone else’s work, like God’s, to give me worth, that would be too dangerous a thing because, what if He couldn’t or wouldn’t or chose not to deliver? How devastated would I be then? No, I would much rather anchor something as fragile and deeply important as my own value to that which I can control. May puts it aptly when he asserts that these addictions are idols, displacing the worship that should be focused on God (4). Instead of trusting Him to provide this love and value that I need, I go after it myself, because my own work feels more trustworthy than His does. I can force myself to work things out, but I cannot ever force Him. So I would rather love that which I know, if worst comes to worst, I can control. If I am working and achieving and providing myself with value, then there is no need to trust anyone else. Much safer that way, it would seem.
Like Eve who so aptly represented me, I allow Satan to convince me that it would be much wiser to just take for myself than to let God provide. And with this dynamic in place, I work everyday to prove my own worth, and have become addicted to my own achievement. May asserts that an addict is making an attempt to control her own environment. This is most certainly descriptive of me. Aside from a twelve-step program during which members are required to simply sit and accomplish nothing, what I feel will help me to be honest about my own unhealthy and addicted priorities and will help me to begin to loosen that grip on control is the practice of contemplative spirituality.
I feel that this behavior is an addiction in my life because it has begun to interfere with my choices and healthy functioning. There have been many times in my life – this semester being no exception – when I have been stretched to capacity. I have maximized every second. I have grossly overscheduled myself and can only survive by using a weekly planner that is so meticulously detailed that I have even had to schedule in my own free time, or else I would not take any. Monday, 4:00-4:45: watch TV. Thursday, 3:00-3:30: read for pleasure. And that is it – that is the free time for my day. Nothing can spontaneously come up, no plans can be made at the last minute. I have six classes. I have three jobs, each of which has been described by others as the only extra thing anyone could possibly do in a semester. No minute is wasted.
The situation I have created is incredibly unhealthy. And yet, when Dr. Greener approached me last week and asked if I would like to be a leader on a team of people to start a new outreach program in North Chicago, I agreed without a pause. One more thing. When I realized that my church service on Sunday morning does not start until 10:30, I started lightly inquiring at Panera, to see if I could get hired for a short Sunday morning early shift. This is no exaggeration, I had this conversation not five days ago. I compulsively add jobs, achievements, and accomplishments into a life that is already full to bursting. For someone who equates usefulness and accomplishments with value and lovability, any down time is an unlovable minute. Any job that I choose not to take (nevermind that I already have three others) feels like a squandered opportunity to better myself and, by extension, make myself more valuable. I compulsively agree to tasks and jobs and projects, but the incredibly unhealthy situation I have created for myself bears no weight the next time someone asks if I would be interested in an opportunity. May was right when he called these addictions a 'counterfeit of religious presence' (13) because it an experience close to religious. I worship this work and, by that logic, myself.
May provides five characteristics of addiction, and I find them very apt and appropriate. He lists: tolerance, withdrawal, self-deception, loss of willpower, and distortion of attention. Tolerance is the dynamic of constantly needing more of an addictive behavior to feel satisfied. Withdrawal manifests as a stress reaction, as the system needs the behavior, and a backlash, as the person experiences the opposite of the addiction’s comfort. In self-deception, our mind creatively blocks every effort to control or admit the addictive behavior. Loss of willpower is a stage during which the will of the addict is divided. Part of him may truly want to be free, but another part finds comfort in the addiction and wants to continue. For a true addiction, the part that remains committed is the stronger of the two. Finally, the addict reaches distortion of attention, in which he focuses so much attention on the addiction that he finds it difficult to love anything else. His new god has his full attention, all his worship, and the idolatry is complete (26-29).
Personally, I see myself in the stage of having lost willpower. I cannot see a full distortion of attention, because I do have many other things in my life that I love and people with whom I connect. I do not only desire my accomplishments and they do not consume my thoughts to the exclusion of other loves, but I feel that I have displayed a loss of willpower. Several times this semester, I have felt the depth of my over-commitment – like butter scraped over too much bread. I have so much to do that I can barely give my all to even those things. And yet, as I mentioned before, opportunities have been presented to me and I have quickly, without any prayer or any thought, accepted them. I have added one more thing when I know well that I do not even have room for my current commitments. Like a glutton, I disregard my present state of fullness and can only see the potential of this thing now in front of me, and I have to have it too. I have wished, later, that I hadn’t agreed to anything more. I wish that I had been strong enough and had had the presence of mind to say, “Thank you, but no. I wisely know my own limits.” But weariness and wisdom are no match for the much stronger bullies of insecurity and desperation for value, and are promptly silenced. Except for the rare victory, usually occasioned by the intervention of someone else, weariness and wisdom are on a pretty steady losing streak: the Chicago Cubs of weaker wills. My true desire is for some rest, for some contented security, and mostly for the Lord’s assurance of my value, but I am compelled to give my energy to something else (14). I want to be made secure and valuable by His love, but I substitute Him for myself, so addiction exists for me. If I think an opportunity could benefit me and, in my eyes, make me better, I will take it. No matter that I haven’t slept since summer.
Not only is my addiction not condemned by the Church, but it is also reinforced. When I bring my addicted need for a goal to church, it is met with praise of hard work and the ever-lovely title of “servant.” Far from seen as problematic, my addiction is in fact upheld as virtuous. The fact that I want to undertake any necessary task makes me a willing servant in religious eyes. It makes me a giver of myself and shows willingness to put the things of God first, nevermind the ironic fact that I am doing these things to try and exclude that very God from my frantic, desperate clawing for self-worth.
My addiction is similarly reinforced by my culture. While I do not believe that every American suffers from this same addicted love of work, I do believe that this has been influenced and bred in some respects by American culture. In my opinion, we are a society that values hard work, personal achievement, and the ability to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps and go it alone on the pursuit of the goal, true to our roots of cowboys and rugged-individualists. We have a colloquialism for what we call “The American Dream” – so dear do we hold it that we have endowed it with a proper name – and we often hold this dream of working as hard as you can, to have as much to show for yourself as you can, up as the highest good. I thought for a while that this was simply the human experience. It is not. The Italian people have a term, il bel far niente, that simply means the beauty of doing nothing. While they are hard workers, the goal of their work is il bel far niente – finally creating a space for yourself to do a lovely bunch of absolutely nothing. It is something, for them, to be envied and valued. I know this to be true, and yet this idea, for me, is so inconceivable that I don’t really believe that anyone actually desires that, much less is fulfilled by it. Preposterous. How useless I would feel! I feel that American culture, with all of its priorities on strivings and accomplishments, has certainly created a platform for the growth of this addiction, largely because an addiction of hard work is reinforced and even praised here. If you can work harder and longer and faster than anyone else, that is an enviable and praisable virtue, not to be worried about until you are nearly dead. I feel that my addiction is not only acceptable, but rather is exalted.
But if American culture was the cultivating incubator of my addiction to achievement, my family was certainly its birthplace. We are all products of my great grandfather, Joe, an independent farmer who saw his children as unpaid staff and had the same tolerance for goofy, fun-loving ease as an English Puritan. Idleness was unacceptable. If you murdered someone, his biggest concern would be the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which you did it. Better to be productive than godly, if the choice ever came down to it. If you break an arm or a leg, find a job that one requires one leg and get to it while you heal up as quickly as possible. My family is full of can-do attitudes and unstoppable natures that have taught the next generation our family anthems of work. You need to contribute, and God forbid you should get uselessly underfoot and slow progress. Productivity is passed along like genes.
My time at school was no different. My parents had no time for my complaints that the only reason I was in trouble at elementary school was because my teacher was mean. My complaints met deaf ears, partially because they knew well that the real reason I was in trouble at school was because I bit everyone – including that teacher – but more importantly, because my task was to learn work hard, even at the simple tasks of children, and fulfill my purpose, and get my jobs done. Not on their watch would I be the child who could not contribute or did not progress.
As soon as I got my driver’s license, my father told me that anyone who was grown up enough to have a license was grown up enough to have a job. For anyone in our house, a license and a job came together. It was, in hindsight, a positive experience, and I am grateful to my family for instilling into each generation an incorrigible work ethic, just maybe not for the extents to which it has come into my own life. Since then, through all of high school and college, working with all my might has simply seemed self-evident.
My family values that which is useful and helpful, both in our surroundings and in each other, and we see hard work as the highest good. This dynamic has instilled in me a fairly constant – and now addictive – drive to prove myself and my own worth. If you don’t contribute and bring something to show for yourself, you may find yourself flattened or forgotten amongst the perpetual forward-movement of people who have no time for the weak or the useless. As I have grown older, I have realized that this dynamic has created in me a real fear of failure and uselessness. I know in my head that everyone needs rest and no one can do everything, but in my heart, I often feel that my failures and incapabilities mean that I am useless, and by extension, unlovable. It has created a dynamic in which it is very difficult for me to believe God when He says that He is the one who finishes and accomplishes things and that I am made valuable by His work. I know that I should be able to rest in the fact that His love is not contingent on what I am able to do or not do, but this is extremely challenging for me, when so many other places in my life have reinforced the message that I do have something to prove. I have been told so often by my family, my community, even the challenging schools I have always attended that ability, hard-work, and success are what is valuable, and so I have a difficult times transitioning into a relationship with a God who is not turned off by my inability or weakness.
I am in continuous prayer that God will help me to really believe that He values me for who I am, not what I am able to accomplish or offer to Him. I feel that this is vital to my counseling, because my biggest fear is that I will consider myself successful when and only when I have been able to “fix” every client. Because achievement is my addiction, I fear that I will be in danger of seeing clients as jobs that are either successful or not, and that I will hinge my own value on that success. I fear that I will want to impose my values – to figure out the best plan of action and to have little patience when the client does not immediately take the steps to make everything right, because I want to “get this job done” instead of “meet and know this person.” I fear that I will want to help the client take charge of his situation the way that I would and will take it as a personal failure when he does not. I know in my head that I can only do my best in working for the Lord and beyond that, I cannot hold myself responsible for a client’s choices. But I fear that my old family values will creep in and tell me that I should have done better, I should have been able to save this person, and that this will lead to the breakdown and burnout of my confidence and drive. I am working to trust God when He tells me that my value and success, as a person and a counselor, are found in Him, to believe that He makes me worthwhile despite inability, and to take one step towards freedom from a self-worshipping addiction.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Praying Smaller Than We Should
I have always tried to journal. I have a few journals (more than I'm proud of) in my room - nice journals, glossy and new, with crisp, creamy pages, and one entry that smacks something of "I'm going to write in your every day, new journal friend!" Well, now I'm making no such promise, and hopefully this will not be the same such failed journaling, just relocated. It really might be... but I hope not. My hope in the success of this (and my confidence in my own writing) is low enough that I'm not telling anyone I'm now a blogger (which is a distasteful thing to say of yourself anyway). This is really just for me. So if it doesn't work, then I guess who cares?
I have a new mentor, Heather. She's marvelous. She's more wise and more insightful than she knows. Her husband says we're the same in ways that neither of us sees - he must be right because she is onto me big time, even when I'm trying to skirt. Anyway, she said something in passing that changed my life with God. I should probably tell her that.. She asked a group of us during RA training - if you could have one spiritual superpower, what would it be? Well, I had oh so many grand plans. Supernatural peace. Supernatural joy. Supernatural kindness. Supernatural wisdom. Oh but how wonderful would it be if I could actually get one of those, like ole Solomon (unfortunate go to man for underused potential... if God had given me all that special wisdom, I'd do WAY better with it than Solomon... I'd be writing stuff full of hard-hitting, major awesomeness, instead of the whiny, angsty stuff you find in Ecclesiastes (right?)) Anyway, that's what she asked and I thought up a whole bunch of noble choices and then silently lamented the fact that those could never be mine. Her next question was this - if you really believe that God listens to you and wants the best for you, why would you think that He wouldn't give that to you if you asked? I was floored. What a revolutionary thing to think! And I had no good answer at all. Why don't I pray for exactly what I want? Big things? Huge things? Supernatural things? We hedge our prayers: instead of praying that God' will supernaturally heal someone, we pray for wisdom for the doctor. Wisdom for the doctor is a wonderful and necessary thing to pray, but why don't we also add in that we wish God would just supernaturally heal this person? He CAN. He doesn't have to, and our faith in Him shouldn't be shattered or shaken if He chose not to, but why not ask? If we really have faith that He will do what's right, then I think we can confidently tell Him exactly what we'd like to see and then be trusting and content with whatever He chooses to do. Personally, I don't ask for the big thing because I'm afraid of what will happen to me and my faith if that isn't what happens. If I pray for a safe thing, like wisdom for the doctor (a thing that will probably be there anyway), then I can reaffirm my own faith and not have to be shaken when the big thing I prayed for wasn't delivered. It's like those fortune tellers who tell you vague things that could apply to anyone so they seem real. I pray for vague, simple things so that pretty much anything that happens could be mentally manipulated into fitting as an answer to prayer. I think I'm trying to affirm and boost my own faith by praying for stuff that isn't too much of a stretch. There is a section in Le Petit Prince where this king of this planet (who really isn't a king at all because he's living there alone) is so desperate to rule that when the little prince comes there, the king orders him to do all the things that he's already doing anyway (like, sometimes yawn and sometimes don't) so that, whatever the little prince does, the king's authority is confirmed. I think that's what I do with faith that God answers prayers. I'm secretly a little insecure about how well that actually works, so I pray for easy things that will probably be there anyway so that I can feel better about prayer working and God really being helpful. Heather changed this for me. Since she said that to me, I have started praying big things, hard things, things that would be REALLY noticeable if they came true and really noticeable if they didn't. This requires a lot more faith. And it requires that you completely trust that, even if God doesn't deliver on the big thing you asked for, He did listen and chose to do a better thing. It's much more dangerous, this big praying. If you're not REALLY sure that He's there and listening and able, this big praying could crush you. It's formidable and I'm just beginning to work with it. I think it's real and big and important though and I think we've let it go in the name of being reasonable. God said to be faithful and confident and consistent in our prayers, never "reasonable."
I have a new mentor, Heather. She's marvelous. She's more wise and more insightful than she knows. Her husband says we're the same in ways that neither of us sees - he must be right because she is onto me big time, even when I'm trying to skirt. Anyway, she said something in passing that changed my life with God. I should probably tell her that.. She asked a group of us during RA training - if you could have one spiritual superpower, what would it be? Well, I had oh so many grand plans. Supernatural peace. Supernatural joy. Supernatural kindness. Supernatural wisdom. Oh but how wonderful would it be if I could actually get one of those, like ole Solomon (unfortunate go to man for underused potential... if God had given me all that special wisdom, I'd do WAY better with it than Solomon... I'd be writing stuff full of hard-hitting, major awesomeness, instead of the whiny, angsty stuff you find in Ecclesiastes (right?)) Anyway, that's what she asked and I thought up a whole bunch of noble choices and then silently lamented the fact that those could never be mine. Her next question was this - if you really believe that God listens to you and wants the best for you, why would you think that He wouldn't give that to you if you asked? I was floored. What a revolutionary thing to think! And I had no good answer at all. Why don't I pray for exactly what I want? Big things? Huge things? Supernatural things? We hedge our prayers: instead of praying that God' will supernaturally heal someone, we pray for wisdom for the doctor. Wisdom for the doctor is a wonderful and necessary thing to pray, but why don't we also add in that we wish God would just supernaturally heal this person? He CAN. He doesn't have to, and our faith in Him shouldn't be shattered or shaken if He chose not to, but why not ask? If we really have faith that He will do what's right, then I think we can confidently tell Him exactly what we'd like to see and then be trusting and content with whatever He chooses to do. Personally, I don't ask for the big thing because I'm afraid of what will happen to me and my faith if that isn't what happens. If I pray for a safe thing, like wisdom for the doctor (a thing that will probably be there anyway), then I can reaffirm my own faith and not have to be shaken when the big thing I prayed for wasn't delivered. It's like those fortune tellers who tell you vague things that could apply to anyone so they seem real. I pray for vague, simple things so that pretty much anything that happens could be mentally manipulated into fitting as an answer to prayer. I think I'm trying to affirm and boost my own faith by praying for stuff that isn't too much of a stretch. There is a section in Le Petit Prince where this king of this planet (who really isn't a king at all because he's living there alone) is so desperate to rule that when the little prince comes there, the king orders him to do all the things that he's already doing anyway (like, sometimes yawn and sometimes don't) so that, whatever the little prince does, the king's authority is confirmed. I think that's what I do with faith that God answers prayers. I'm secretly a little insecure about how well that actually works, so I pray for easy things that will probably be there anyway so that I can feel better about prayer working and God really being helpful. Heather changed this for me. Since she said that to me, I have started praying big things, hard things, things that would be REALLY noticeable if they came true and really noticeable if they didn't. This requires a lot more faith. And it requires that you completely trust that, even if God doesn't deliver on the big thing you asked for, He did listen and chose to do a better thing. It's much more dangerous, this big praying. If you're not REALLY sure that He's there and listening and able, this big praying could crush you. It's formidable and I'm just beginning to work with it. I think it's real and big and important though and I think we've let it go in the name of being reasonable. God said to be faithful and confident and consistent in our prayers, never "reasonable."
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