Longing
In our hyper-cerebral, post-modern culture, we may have been looking for answers in the wrong place all along. A fellow recently shared the following acronym during a meeting: FAITH = Finding Answers In The Heart. When we have begun to embrace all that resides within us, and only then, can true healing begin. Everything in there belongs to us. There are no bad parts, only those that pull us towards wholeness and those that would attempt to take us backwards, to the status quo of our early childhood sense of dis-ease…
Beyond Morality
Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in L.A. Many of those who benefit from the services of Homeboy Industries are living, like me, in long-term addiction recovery. As Fr. Greg, or “Gee”, as the hommies like to call him, points out in his most recent book “Cherished Belonging”, morality has not succeeded in making us moral and has, in fact, been the means by which division has been sown among us. We are good and they are bad…
Secrets
As an addict living in recovery since 2003, I have had plenty of opportunities to get to know and interact with people from the many fellowships now providing support to those of us who wish to recover, all around the world. My experience of recovery is that of a transformative shift from fear to love. A major prerequisite for the success of this transformation is the cultivation and practice of compassion: for self, others, and circumstances. The realisation that: `We are as sick as our secrets´ plays a prominent role in the recovery process.
Emotions
In my family of origin, as I experienced things, there was no common language for dealing with the multitude of feelings that are integral to the human condition. It was as if we tried, in a group effort, to read Anna Karenina in the original without any prior knowledge of the Russian culture, language, or even the ability to read Cyrillic script. Emotions are sometimes characterised as `feelings in motion´. A wide array of emotions exists. The following list captures those generally identified as the most common: Acceptance, admiration, affection, amusement, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anticipation, anxiety…
Spiritual Experience
Every roomful of recovering addicts is a roomful of miracles. For reasons beyond our comprehension, we had been guided and protected up to that turning point and had been granted sufficient clarity to make the decisive choice. The prospect of death thus became a constant companion to us, not in any morbid sense but in a way that helped us cultivate gratitude for simply being alive in a world which, we gradually discovered, also contained tenderness, beauty, and wonder…
