It is somehow a long way down to the bottom of a life that we hold onto so desperately; to the bottom of a heart that is hidden behind the constructs and machinations of a mind that is nothing more than a cloak for a hungry ego. And yet, when the journey in and down—the duende of the poets—has begun and blossomed
into a full and robust death angst of despair; it is then, in the whispering hush of the last escaping breath that life can be infused and re-blown into us. When we are truly empty, we shall be filled - the Spirit can win out.
Breathing Under Water is Richard Rohr’s masterful telling of the unwinding nature of addiction and entropy in our lives. So often we claim that addiction is different than the natural process of falling apart. These words make it visible that entropy and addiction are one and the same. What wears us down is the same. What is different is that in entropy we tell the truth; in addiction we lie.
The spirituality of coping with addiction is the same spirituality of all of life’s descents. Entropy is upfront about the fact that things wear on us and weather us into non-existence and humble realism. In addiction we claim the thing that wears us down is actually giving us life. It does not matter if we are addicted to the ego or to a needle or shot glass. We sustain ourselves in addiction on a lie. In entropy we come to terms with the truth of the nature of things.
Rohr help’s us to see the redemptive nature of recognizing that life begins from the bottom. When we whisper defeat and acknowledge we are undone, then we can begin to live. It is not just in this book of his, it peppers everything he does. The gospel he proclaims is that life can only begin when we are able to say “I am not in this alone” and “My own way is just not the fullness it could be”. We all need a community in order to be who we were meant to be.
The break-open point in people’s lives is when they can unabashedly admit that things are a ramshackle. When we can say we have crashed into the bottom, we can awaken to the
possibilities of truth. When we are down and out we open to the fragility of human existence. “The wheels have gotta fall off for there to be any movement.”
The 12 step program is an odyssey toward organizing the life of abasement. This is also what grace is all about. An opening toward the agony of
entropy is a sure sign of mature spiritual development and wholeness. When I am weak then I am strong.” “The way up is down.” “Everything belongs.” Pick the
phrase or the telling of the tale, it matters not the truth isthe same: honestly looking at yourself, wrestling amid the turmoil of amending, correcting, and repairing, leaning into
repentance, forgiveness, and asking is the
only way to become saturated with a genuine love—a love that is able to allow the darkness of the shadow to burgeon into shards of blinding light.
This book weaves classic spiritual depth work with the twelve steps that ignites a fire in the mind, the heart, and the belly all at once. It does not take long in the reading to recognize the
undercurrent of good religious principles—a good philosophy of religion. Some of the underpinnings of the 12 Step Program could easily
footnote the works of Heschel, Kierkegaard, Boehme, Nouwen, or Wilber. We figure out we are not whole,we figure out we need larger “I” to live through, we clearly identify our need to repair damage we have been a part of, we work toward mending amid a community of
like minded people.
The themes are ancient and eternal. The themes are from the mythologies of all ages. The themes are: power/powerlessness, a Higher-Power or God, surrender to this Higher- Power or God, reviewing the nature of our lives and errors, confession of our wrongs, a willingness to have our wrongs removed, asking for our wrongs to be removed, the reparation of whatever damage we have caused, development of a community of people who abide by these themes. This process is the process of all religious faith. It is the way we come to terms with living in a universe that is compiled of small pieces of
matter that are all interdependent.
What makes this book so immense is that Rohr has been able to make connections between the 12 Step Program and the long-standing religious traditions of men and women in search of God. And, in allowing
the greater underground themes to bubble up and merge with a post-modern paradigm of healing, people are able to meld a pragmatic contemporary schema to eternal themes that have passed the test of time.
I also think this piece has great merit in that the pathway of descent that is exposed in the telling is the same pathway that good psycho-therapeutic adherents rely on. People only change when they have hit the bottom
and know they need something to buoy them up. When THEY know. Not when they are told, but when they know it. When people are ready to be cracked open by experience – and when in being cracked open the are able to be self-aware of their brokenness – then they can
begin to mend toward wholeness.
Henri Nouwen would have said that it is in the process of discovering our brokenness and woundedness that we actually begin to heal. In this sense, the religious process toward wholeness is afoot of any
experience in
life where the wheels fall off. It could be addiction, death, loss, divorce, mental unwinding, grief, or war. There is no triumph in human existence until we are able to recognize that our prevalence toward weakness is our one true strength. The person who can weep at our own human condition is wiser than those who have never touched their shadow.
No comments:
Post a Comment