The Healing Balm of Truth & Beauty

The natural beauty of the autumn season on a warm, sunny day can hardly be surpassed. Today is such a day, and I am filled with gratitude for the Beauty I have discovered in the Catholic Church. I remember as an English major in college studying the poetry of the Romantics, who capitalized words such as Truth and Beauty. Perhaps this capitalizing of ideals was working in my subconscious and then began to surface as I searched for the right church home for me and my family.  I suspected that the secular idea of finding one's own, personal truth was faulty. "I have to speak my truth," people will say. And even in the sphere of religion this is true, for as Protestant denominations first broke from the Catholic faith, so they have continued to splinter amongst themselves, being defined more by the nature of protest from which the name of Protestant springs, than they are as a beacon of the light of Christ. Even among professing Catholics there is division, as some wish to join the secular parade of self-defined truth. Yet the Church herself cannot error in her official teachings, and she is indeed the last Christian bastion of Truth.

12 Step groups by their nature contain only a portion of the truth, as they by necessity must refrain from proclamations of absolute, God-given Truths. And so while spiritually based, these groups remain secular, and the fullness of healing cannot be found. Help can be found, yes, and there are those wise souls who speak the Truth for others to hear. They are models of faith and charity, and they selflessly share their experience, strength and hope. But perhaps the 12 step groups are like those places in the world that do not know the season of autumn, who have not lived through the physical transformation of color, smell, texture, and sound, the migratory flight of birds, the last call before what looks like death but is only dormancy. Winter is but a dark night of the soul, a waiting place before new life bursts forth from black soil into the light.

Some misunderstand the Truth of Catholicism as a starkness of black and white. They do not understand the both/and nature of the Church; they do not see the in between places where faith grows in stages, where the soul is transformed into a harmony of dazzling color and ineffable Beauty. They ignore the poetry because it is too subtle, too simple, too ordinary to sense the profound depths of the underground river of Life.

Lady Wisdom can be apprehended in the patterns and changing colors of autumn, in the fragrance of burning wood and the crisp air breathed on the night of the harvest moon. She invites us to wake up and taste the cider, put on a costume and dream of who we might be if we only had the courage, if only the wizard really could put valor into our cold, frightened hearts. Imagine for a moment that Beauty is real, and that she can lead you by the hand to Truth. Right here, right now, Love is ours for the asking. Knock, and it will be opened unto you.

Forgiveness and Healing--Which Comes First?

 Immaculate Heart of Mary

I am wondering today, which comes first, forgiveness or healing?  In other words, if someone has deeply hurt my feelings, do I need to heal first in order to forgive and forget, or do I need to forgive and forget in order to heal?  I am currently in a situation in which a relative has caused me deep grief, and this person cannot really understand how I feel, either because she chooses to see things only from her own perspective, or simply because she is not a mother and cannot comprehend my mother's heart.  She does not think she did anything wrong.  Despite expressing my broken-heartedness in the original case, this person made additional choices which compounded my pain.  She was going to let me walk into a situation that she must have known was going to hurt me, and luckily another family member did not think this was right and spilled the beans.  I sucked it up and endured the day, but now what?

If she did not care enough about our relationship to tell me the truth, if nothing else but to prepare me for what was to come, then what kind of relationship can we have?  The fear of upsetting another person is no excuse for allowing them to be blind-sighted by a fast pitch.  If we cannot share openly and honestly despite the consequences, then our relationships will always be superficial and likely to harbor resentment.  I had a small epiphany that perhaps all of the praying I have been doing for the healing of strained relationships is not quite the right focus.  I realized that I have to pray for healing for myself, because otherwise these relationships can't heal.  Expecting healing from someone who has hurt you can be like going to the hardware store for bread.

Since I had talked to this person already in the initial instance on at least two occasions, and written her a letter as well, my feelings and position were clear.  The straw that subsequently broke the camel's back, then, seems pointless to address.  She didn't get it, or she would have chosen differently.  Sometimes the solution is to do nothing.  Today I do not have to make the phone call, write the letter, or have the conversation.  In spiritual struggles there is always something to be learned.  It may not be my lesson that needs to be learned in this case; it may be hers.  We "Al-Anons" sometimes have an overly developed sense of responsibility, thinking it is up to us to fix things, to settle differences, or to make the other person see the light.  Just for today, I can turn it over and leave it there.  I can write the problem on a piece of paper and put it in a "God box."  Let the problem take care of itself, in its own way, in its own time.  And I can do the same thing tomorrow, and the day after that.  I can continue to pray for my own healing and the humility to forgive and forget.  The forgiving part is not so hard.  The trouble is in avoiding picking open the scab. Underneath Mary's mantle is the only place to be, close to her Immaculate Heart.

Another Look at Detachment

de·tach·ment  (d-tchmnt)n.

1. The act or process of disconnecting or detaching; separation.

2. The state of being separate or detached.

3. Indifference to or remoteness from the concerns of others; aloofness: preserved a chilly detachment in his relations with the family.

4. Absence of prejudice or bias; disinterest: strove to maintain her professional detachment in the case.

These are the definitions of detachment given by an online dictionary. I have always had mixed feelings about the concept and practice of detachment, and I am beginning to understand why. My first sponsor in Al-Anon, who was also a member of AA, instructed me to read all the pages on detachment in the program literature as my first assignment. Detachment was regularly a topic brought up at meetings. I think this was because it was such a difficult idea to understand and just as hard to practice. When emotions run high, when the walls are crumbling all around you, such emotional distancing and separation from others can seem impossible. In a way, it is. A qualification was then given to this task; that is, to detach with love. But being both loving and aloof seems counterintuitive. However, by detached the program does not mean to suggest that one be unfeeling as the above definitions might suggest. 

We must find a way not to be so involved in the alcoholism and problems of others, to take care of ourselves and not lose our serenity when dealing with overwhelming difficulties and toxic, volatile relationships. My conclusion? One cannot detach on one's own, and detachment is not even a worthy goal if it is focusing on a negative. Rather than willing oneself to achieve complete emotional separation, my belief is that there is only one way out of our problems. We must become attached to God alone. In this way only will we be able to set our boundaries, mind our own business, and remain spiritually healthy. Our only hope is to rest in God. I have revised my previous post, Suffering and Detachment, to better clarify these ideas.

So this is the new slogan I suggest: Attachment to God alone. If we are attached to God, we abide in Love. There is no separation; we are all one in the Lord. Perhaps this was the goal when detachment became the prescription of the day, but it ultimately left me adrift, a ship with no anchor. And eventually I get fed up, frustrated, overcome with grief or anger, and/or physically ill as a result of toxic circumstances and relationships. Only a saint can practice detachment in any situation, and most of us won't reach the level of sainthood in this lifetime. But we can take a contemplative approach to recovery and begin to learn detachment in a particularly Christian way and apply it with Divine Love to our troubling situations. Our anchor is the Lord. This is the basis for Paths to Grace. And in this blog I hope to channel the will of God, that He might provide the tools to carry this out, that our paths will be made straight and clear, with no confusion or ambiguity left to impede complete healing. 

Re-Evaluating the Twelve Steps

Many people have recently looked at the original post for this blog, titled "The Twelve Steps--A Catholic Perspective", so I think it's time to define my purpose and intentions again. The "program" I have been slowly developing has as its base God's Grace, rather than a set of steps. I have been reflecting upon various slogans, ideas, and practices regarding what I personally experienced as a member of Al-Anon for 10 years and what I observed as the close family member and friend of a number of alcoholics. My feeling now is that something new is taking shape, and that I may not be making a systematic re-evaluation (and potential re-writing) of the 12 Steps after all (although I will continue to loosely do this as I have been). Those steps help many people and can be a springboard for sobriety, healing, and a better way of life. I still use some of the tools I learned in Al-Anon which do not conflict with my religious beliefs. But I left the program to search for that Something More that the program can't offer, and then I began to be aware of what its specific limitations are, which is part of what I have been writing about here. My goal now is to illuminate alternative paths to healing, rather than to reinvent the wheel.

In Al-Anon I was told that all the answers to my problems were to be found in the 12 Steps. But what is interesting is the fact that the "step meetings" were the least attended of all types. For example, if the first Sunday of each month was designated by a group to be a meeting to study a particular step, there was a noticeable difference in the number of people who would come that week. The step meeting involves readings out of books about the step in question, and each reader then comments--or not--on what he or she has read. So why weren't these meetings as popular? Evidently, what people really want and need is to talk. They want to choose their own topics, tell others their problems, and listen to the answers. They want the personal experiences of the people sitting in the room. They want their own experiences and feelings validated, to know that they aren't alone. They want talk therapy.

That doesn't mean the steps weren't important to them, and some people really appreciated getting more deeply into a discussion of a step. It just wasn't, perhaps, the main thing that drew them to the program. Some steps seemed difficult to understand, and there is no absolute teaching on them. "Take what you like and leave the rest" sounds good in theory, but you may be leaving out something essential, and taking something that in reality is a bitter pill. It wasn't unusual for a person to get "stuck" on a step and never progress to the next. It is taken for granted that the 12 Step model is the most effective, and so many other  groups have adopted it, such as Overeaters Anonymous. Such programs work for some people, to a certain extent. I think for now I will just continue on as I have been, writing as I am inspired, and relaying the insights I have gained. Only time will tell what form the new path will take!