Tag: resentment

Silkworth, Buchman & Bill

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

Alcoholics Anonymous resulted from a combination of two historical trajectories.

One of these had to do with certain people at a certain time wrestling with the puzzle of a particular type of alcoholic. The best doctors, notably William Silkworth and Carl Jung had found their methods utterly ineffective for a certain type of drinker. Silkworth and Jung effectively said to Bill Wilson and Rowland Hazard – we’ve tried everything we know, and we can’t help you. Bill and Rowland were the type of alcoholic who drank even when they didn’t want to, even when they knew a great deal of accurate knowledge about their drinking experience.

To varying degrees, and with varying experiences, they would be overcome by what Silkworth called a physical ‘allergy’ to alcohol, which triggered a phenomenon of craving. One drink could usually trigger this. They also had a mental obsession, or a kind of blank spot, which meant all previous experience of suffering and humiliation and damage went out the window. The alcoholic ‘thinking’ that precedes, justifies, rationalizes or just throws in the towel just before the first drink.

Though such drinkers were often perfectly normal in other respects, being good men, successful businessmen, skilled physicians, etc., will power seemed to be non-operative with regard to alcohol. Their only hope, according to Silkworth and Jung, was what some called ‘vital spiritual experiences’, which had seen some of these types recover. But such miracles were rare and little understood. Alcoholics like Bill and Rowland were sent off looking for such a solution…

The second historical trajectory had to do with other people at another time seeking to get back to the basics of religion – in this case, Christianity. This trajectory in a sense goes all the way back to the dawn of humanity and all religious ideas, but in more practical terms it starts with the experience of Frank Buchman.

Buchman was a Lutheran minister who had started up a hospice for young men, and had grown so upset at the board over financial disagreements that he resigned. At the 1908 Keswick convention in England, a message preached by Jesse Penn-Lewis brought him face to face with his self-focused, self-justifying anger. He came to see that they had probably wronged him, but the main point for him was that he had gotten “so mixed in the wrong that I was the seventh wrong man.”

This foundational pivot, a perfect example of taking the log out of your own eye (Matthew 7:5), set Frank on a trajectory of founding the First Century Christian Fellowship, a movement seeing to embody a return to the original teachings of Christ, simple and practical. This fellowship, later known as the Oxford Group, had a particular affection for the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and the epistle of James. They were convinced that faith without works was useless, and that one must clear their blockages from God, be of service to others practically, and seek constant daily direction from God through prayer and meditation.

This movement, seeking to build Christianity down to it’s most vital elements, grew in effectiveness and size. Though they had no formal articulation of their process, through their four absolutes (Honesty, Unselfishness, Purity & Love), they saw the lives of many people with various struggles turned around, including many alcoholics. One in particular went by the name of Ebby Thatcher.

These two trajectories were made for one another, and would merge in the person of Bill Wilson.

Bill Wilson was one of those rare types of drinkers for whom there seemed no solution, save the rare spiritual kind. He was a friend of Ebby Thatcher, who had been dramatically sobered up through the Oxford Group. The story of Ebby sharing his experience with Bill is featured in chapter 1 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, called ‘Bill’s Story’. At the time of the writing of the book, according to one of the foundational stories called ‘He Sold Himself Short’, the Oxford group had a sub-group of Alcoholics who seem to have tailored the Oxford process into a sequence of 6 steps, as used by Dr. Bob (the co-founder of A.A.):

1, Complete deflation.
2. Dependence and guidance from a Higher Power.
3. Moral inventory.
4. Confession.
5. Restitution.
6. Continued work with other alcoholics.

Bill and nearly a hundred other alcoholics adopted the Oxford process and formulated the 12 steps of AA as they are known now.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

When you look at the steps, especially as they are explained in the AA Big Book, you can see that the first two steps encapsulate the wisdom of Dr Silkworth concerning the unique powerlessness and insanity of the alcoholic concerning alcohol. The rest of the programme seems clearly dependent on the process of the Oxford Group.

So there you have it.

Silkworth & Jung found that the alcoholic problem needed a spiritual solution
Frank/OG spread a spiritual solution that relieved all kinds of problems.
Bill and the early AA’s said yes – thank you.

from resentment to acceptance

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

Many of us will be familiar with the four stages of competence. It’s a really useful framework:

  • Unconscious incompetence – we are unaware of room for improvement
  • Conscious incompetence – we learn we have room for improvement
  • Conscious competence – we are doing better with deliberate concentration
  • Unconscious competence – we do better naturally without having to concentrate

These stages can be helpfully applied to the journey from resentment to acceptance.

  • Unconscious resentment – we are angry, but not aware of it or the ways it is keeping us sick.
  • Conscious resentment – our anger is still hindering our mental health, but at least we are aware of it
  • Conscious acceptance – we make a conscious decision (or multiple decisions!) to let go of our anger and accept others as imperfect like us – we enjoy moments of relief from the effects that anger has on our mental health.
  • Unconscious acceptance – seeing others as equal to us has become an embedded habit – a way of being that we do not have to labour at – more like brushing teeth than solving a complex problem.

the disturbing arrival of just mercy

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

For those of us in contexts with a wealth of technology and media (and a poverty of contentment and patience), many of us are feeling weary, tired and over it. This is an exhaustion that goes deeper than number of hours worked or slept. It is an underlying dissatisfaction with things… something… or maybe everything.

Further Fracturing…

Humans have had their usual military, political and personal dramas for aeons. But something is different. There is growing division and distrust and distance from one another. We are losing hope. Relationships seem more fragile. We have more and more reasons to avoid one another. More and more things are harder and harder to talk about. Discourse is toxic. Extremes widen. We seem strangely eager to uncover wrongs, and understandably terrified of being seen to be affiliated with anything wrong. We are determined to be right, or at least less wrong than ‘them’.

And underneath this, we are slowly waking up to the reality that our greatest boast in the modern world, science, is not the simple saviour we had hoped it was. We are beginning to admit that even an impressively comprehensive collection of accurate factoids cannot itself provide the epistemic basis for meaning, value, justice, human rights, compassion.

Worse still, it seems that our heroic efforts at making a more just world sooner or later take on the broken and fragile characteristics of our individual and collective psychologies. Our demonizing, defensiveness, vengeance, resentment, superiority (so often mixed with inferiority), fear and hopelessness end up pouring fuel on the fires of injustice. Seeking justice, we create more injustice.

As the Psalms frequently invite us to do: “Selah” (reflect on this for a moment)

The God of Just Mercy

The Christmas story, amidst all the consumptive noise, unintentionally exclusive gatherings, Santa hats and holiday ‘meh’, is about the arrival of the God of just mercy.

Luke’s historically-savvy Gospel understood well the reality of Roman oppression of 1st century Israel. Luke captures the song known as Mary’s Magnificat (see Luke 1:45-55), rich with feisty social justice themes of powerful people being cast down and rich being sent away empty, while the humble are lifted up and the poor are filled with good things. Despite what you may hear on streets or screens, the biblical Gospel was never only about individuals going to heaven after they die. God longs for his fair and just rule to be realised here on earth. Now.

To riff off of Isaiah 58, God is the breath in the lungs of the oppressed when they ‘lift up their voice’ (v.1) against oppressors – even (especially!?) religious oppressors (‘my people’ / ‘the descendants of Jacob’ v.1).

The Bible clearly and consistently shows God to despise oppression and injustice, but we should not mistake the Gospel for the kind of popular rage that wants to burn it all down. God doesn’t burn for the sake of burning. Like a farmer burning off a field, the fire is for fresh grass to grow.

The Magnificat ends with mercy.

Yes, the immediate focus is on mercy to the ancestors of Abraham, but those who know Scripture will recall that Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) and his people had a vocation not simply to burn with judgmental finger-pointing at the nations forever, but to be a channel of blessing to them. The prophet Jeremiah knew that even in exile among their oppressors, the victim mentality that so often justifies violence would do them no good. Before Christ ever said “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, he told the captives to “seek the peace of the city…” Even in Babylon, a city continually reminding Israel of their oppression, Jeremiah wants them to have a different stronger memory of his words that “in its peace you shall have peace.” (Jeremiah 29)

God is not revealed as a tyrant in the thunderclouds, who gets a real kick every time he gets a chance to topple, expose, shame or punish someone. Yes, God is angry at oppression to be sure. But God knew the familiar patterns of injustice long before we did. God knows that oppressors often justify their oppression with their own claimed (or maybe even real) experience of oppression. God knows the cycle. Nobody’s hands are really clean.

Justice – and Mercy – for Everyone?

God knows that justice has to be mixed with mercy and hope – for everyone.
Obviously the oppressed… but even oppressors.

The Oppressed are offered hope that oppression will not go unpunished in the end, and practical real-world assistance as the God of justice empowers down-to-earth help from their neighbours, allies and prophets.

As for Oppressors, yes they are summoned to repair the damage they’ve done as best they can, but they too are offered the hope of renewal and new life. For Israel who “oppresses all [their] workers” and more, they are challenged to change, for sure.

But… they are also told of the life they can have if they do.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.

And that is at least one ingredient that missing in our world. A justice that is merciful and vulnerable. A justice for all. Hope for all. A God whose compassionate justice – whose just mercy – is well described from the times of Exodus:

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…”

Punishment and Forgiveness.
Justice and Mercy.
Consequences and Restoration.
Held together in redemptive, transformative tension.

This God does not leave oppressors to oppress. The consequences of injustice are firm and full punishment. But nonetheless, even the “wickedness, rebellion and sin” of oppressors can be forgiven and overcome.

The author of the persistently profound hymn extolling the wonder of a Grace that “saved a wretch like me” is none other than an oppressor – the former slave-owner John Newton.

This is a merciful justice that may disrupt our popular rage or political resentment. But it just may be the one solution to injustice that actually works. If we would have the courage, and yes the mercy, to give it a try.

Have a merry and merciful (and just) Christmas.

the human connection between anger & temptation

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

The sermon on the mount is the best teaching on human living. It lays down the patterns for full and complete humanness. After the Beatitudes and opening statements, the first two issues that Jesus deals with are a) anger leading to murder, and b) lust leading to adultery. It won’t do to simply label murder and adultery as unlawful, immoral or wrong. Jesus knows we have to get to the heart of these matters and deal with our anger and lust.

The early chapters of Genesis are also profound in their statements about humanness. Every human is like Cain, who gets ‘very angry’ and is tempted into taking actions that violate the humanity of his ‘brother’. In chapter 6, we see the moral devolution of humanity is so degraded that the beautiful daughters of men were being treated like sexual property. The Creator is grieved to the point of being willing to uncreate the whole creation.

Anger and Sex are connected. We need not illustrate all the ways that this interrelation plays out through rape and pornography.

Their interrelation also shows up in another text that is likewise profoundly awake to the realities of human nature: The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, written by Bill Wilson. The Step 4 inventory (see chapter 5, ‘How it Works’) of ones own life invites an addict to reflect on a) Resentments, b) Fears, c) Sex conduct and d) Harm to others.

Anger and Fear can be understood as a natural pair, just as Sexual dysfunction and Harm can be. For example, consider Resentment and Fear. When I resent another person, I am looking down on them in judgement (perhaps sometimes justified judgement); and when I fear someone, I am looking up at them. When I process my resentments (and fears) properly, I discover that I need not look down on (or up at) others. I can look them in the eye as equals. This humane equality is a profoundly disturbing idea for someone whose identity is dependent on feeling superior to others.

The same is true for the Sex and Harm pairing. Healthy sexual relations is a mutually helpful matter of freely giving and freely receiving. Literally ‘intercourse’. Harm, by nature, including sexual harm, is the opposite of giving and receiving. Instead of giving it forces itself on someone. “You will have this whether you want it or not.” Instead of receiving it is taking. “I’ll take this whether you’re giving it or not.” It is violent and violating.

So therefore, according to Jesus, Moses and Bill, it seems to be a human reality that when we feel resentment towards someone who we feel has wronged us we sooner or later are tempted to some kind of violence or dysfunction.

This connection between anger and temptation, finally, is seen within The Lord’s Prayer, which is – not surprisingly – the humane prayer in the structural centre of the humanising Sermon on the Mount, preached by the one Christians see as the True Human. I am instructed to link my own forgiveness from my Father in heaven, with the forgiveness I am continually working at with others who have ‘transgressed against’ me. Immediately following (and linked to) this, is that I must be on guard against being led ‘into temptation’.

Whether our resentment is justified or irrational, political or personal, sharply focused or a foggy haze; we are reminded of an important moral human truth. The longer we allow anger to fester and burn the more tempted we can be to find our way into a fix, escape, or treat. This could be in the form of a verbal insult, a preachy self-righteous Facebook comment, some form of sexually energising daydream or exploration, or any other drug of choice (working late hours, over-eating, gambling, numbing myself with drink).

And so, the journey to full humanness must include humane prayers where we lay our vulnerability to anger and temptation before the Lord.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.

Or, we might paraphrase…

Lord, help me to so savour your mercy towards me that I too flow with mercy towards others, especially those I am likely to point the finger of superior judgement towards, whose wrongs I feel the most burned up about. The ones who threaten me and interfere with how I think the world should run. Those who make my blood boil. The ones who, like me, do not deserve mercy.
And keep me far away from letting my anger drive me into some kind of tempting and ultimately self-serving power trip. Deliver me from the fleeting and temporary soothing ego trips of violence of any kind to myself or another.

Amen.

stuck v. free

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

The journey from being stuck to being free is perhaps one of the most basic of all trajectories for human development.

Perhaps one of the most ancient and foundational narratives that give colour to this trajectory is the Exodus. The Israelites go from being brutally enslaved in Egypt to being free in the promised land. The complex and protracted nature of their arrival in the promised land only adds further colour to the trajectory. As the preachers say, it took a single night to get Israel out of Egypt, but an entire generation to get Egypt out of Israel.

Depending on where you live and what your relationship is with various ideas or traditions, you may put different labels to what you find enslaving and what you have found freeing. Some examples could be:

  • feeling enslaved by moral failures and finding freedom in forgiveness and grace
  • feeling enslaved by guilt and shame and finding freedom in people who have felt the same as you
  • feeling enslaved by rules and finding freedom in autonomy
  • feeling enslaved by chaos and finding freedom in order
  • feeling enslaved by religion and finding freedom in secularism
  • feeling enslaved by meaninglessness and finding freedom in tradition
  • feeling enslaved by others and finding freedom in self
  • feeling enslaved by isolation and finding freedom in community

As the list shows, sometimes the very same thing that one person associates with slavery can be associated by another with freedom. As is sometimes said, freedom ‘from’ is not necessarily freedom ‘for’.

12-step spirituality is about a the trajectory away from the slavery of addiction and the freedom of recovery.

You might say that 12-step spirituality is designed to take an addict down to the deepest level of their slavery and take them to the deepest kind of freedom.

  • The physical level is the surface level
    • there is the slavery of using the drug (or engaging in the behaviour) again and again, and the freedom of not using
      • This level does not touch the real nature of addiction. Unless the deeper levels are addressed, addicts can abstain for varying lengths of time before they use again.
  • The mental level is near the surface
    • there is a kind of slavery to ‘addict thinking’ which is obsessive, disordered, and ‘insane’, and the promise of the freedom of being restored to sanity.
      • This too still falls short of the heart of addiction and recovery. There are very helpful insights (“You know, addiction thrives in isolation, I was watching this great TED talk…”), slogans (“stinking thinking”; “one day at a time” or “remember to reach out”), or acronyms (“When you want to drink, remember H.A.L.T. and ask yourself if you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired…”). But one of the prime features of addiction is forgetting all the good reasons or the pain that addictive behaviour brings. Relying on memory isn’t enough for a real addict.
  • The spiritual level is where the steps focus.
    • The ultimate need is to overcome a focus on (and defense of) self that is warped by resentment, fear, and the inability to clearly see when I have harmed others (even if they may have harmed me). This excessive focus on the self is the real slavery. The real freedom promised by the steps is a life of humble service to others. An addict working the steps is liberated from the resentful blindness to any harms they have done, and into the capacity to humbly see and make amends for how they have hurt others.

To put it as succinctly as possible: a) the journey from being stuck in addiction to being free in recovery is tethered via an unbreakable spiritual cord to b) the journey from being stuck in self-justifying resentment to being free in humble amends and service to others.

To finish, here is a paragraph from the AA Big Book which summarises the need for a spiritual overcoming of selfish resentment in order to find deep recovery.

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again.

from the bondage of self

~ dwc ~ Leave a comment

When an alcoholic is working the 12 steps using the guidance of the ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous, I am told that it is traditional to pray the “Third Step Prayer” found in Chapter 5 ‘How It Works’. Here is the full prayer:

“God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!’’

There is clearly much to appreciate about this prayer, but in this blog I want to do two things. First, I want to zero in on the significance of one line “Relieve me of the bondage of self”; and Second, I want to use the Lord’s Prayer to demonstrate how it is a prayer that asks the same thing.

The Self

The AA Big Book has a lot to say about an addictive focus on ‘self’. “Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows…” (bold and italics not in original) It says “the alcoholic is an example of self-will run riot.” In one of the appendices, there is a quote from Dr. W. W. Bauer, who observes that helping other fellow alcoholics creates an atmosphere in which “the alcoholic often overcomes his excessive concentration upon himself.”

Modern psychologists may sometimes take issue with what could seem like a negative view of the self in such language. But if we are read these quotes as intended, we can see that it is not the self, as such, that is being critiqued, but the ‘excessive’ focus upon self. ‘Self’ is not the problem, but selfishness. The AA Big Book wants the alcoholic to see that even when trying to be ‘good’ their self-will is at play. Such is the description of the ‘actor’ trying to ‘run the whole show’: “Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind?”

This wisdom about a counter-productive self-focus is behind one of my favourite lines in the prayer: “Relieve me of the bondage of self.” Through the spiritual programme of action outline in the 12-steps, the alcoholic or addict is guided through a process by which their excessive focus on themselves is relieved by the aid of a Power greater than (who?) themselves.

The Lord’s Prayer

I’d now like to translate this wisdom into Christian key. Of course, it is well known that the Christian faith was the spiritual garden out of which the principles of AA were harvested. Frank Buchman, the Lutheran minister, had his transformational experience with resentment, which led to him establishing the ‘First Century Christian Fellowship’ later known as the ‘Oxford Group’, whose 6 principles were expanded into 12 steps by Bill Wilson and the early AA fellowship.

So, although, it is not needed to re-translate any of this back into Christian faith, it might at least be interesting or useful to show how the Lord’s Prayer relates to this line from the Third Step prayer (indeed the entire prayer!); particularly given that the early AA groups used to open or close their meetings with the Lord’s Prayer (and some still do).

  • Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
    • Right from the start, my focus on self is violently interrupted by shifting and lifting my spiritual gaze off of my self and onto another. Not just any ‘other’, but the ultimate Other. Consider how the same shift can at least be somewhat attempted in the practice of someone who does not believe in any traditional Monotheistic God. Take a practitioner of yoga (which I am neither criticizing nor commending here). Through their practice of breathing, exercise, community and spiritual worldview, they also shift their focus from their individual self onto their body, the others they might be exercising with, and indeed the Universe. Stresses and difficult mental states are at least temporarily put aside as one focuses on higher and wider things than their self. Monotheism simply takes this as far as the logic can lead – to an ultimate Other, the un-caused Cause behind all causality, the One Creator of all things.
  • Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
    • In contrast to the self-will that wants to run the whole show of life, and aggressively or passive-aggressively trying to get others to do what we think they ought to do, this part of the prayer acknowledges that there are higher laws and higher wills and a higher order of things than mine. I do not need to, and indeed I cannot live well if I persist in trying to, play God. Even the agnostic can at least sense a comparable shift when they acknowledge the vast order of natural law in the Universe. We are but a small part in the whole. Monotheism simply recognises that this higher order is not the an order characterised by ‘blind, pitiless, indifference’ as Richard Dawkins famously wrote, but rather by a purposeful, creational and ‘kingly’ or royal will.
  • Give us this day our daily bread
    • One of the basic fears that a fragile self can have is around the fear of financial insecurity. We fear not being able to secure means for ourselves, and for those who may depend on us. Food security experts talk about the difference between a ‘scarcity’ or ‘abundance’ mindset. One can base their positive affirmation of abundance on factual appreciations of the wealth of resources available to us. This prayer just rests this confidence on the ground of a generous God.
  • And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
    • One of the most profound contributions of the AA Big Book is the focus on cleaning one’s own side of the street. We have many resentments against the wrongs others have done. Sometimes these resentments are essentially justified and we have truly been harmed. However, the wisdom here, is that even an innocent victim can get stuck in justified resentment. As the saying goes, “holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” I cannot change the other person who hurt me (in my case, as a young child). I can only focus on changing myself, particularly the ways that I nourish my sense of victimhood and keep the fires of resentment enflamed. Forgiveness, in this context, has nothing to do with absolving or excusing or minimising the harm done to me; nor should it keep me from taking any appropriate action to protect myself or others from present or future harm. It is simply ‘giving’ them up out of my death grip of judgment. The wisdom here is very challenging, because never does the self feel more righteous than when criticizing another for legitimate harms done (think of Israel or Hamas). Whatever forgiveness may do for the one who is forgiven, it is undeniably transformative for the one doing the forgiving.
  • And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.
    • Here the prayer follows on directly from the previous line. Unforgiving and merciless criticism of another person, and most of all the victim mentality too often leads to various forms of verbal, physical or military retaliation or vengeance. For others, it could lead to various forms of escapism as we feel entitled to a mental or moral holiday. We’ve been harmed, mis-represented, ignored, abandoned, so “Screw ‘them’; they have it coming.” Or “Screw ‘it’, I’m going to numb out…” with food, work, sex, drink or self-harm. Such escalations or self-harm are named here as temptations driven by a force that is malevolent, destructive, anti-creational, counter-productive, distorting, enslaving and thus ‘Evil’.
  • For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.
    • My life, my future, my past and present; and the history and activities in the whole world, are all subsumed within a higher order that will be ‘just fine’. This is not the well-meaning distant dualism of hoping that ‘God is watching us… from a distance.’ It is the dogged, insistent hope in the reality of a loving Father who can sort out the baddies ‘out there’, and who is constantly and compassionately available to help me with my fearful and vulnerable badness ‘in here’. God is the one who provides, rules, understands, judges and heals. I need that every day.

So then,
Father of all Creation,
today and every day,
relieve me of the bondage of self.
Make me a vessel of reconciling love
to some of your children today.
Amen.