Ken shares a story from Anne Lamott wherein she talks about calling around to different friends asking about what Advent means to them. She doesn’t have much luck until she reaches a Jesuit friend who has 35 years of sobriety. He shares a dramatic event which happened early in his own recovery wherein folks at a 12-step meeting showed compassion to a man in a terrible state. The patience they showed then, evoked the feeling of Advent for this friend.
Darkness Visible
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Good morning, Wellspring’s. It is good to be with you again. This morning for my message, I want to share a story
with you.
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It’s from the writer Ann Lamott, some of you might know her from our Wellspring’s 2.0 Listening to Our Lives group
from the chapter in a book entitled Into Thin Mud. And some of you may have just read her on your own.
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Now, the thing about Anne Lamott, if you’re at all familiar with her, is that she has a deep writerly.
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Capacity for profound irreverence and for profound reverence, and it’s about some of that irreverence that I want to
give you a little heads up today, because the irreverence directly plays into the reverence. So in the story I want to
share with you, she talks pretty honestly about bodily functions, not all of the story, but it’s a part of it and it’s
integral to the story. Now, I’ve cleaned up some of her language about those bodily functions, but I do want to give
you a heads up that’s coming. And the second thing is this. She, like me, is a person in long term recovery and a
decent part of this story is about what can happen in recovery. And in it she uses some language that those of us in
recovery sometimes use to refer to other people we know in recovery.
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And in that context used between us, these words take on a quality of connection and belonging and actually
become terms of endearment. But when these are words used about us by people not in recovery, these words take
on a quality of exclusion and looking down on us and actually contribute to stigma. So the context in which these
words are used is incredibly important. So the story that she tells is about Advent, which she says, for Jesus, people
like herself is an incredibly important time of year. It’s the time of year of opening the heart of preparing for
Christmas. And really what Christmas signifies, what it means the in the Hebrew, the Emmanuel, the sense of the
divine really dwelling amongst us and within us and for and with all of us. What is stressed, what’s important in the
time of Advent is a kind of patient waiting and openness for that presence to gain root within all of us, so that a
realm, a way of being of of peace and justice and compassion, regardless of what we believe belongs to and with
and for all of us. She says she deeply wants that that way of peace and justice and compassion for all of us.
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And she’s even open to the waiting and the patience of this time of year, especially for those of us who live in the
northern hemisphere for this time of the year in which the sunlight is diminishing.
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Sometimes that can be a real challenge, especially when it’s cold as well, and she says it’s not that she lacks faith,
it’s that she has some real mental health challenges. And so this particular adventure some years ago when she
was writing the story about she says that it’s almost like she developed a kind of childlike chant that was going on
inside of her mind all the time at this particular advent that went something like this worry, worry, worry, worry,
worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry,
worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry.
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She was not doing so well.
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No, she wanted that patience and that peace. She was having a tough time locating it.
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And so she thought about reaching out to her own pastor, but this was early on in Advent and it is a busy season
for folks who are clergy. And so her pastor was away on some self care, R and R to prepare for the time of preparing
for Christmas. And and Lamont wrote tongue firmly in cheek. She said, if we knew that we were going to hire a
pastor who was so committed to their own boundaries and self care, we would have thought twice about what she’s
getting. And so her own pastor not being around, she decides she want to reach out to some of what she called
God’s other spokespeople.
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She called the ministers she knew and she said, talk to me about talk to me about God. And the other minister said,
who’s that? And she thought, OK, that’s not very promising, moving on.
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And so she reached out to a Jewish friend of hers and she picked up the phone and she could hear immediately in
the background this person’s children keening and crying and all kinds of tumult in the background. And Anne
Lamott still went on with it. She said, tell me about the preparation for the time of Hanukkah, the miracle, the
Festival of Lights. And the friend immediately says, are you joking? Hearing the sound of the chaos in the
background? And Lamott says, Well, I know you’re I know you’re reformed. And the friend shoots back. We’re so
reformed. We have a crucifix on the door of our house. So, again, not so much what an Lamott maybe was
searching for in the way of peace and patience. And the friend says, call me back tomorrow as the kids are creating
even more chaos in the background. Call me back tomorrow, she says, and I will talk to you about Hanukkah and
the kicking out of the old invader’s. The old Assyrian kingdom invader’s thousands of years ago from the Holy Land
and by the Holy Land. No, I don’t mean Miami Beach.
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So an Lamott moves on to her next friend, another minister. And says, talk to me of God, talk to me of of people
who are doing all right, and the friend just kind of sighs and says, Oh, Bobby, you’ve you’ve got a you’ve got a big
one there. And the friend says, this is what I know. Take care of God’s children and God will take care of you. And
Anne Lamont says, is that written somewhere, the friend says it’s right there under what’s called the special
instructions for living.
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And Anne Lamott still not quite getting what she was searching for.
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Calls her friend Tom.
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Tom, who she describes as a hopeless alcoholic of the worst sort with thirty five years sobriety, Tom, who is a Jesuit.
Tom, who she trusts because Tom is still very open, even after thirty five years of sobriety, that he can suffer with
struggles over the images or at least the images that he believes about his body, and he can fall into despair at
times. And so and Lamott trusts him because he is honest and real. And Ann Lamott, her Jesuit friend, Tom.
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Tell me of people getting well. Tell me a story of people getting well. And Tom pauses for a moment.
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And he thinks.
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And he says, this is my story of people getting well, this is my story of Advent. It was many years ago, it was 1976,
and I was very newly sober.
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And terrified of everything.
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He said, at that point, I was living in California, I was living in what they called the time the People’s Republic of
Berkeley, and I kind of liked the meetings, the recovery meetings I was going to at the time, because unlike in L.A.,
where I was a little bit familiar with as well, too. And I think Anne Lamott was familiar with L.A. at that time, that the
people in Berkeley, they didn’t kind of whoop it up. There wasn’t too much clapping at the meetings. It was kind of
more sedate. And he found people like himself, kind of folks who had been in school real long time.
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And he said the problem was, is that in addition to being in early recovery and scared of his own shadow. He was
transferred within his order, within the Jesuit order to Los Angeles. And all he really knew about Los Angeles. Where
where the bars were in various parts of town, and so he was terrified even to leave his apartment for fear that he
would see himself going to one of those bars again. Remember, he is in very early recovery. And so we called up his
cardinal and one of the higher ups in his order and the cardinal said, I want you to search out Terry. Terry, it turns
out, has five years of sobriety, which Tom says makes Terry God to me, couldn’t even imagine that five years of
sobriety at the time. And so during this time, add Advent in 1976, he makes contact with Terry and Terry asks him,
I want you to come and meet me at a at a men’s meeting in downtown L.A. at the Episcopal Cathedral, which was
located real close to what was called Skid Row.
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And Tom gets there and he meets Terry and he sees all the people hanging out in the courtyard of the church,
people who look like real hard core alkies and addicts.
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People who look like they might be numbering their days of sobriety in hours, people who look like they’re on the
edges of society. People who look like they’re barely hanging on. And the truth is, although Tom is fairly well
scrubbed, he thinks he feels like he’s barely hanging on.
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And although he has been told to seek out Terry with the five years of sobriety, Terry, as it turns out, is a complete
introvert who has almost no social skills and is really, really awkward interpersonally.
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And so he’s trying to make small talk with Terry, but it’s not really working. And at one point, Terry simply asks
them, So how are you doing?
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And he says, I am scared. And Terry says, yeah, gently.
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That’s about right, and so there they are hanging out in the courtyard of the Episcopal Cathedral with all these kind
of folks who look really down on their luck pretty much.
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And a door opens and Terri finds himself going up the stairs. Very, very long, narrow set of stairs.
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I think I said, Terry, I mean, Tom, Terri’s in back of Tom and he’s feeling his legs absolutely shaking.
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This set of stairs that feels almost limitless and in front of him, there’s a guy also youngish about Tom’s age who
looks even shakier than Tom feels.
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And at one point, the guy in front of them who looks like he is perhaps measuring his sobriety in minutes, loses
control of his bodily functions.
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And Tom says inside, I look like Edward Munch’s The Scream, I just want to get out of there, I am nauseated and I
feel Terry’s gentle encouragement, easing me up the stairs because the guy in front of me doesn’t seem to know
that he has defecated on himself and they get up to the very top of the stairs before they enter this airless,
windowless room. And the guy whose job it is, is to kind of greet people as they come into the meeting, kind of like
a volunteer position. He’s got a big shaved head and a big barrel chest and one of those big, bushy, vulga Viking
mustaches. And he gets one whiff of this guy who’s gone to the bathroom on himself and he vomits all over the
place. And so now this windowless, airless room is filled with the smell of human poop and vomit, and everyone
starts madly smoking cigarettes to try and get the stench off of them. And the guy who’s gone to the bathroom on
himself just kind of stumbles in and falls into a chair and everyone kind of starts to freak out.
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But not Terry.
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Tom just wants to run, this is too much to deal with. Terry goes over to the guy who’s vomited, the guy with the big
vulga mustache, he says, seems like you got a bit of surprise there, my friend. And Terry and the guy with the big
mustache and the shaved head just start laughing. And Terri walks over to the man, so down on his luck.
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And he sits down next to him.
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And he says it looks like you’ve run into some trouble here, my friend.
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The man doesn’t say anything, just nods and he says, we’re going to help you out.
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Now, first, what they do is because this isn’t the first time something like this has has happened like this in this
particular meeting, is Terri sends a bunch of guys off to get some towels and some kitty litter to start soaking up
the effluvia.
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Not the first time this has happened there. And he gets Some men. Who are very early in recovery themselves.
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Some men from a nearby halfway house right next door to the Episcopal Cathedral.
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And they steady the man who’s gone to the bathroom on himself and they guide him down that set of stairs and
they bring him over to the halfway house. And they feed him. And they give him coffee. And they clean his clothes.
And they care for him. And they give him respect. Now, these men who kind of themselves are barely hanging on.
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The kinds of addicts and alcoholics that are so often looked down on by society, they care for this man because he
is one of them. He is one of their own.
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And back at the meeting.
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Tom says and feels for the first time something he has not felt in months. Which is a little tiny shred. Of hope. He
sees the way that Terri has kind of calmly, gently, kindly.
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Turned everyone to action for care, and he said, you know what?
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I was back in Berkeley. I thought everyone looked like this. Nineteen seventy six now, David Niven, very debonair
British actor.
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And I thought I would get sober with people just like myself.
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Housebroken, overeducated and fun.
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But the truth he saw at that meeting. Was that was not to be. And more than anything, he thought he would be Tom
would be restored to health overnight. And that was not to be either. It would be a patient process. A process that
took some time.
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And some care. And some waiting. And in the midst of his fear.
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And that windowless, airless, smelly room, he found hope for the first time in a long time.
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And now addressing himself to Ann Lamott in the present tense, he says that is Advent to me. That God will set up
a tent before us. In which we are all invited. In which we learn to get well together.
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That is Advent to me.
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Not quickly. Not overnight. That is my Advent story.
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And he signs off by saying, for you, Miss Crabby and for me. For us together. In time.
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That is an Lamonte story about that.
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Makes me think of. My life about 15 years ago when I walked up a different set of stairs here in Pennsylvania.
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Not nearly as smelly, but I was just as terrified. I walked up that long set of stairs into a windowless, airless room.
Because I had to face. My own alcoholism. And I remember in the first couple meeting someone saying we take
everyone from Yale to jail here.
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And I remember saying I got one of those and a guy in back of me I didn’t even know then said I’ve got the other I
guess maybe looking at my clothes, he was guessing which one, which can always do.
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In this case, he was right. And we kind of laughed together.
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I remember feeling that little shred. A little glimmer of hope. Then maybe I would know what it would mean to get
well. And that it would take some patience. And some time.
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And it did. And it has worked and it continues to.
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But I also think more broadly about us as well, to not just those of us in recovery. About this moment of being alive.
Of the last four years. Which has felt.
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For those of us who set our hearts upon peace and and justice and compassion as felt that those things have been
under assault.
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And at this moment, at this turning of the year, that perhaps things these problems that are much bigger than just
the last four years, that perhaps peace and justice and goodness and compassion.
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That these things may have more than better fighting chance again. And I think of the last now almost 10 months of
this pandemic and seeing the images of the vaccines roll out. Hearing about people I know who know other people
who are starting medical providers to get the shot, the inoculation. And maybe for the first time in a long time, we
were feeling some hope. And yes, we know as well. That it won’t be overnight, that the pandemic ends and in fact,
right now, with the numbers skyrocketing, there is more death and more illness in our midst and there will be for
some time. This is what I love Ann Lamott’s adventure story. Because on this morning, one day shy of the solstice.
The day with the least sunlight of the year. And time of the year when many of us feel ourselves wanting so deeply,
more sunlight and more light in our lives. I find it so heartening to receive this remember this reminder to
remember, to look for both light and love in small and meaningful life saving patient ways. It reminds me of one of
my favorite readings for Advent, the solstice time of the year.
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And from the great psychiatrist Carl Jung. Who says we become enlightened not by imagining?
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Figures of light. We become enlightened. By making the darkness conscious.
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And so in these days. The challenge and the promise. Even if that promise seems small. May we allow? Our eyes.
And our hearts. Time to adjust. So that hope and goodness and peace. Compassion and justice.
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That these things can take root and grow in our lives. Even in the midst of winter.
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Amen. And may you live in Blessing
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I invite you to join your heart with mine in prayer right now.
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Emmanuelle the Divine with us within us. The divine.
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The spirit that might feel distant in many ways these days in the midst of all this struggle and all of this suffering.
We allow ourselves to have a sober hope.
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The hope that. Even in the midst of winter. Allows us to plant some seeds.
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Seeds that are not miracle grow. Seeds that take time. To become what they are intended to be.
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May that hope that seeding hope take root within us this day. So that we can in time. All grow into the people in
this world. That we hope to be.