I know where I’ll be every Monday and Tuesday evening, and on Sunday mornings. And I know what I’ll be doing first thing every day. This is in stark contrast to a half dozen years ago. Then, the only thing you could count on from me was that I’d probably be alone in my apartment, though I probably wouldn’t answer the phone. I had no regular weekly commitments. Not a one. When I was invited to social events, I didn’t RSVP; I’d just show up or not — that way I could decide at the last minute. My decision was usually no. This change happened gradually, but it is the result of two large events — renewed sobriety and a radical deepening of my spiritual life — and one simple tool that I learned along the way: making commitments nonnegotiable.
Being unwaveringly faithful to commitments is seen today as quaint, almost anachronistic. Obedience and discipline are not very popular words. I want you to consider increasing the number of commitments in your life. Having nonnegotiable appointments gives life structure, gives you comfort, reduces anxiety, raises the esteem in which you’re held, and simply makes life easier to manage. It also guarantees you do some things that are good for you that might not otherwise get done.
Our society tells us we can have, and should want to have, whatever we want whenever we want it. We’re told that “The Man” — our boss, parents, religion, government — wants to limit us, and that the true American spirit, the true “modern” spirit, is “free.” We might nominally remain members of families, companies, communities and religions, but don’t tell us we have to do something we don’t agree with or we shed those obligations in a flash.
But that rugged-individualist freedom is an illusion. It exists in denial of the fact that there are trade-offs when choices are made, that we can’t just do whatever we want whenever we want without consequences. We want no commitments and no consequences. But as Scott Peck says in The Road Less Travelled:
Balancing is a discipline precisely because the act of giving something up is painful.
We all struggle with commitments — going to the gym, our diet, meditating daily, staying sober. We did them all faithfully at first. Some we abandoned in weeks or months. Others we continue, but feel as if we’re fighting ourselves to do the right thing.
I’ve often said that in my recovery, I used to have one foot out the door in my head. I was there, but I wasn’t really a member of the club. I might have looked like I was fully committed, but on a deeper level I knew it was provisional for me. That’s why many well-meaning New Year’s resolutions fail. The commitment isn’t really that deep.
Making things nonnegotiable
Don’t audit life. I want to encourage you to make a few things nonnegotiable — things that take some willingness and effort and have benefits that aren’t instant. I’ll give you a few examples:
A New Year’s challenge: Enhance your connection with God
I’ve been taken aback these last few weeks by all the retrospectives and their universal declaration that the “aughts” were an awful decade. Objectively, it’s hard to argue as they trot out disaster after disaster, setback after setback. And when pressed, I recall that as the decade began I had a six-figure salary at a high-flying dot-com, millions to come with the genuinely likely public offering, and a beautiful girlfriend. I had none of those things within a few years. But I need to be reminded of the losses and setbacks and derailed career, because my perception of the story line of the decade is entirely different. For me the aughts weren’t awful; they were awesome.
You see, for me the key events of the decade are: reclaiming my sobriety, my conversion and baptism, and feeling and answering the call to return to writing, with a new focus on spiritual work. The past decade has in many ways been the most joyous of my life. It has been a period of spiritual growth, of expanding community, and of a radically increased sense of usefulness and purpose.
There’s an obvious connection here. As I said in my column, “Losing your footing and finding the ground“, losing the material things that define our lives can shake us into adjusting our focus, our priorities.
My challenges to you for the new year and new decade:
Make your own day, week, year and decade — and, ultimately, life. Don’t let other people tell you that you should be unhappy, or happy. Experience and honor what happens; just don’t let it define you.
Enhance your connection with God. Instead of chasing after symptoms, go to the root. In the year ahead, explore new ways to bring yourself into closer union with God and focus on Love.
But mine is not a neat and tidy conversion story of: “My life was pointless and painful, then I found God, and now everything is rosy.” For me, the life stripped away by the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11 did matter and, in many ways, was good. I looked forward to going to work every morning and figuring out how to bring more music into people’s lives. My work was both creative and challenging. I lost a good thing. And the same was certainly true of my relationship.
Once was lost but now am found
There is a different conversion story arc that does apply: the one found in the Luke 15 parables of the Prodigal Son — “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” — and the lost sheep — “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” — and in Psalm 119, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep.” Or as it’s rendered in “Amazing Grace”:
I once was lost but now am found.
Was blind, but now I see.
A frequent metaphor in both Christian and Hebrew scripture is the path or way, straying from the path, losing one’s way. The Hebrew word “shub,” often translated as repent, literally means to return. “Convert” comes from the Latin, meaning to turn around. Our internal compass knows which direction leads home; we need to decide to follow it.
Or clear our vision so we can see it. Throughout the mystical literature of many different traditions, you find the metaphors of being asleep or dead or blind, and the potential of awakening or being reborn or seeing. I have spent much of my life sleepwalking, not fully alive, lost, so to speak. Wonderful gifts have come and gone, and I’ve enjoyed them, and I’ve mostly been good to others. But it was all through a haze of disconnection. In the 00’s, I woke up; I reconnected; I found God and myself; and through this I became a new person; I was reborn.
Did any among us not grow up with Disney? Children of the 40s marked their years with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. For boomers, it was Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Jungle Book. By the time I came along, Disney’s animated features had lost their spark. But my family gathered around the family TV set every Sunday night at 7:30 to watch The Wonderful World of Disney — a collection of animation, feature movies, TV dramas and nature documentaries. This brew, rich on American stories like Davey Crockett, helped shape my worldview. For children of the 80s and 90s, Disney animated feature films returned to the forefront and for this we have one person to thank: Disney’s keeper of the faith, Roy E. Disney.
Twice when Disney the corporation drifted away from its basic mission, Roy E. Disney, son of Walt’s brother, Roy O., has stepped in like a prophet to remind them of what matters.
Though his father was CEO and president of Disney until his death, Roy E. was never given control, and held only one percent of the company stock. He did have an executive title and a seat on the board of directors, though, and after Walt’s death in the mid-60s, then through the 70s and early 80s, he watched as Disney Corp. drifted away from its roots. The board’s focus on high-yield activities and careful protection of capital had turned Disney into what Roy E. once called a real estate holding company that happened to make movies.
Fed up, in 1977 Roy resigned his executive position, and then in 1984, he dramatically quit the board, signaling to investors and analysts his lack of confidence in the company’s leadership under Walt Disney’s son-in-law. Roy and other major shareholders brought in Michael Eisner, head of Paramount Pictures, to replace him, and Roy returned as vice-chairman and head of the animation division.
Disney’s animation renaissance
While Eisner knew little about animation and doubted its value, he respected Roy and owed him a favor, so he gave him free reign. What followed was a string of new animation classics that restored the Disney name to the top of the animation, and entertainment, world: The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994).
A clip from Roy E.’s pet project, Fantasia/2000
Around this time, Roy E. noticed an impressive new animation company with breakthrough technology, and began a relationship with Pixar. As the amazing run of traditional animated films started to lose steam, Roy E. was caught up in his pet project, the completion of his uncle Walt’s never-realized sequel to Fantasia. Begun in 1990, Fantasia/2000 was released in 1999 to critical acclaim but lukewarm sales, just like the original.
But Roy’s initial connection to Pixar grew, and in 1995, Disney released Pixar’s Toy Story. Thus began a new era of digital animation at the company. As the decade came to a close, after years of bickering with Eisner, Disney was being sidelined again…
“The Drunk Father”; lithograph; George Bellows, 1923
Are you going home for Christmas with trepidation because it means dealing with a drunken parent? Are you not going home for Christmas because, after years of discomfort, you’re not willing to put up with it anymore?
Ever since I first wrote about alcoholism and addiction in the What Works column (Am I An Alcoholic?, Spiritual Recovery), people have asked about a parallel issue — when a friend, family member or partner is an addict or alcoholic. It’s too big a topic to cover in a single column, so for this family holiday, I’ll tackle the most relevant part of it: a parent who’s an alcoholic or addict.
Before my parents passed away, Christmas meant visiting their home. And, among other things, dealing with my dad’s alcoholism. My dad was usually a pretty harmless drunk, getting gradually mellower and eventually passing out. But occasionally he would get rageful instead. And though he never resorted to physical violence, that is all too common a result when alcohol simultaneously fuels anger and loosens inhibitions. (Being of a mix of pilgrim and pioneer stock, my parents’ form of punishment was not violence but shunning — the silent treatment — which could last for days.)
But family holidays meant more drinking than usual, and it meant my dad stayed up and engaged. This combination meant an “incident” or two — of anger or inappropriateness — was likely.
Unpredictability
All families are dysfunctional in various ways. We’re all flawed. But when a parent is an alcoholic or addict, it can pour gasoline on the mix. Perhaps the most difficult issue is unpredictability. Will the parent be mellow or rageful, happy or depressed? Having the rules shift under your feet creates a lack of feeling safe. You can think you’re OK, and next thing you know, you’re being yelled at. You can think you deserve to be in trouble and have it totally overlooked.
This unpredictability and the seeming arbitrariness of authority figures can also damage a child’s respect for them. From a pretty early age, I was aware that my father’s reasoning abilities were worse than my own (when he was drunk), removing most of the incentive to follow his rules or respect his guidance. Children need and want structure — not harsh or cruel structure — but an appropriate predictable framework.
You might have heard the term “adult child of an alcoholic/addict,” abbreviated as either ACOA or ACA. There is a whole subculture in the recovery movement devoted to it, though it was much bigger in the 80s. Unfortunately, much of the support out there is unhelpful — amounting to little more than feeding a sense of victimhood.
True forgiveness, true recovery
True recovery from the damage of growing up in an addictive home comes from getting to a place where it no longer continues to harm you. “Resentment” comes from the Latin sentire, to feel, and it literally means to re-feel an incident from the past. The only one being harmed is you. And as Rick Warren said so crisply, “Delay only deepens resentments and makes matters worse. In conflict, time heals nothing; it causes hurts to fester.” The damage to family relationships caused by harms done in the past rarely fades on its own.
The reason most people never let go of the hurt done by an parent is that they never take the essential step of forgiveness. That’s not surprising; forgiveness is hard. But forgiveness is not excusing what happened or defending it. To forgive means…
This is one I still struggle with. A lot. I’m in no way an expert in getting places on time. But I’m much better than I used to be. And the reason I’ve improved is that I’ve come to understand more and more how it’s not just about time management. If you’re a chronically late person, it can carry behind it a lot of other issues — disrespect, dishonesty, creating chaos, self-centeredness, to name a few — and it bothers other people more than you realize.
There are so many reasons to be on time. The most obvious is that running late is stressful. It adds to the anxiety in your life with no change in outcome. Whether you’re early, just in time, or late, once you’re there, you’re there. But running late or cutting it close means that the whole period of time leading up to it is stressful. Usually some of that anxiety spills over into the time after you get there too. And the childish thrill of getting there in the nick of time does not erase any of that stress.
Being late is an expression of disrespect to those who are expecting you. You are saying, either consciously or unconsciously, that you don’t value their time as much as your own. This has been a bad pattern of mine at jobs throughout my life – a part of the attitude that they are lucky to have me. It’s worse than that, though. There’s a qualitative difference between your time and theirs. Because you know you’re late, whereas they don’t know what’s going on. So, in many cases, they’re putting everything else on hold because they are expecting you to show up at any moment, when you still might be 15 or 30 minutes away. You can help alleviate this a bit by calling ahead and letting them know you’ll be late. It won’t get you there on time, but at least it gives them the possibility of putting that time to good use.
The most important reason to be on time goes back to the column I did about honesty. “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’” (Matthew 5:37) If you tell people you’ll be somewhere at a certain time, to be late is to break your word. This isn’t true if your travel plan was reasonable and something unusual made you late. Things happen. But if you don’t make a reasonable effort to get somewhere when you said you would, then you are not being true to your word. This is often part of a bigger pattern of cutting corners, of finessing the system, of self-seeking behavior. We gain self-esteem and the esteem of others by taking estimable actions, like honoring our word.
(My friend James observed the other day that the ability to call or text from a cell to tell people plans have changed has made people less responsible about sticking to our original plans — we don’t take plans as seriously as we did when there was no chance to adjust them en route. The fact that you can call and say you’ll be late doesn’t make you on time; it just makes you a little more considerate.)
And often, even if we think we’re not inconveniencing others, we are. If you arrive late at a movie theater or group dinner, everyone else has to absorb your frenetic energy as you come barging in — even the strangers at other seats or tables. You are making everyone else deal with your lateness, your distraction.
Even if you’re not meeting someone, even if the date is with yourself, you are still disrespecting that person — yourself. You had made a plan because it mattered; now you are placing the urgency of trivialities or the lure of sloth above it. And the additional stress we add to our lives by running late is toxic. The self-recrimination covered with justifications is corrosive to our self-esteem.
This is the last What Works column to run before Thanksgiving, so I want to talk to you about gratitude. I could write a dozen columns about gratitude in various forms; for this column, I’m going to focus on one simple tool: the gratitude list.
When you find yourself feeling particularly ungrateful about your life — or your spiritual director or friend points out to you that you are — you can stop and remind yourself of all the things for which you can be grateful.
There are some obvious things. You often hear people say, “at least I’ve got my health.” That might sound trite, but if you have ever experienced a serious loss of your own good health and then gotten it back, or if you or to someone close to you is deprived permanently of good health, you will know that good health is a great blessing. Another common item is family — partners, parents, children: whoever loves you unconditionally and gives you sustenance and support.
Not half full or half empty — just half full
Gratitude list items can also be seemingly trivial things — or at least things that might seem so to someone else. And many things can be seen as blessings or negatives. For example, I do not live with anyone else. I could focus on and feed feelings of loneliness. But I can also be grateful for the control I have over my environment and how easy it is to meditate and have silence when I want it. (Ask anyone with a big family about how precious that is!)
It’s important, even though this is a list, to not fall into thinking of it as a two-sided ledger. It’s not “I’m alone but at least I have peace and quiet.” It’s, “I can have peace and quiet whenever I want in my home.”
It’s not about seeing our world’s cup as half full rather than half empty. Because the truth is everyone, and I mean everyone, has things they can be grateful for and things they can be ungrateful for. It’s about paying attention to the part that’s full. Who cares about what you don’t have? Seriously. Think about that for a moment.
Focusing on what we don’t have, on expectations of things that have not materialized for us, only leads to anxiety and self-pity. I’m not saying there is no place for wanting to create a more abundant life, but that’s not the way. Paradoxically — as are most great spiritual principles — it is by being content with what we have that we are open to seeing clearly what is around us, and seeing new opportunities.
Thousands of you read, responded to and shared my August piece about the health care debate and Catholicism. We are now in the final phase of the Congressional process and some things are clearer than they were then. Catholic Church leaders wanted undocumented immigrants included in the bill. They are not. Sadly, the Church stands almost alone among organizations in this country in its concern for the undocumented. They wanted universal coverage, and to the surprise of many, it looks like it will happen.
But, though the House bill does not fund or encourage abortion services, the bishops and most Catholics wanted specific language keeping abortion out of the bill entirely, and making it impossible for a future administrative action to change this, effectively bringing the Hyde Amendment into the bill and codifying it in a way that is stronger than its current status. This still could happen, as pro-life Democrats take up the cause. But what if it doesn’t?
The US bishops have a clear answer: Kill the bill. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops began a massive final push on health care this past weekend, hitting 17,000 parishes with a bulletin insert and email campaign to be distributed over the next few weeks. The bishops’ final stand on the absence of strong enough pro-life language: “If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”
But what of universal coverage? What of help for the uninsured, some of whom die and suffer for lack of medical care?
In September, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, expressed a very different view, equally grounded in Catholic teaching. Having lived for 16 years in the US, Cardinal Martino said he “could never explain” the fact that a large number of Americans lacked health care assistance, something every other developed nation provides for its citizens, concluding, about President Obama’s efforts for health care reform, “So I cannot but applaud this initiative.”
As I said in my earlier piece, if you oppose the bill on the basis that it should do more to exclude abortion, recognize that choice leads also to denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans — your neighbors — whose quality of life would be improved and some of whose lives would be saved.
The bishops’ press release accompanying this latest push reiterates that church teaching says “health care is essential for human life and dignity,” while also saying the bishops “recoil at any expansion of abortion.”
And that’s the point. Both issues are involved and there’s no way to separate them.
An unassuming little tool in my spiritual first aid kit that can have a big impact
I want to share with you a little method with a big impact: the Welcoming Prayer. This unassuming little method has helped me many times. What’s your first impulse when you have a “bad” feeling? If you’re like me, it’s usually to suppress it. But we all know that doesn’t work. What you focus on sticks around. This is one of the big lessons you learn through meditation. If you try to suppress a thought, it becomes your entire focus. Worse than before.
But while a regular meditation practice can inculcate a balanced relationship with your feelings and emotions, with the serenity that comes from that, sometimes you need help now, in the field. You can’t exactly sit down on the sidewalk and start meditating. (Though there may very well be a church nearby.)
And sometimes, you’re too caught up in the thoughts that are swirling around a negative emotion, and meditation just seems impossible. I encourage you to meditate anyway in those situations, but if you want some extra help, the Welcoming Prayer might help.
Palmer: How do you do it — block out fear?
Gibbs: You don’t. It’s what you do with it.
— NCIS
You’ve heard all the axioms about going through rather than around problems. Well, the Welcoming Prayer is a method for doing this with bad feelings. The basic idea is that when you are experiencing a negative feeling, you don’t pray for it to go away, you welcome it. Let’s say you are feeling fearful. You literally say to yourself, “Welcome, fear.”
You don’t detach from it. You get to know it.
The method
The history of the Welcoming Prayer is a little surprising. It’s not an ancient practice, though it’s an ancient idea. Mary Mrozowski of Brooklyn, New York — a practitioner of Centering Prayer and friend of Father Thomas Keating — developed the method. She was inspired by Abandonment to Divine Providence, an early 18th century spiritual work by Jesuit priest and spiritual director, Father Jean Pierre de Caussade. Father Thomas and others saw the value of her little method and over the years it has been supported, fine-tuned and expanded, within the community of people who practice Centering Prayer and beyond.
If you are struggling with a bad feeling, the power of this little method is that it offers a structured way to embrace and accept it, so you can release it and move on. There are three phases to the Welcoming Prayer. You might go directly from one to the next in a single, relatively formulaic prayer sequence. Or you might find yourself staying in one phase as it does its interior work.
We’ve all heard the jokes. Ever since the term “baggage” entered popular use thanks to the 80s inner child movement, it’s been both a warning — “I have a lot of baggage” — and a punchline.
Example: A few weeks ago on Jay Mohr’s sitcom, Gary Unmarried, before he meets his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, she says: “And I really like him, so please don’t make that joke about how his strong grip will come in handy when he’s carrying all my baggage, OK?”
The broad definition of baggage is: something from the past that continues to weigh you down.
Christine used the word “fraught” in last week’s excellent column about toxic friends. I love the word fraught. It comes from the same root as freight and literally means “loaded down with baggage.” So many of us are loaded down with baggage from our past. So, literal and spiritual housecleanings are a necessary practice for everyone. And if your past regrets and scars are ruining your present, cleaning your spiritual house can transform your life.
The most common use of the term baggage is trauma or bad experiences from the past that taint your ability to face the present with trust. The most disturbing is child physical or sexual abuse, but many less severe forms come into play too. Typically, when past experience of dating jerks and deep unresolved issues with parents block us from being able to trust and be open with a partner.
Another kind of baggage is low self-esteem, perhaps due to a parent who told us we could never succeed or that we were ugly, fat, stupid, useless, etc. Despite being years, even decades, free of their direct influence, we can still be weighed down by these judgments.
I’ve talked here before about what Margaret Silf calls the if-onlys — “If only I’d made a different life choice.” ”If only I didn’t drive my children away.” “If only I didn’t let my marriage fall apart.” These can weigh on us too; if we refuse to accept and release some past failure, we are stuck, replaying it and unable to move forward based on the new reality because that would acknowledge the failure (while contradictorily also beating ourselves up for it.)
The beauty of grace
Many therapeutic approaches can get bogged down in causes, even focusing entirely on the past to the neglect of the present. Others see only a long slow recovery from the depths, offering a bleak and arduous outlook.
But God doesn’t want you to suffer. The message in scripture is not one of a slow, painful, expensive process. Jesus says:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
Many other spiritual traditions have a similar message. Instead of analyzing and fighting your issues, turn them over and let go.
[Actual 9/23/09 WABC-NY local news tease at 10:32 p.m.]
At 11, we follow the food to local restaurants and our investigation could take your appetite away! [video of bloody meat being handled unsanitarily] … An act of love or murder — why did a man shoot his wife of more than 50 years? [video of body bag being removed from building] … And, he stopped for a bag of ice at a corner store, but he never saw this coming. [video — no joke — of a pedestrian being slammed into in a parking lot by an SUV]
I don’t mean to put anyone out of work in this difficult economy — I even have several friends in this profession — but I implore you to turn off the news and leave it off. Mainly, I want you to turn off the local news, where “if it bleeds, it leads” and the priority, after titillating you with gore, is to scare you — because they thrive if we think we have to watch or we’ll die.
There are a number of reasons I recommend turning off the news. First, life is stressful enough already. Who needs this? Second, if you are powerless over something, there’s usually no benefit in worrying about it. Third, exposing yourself regularly to the ugliest aspects of society darkens and coarsens your view of other people, which takes you away from compassion and love, and thus away from God. It undermines your spiritual fitness.
Rather than helping us better to mourn — to see the suffering in the world with an open heart — watching the news regularly hardens our hearts. In order to face so much suffering with no option of relevant action, we detach from it; we tune it out, if you will.
