Spirituality & Religion
by Phil Fox Rose
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 … Continue reading What Works: My aughts weren’t awful, they were awesome
Spirituality & Religion
by Phil Fox Rose
Give yourself the gift of time with no goals, on retreat, on vacation, and at home
“Dolce far niente.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, it’s a saying we have in Italy: How sweet to do nothing.”
“Well, you’re in America now and they can pull you in for that.”
“Oh, poor Americans.”
— Sophia Loren & Cary Grant — Houseboat (1958)
Our new level of connectedness is a wonderful thing — perhaps the greatest blessing technology has brought us. But it has created a new problem. In this hyper-connected world, time in which you can do nothing is rare.
Despite how highly I value and seek out serenity, I am linked continuously to my workplace and other obligations. It’s all too easy to feel pressured by the things I could be doing — like Fran in Black Books, cursing under her breath while answering her cell phone as she’s running late for yoga.
The seeds were planted centuries ago with the Puritan work ethic — epitomized by Isaac Watt’s hymn for children from the early 1700s praising the worker bee, which includes the lines:
In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
The industrial age took things to a new level. Then, since Houseboat was released, we’ve had the information age, greed is good, and time is money. And now, cell phones and the internet have really changed the game.
So, in these lazy days of midsummer, I want to put our focus on: doing nothing….
[Read the rest of What Works: How Sweet to Do Nothing at bustedhalo.com.]
Spirituality & Religion
by Phil Fox Rose
Becoming free from alcoholism and addiction requires God’s help, not self-help
If you are an alcoholic or addict, being spiritually unfit can be fatal. If not literally fatal then, as in my case, a living death — one definition of Hell is being alive and active in this world, feeling separated from God. And I spent years there. But today I live — and have for some time now — free, awake, fully alive, vital.
My earlier What Works column on alcoholism and addiction focused on self-diagnosis, and I could easily explain my own alcoholism by pointing to genetics and circumstances; but the root cause is spiritual — that God-shaped hole, that feeling of brokenness and alienation I was trying to assuage. I’ve met other alcoholics who had no obvious “causes” but I think we all share a spiritual longing.
Carl Jung wrote, to Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson, that “craving for alcohol” is “the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness,” famously concluding the letter “spiritus contra spiritum” — the Spirit against alcohol.
As I said about not getting enough sleep, when you don’t feel connected to God, it’s easy to slip into irritability. A more accurate word is probably “sullenness.” And, if you’ll forgive a moment of word-nerdiness, “sullen” comes from the same root as “solo” and originally meant “alone.” How fitting, because that’s really what’s going on — you feel alone in the universe.
Recovery is not self-help
Let me be as clear as possible here: Recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction is not about self-help. The solution is not to gain knowledge and strength and willpower so you can beat it. As I’ve said before, it’s not even to admit you have a problem. Recovery is about … Continue reading What Works: Spiritual Recovery
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