My Mom on Drugs
Blessing for an AddictOn its way through the innocent night,
The moth is ambushed by the light, Becomes glued to a window Where a candle burns; its whole self, Its dreams of flight and all desire Trapped in one glazed gaze; Now nothing else can satisfy But the deadly beauty of flame. When you lose the feel For all other belonging And what is truly near Becomes distant and ghostly, And you are visited And claimed by a simplicity Sinister in its singularity, No longer yourself, your mind And will owned and steered From elsewhere now, You would sacrifice anything To dance once more to the haunted Music with your fatal beloved Who owns the eyes of your heart. These words of blessing cannot Reach, even as echoes, To the shore of where you are, Yet they may work without you To soften some slight line through To the white cave where Your soul is captive. May some glimmer Of outside light reach your eyes To help you recognize how You have fallen for a vampire. May you crash hard and soon Onto real ground again Where this fundamentalist Shell might start to crack For you to hear Again your own echo. That your lost lonesome heart Might learn to cry out For the true intimacy Of love that waits to take you home To where you are known And seen and where Your life is treasured Beyond every frontier Of despair you have crossed. --John O’Donohue, in To Bless the Space Between Us. The Role of God in RecoveryThose of us in the Open and Relational (Process) community believe in creative transformation, not only in individuals but in relationships. Kayla Wilson, daughter of a mother formerly on drugs, believes in it, too.
Creative transformation is just a fancy phrase for healing: emotional and relational. We believe that the very Soul of the universe (God) is present in the world as creative transformation, and that God never gives up on us. We also believe that God needs our cooperation for the transformation to occur. God is not, and never has been, a puppeteer. God's power is "open and relational" through and through, never coercive. If we are addicts, we need to envision a different kind of future for ourselves, commit ourselves to it, and renew our commitment every day, with help from others. God cannot do it alone. If we are parents, we have special motivation to do this, not for our sake alone but for the sake of our children. Our life of addiction is very selfish, and we know it. Our children may well hate us for our selfishness, and rightly so. But their anger -- even their hatred -- can help us break out of our narcissism. Their anger is God's face present to us. And so is their love, which is always mixed in with the hatred. Our children love-hate us, and in their love and their hatred, the bonds of relationship unfold. The opposite of love is not hatred, it is apathy. This page is dedicated to a friend who is both a mother and an addict, who is soon to be released from prison, who seeks to live from God's love, and who hopes to gain her daughter's trust. May this story, daughter Kayla and mother Wendy, give her hope and inspiration. I hope she will also read: I Love My Life: Surviving Prostitution, DrugTrafficking, and Addiction; The Heroin Epidemic and Process Theology, and Celebrate Recovery: Christ and Addiction. And you, too, if this is important to you. -- Jay McDaniel |
Commentary on the Blessing for an Addict
Most of us don’t intend to be lured off the pathways of our lives and become glued to a window. We don’t wake up in the morning and think, “Hey, I’m going to fall in love and have an affair” or “I’m going to become so obsessed with money that I break every financial law to get my hands on it” or “I’m going to build my life around the serenity (or excitement) that a chemical substance brings me.” Instead, we see a warm light in the distance and our curiosity is piqued, our imagination is ignited. We step first an inch off the path and then a yard, until our face is pressed against the window and everything else in the world is drowned out by its light. Given that almost one in ten Americans over the age of twelve suffer from substance abuse or dependence, if we ourselves are not ensnared by a chemical glow that disrupts or destroys our lives, chances are that someone we love is. Like many of us, I have loved someone who couldn’t see that I was standing right beside them; I was hidden in the shadows cast by the seductive light that is addiction. My own words of blessing, mixed with profanity, seemed to go unheard. Truth be told, maybe my words were whispered and not shouted. We are usually ambivalent in our blessings for loved ones who struggle with addiction. After all, our words of blessing often sound more like curses—they are grounded in an anticipation that is equal parts hope and dread. Who wholeheartedly wants to see someone they love crash hard and soon, their broken shell lying in a thousand pieces all around them? Who wants to hear the broken heart of someone they love cry out in loneliness? But didn’t Jesus say that to save our life we must lose it? So our wearied hearts are left with no choice but to trust that the unseen is stronger than the seen, that the shadowy figures of new life and a surviving soul are more real than the deceptive light that blinds. We hope in a life after the crash, and we have faith in the brief glimpses we see of an identity deeper and truer than that of “addict.” And our blessings search for any crack in the shell of our loved one that might lead to that white cave where the soul is captive. -- Teri Daily |