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Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
The classic first Step of the traditional 12 Steps of AA. The First Step, because for so many, there’s no facing the need to change until all has crumbled around them. Men, the founders; accustomed to power, to authority, to control, to managing their own lives. Facing and admitting powerlessness was absolutely transformative for them; accepting help from others began to bring radical change to their lives.
Years ago I heard William White of Chestnut Health Systems speak on their addictions programs, and how they’d found the traditional 12 Steps seemed strangely ineffective for some populations – specifically, for low-income women, women who had experienced crushing poverty, abuse, possibly prostitution, the child welfare system. Addictions counselors would wait and wait for these women to “hit bottom”, astounded that the repeated insults to life and self did not bring them to a place of readiness to take that first Step. What the counselors were so slow to realize, is that these women did not “hit bottom”, because they lived at the bottom. Admitting powerlessness was not transformative for them, since they had never experienced power. Life had always meant powerlessness, and had been unmanageable from the beginning.
For women who lived in powerlessness, the transformative experience, the one thing which began to bring change into their lives, was Hope.
The chance to actually have a little power. The taste of choices, and the ability to act on those choices. A glimpse of vision that their lives could be different, could become better, could ever be manageable.
Matthew 16: 24-25: Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
It’s horribly bold of me to reframe Jesus. Yet I am coming to think that to lose one’s life, one must first in fact have a life. One must be engaged in the world, share its pain, share its struggles. Have connections which endure, through trial, through testing, through pain and betrayal and difficulty and sickness and health. Through joy and concern. To minister to the world, one must be in the world. Not just watch it, from a comfortable safe distance.
How can I say I love, and yet go unscathed? Am I so willing to give, because I have nothing to lose? I skim on the surface, I pick and choose, I take the easy road. Forgive me.
God makes connections where there are no visible reasons to have connections, but God has a plan. God has reasons we cannot see. I need my life to be interwoven. With Deborah, with Andrew, with my sisters and brothers in Waverly and in Geneva and in Taurage and in Jarabacoa and in Bangkok and in Arbon and in places I do not know. My compadres. My co-parents, my family.
God has given me a flexible sense of family, all my life. This is part of who I am.
I do not know who else I am. I instigate gatherings. I create spaces and places and times for people to meet and connect and share stories and become intertwined. I watch the connections form, grow, lead to…something, or something unknown. I wash dishes. I knit, gifts and remembrances and well wishes and prayers. I listen.
And sometimes I hold back. Sometimes I push or pull or ask or nudge, and then listen and watch. I seek to shape, to open, to invite, to comfort, to accompany. Do I have a journey of my own? or is it my path to accompany others?
“To deconstruct – to tear down, in order to rebuild.” This is not my path. I integrate. I shift. I reframe. Am I deceived?
How can I think I have the gift to lead, when I have nothing to share?
is it my gift to be hollow?
Where charity and love prevail, there God is ever found; brought here together by Christ’s love, by love are we thus bound. Forgive we now each other’s faults as we our faults confess; and let us love each other well in Christian holiness.
Bill preached on being connected, on being part of a wave, on being unable to be ourselves if we are alone, not thinking we are the only marble in the pot – unchanged if we are separated. And afterward, Jack came and kissed me. How odd, that we are part of each other, he and I. I think only in God’s kingdom could this be so.
I need to regain hold of myself. In order to lose my life, I need to claim it. Not to be blown by the wind, nor to be distracted by others’ visions of me; not to fritter it away nor to sacrifice it without knowing what it is. I have let myself go – I need to reclaim myself – or to claim myself. To live inside my own skin. To know what it is that God can use – or, if not to know, at least to continue to train. To have something, to have a life, which can be used. To be more than only what others hope I might be. More than hollow. More than reflective. More than a moth.
Means of grace. Brokenness…being torn down in order to be built up. Deconstructed. O, God.
When the revenant came down, we couldn’t imagine what it was … Incarnation.
So it happens that my annual bout with laryngitis has struck twice this year. I thought I’d faced the worst it was going to throw at me a month ago, when the week of my birthday I became extremely hoarse. But no…it was merely making a scouting foray into my life, to test the waters and see what havoc it could wreak. THIS week is the real thing.
At least it’s now and not a few days ago. This past Sunday, our gospel choir sang for two services at church, followed almost immediately by an hour and a half of cantata choir rehearsal (including a couple of short solo lines from yours truly). Monday evening was the final practice for our women’s ensemble, which then sang at both a morning and evening Advent service on Tuesday. Right in the middle of the evening service, I could feel something starting to come on…you know that sensation of “Something’s not right” that can hit at the start of a virus? Yeah. That was it. I made it through the service with no trouble, got home, and got hit with the chills. Woke up Wednesday with, shall we say, impaired vocal skills. Made the mistake of trying to “take it easy” with my voice instead of starting total voice rest right away, and paid for it yesterday and today like a leggy Little Mermaid. I got nothin. Nada. Ninguna de vocality. Total silence. The last straw was my friend Vicki telling me “you know, whispering is even worse than trying to talk.” So now I’m not even whispering. Thanks, Vic.
We could, of course, discuss the possibility that it was because of all of that singing that my voice went. That would be consistent with my experience of losing my voice, umm, virtually every year at this time…right in the midst of cantata and ensemble practice. Not sure what to do about that…really, it’s a small price to pay for what is otherwise one of the high points of the year for me.
As you might imagine, being mute has its entertaining moments, most of which fall into the general category of “how other people react.” My older girl gets unusually chatty; my younger one gets almost as quiet as me. My hubby falls into the trap of only being able to think of things to say that are also questions for me, and thereby confuses himself into polite silence as well. (I think this is much the same phenomenon as the natural thought process when the electricity goes out: “Well, I can’t watch TV, so I’ll just do some work on the compu…No, can’t do that, I’ll turn on the radi…Whoops, better just read; here, I’ll flip on the li…”) Me, I just keep my mouth shut and try to remember the meager bits of sign language that I once knew. Not that what I remember is a big help, since my family knows even less…but hey, it’s a learning opportunity, right?
Regardless, today being Friday, and being unencumbered by work (seeing as how my work consists entirely of, let’s all say it together, talking to people) I went to Friday Morning Knitting. How glad I was to provide endless varieties of entertainment to Lesley, Nan, and Jodee! It seems I’m funnier when I don’t say anything. I just get to be the backdrop for whatever jokes everyone else thinks of. It was really pretty hilarious. So, here’s what I couldn’t say this morning!
Yes, it’s a Lopi pattern, from Vol. 17, and Lopi yarn. It’s on my Ravelry project page. Took me about eight days to knit. Yes, it’s really warm, but so far, I haven’t written any poems to it.
This thing I’m working on here is the stole for my sister, for her Christmas gift. Yes, it had better be done by Christmas, but it’s almost finished. I’m baffled why the pattern calls for a size freakin’ K crochet hook ’cause that seems really huge to me. If I could talk, I’d be asking Lydia and Nan for some serious crochet consultation.
I want your iPod touch. Both of you. I want them both. No…really, just one would do, but I’ll take both of your music collections. And your iPod knitting softwares. That is so on my Christmas list. Thanks for letting me fondle, and sorry Jodee for leaving your music running. Great song though.
Last night’s communication with my husband consisted of me typing in Notepad or in the Google search box on the computer screen, while he just got to SAY WHATEVER HE WANTED. He even brought me a BELL TO RING to get his attention. Hmm, maybe I should have brought my laptop to knitting…or maybe that’s just another justification for the iPod!
So there it is. Tea and honey are my dear friends this week; I never want to be far from them. I’m putting all my wool accessories to practical use, mostly wrapping them about my neck, chest, and head. It was great to SEE y’all this morning, and those who weren’t there, I missed you, stay in touch…but remember: Email me, don’t call!
AGAIN. Ye gods, will this winter never end??
In a valiant effort to withstand the eternal grey and white and cloudiness, I offer you this:
Because otherwise we would just have this:
Now, if someone would kindly forward me additional supplies of Noro Silk Garden (four skeins, please, in two lovely colorways, preferably involving lavender), we might just make it through another week of…winter.
In other news, there has been Spinning and we have proudly achieved
Yarn.
We *loves* it. It is wooly and brown and soft and yummy and it has bits of vegetable matter in it (see? don’t I sound just like a real spinner? I can say “vegetable matter”) and we just wants to eat it up. I made YARN!
I have this fantasy (no, not that one…the other one) that this can be knit up into a flower basket shawl and I will be able to wear it with everything and everyone I know will just scream with envy.
Honestly, I’m not sure whether the thickness, which varies irregularly between DK and worsted, and the actual fact of the abovementioned unevenness, will lend themselves to this becoming a FBS. But…they might. Stay tuned, and don’t give up on Spring, it’s never failed us yet.
“A spinning wheel is simple to understand, really…Not like a computer.”
Meet Anna.
Anna is a beautiful Ashford Traditional, single drive, single treadle, and I can tell already I’m going to have competition for time with her. She’s been in the house less than an hour and my youngest is pestering me for spinning lessons.
Ah, the joys of new love! Let it snow all weekend…We have Anna and six wonderful ounces of merino/corriedale to keep us happy.
djennerosity 