“We may go through a great deal of humbling, if not outright humiliation, before we come to this simplicity of hope. We do not like admitting defeat, and we will struggle valiantly, even foolishly, to prove that we can master our destinies. God, in whose image we are made, instills in us the capacity for relentless tenacity, an assertiveness that complements our yearning hunger for God. But most of us overdo it, our spirit of assertiveness quickly becomes a spirit of pride. We will never really turn to God in loving openness as long as we are handling things well enough by ourselves. And it is precisely our most powerful addictions that cause us to defeat ourselves, that bring us to the rock bottom realization that we cannot finally master everything. Thus, although in one sense addiction is the enemy of grace, it can also be a powerful channel for the flow of grace. Addiction can be, and often is, the thing that brings us to knees.”
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pp19-20.
My reflection 1:
May taps into a great Gospel truth that in our weakness we find strength. Early on in life I verbalized a much less profound set of circumstances as “the Jesus game” where you win by losing. It all comes down to a simple reality. Our experience of God demands space and that space only comes with the diminishment of our ego.
Three examples come to mind when I reflect on May’s insight about the power of grace over our most profound addictions.
The first was the experience of building a plaza next to our church in Los Angeles. We had to remove the grass and two feet of dirt below it. This was filled with two feet of sand. Then the bricks were placed very tightly to one another on top of the sand.
To my amazement, within four months a blade of grass, the first of many, broke through the tightly connected bricks.
For me, this was a symbol of May’s message of God’s grace breaking through our most powerful addictive resistance. What seems impossible just pops up in front of our eyes.
My reflection 2:
One of the great poems in the English language is “The Hound of Heaven.” The message is similar to May’s selection on grace and addiction. It is a story of a priest drug addict resisting God. It begins:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears.
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
Adown titanic glooms of schmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat-and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet-
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears.
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
Adown titanic glooms of schmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat-and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet-
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
The poem goes on with majestic verse expressing “The Hound of Heaven’s” relentless pursuit of the feeble resistance of the addict. It concludes with this final verse three and a half pages later;
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest. I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”
A haunting theme throughout the poem is our deep human fear that in having God we will have nothing else. Of course, this is the point. How slowly we learn in having God we have everything our heart desires!
My reflection 3:
Here is a final reflection on May’s majestic story of God’s grace always pursuing us no matter how bad the addiction and our rejection.
Teresa of Avila never tired of proclaiming the utter importance of self-knowledge. For her, the whole journey in quest of God is the fundamental surrender and acceptance of reality. God is God. We are the creature. God is a God of mercy and love without limits or conditions. We are the creature sinful but forgiven and loved.
As self-knowledge grows it brings this reality into focus in our mind and heart. We will be totally free when we forsake our effort at control and simply live immersed in God’s love and mercy.
Gerald May, in his classic, Addiction and Grace, offers us great and valuable insights on the obstacles within us on our Pilgrimage to God. He shows that all of us suffer from addictions that rob our freedom and block our quest for God. The following “bit of wisdom” is a selection for his text with some reflections.
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