Addiction uses up our spiritual desire—that drive that God put in us for total satisfaction, for home, for heaven, for divine union.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" (Part Two)
"A God-Shaped Hole"
Sunday, 22 June 2014
We humbly asked [God] to remove our shortcomings.(Step Seven of the Twelve Steps)
Gerald May, a dear and now deceased friend of mine, wrote in his very wise book Addiction and Grace that addiction uses up our spiritual desire. It drains away our deepest and truest desire, that inner flow and life force which makes us “long and pant for running streams” (Psalm 42). Spiritual desire is the drive that God put in us from the beginning for total satisfaction, for home, for heaven, for divine union. It has been a frequent experience of mine to find that many people in recovery have a unique and very acute spiritual sense, often more than others, I would say. It just got frustrated early and aimed in a wrong direction. Wild need, meaninglessness, and unfettered desire took off before boundaries, strong identity, impulse control, and deep God experience were in place.
The addict lives in a state of alienation, with a “God-shaped hole” inside that is always yearning to be filled. Addicts attempt to fill it with alcohol, drugs, food, non-intimate sex, shopping—anything they feel will give them a sense of control over their moods and relief from the sense of meaninglessness and emptiness. All of us, of course, have our own false programs for happiness, which we keep using more and more to try to fill that God-shaped hole. I suspect this is the real meaning of “sin.”
God’s positive and lasting way of removing our shortcomings is to fill the hole with something much better, more luminous, and more satisfying. God satisfies us at our deepest levels rather than punishing us at superficial levels, which so much of organized religion seems to teach. Then our old shortcomings are not driven away or pushed underground, as much as they are exposed for the false programs for happiness that they are. Our sins fall away as unneeded and unhelpful because now a new and much better vitality has been found. This is the wondrous discovery of our True Self, and the gradual deterioration of our false and constructed self.
Adapted from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, pages 59, 64-65 (also available as CD audiobook); The Little Way: A Spirituality of Imperfection (MP3 download); and Emotional Sobriety: Rewiring Our Programs for “Happiness” (CD, DVD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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