Lectio
“This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly. That war is our wilderness. If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side. If we cannot face it, we will never find Him.”
— Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Meditatio
There is a saying in the recovery community, “Do not allow yourself to become too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.” It is not that any of these, on its own, is the cause of relapse for the alcoholic or addict, but because being overly hungry, angry, lonely, or tired puts us in a state of spiritual weakness within which temptations become stronger and the voice of God becomes quieter. Addiction is, in its essence, a spiritual malady — not to the exclusion of its environmental, genetic, and biological dimensions, but at the root of them. Recovery is, therefore, primarily a spiritual battle for the soul of the alcoholic or addict, with the spiritual strength to overcome the brokenness of addiction found in a spiritual awakening and a conscious contact with God, and the main threats to recovery being those things — like excessive hunger, resentment, isolation, and exhaustion — which hinder this spiritual awakening and limit their access to that grace.
But the difference between the alcoholic or addict and those who are neither alcoholic nor addict is more a matter of degree than species, and immediate consequence than eternal outcome. Every one of us suffers from a spiritual malady in original sin. Every one of us is wandering through a desert — a place within which, as Jesus himself knew, our deepest hunger, anger, loneliness, and exhaustion are laid bare, and where we are most vulnerable to the voice that offers us a way out that is no way out at all. Every one of us is in a spiritual battle every single day, whether we know it or not and whether we accept it or not. And when our spiritual condition is weakened — by neglecting the body, harboring resentment, isolating from community and from Christ, refusing the gift of Sabbath rest — the devil’s temptations grow louder and the Lord’s voice grows quieter. All of us, alcoholic, addict, or not, are made vulnerable to spiritual desolation and despair.
For the alcoholic or addict, this may mean relapse, self-destruction, and the destruction of the lives of those caught in the wreckage of their addiction, but things are not really so different for everyone else, except that for those without an acute addiction, the manifestations of spiritual malady — rooted in the self-centered fear that we are, ultimately, alone and unloved by God — unfold more slowly for all involved and do not have the outward symbol of drugs and alcohol to point at or blame.
The spiritual malady of those for whom the desert has no obvious name manifests much more subtly than that of the alcoholic or addict — and the warning signs are subtler too. The hunger, anger, loneliness, and exhaustion accumulate quietly, without the visible crisis that forces the addict to their knees. This may be both a blessing and a curse.
The blessing of the alcoholic or addict, although it may not feel like it to anyone at the time — not the alcoholic, the addict, or those who love them or interact with them — is the bottom, if they live long enough to get there. The bottom names the desert. It may have been visible to everyone else for a long time — the wreckage accumulating, the denials wearing thin — but for the alcoholic or addict, the bottom is the graced moment within which their own eyes are opened to the powerlessness they have over their own brokenness and the unmanageability it has caused for them and others. It lays bare the desolation and forces the question that the spiritual life has been asking all along, and the alcoholic or addict is left to either live with the despair they now face, to do their best to blot out the consciousness of it with more drinking or drugs, or to accept spiritual help and turn toward God. In this way, the curse of alcoholism or drug addiction becomes, through grace, the blessing of the naming and admission of one’s own brokenness and the acknowledgement, however reluctant, that what is needed in order to be made whole is a relationship with God.
The curse of those for whom the desert has no obvious name is that there may be no bottom — or none that is recognized as such. The desert deepens quietly, behind respectable lives and functional routines. It is masked in a thousand ordinary ways — a comfort that becomes a compulsion, a resentment nursed quietly for years, a screen that fills the silence, fantasies that slowly pull us away from fidelity, small selfish choices that steadily harden the heart over time, a busyness that leaves no room for God. No one names it because it is barely noticeable day to day. No one is forced to their knees. Without a bottom to hit, the spiritual malady advances unseen, slowly pulling us away from God, away from one another, and away from communion. This may go on for many years.
But the desert is there regardless. The desert — the daily facing of despair, the refusal to consent, the war waged unceasingly under hope in the Cross — is universal to all sons and daughters of God. It is the terrain of every human life — alcoholic, addict, or not — and the only question it asks is whether we will face it or flee it. The warning signs are the same for all of us — hunger, anger, loneliness, exhaustion — whether or not we have ever touched a drink or picked up a drug. These are the conditions within which the ancient temptations find their purchase — bread for our appetite, attention for our longing, power for our fear — and within which despair whispers that there is no way through, that we are alone and unloved, and that we must fend for ourselves and comfort ourselves. But there is a way through. If we flee the desert — into drink or distraction, resentment or exhaustion, any of the thousand ways we mask the ache — we will never find it. If we face it, we will find Christ at our side. He has been there before us. He is here with us. He knows the way.
Oratio
darkness
settles down
upon me
slowly
subtly
my eyes do not notice
the dimming
until I find myself groping
for something certain
for something real
for You
my Light
my Lord
my fire and my cloud
out of the wilderness
of me
Contemplatio
What are the thousand ordinary ways you mask the ache of the fear you dare not name — and do you hear the Lord calling you out of that wilderness into love?
Related Scripture
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’ Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’ Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”
— Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like All Manner of Not-God: On Sabbath, Restlessness, and the Soul’s Hunger for God, which names the compulsions that masquerade as satisfaction — all the not-God places we return to when the longing becomes too much to bear — and asks what it means to wait for the Love our souls cannot stop chasing.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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