Kenosis

On the Deepening of a Relationship with God

Pathological beliefs run deep.

So deep, that sometimes you aren’t even aware of their existence, and yet their machinations manage to snake into every aspect of your life, running the show from behind the scenes and informing how you relate to this thing we call life. And my life was informed by one such belief from the time I started getting high and drunk until just a handful of years ago.

What belief, you might ask?

The belief that relationships are transactional.

Because at a certain point in my life, every relationship was transactional.

I was always looking to get something out of my dealings with you, no matter how minor or trivial the come up. A come up was a come up. And this is because in the circles I was in, someone was always trying to get something out of me. To put it another way, this was simply how one kept things on an even playing field. And then I left those circles behind, exited the old life and entered into a new one.

But there was one small problem, you see. When I did finally enter those musty church basements so emblematic of 12-step recovery, guess what? I might have left the lifestyle behind, but that belief managed to stow itself so deeply on the proverbial ship that I didn’t even know it was on board.

Every relationship was still transactional.

And yes, this also applied to my relationship with God.

I had a belief, that once I managed a year of sobriety, that my life would resemble the lives of the more successful people that I looked up to in recovery. That is to say, all the charismatic guys that had lots of money, popularity, dated beautiful women and drove fancy cars. In other words, all of the surface level material things that I equated with being a fully-recovered human being. I wanted what these people had and Lord knows I was willing to take certain shortcuts to get there, all the while having this view that God was going to make me one of them so long as I strung together 365 days of continuous sobriety.

Well, January 21st, 2010 rolled around. And I got my shiny one-year coin (the first of several, but I’ve mentioned this elsewhere) on a dismal and rainy day in the basement of St. Paul’s church in Seattle.

So, how did one year of sobriety look on Carson? Let’s do a quick inventory, shall we?

Toxic and soul-killing relationship. Check.

Low-paying job and constantly broke. Check.

No stranger to payday loans. Check.

The self-esteem of a banana slug. Check.

Yeah, not exactly living in “The Sunlight of the Spirit” as people like to throw around in those parts. More like its shadow. And yeah, I was a little resentful about it. I mean, as far as I was concerned, I’d held up my end of the bargain, but God did not hold up God’s end of the bargain.

I think I held on for a few more months before I finally threw in the towel and got high. Needless to say, it was not the escape hatch I thought it’d be. All in all, it was a pretty terrible time. Even my drug dealer was scolding me about getting high again, not that it stopped him from selling me 80 MG Oxycontin, back when you could still purchase such things.

But I digress.

In hindsight, my understanding of God was akin to that of Santa Claus. If you were good (stayed sober), you’d be rewarded with nice presents. If you were bad (got loaded) you’d be punished. And I think Santa Claus is the proper analogy here, because who relates to Santa Claus as some bearded entity that is either going to reward them or punish them based on their behavior?

Children do.

And I was relating to God in a childlike way.

The childish concept of God that I had has since been destroyed (as I’ve detailed in my essay Dark Night of the Soul) and since then there has been a slow maturation leading up to what my life looks like today. I say slow, because all of this stuff is like watering soil and waiting for plants to grow. The growth is organic, it happens on its own, but you can’t force it, and you do actually have to make a point to show up and water it. And that can sometimes be painful to people like me who lean towards instant gratification as a way of life. I’m also going to do a caveat here and mention that it would be dishonest for me to say that material comforts no longer appeal to me.

I like spending money.

I like eating at nice restaurants.

I like buying nice clothes and I buy way too many movies and books, most of which I have admittedly neither watched nor read. But I like them.

In short, I still very much need everything I want.

BUT.

There has been a gradual shift in how I relate to these things. I know that these things can never truly deliver what I (still) hope they can. I know that a new TV isn’t going to be the thing that makes me happy, because I know that a year after I buy it I’m no longer going to happy with it because there’s a newer model out and I want to buy that.

The satisfaction I find in this life doesn’t come from anything I own. It can’t. Despite my insistence on playing the game, I know that all material pleasures are fleeting, at best.

So what does bring actual contentment, you might ask?

What I’m about to say is a bit of a paradox.

The only time life feels full is when I’m emptying my life back out into the world.

It’s when I’m being of service to others, whether in those musty church basements or outside of them. Whether I like the person or not is immaterial. If I can genuinely help them, I’m going to do it.

It’s when I’m expressing myself creatively.

It’s when I’m praying and meditating on a daily basis, my entire meditation practice being one of surrendering all preoccupations that arise during the meditation session itself. And this includes my inability to surrender. I surrender that too.

This simple formula has been the only antidote to the lingering dissatisfaction that has plagued me throughout my entire life, the same dissatisfaction and sense of something missing that led me into the grips of addiction in the first place.

And with all of that said, “I’m going to go ahead and end with this.”

I was invited to speak at The Salvation Army last week.

I made a point of telling myself beforehand that I was not going to talk about material success whatsoever, not even a little bit.

No, I was going to stick to the above.

I got about as far as telling everyone what led me to recovery. I told them a little bit about early recovery. I spoke of of the dissatisfaction I’ve mentioned. I even got as far as telling everyone that my relationship with God was a transactional one.

And here is what I was going to tell them.

I wanted to tell them that all of my relationships used to be transactional. But that is no longer the way I feel about people. I wanted to tell them that I appreciate people simply for who they are, and the fact that they even want to be a part of my life at all, and I get to be in theirs, and that they add to the fullness of my life with nothing more than their being a part of it.

I wanted to tell them that some of them may never achieve material success, but that is okay. Because material goods are not the prize. A deepening relationship with God is. A God that pours itself out as the stories of our lives, stories full of ups and downs, smooth sailing and hardship, victories and losses, and the wholeness at the center of all of these opposites. And then we get to pour ourselves out in turn, completing a circuit and enriching both ourselves and others in the process, not in a material sense (sometimes, maybe), but in a much more fulfilling one.

I wanted to tell them that life itself is the gift, that all of creation is a miracle, but we’re often too blind to see it, caught up in the everyday drama that comes along with the gift of living in this world.

It was then that an employee started fiddling with something in the kitchen, and I was momentarily distracted. I’d lost my train of thought, and I’d completely forgotten what I was going to say.

I turned around to look at the men seated in front of me. Gang members. Winos. The majority of them with under six months of sobriety and staring at me with receptive eyes. Men that were no doubt waiting for the gifts of that shiny one-year coin. Men like me.

I had to say something. And fast.

“So, I, uhhhh, I’m married now. And I have a career (I’m far too much of a bohemian at heart to ever focus on a career. More like a decent-paying job I don’t mind going to everyday), and I couldn’t have had any of these things were it not for working this program.”

Well, maybe it was for the best.

Who can say, really?