“Out of the Basement and Into the Sanctuary”
Reverend James Kubal-Komoto
Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church
Des Moines, Washington
January 3, 2010

Readings

“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible.” - - Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, written in 1948

“People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven’t tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them.” - - Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon

“For whatever reasons, my brain believes that sex is the best way to medicate loneliness, disconnection, shame, anger, and a core belief—only recently challenged—that I am inherently unlovable.” - - Benoit Denizet-Lewis in his book America Anonymous: Eight Addicts In Search of a Life

“A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.” - - Stella Adler

“In the end, when we don’t stand up and speak out, we hide behind our recoveries, we sustain the most harmful myth about the disease—that it is hopeless.” - - William Cope Moyers

“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - - Anais Nin

Sermon

This is the third year we’ve had a Recovery Sunday on the first Sunday of January, and I want to talk a little bit why we do this.

            You see, for decades Alcoholic Anonymous groups and other 12-step groups have met regularly in church meeting rooms in churches all across this country.

A lot of these meetings, for whatever reason, have taken place meeting rooms in church basement meeting rooms.

Perhaps it has been because holding these meetings down in church basements helped protect the anonymity of the participants, an important factor in their success.

Perhaps it has been because if meetings are held in church basement meeting rooms, other people don’t complain as much about the cigarettes and coffee typical at many AA meetings.

Perhaps there have been other reasons.

Here at Saltwater Church, we currently have two 12-step groups which meet in our space - - an Al-Anon group, for family members and friends of people who have experienced addiction in their lives, and an Overeaters Anonymous group. Both groups meet on Monday nights, and while they don’t meet in our basement - - since we don’t have one - - they do meet in some of our smaller meeting rooms.

However, three years ago, this congregation started an Addiction Ministry Team in order to be more intentionally supportive of individuals who were struggling with addiction in their lives as well as their family members and friends.

            It was suggested to us that if we really wanted to be more intentionally supportive, we needed to do more than offer our church space to 12-step groups that wanted to meet here at the church. It was suggested that one of the things we might do is to have a service once a year celebrating those members of our religious community in recovery, in other words to move our support out of the basement, so to speak, and into the sanctuary.

            We hold this service for several reasons.

            First, church is the place where we celebrate and give thanks for the most important events in our lives, and for some members of our religious community - - their recovery, their continued sobriety  - - is one of the things in their lives for which they are most thankful, and as a religious community, we want to celebrate and give thanks with them.

We also hold this service to help lessen the shame and the stigma that is still, unfortunately, are associated with addiction in this country. Our hope is that by openly acknowledging how widespread addiction is among us and by celebrating those who are in recovery, it might make it easier for somebody who is experiencing addiction in their lives to reach out for help. If you’re worried about yourself or if you’re worried about a family member or friend, talk with me or any member of our Addiction Ministries Team.

We also hold this service to give hope to those who are experiencing addiction in their lives or the lives of a family member. It is true that for a few people, addiction is a fatal disease, and we grieve today for those for whom this has been true, but we mostly want to remind one another that for most people, recovery from addiction is possible. The presence of people in our shared religious community today who are in long-term recovery are living proof that this is possible.

            Let me say a little bit more here about lessening the shame and stigma that is still, unfortunately, associated with addiction in this country, and I want to talk specifically about my understanding of addiction.

            People who study addiction used to think that people could only be addicted to alcohol and certain, specific drugs.

            Now, many people who study addiction recognize that people can be not only addicted to substances - - such as alcohol and other drugs - - but certain activities as well, such as eating, sex, shopping, gambling, and even shoplifting.

            Here’s a definition of addition of addiction that I’ve found useful:

The use of a substance or activity, for the purpose of lessening pain or augmenting pleasure, by a person who has lost control over the rate, frequency, or duration of its use, and whose life has become progressively unmanageable as a result.

            While our understanding of exactly what causes addiction and the best way to deal with it is still very incomplete, it seems like the best way to think of it is as a chronic disease.

            We know that most people who drink, even heavily, don’t become alcoholics. Most people who try drugs don’t become addicts. And certainly most people who eat, have sex, look at pornography, shop, gamble, and even shoplift don’t become addicted to these activities, even those who engage in these activities in unhealthy ways.

            But for whatever reason, it seems like a certain percentage of the population does become addicted to certain substances or activities. Not because of any lack of willpower. Not because of any individual moral failing. Most likely because the neurochemistry of their brains is a little bit different than the neurochemistry of other people’s brains.

Studies show that about 50 percent of a person’s vulnerability to addiction is genetic. I can see this in my own extended family, and can easily trace a genetic predisposition to alcoholism from one generation to the next. It is because of nothing else but a lucky spin of the genetic roulette wheel that unlike several of my extended family members it at least seems I have not inherited this disposition.

(By the way, I say “at least seems” for a particular reason. The group in this country with the fastest growing rate of alcoholism in this country is not the 21-and-younger group but the 65-and-over group, and nobody quite knows how or why this is happening. There’s still a lot of things about addiction that aren’t understood.)

However, in this country many people still don’t think of addiction as a disease. Think about this…Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and most likely certain cancers have a lot in common with addiction . All have a genetic component and are also affected by environmental and behavioral factors. But my guess is most folks think of addiction as being different in some way from these other diseases.

Even people who call addiction a disease sometimes see it differently than other diseases. In a recent poll of adults with an addicted family member, 76 percent called addiction a “disease” but more than of those same people also identified “lacking will power” as the main impediment facing addicts and felt ashamed of having an addicted family member.

Sadly, this shame about addiction keeps people from seeking help for themselves, seeking help for family members and keeps many people from living as fully, deeply, richly, and abundantly as they might otherwise.

            My hope, as we continue to strive to be a religiously community that is intentionally supportive of people struggling with addiction, is that we will abandon so much of the moralism that has too often played a role in conversations about addiction, and learn to think of it more like other chronic diseases for which people can be encouraged to seek treatment.

            But let me also encourage you to think about one more thing this morning, and let me tell a story…

            It was just about exactly one year ago - - the first Sunday of a new year. While this congregation was holding its second Recover Sunday service, I was at the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Corvalis, Oregon.

            The minister of that congregation was beginning a sabbatical, and she had asked me to come and preach that Sunday in her place.

            I preached a sermon that morning - - one that many of you have heard before - - about how to be a more spiritual person and the virtues of compassion, gratitude, acceptance, and faithfulness.

            In that congregation, there is a tradition that after the sermon the congregation engages in a short period of question and answer with the congregation. A woman stood up and said that she had been in recovery for several years and many of the things I said that morning reminded her of things that she had learned as a recovering alcoholic. Then she asked me, “I was wondering whether you are a recovering alcoholic.”

            “No,” I said, a little surprised and probably a bit too defensively, “I am not,” and I left it at that.

            Afterward, I wished I had answered her differently. Now, this is what I wish I had said, “No, I am not, but over the years, I have learned a lot from people in various forms of recovery. I’ve learned a lot reading about their experiences in books. I’ve learned more talking to members of my own congregation.”

            “People who are in long-term recovery,” I wish I had said, “have overcome a great difficulty, and I think, as with anybody who has overcome a great difficulty, the rest of us would be rather foolish if we did not listen to their experiences to discover if they might have anything to teach us about our own lives.”

            Saying this now, I do not want to take anybody in recovery and put them on a pedestal or turn them into a guru or in any way romanticize the experience of addiction or recovery.

            But, as I said, I do want to suggest that some of the things that people in recovery have learned about dealing with one of life’s most difficult problems - - the problem of addiction - - might be useful to those of us dealing with some of life’s more mundane problems.

            Let me say more about what I mean.

            A few years ago, when this church was starting its Addictions Ministry program, a member of the Addictions Ministry team asked me if I had ever attended an A.A. meeting, and I said that I hadn’t. He and other members of the team thought, as minister of the church, it was important that I experience one of these first hand.

            So he and I went to an open meeting one afternoon at a church in Federal Way. It was pretty much what I had expected, not that different than I had read about. But there was something that stood out for me.

            Especially among some of the longer-term members of this group, there was what I can only call a rather strong sense of humility regarding themselves and acceptance regarding others. Some of these guys talked about messing up their lives pretty badly as a result of their addictions to alcohol and drugs, but there was neither bravado nor self-pity in their words, just a rather plain-spoken matter-of-factedness, and implicit in their words was the message, “I’m in no position to judge anybody else in this room who has messed up their lives.” Even though I was only there as an observer, as I sat there silently listening to them, I experienced a feeling a comfort, a feeling that allowed me to look at the imperfections of my own life both more honestly and with less judgment.

            Here’s something else…In his book, America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of A Life, Benoit Denizet-Lewis writes about a conversation he had with a man named Jody, who is both a long-time addict  in recovery as well as a counselor.

            “If you had to explain recovery through the Twelve Steps in one word, what word would that be?” Jodi asked Benoit.

            “ Honesty?” Benoit guesses.

            “Exactly,” Jody says.. Rigorous, painful, gut-wrenching honesty.”

            When I read this, it made a lot of sense to me. One of the things I have learned about addiction is that people in the midst of addiction are very good about deceiving themselves and others about many things, and becoming rigorously, painfully, gut-wrenchingly honest is a key to any kind of recovery, whether it be alcohol, drugs, or something else.

            But one of the things I have learned as a minister is that all of are very good about deceiving ourselves and others about many things. We’re good at deceiving ourselves as individuals. We’re good at deceiving ourselves once in a while as a community. We seem especially skilled at deceiving ourselves as a nation.

            This being the case, the practice of rigorous, painful, gut-wrenching honesty might be a good place for anybody who wants make any kind of change in life to start.

            Here’s one more thing…The first time I read through some A.A. literature was many years ago, and I have to admit that, until recently, I was pretty confused about something, specifically the issue of individual control over life. Much of what I read seemed to see-saw back and forth over the question of how much individual control a person had over his or her life, especially related to his or her addiction. On the other hand, an explicit part of the 12 steps is to admit powerlessness. Nevertheless, a lot of people in 12-step programs also talk a lot about “working the steps” - - implying a fair degree of  individual responsibility.

            Recently, I was talking about this to somebody in recovery, and he explained it to me this way. “You aren’t responsible for being an addict, but you are responsible for your recovery from addiction. However, you probably won’t be successful if you try to do it on your own and don’t reach out for help.”

            This made sense to me, and again, not only for dealing with the problem of addiction, but for dealing with a lot of life’s situations, this idea of, “You may not be responsible for getting yourself into this mess, but you are responsible for getting yourself out of it. However, you probably won’t be successful if you try to do it completely by yourself and don’t reach out for help.”

            When I reflect on these examples and what they teach us - - about the importance of humility and acceptance, about the necessity for honesty, about a nuanced view of responsibility and the necessity of reaching out for help - - they would be good values to practice not only within the 12-step groups that meet in our church but within our whole community.

            Like I said, I don’t want to take anybody in recovery and put them on a pedestal or turn them into a guru, but I am grateful that I’ve had a chance to learn a few things from them along the way, and I hope I will continue to be able to do so.

            Let me finish this morning with these words.

            As we start a new year together, may this religious community continue to be a place where we learn from one another, celebrate one another, offer one another acceptance and love, and encourage one another to have hope.

            So may it be. Amen.