When the Spider's Web Entangles One of Our Own.

 Sunday Morning Meditation

5 am July 25, 2

When the Spider's Web Entangles One of Our Own.

I rolled out bed and after taking my morning meds and doing my morning meditation routine, I open my email and my eyes fall on a late-night email from my church's elder...asking for prayers. It is never a good thing to get a late Saturday night email from your elder asking for prayers, and when I opened it my fears were confirmed, a young person who traveled in an outer orbit of our church, was fighting for their life after overdosing.

I sit and I say a prayer the victim and the mother. I know none of the details, yet I know all of them, for they are played out again and again in our county. Addiction is insidious, it is an equal opportunity evil. It cares not wit if you are 22 or 62, owe the bank or own the bank. A soul is a soul is a soul. They all look the same bagged and tagged, don't they? I consider how wonderfully we are made, the insanely complicated body we are lent for our brief time on earth, the great acts of Good we can perform if we rise above the hub-bub and put our minds to it.

But we are not complete, there is a deficit, a void of some sort, and we don't remember how it came to be. We have estranged ourselves from the only thing that matters and for reasons I can never understand, we resist putting back into our lives the only thing that can satisfy the hunger. The soul knows what is needed but we resist, we refuse the truth, and we look for anything, anything that can be a substitute. And while we search frantically, the missing piece stands always before us, with arms opened wide saying, "Come...come unto me".

We try to fill the void with a good substitute for the-real-thing, but all substitutes are poor substitutes, although we will argue that vehemently... well, at first anyway. The substitutes are well known and in many cases well thought of. Drugs are the most famous and seen as the most dangerous. The list goes on and on, and to the surprise of many, contains many thing we openly strive for; wealth, recognition, knowledge, sexual gratification, security, power, independence, individualism. We perceive these things as limited so we hoard, we refuse to share, we deny access to others. And society (itself, an addict in denial), applauds our efforts to acquire them, not mentioning the cost of broken marriages, broken homes, estranged children, betrayed relationships, poisoned air, and barren soil, endless wars, needless deaths. We vote for, and actively support, people who promise to not hesitate to order remote drone strikes against any of Them who pose a risk to our desires. Such is the cost of addiction.

So I say a prayer into the void, I hear neither echo, nor answer.

bobb

Here is a Blessing written by the late John O'Donohow, which touches on this. Notice never names the addiction. If he did the poem would go on forever.

For an Addict, by John O'Donohue

On its way through the innocent night

the moth is ambushed by the light,

becomes glued to a window

where a candle burns

its whole self, its dreams of flight

and all desire

trapped in one glazed gaze.

Now nothing else can satisfy

but the deadly beauty of the flame.

When you lose the feel

for all other belonging

and what is truly near

becomes distant and ghostly,

you are visited and claimed

by a simplicity

sinister in its singularity.

No longer yourself,

your mind will be owned

and steered from elsewhere now.

You will sacrifice anything

to dance once more

to the haunted music

with your fatal beloved

who owns the eyes to your heart.

These words of blessings cannot reach,

even as echos, to the shore of where you are.

Yet, may they walk without you

to soften some slight line,

through to the white cave

where your soul is captive.

May some glimmer of outside light

reach your eyes

to help you recognize how you have fallen

for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon

onto real ground again

where this fundamentalist shell

might start to crack

for you to hear again

your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart

might learn to cry out

for the true intimacy of love

that waits to take you home

to where you are known and seen

and where your life is treasured

beyond every frontier

of despair you have crossed.

~~ John O'Donohue

5Diana Melton Yarian, Wayne Selcher and 3 others

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