Late Fragment and Addiction

Carver: Recovery

LATE FRAGMENT:
“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”—Inscription on Raymond Carver’s tombstone and his poem “Gravy.”

This takes us back to Olivia Laing’s story in The Trip to Echo Spring, about the relationships of six award-winning but alcohol-addicted authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Carver is the only one of these six highly talented American writers who went into significant 12-step recovery. This tells us a great deal about addiction. It is a cunning and baffling disease, even for the most brilliant and creative minds.

I hope you read my favorite Carver story, “A Small Good Thing,” about a dying son, his birthday cake, and the cake baker. Also, make sure you read Carver’s original version, published after his death by his wife, Tess Gallagher, in Beginners (Vintage, 2015).

When people are caught in this disease, their addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, relationships, or work becomes their God, their higher power. It is impossible to find the relationship with God that our life calls us to when there is something else in our “God hole.” The paradox is that the answer, the awakening, the Lazarus experience for any addiction, is spiritual: surrendering and turning our lives and wills over to the care of the God of our understanding.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Raymond Carver: Gravy

Carver: Gravy

“No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. ‘Don’t weep for me,’
he said to his friends. ‘I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.’”

—Raymond Carver in The New Yorker (9/29/1988), p. 28.

It is not unusual for people seeking spiritual direction to come seeking relief from an addiction. They are under the influence of another “spirit” and have “seen through a glass darkly” that the answer may be a spiritual one—a relationship with what those in recovery call “a higher power.” They may simply come for a brief time. As spiritual friends, we care for their soul, which has been anesthetized and put to sleep by drugs, alcohol, work, shopping, etc. We keep looking to see where God has worked in the person’s life, caring for that soul. We keep praying they will become aware of God’s leading them to a new life of spirituality through those moments.

A recovery theme or principle is that a person caught in addiction must reach some sort of “bottom” before having a moment of clarity leading to a desire to change. So, we look for that bottom and hope to bring awareness to the person who can learn from that devastating event.

Raymond Carver was a brilliant poet, short story writer—and alcoholic. When he reached his bottom in June 1977, he went into recovery for ten years. This is his famous poem about his last ten years in recovery, written at age fifty before he died of lung cancer. It is also inscribed on his tombstone in Port Angeles, Washington. Sometimes, I share this poem when that moment of clarity comes to someone I am talking with.

Olivia Laing has written an insightful book, The Trip to Echo Spring (Picador, 2013), about the association between creativity and alcohol in the lives of six writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Carver is the only one of these six who found significant recovery.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Cymbals and Morning Prayer

Cymbals and Morning Prayer

“Praise him with clanging cymbals;
   praise him with loud clashing cymbals!”—Psalm 150:5.

I frequently read Morning Prayer online from The Daily Office  https://dailyoffice.wordpress.com/, posted by Josh Thomas in Indiana. Josh calls the site “not a website, but a community” because an interactive Morning Prayer is offered during the week online and as a webcast at 7:00 and 9:00 in the mornings. There is also a video Evensong every Friday night at 9:00. Josh founded dailyoffice.org in 2004 and is a vicar and lay commission evangelist in the Episcopal Church. I am drawn to the website because of the ease of reading Morning Prayer, according to The Book of Common Prayer.

I look forward to the artwork, the music, and the short, related discussions Josh and his staff bring to the Daily Office.

One morning, Josh included some information about cymbals in worship, referencing this article in the New York Times by Lara Pellegrinelli with this photograph by Kayana Szymczak:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/arts/music/zildjian-cymbals-400-years. 

For over 400 years, an Armenian family has been manufacturing what is considered the world’s best cymbal, called Zildjian, which means in Armenian, “son of the cymbal maker.” The family first developed the cymbal for the Sultan of Turkey, but moved the business to Massachusetts just before the Armenian genocide. The cymbals are made from a carefully guarded family secret alloy of tin, copper, and silver. Today, the company is led by its fourteenth generation of cymbal makers and the first female CEO, Craigne Zildjian.

Sometimes, we have cymbals in our resurrection Easter worship, but we more often see them used in bands and at the symphony. Interestingly, no two cymbals are precisely alike.

Today, I learned about an instrument we so often see and hear but take for granted, and one we would typically not consider captivating unless we were drummers or percussionists. I learned that this powerful instrument came alive 400 years ago when an Armenian artisan convinced a Sultan that the cymbal would be a powerful instrument to mark the rhythmic cycles each morning before prayer and every evening after prayer.

Next time I am at the symphony, I will pay more attention to the cymbal player and give thanks for this Armenian family that has made a difference in so many of our lives. 

The Zildjian family story is only one of so many powerful stories to be told about people who have come to this country seeking a new life and have enriched all our lives in ways we most often take for granted.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/