I’m honored to be a part of a new magazine of the South, called Good Grit. If you’re not familiar with it, please check it out in print, or online. Buy a subscription. It’s beautiful. The Harvest issue has just been published and it’s a keeper too.
By Karyn Zweifel
My mother was born near the geographic center of the continent, oldest child of a teacher and a mail carrier, about as distant from the sea as it is possible to be. Surrounded by waves of golden grain as far as the eye could see, she dreamed of the ocean, endless ripples of blue fringed with white. When she finally made it to the seashore at age 22, it was in reality a homecoming; “I knew when I saw it that that’s where I came from,” she says. “I just cried, it was so beautiful.” To this day she feels more connected to the universe at water’s edge than anywhere else on earth.
I am no stranger to the disease of alcoholism. I have two aunts with many years in recovery and a brother still struggling. So when my husband and I visited our oldest son, Andrew, during his first semester of college out of state, I was very concerned about his behavior.
“…now I understand how the stigma of addiction and mental illness causes so much pain. Parents need to be more open, be willing to say ‘I’m really struggling,’ and get help for themselves and their children.”
He’d joined a fraternity, and during our visit, my mother’s intuition kicked in. I could tell it wasn’t just the normal college drinking experience. Andrew was secretive, and what we saw at the fraternity house was alarming. Andrew did not do well academically that first semester but convinced his dad to give him a second chance.
“Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot ‘manage,’ you will never find the True Manager. So God makes sure that several things will come your way that you cannot manage on your own.”
–Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water
These simple words are likely to strike a chord of recognition in almost every human being. Rohr, known world-wide for his focus on transformational and mystical traditions, has written more than twenty books about spirituality, recovery and relationships, and his writing style is straightforward and concrete.