Most of us know some sort of addict--to alcohol, tobacco, sex, gambling, overeating, if not to the "illegal drugs" that are more dangerous purely because they've been ruled illegal. So we know the cliche: Addiction is a physical disease (in its own right, apart from the chemical imbalances specific addictions set up), but it has a social cure. Addiction involves biochemical reactions, inside the brain, to whatever it is the individual has become addicted to. While breaking up the physical patterns involved in addictions to specific substances, it can be crucial for extroverts and even useful for introverts to retrain the brain to transfer those biochemical reactions to something that is healthy and useful. For millions of people, a social group that's not affiliated with a specific denomination, but does what the apostolic church did for its society, turns out to be a good thing to attach those emotional and biochemical reactions to. By developing a psychological reaction to a social group and the social behaviors the group encourage, people get through any physical withdrawal symptoms they have and recover a more nearly "normal" life.
I've always been a Christian. I've not, as an adult, belonged to a church. I've declared a very simple rule for myself, based on observation of what works for Muslims. Friends help each other succeed in what they want to do. If you want to be my friend, and you are an adult human, that means you support my business. The Bible tells us, "Six days shall you labor and do all your work." The seventh day is reserved for God, best celebrated in pure worship but also, according to the Bible, set apart for acts of charity. The Bible lists several acts of charity that are appropriate ways to spend part of our days of rest. Indulging extroverts' felt "needs" to fondle and pry and score off and put down is not on any of those lists.
For me, the spiritual effect of dressing up for a meeting with an ordinary group of people is anti-spiritual; as antithetical to pure worship as the dreariest business meeting or the most extravagant party would be. If I ever do find friends with whom I can worship God in fellowship, I'll know it because these will be the people with and for whom I work on the other six days. I'll know it because, as a group, they don't just take my money, waste my time, and gossip about me behind my back, but actively participate in helping me--and everyone else--to use our talents in service to God. Anything they do as a group other than the pure worship in which people enter a sanctuary in silence and devote themselves to prayer and singing, so completely that the goal is not to know which other people are present--any meetings in which they do look at and speak to other humans--will be effective work that relieves the real human needs Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul described. Wealth and even seniority will be recognized as talents among others. Everyone will be active, on as nearly equal a basis as their talents permit, with a commitment to pull down the vanity of those who like to feel dominant, in feeding the hungry, healing the sick, teaching the ignorant, visiting those in prison, mitigating the effects of disabilities...
...and, I've wandered off into religion so I might as well wander into politics too, in helping "the foreigner." That's a separate rant but, if the shoe fits, let Trump wear it. Some foreigners are best helped by warning them that those who encourage them to immigrate to the US are doing so for very selfish reasons, that if they can rent a safe place to live in their home towns they should. A few foreigners are best helped by delivering them, in chains, back to the criminal justice system in their own countries, making sure they are not starved or raped or even beaten more than necessary. Most of the foreigners we meet, we can and should help by showing them how well our understanding of ethics, morality, and spirituality work...by being nice.
Anyway, when various people have suggested that I ought to attend or join their church, I've explained this to them. I've already invested my lifetime supply of time, energy, and money in a church that didn't deliver any fellowship when I ran out of investment. Fellowship with any other church group will start where it should always start, with fair trade that supports my work. Six days of profitable work with or for members of one group will justify one visit to one church meeting. If what I find there is pure worship of God unspotted by any mere socializing with other humans, which may then be followed by service to meet real human needs when and where those are found, then I'll come back. And in my lifetime I did find something similar to this with Muslims, so I know it's possible; but for better or for worse, I am a Christian not a Muslim.
I see a lot of bad things being said about Muslims on the Internet these days. I don't like that these beliefs and feelings are polluting the atmosphere but y'know, dear Muslim friends who have failed to oppose Muslim terrorists, toward the goal of breaking up the stereotype that you are violent uncivilized people it would help if your fellow believers weren't killing quite so many people every day.
But when Muslims decide to be friends they can be awesome. They promote your work, they've got your back, they respect your monogamous or celibate lifestyle, they share ideas, they know someone who can help if you need extra help for a job...without any of the preliminary time-wasting that some Christians seem to think friendship is all about. Their cultural tradition takes friendship seriously and teaches people how to be good friends. I would like to find something like that sense of community among Christians. So far I've not found it yet.
And if these Christian friends who have tried to understand what I'm explaining are anywhere close, they say, "Maybe what you're looking for is a twelve-step group."
And I say, "But I don't have any addictions. Or if I did, it would be an addiction to writing; I don't want to give that up!"
And one dear man had enough faith in his group, which was basically Alcoholics Anonymous but open to others because it was a small town, to say, "Maybe you could try saying pride in not having any addictions? Like you've always known you have the alcoholic gene, so you don't drink alcohol--so maybe you'd be like a 'dry drunk'?"
Maybe. I don't think I'd ever have the chutzpah to walk into an AA meeting and say that.
But I have seen how that group worked with people I knew, made active and radical Christians of people before they'd ever tried to verbalize what Jesus meant to them, and I admire the twelve-step groups. They can go wrong. Some groups do turn into personality cults, despite the way the group was set up to resist that. But some groups really do what they try to do, which is awesome. They don't specify how individuals have to relate to their Higher Power, they leave it up to the individual doing the steps to decide when and where to pray, but they really encourage every member, whatever faith tradition person claims, to be a good example of that tradition.
I e-met Laura McKowen through a distant relative of mine. How distant, exactly, I'm not sure. Not all of my ancestors have been as well documented as some of them have. Then in every extended family you find somebody who was brought up as a cousin but was actually adopted, as a baby, and after person finds out the facts you might refer to person as "my cousin" and person says bitterly "If you go all the way back to Adam and Eve!" I think this particular relative was a cousin in the biological sense because people looking at us so often guessed he'd be my brother, but that was also true for an ex-boyfriend whose ancestors had been in different places from mine for centuries. Anyway he'd been brilliant and successful in youth, then become an alcoholic and basically come home to die, and on the way he'd joined one of the wonderful AA groups.
And he worked the steps. Three guys who were in or between his and my high school classes became homeless, hopeless alcoholics. Most of our other classmates tried to avoid them. This relative tried to find rooms and jobs for them. Two of them have died by now--but one seems to be recovering.
So I said to this relative, as I usually say to everyone sooner or later, "Who's your favorite writer? Whom do you recommend?" and he said, "Laura McKowen!" I looked her up. She had a blog. I started following that blog. She wrote nice, warmhearted, blunt and practical columns about addiction and recovery and being a single mother. Those are not topics on which I have any expertise. I followed her in order to learn about them.
Years passed. I went from saying "Of course I wouldn't count on Associated Content to pay my bills," to earning enough on AC to pay some of the bills, to blogging. Laura McKowen sold a book, then another book, then moved from blogging for free to a newsletter for paid subscribers. For some years she kept me on her list as an honorary subscriber. Then she moved to an all-paid Substack. She still posts very occasionally on Blogspot, free for everyone to read. She puts most of the first drafts of possible chapters in future books on the Substack. I respect that decision. I don't pay for subscriptions to anything online.
Actually I don't like the idea of subscribing even to magazines I've consistently bought in stores, because when you subscribe you're paying in advance for content you might have chosen not to buy in a store.
This actually happened: I went to Stitches Fair and got into a conversation with an editor at a knitting magazine. I said I liked that magazine because, in the eighteen months it had been published, it had been free from those tedious patterns that basically rewrite a pattern we've had for years, only they use a very expensive novelty yarn that's only in a few shops for a few months and most knitters don't even live near those shops. I always look through knitting magazines in the stores and, if they're full of basic-for-beginners patterns made with novelty yarn, I leave them in the stores.
So the editor and I went our separate ways. I went home and decided to subscribe to that magazine because the editor had seemed so nice. The editor went home and told the rest of the magazine staff what people at Stitches Fair had told her they would or would not like to see in future issues. For every knitting magazine that has ever been printed there's been at least one reader who has whined and pined for more "easy" patterns...and within the year, an issue of the magazine came out with the theme of "easy projects that use very expensive novelty yarns"!
I cancelled my subscription. They learned from their mistake. I bought every issue of the magazine in a store for the next ten years, before the magazine sold out. After selling out the magazine followed the usual trajectory. Bigger company with more money than "heart" for the craft lost most of the subscribers and, in a few years, the magazine disappeared.
With Substacks you know that that, at least, isn't going to happen. Some people subscribe to Substacks because they know they're willing to read whatever a favorite writer, an e-friend, may write even when it's "I haven't had a new idea for three years, I'm starting to forget all kinds of basic information, and I'm afraid my brain is going."
Some Substacks are the last paid jobs people have. Writers of the stature of Dave Barry are admittedly using Substack to eke out their retirement pensions. I am NOT opposed to the idea of people who have money choosing to pay for subscriptions to the Substacks of people who have no other job, may have medical expenses to pay or children to rear, and need the money. McKowen had mentioned a child. If you have the money, subscribe to her Substack by all means. I don't have the money. I have a computer that will lose its sponsored Internet connection if it sends money online to anything or anybody.
I still get a small part of Laura McKowen's Substack in the e-mail. It's still worth reading. She's not a very "voicy" writer; she's friendly and accessible, and excels at hosting blog discussions.
If you know an addict who wants a confidential e-friend? McKowen has been there. She'll put the person into a warm, confidential, but not enabling online community that can help keep the person on track. If you don't live near one of the really good twelve-step groups? That could be well worth a subscription.
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