Father Bill W., Chair, Episcopal Diocese of Texas Recovery Committee

Father Bill W. and one of his earlier articles for Recovery Today. Father Bill was recently interviewed on our ChristianRecoveryRadio.com show and brings us up to date on his Christian recovery outreach today. Dick B.

 

"Making Room Inside"

by Bill Wigmore

Friar Bill Wigmore
CEO of Austin Recovery

I heard a story a few weeks ago that I liked, and thought it had some bearing on recovery from addiction. It was a story about a teacher who wanted to teach his class a lesson in values. So one day the teacher brought a huge glass beaker into his classroom – the kind we used to use back in chemistry class. He had completely filled the beaker with large stones right up to the top.
Then the teacher showed the beaker and the stones to his young students and asked the class: “Could any more possibly fit into that glass jar?” The kids all said, “No!” … But then, from under the counter, he took some tiny-pea-gravel and poured it into the jar – and the gravel filled in all the empty spaces left between the stones.

"The closest many of us come to describing [addiction] is when we call it, 'a hole in our souls.'"

So once again the teacher asked if there was room for any more? And this time the kids weren’t so sure and weren’t so quick to answer. Then the teacher brought out some very fine sand and proceeded to pour it into the same jar. The sand filled in all the little spaces left between the small pieces of gravel. And then finally, after he asked the class yet again, he poured water into the beaker – and the water filled all the empty spaces between the tiny grains of sand.
Then the teacher asked his class, “What lesson did this demonstration teach you?” And one kid said: “Maybe the lesson is: If you plan your day really, really well you can pack a lot more into it!” (We’ll likely see that kid in Workaholics Anonymous some day!)
And another kid said his lesson was, “Seems like you can always have one more!” (And, of course, we’re saving a bed for that kid in treatment!) But what the teacher said he wanted his students to learn from the exercise was simply this: “Always get the big things in first!” He said: “If you’ll fit the big things into your life first then you’ll find there’s always room for the rest.”
Over and over, I hear alcoholics and addicts try to describe what it feels like for us “on the inside.” And over and over the story’s the same. “Deep inside me there’s an emptiness – a longing – a craving.” The closest many of us come to describing it is when we call it, “a hole in our souls.”
When Bill Wilson wrote to the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung thanking him for the critical part he played in starting Alcoholics Anonymous, Jung wrote back and spoke with unusual candor about what he called, “the alcoholic’s deep craving for alcohol.” Jung called that craving, “…the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness…” He said, “expressed in medieval language,” it was a craving on the part of the addict for nothing less than, “ union with God.”
According to Jung, the only thing big enough to fill the alcoholic’s craving for spirits is for him or her to become filled with the Spirit of God. “Spiritus contra spiritum,” he said was the proper formula to finding a full recovery from addiction.
Both Jung and the teacher in that story were truly wise men. If we’ll make room in our hearts for God, and if we’ll do that first, then everything else in life will find its proper place and both our lives and our beakers will be filled to overflowing.
Jung ended his letter to Wilson with a passage from Psalm 42,1: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” Don’t settle for anything less.