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The genius of implosion: Richard Rohrs book Breathing Under Water and the spirituality of descent
Father Dn Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ, OSL

t is somehow a long way down to the bottom of a life that we hold onto so desperately; to the bottom of a heart that is hidden behind the constructs and machinations of a mind that is nothing more than a cloak for a hungry ego. And yet, when the journey in and downthe duende of the poetshas begun and blossomed into a full and robust
Father Dn Thomas JohnsonMedland, CSJ, OSL, is one of the managers of the Pocono Plateau Camp + Retreat Center, Cresco, Pennsylvania. He also provides Spiritual Direction + Formation as a private consultant. He lives in the Poconos with his wife Glinda, and his two sons: Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel.

death angst of despair; it is then, in the whispering hush of the last escaping breath that life can be infused and re-blown into us. When we are truly empty, we shall be filled - the Spirit can win out. Breathing Under Water is Richard Rohrs masterful telling of the unwinding nature of addiction and entropy in our lives. So often we claim that addiction is different than the natural process of falling apart. These words make it visible that entropy and addiction are one and the same. What wears us down is the same. What is different is that in entropy we tell the truth; in addiction we lie. The spirituality of coping with addiction is the same spirituality of all of lifes descents. Entropy is upfront about the

fact that things wear on us and weather us into non-existence and humble realism In addiction we claim the thing that wears us down is actually giving us life. It does not matter if we are addicted to the ego or to a needle or shot glass. We sustain ourselves in addiction on a lie. In entropy we come to terms with the truth of the nature of things. Rohr helps us to see the redemptive nature of recognizing that life begins from the bottom. When we whisper defeat and acknowledge we are undone, then we can begin to live. It is not just in this book of his, it peppers everything he does. The gospel he proclaims is that life can only begin when we are able to say I am not in this alone and My own way is just

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Healing Ministry

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not the fullness it could be. We all need a community in order to be who we were meant to be. The break-open point in peoples lives is when they can unabashedly admit that things are a ramshackle. When we can say we have crashed into the bottom, we can awaken to the possibilities of truth. When we are down and out we open to the fragility of human existence. The wheels have gotta fall off for there to be any movement. The twelve step program is an odyssey toward organizing the life of abasement. This is also what grace is all about. An opening toward the agony of entropy is a sure sign of mature spiritual development and wholeness. When I am weak then I am strong.. The way up is down. Everything belongs. Pick the phrase or the telling of the tale, it matters not the truth is the same: honestly looking at yourself, wrestling amid the turmoil of amending, correcting, and repairing, leaning into repentance, forgiveness, and asking is the only way to become saturated with an genuine love - a love that is abel to allow the darkness of the shadow to burgeon into shards of blinding light. This book weaves classic spiritual depth work with the twelve steps that ignites a fire in the mind, the heart, and the belly all at once. It does not take long in the reading to recognize the undercurrent

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post-modern paradigm of healing, people are able to meld a pragmatic contemporary schema to eternal themes that have passed the test of time. I also think this piece has great merit in that the pathway of descent that is exposed in the telling is the same pathway that good psychotherapeutic adherents rely on. People only change when they have hit the bottom and know they need something to buoy them up. When THEY know. Not when they are told, but when they know it. When people are ready to be cracked open by experience and when in being cracked open the are able to be self-aware of their brokenness then they can begin to mend toward wholeness. Henri Nouwen would have said that it is in the process of discovering our brokenness and woundedness that we actually begin to heal. In this sense, the religious process toward wholeness is afoot of any experience in life where the wheels fall off. It could be addiction, death, loss, divorce, mental unwinding, grief, or war. There is no triumph in human existence until we are able to recognize that our prevalence toward weakness is our one true strength. The person who can weep at our own human condition is wiser than those who have never touched their shadow.

of good religious principlesa good philosophy of religion. Some of the underpinnings of the 12 Step Program could easily footnote the works of Heschel, Kierkegaard, Boehme, Nouwen, or Wilber. We figure out we are not whole, we figure out we need a larger I to live through, we clearly identify our need to repair damage we have been a part of, we work toward mending amid a community of likeminded people. The themes of power/powerlessness, a Higher-Power or God, surrender to the HigherPower or God, review the nature of our life, confess our wrongs, be willing to have our wrongs removed, ask for them to be removed, repair whatever damage we have caused when possible, stay connected/communicate to the Higher-Power or God, stay close to other people who exhibit this degree of communion. This process is the process of all religious faith. It is the way we come to terms with living in a universe that is compiled of small pieces of matter that are all interdependent. What makes this book so immense is that Rohr has been able to make connections between the 12 Step Program and the long-standing religious traditions of men and women in search of God. And, in allowing the greater underground themes to bubble up and merge with a

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