Varieties of Spiritual Experience

     My analogy for the varieties of spiritual experience goes like this: I had a basement bedroom in my teens. My mother would call down from the top of the stairs to wake me for school. I’d hear her voice calling, “George, it’s time to get up!” and try to get a few more minutes of sleep but, within a few minutes, she’d call again... but a little louder and louder... until I answered… usually annoyed… “I’m up, Mom!” Of course, I wasn’t up at all: but I could squeeze out a few more minutes of precious slumber before she’d call again, “Breakfast is getting cold, wake up!” And then she’d give out a final yell, “I want to hear your feet on the stairs right now or I’m coming down to jerk you out of bed!” 

     Some of us would obediently get out of bed after hearing the first call from our Higher Power and some of us will stall as long as possible but we do wake up of our own accord. This category would be the addict or alcoholic that gets up of his/her own will. These still have to get up the stairs; and, after nourishing themselves, get on to school (gratefully acknowledging that breakfast and lunch bag are prepared by their Higher Power). These can do most of it on their own.

    However, the next category is akin to being awakened when the house is on fire: it is damned hard to wake up someone in a smoke filled room. It takes shaking, and sometimes carrying, the near dead asphyxiated body out of the burning house. And some of us will drift into unconsciousness ‘til a crises becomes so extreme that God will either personally intervene; or, use one of us to play the roll of a firefighter to literally yank us out of slumber.

 The point of all of this is to say that we do have to either take steps to get out of the house and go to school; or, in other more extreme cases, we are rescued from a crises so extreme that we have no power to escape of our own volition. There is a vast array of ways this happens and every one of them is miracle enough for me.

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