Eric S. Fought

A prodigal misfit's journey.

Recovery from Perfection

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God willing, this month I will mark another year of continuous sobriety from alcohol and drugs.

Such a time as the period before and after a sobriety anniversary welcomes a great deal of introspection, hope and fear.

It is good to celebrate such milestones. Not so much to pat oneself on the back, but to show others on a similar path that long-term sobriety is indeed possible. And, in my case, there is no doubt that I can say without hesitation, if I can do it, anyone can.

But the reality is that I am sober today, not so much because of what I did, but because of what I stopped doing.

Certainly not picking up a drink of whiskey or a hit of crystal methamphetamine—my drugs of choice—has been a helpful daily decision.

However, even more critical has been my decision to stop trying to be perfect. In the end, such a goal, the goal of perfection, is about as achievable for me as running a double marathon on a hot August day.

It’s just not going to happen.

I drank and used drugs because I was led to believe that in order to be successful, in order to fully participate in the life of this world, I needed to be perfect. And every day, when I fell short, I drank and used to console the disappointed and devastated ego within.

Even more difficult for me to endure was the fact that people around me were never going to be perfect either, no matter how much I wanted them to be. My expectations of those people in my life always led to bitter disappointment and pointed to my own failures and imperfections.

So, in isolation, away from all of the imperfection that surrounded me and found within me, I sought a way out. And in the end I was nearly successful.

I made the decision to go to treatment and seek help.

But today, as I look back, I believe it wasn’t a decision I made on my own. It was made as the result of a nudge from God and the Holy Spirit at work in my darkest days. God was at work, in spite of the fact that I was so bitter and angry and alone. God was at work even when I wanted to have nothing to do with anything spiritual or even helpful.

There is a great disconnect in the way we as the church view perfection and the way God does.

Somehow, Christianity has become the ultimate training ground for those who seek to become as perfect as possible. We have been led to believe, and many of us have taught for too long, that imperfection is not a Christian virtue. We’ve been taught the only way to live an authentic Christian life is to pick up the pieces—day after day—and try to get perfect tomorrow.

Such an obsession with perfection has made all of us sick, and it is time for us to come clean.

Throughout Scripture, we read stories of imperfect people being chosen by God. Sometimes those men and women do extraordinary things as a result of that call; sometimes they simply continue to live authentically imperfect lives, affirmed by the knowledge that God was on their side.

Indeed, Jesus had little interest and gave little time to those who viewed perfection as their goal in the life.

His view of religious and societal expectations should give us pause in an ecclesial environment so focused on doing things right all the time.

Through the years, headlines have been full of Christians who have fallen into scandal as a result of falling off the pedestal of perfection.

Each time it happens—from righteous televangelists to upright members of Congress—we are surprised and feign outrage. Yet, deep down we know we are just as imperfect and are ashamed to admit that their failures are just like our own.

Many Christians find it difficult to hear stories of the darkness of addiction like the life I experienced for many years. It is human nature to judge, and judgmentalism is often an unfortunate characteristic of the Christian life.

But in the end, I believe that it is difficult to hearabout the poor choices and failures of others because it points to the darkness in each of us, no matter how that darkness is revealed.

I’m grateful to have a different perspective about perfection today.

I find comfort in the grace I receive from sharing my story about trying to live authentically.

I’ve learned how to find the perfection in my imperfection, and I pray all Christians might find a path to embracing themselves as they do the same.

As Bells Ring, Remembering a Peacemaker

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On a recent Thursday morning the bells that hang high above the Abbey Church of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota awakened me. Normally I pay no heed to the bells, which ring at regular intervals marking the hours of the day. But on this day, at that time, they rang and kept on ringing. 70 times, to be exact.

abbeybannerIt was 8:16 a.m. on August 6 and the bells rang out to mark what had happened exactly 70 years before, the bombing by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The campus of Saint John’s University, where I am a graduate student, was quiet. Summer classes having concluded, most students and faculty have departed for a few weeks before the crisp autumnal air welcomes a new academic year.

As I began to wake, it didn’t take long for me to think of Ivan Kauffman. A year ago, Ivan and his wife Lois would likely have been at Morning Prayer in the Abbey Church on that August day. And Ivan would have been pleased to know that the Abbey was setting aside time intentionally to pray for peace.

Kauffman, an acclaimed journalist, author, peace activist and organizer died on July 15. He considered himself a Mennonite Catholic, one of the founders of Bridgefolk, an international movement of Catholics and Mennonites, which encouraged and brought about dialogue between the two churches.

When I came to Collegeville in the fall of 2013, Ivan was one of the first people I met, introduced by a friend and classmate of mine. Ivan and Lois lived nearby in a house of hospitality, the Michael Sattler House, established to welcome Mennonites and people of all Christian denominations and other faiths to campus and the area.

I was drawn to Ivan and his perspective on justice issues immediately. It was clear that he had been on the frontlines and wasn’t someone who just talked about the common good, but was bringing it about by bringing people together.

In the days following the release of the U.S. Catholic Bishop’s pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace” in 1983, Ivan was deeply moved. Raised in the Mennonite tradition, absolute nonviolence was at his core. Now a Catholic, he found a voice to his own experience as he began to write a weekly syndicated column for diocesan newspapers titled “Making Peace.”

Two years later he found himself among a large delegation organized by the National Council of Churches visiting the Soviet Union. He went along as a journalist and wrote openly of the realities that he found in a region seized by violence and despair.

In late 2012 Ivan would recollect in an essay published by America magazine that “the consensus position in the liberal community had been that the Soviet Empire was here to stay, and the most we could hope for was to get along with it.”

As we all now know, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, after dividing Germany for 28 years.

Justice, and the peace that it affords, does come, even when we don’t expect it.

In recent years, Ivan turned his focus more and more toward finding peace in the church and its many forms. He remained a devout Catholic with Mennonite roots. Because of such a unique perspective he was an irreplaceable force in the ecumenical dialogue that at once, like the fall of communism in Europe, seemed impossible.

Ivan and Lois left Collegeville this past spring, after being an integral and treasured part of the wider community for a number of years. In the days prior to their move to Philadelphia they graciously invited me to join them for a casual lunch.

We chatted about many things that afternoon. However, the bulk of our conversation centered on the many lessons to be learned from the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue of which Ivan and Lois engaged.

We agreed that there was little hope for any sense of renewal or reconciliation in Washington, as polarized and dysfunctional as it has become.

But Ivan had great hope for the possibility of renewed dialogue within Catholicism and other Christian denominations themselves. Here he often spoke of the need for our churches to model the dialogue that we seek in the world, and the peace that would follow it.

Again, writing in America, Ivan noted, “There are three options open to us, not just two—left, right and Catholic. The options offered by both the left and the right are based on ideology. The Catholic option is based on realism—the careful and patient discovery of facts and the search for policies based on both facts and on the Catholic imperative to preserve and enhance the common good. Catholic and centrist are not the same; we do not achieve the common good by splitting the difference between competing ideologies. We achieve the common good by finding and advocating solutions to the real problems of real people living in the real world.”

There is no doubt, Ivan Kaufmann’s life was full, rich and grace-filled. Much more can be said about that amazing journey and the many lives he touched. As for me, I am grateful for the inspiration and the hope found in his witness, as I continue to seek to be a part of a Christian community that works for peace inside and out.

Rest in peace among the peacemakers, good and faithful servant.

The Compassion Shutdown

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As I write this, the shutdown of the federal government is about to enter its 14th day and there is no indication that operations will resume in the near future. Much can and has been written about what has brought us to this point—political polarization, the collapse of the economy and a slow recovery, even covert and overt racism.

However, I’d like to focus on another shutdown that is taking place throughout the land, a compassion shutdown. America’s compassion shutdown must end, regardless of what Congress does or doesn’t do in the coming days.

We now live in a country where it has become acceptable to not only skirt our responsibility to aid the poor and vulnerable, but where we now vilify them for being in a state of poverty and vulnerability.

We find ourselves in a time and place where we have elected leaders that not only fail to lead in the daily operation of our government, but who outwardly and vehemently express their undying distrust of government itself.

And those Americans that have elected leaders from the radical extremes are now shocked…shocked, I say!…that these officials are governing from extremes.

The compassion shutdown began long before the present government shutdown and contributed greatly to it.

Other than planning to elect new representatives to Congress—a remedy I heartily support—there are steps we can take to reverse the compassion deficit that America is currently experiencing. Here are just a few:

  1. Don’t allow harmful discourse on poverty and vulnerable Americans to go unchallenged. Every time someone is able to charge incorrectly that the working poor among us are lazy or seeking a handout without a response, they win.
  2. Arm yourself with actual facts. There are so many lies and myths floating around about programs such as the Affordable Care Act, food stamps and unemployment insurance. These safety nets are in place to help those that are in a time of need and are law. The more we offer a factual basis for the argument to take care of the least among us, the more effective that argument will be.
  3. If you come from a place of faith, speak from that place. All of our faith traditions ask us to advocate for the poor and vulnerable among us. It isn’t simply a Christian call, but the call is certainly there for Christians to heed. All people of faith must stand up and call for an end to our compassion deficit and shutdown, speaking directly from their faith tradition.
  4. Engage in the process. This is the time to send emails to your representatives in Congress, letters to the editor of your local paper and to share your thoughts with friends and families via social media. It’s also the time to get involved in political campaigns that are forming throughout the country, working with candidates who seek to end the gridlock and get Washington working again.

It’s easy to feel like we are helpless in this mess. And it truly is a mess. But we’ve seen time and again how an engaged public can change the course of history. Engage, and be a reasonable voice in the midst of unreasonableness. I believe it’s the only way forward.