Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [30]
George Valliant, a Harvard psychiatrist in the twilight of his career, put it this way. He told me he used to believe that spirituality could be explained by Freudian principles, or temperament, or as a response to stressors such as poverty. He followed two groups of men from the time they were eighteen—Harvard graduates and men from inner-city Boston. After chronicling their life journeys for more than six decades, he came to a radical insight about spirituality.
“Looking at those who are spiritual, it has nothing to do with mental health, and nothing to do with good fortune,”Valliant said. “It has everything to do with recovery from brokenness.”
Of course, many people encounter the “divine” without a psychological trauma.Young people in particular seem to embrace God without the usual upheaval, which is why evangelistic groups like Young Life or Campus Crusade for Christ focus on teenagers and college students. But for those who emerged from youth untouched by the spiritual, I believe brokenness lies at the root of conversion.
The trouble with studying spiritual experiences is that they’re sly little devils. You never know when one is going to sneak up on you. You can’t schedule one for next Tuesday afternoon at two-thirty and then keep a log of all the emotional and neurological blips that occur in the days before your encounter with God. This research is by necessity an anecdotal and not a statistical affair.
Therefore, I was limited to post facto anecdotes. The question was, where do you locate those stories? Well, if you want to find bees, search for a honeycomb. If you want to find a cluster of ordinary Americans who have enjoyed dramatic, sometimes physical encounters with God, visit your local church or synagogue. But walk past the minister or rabbi studying in his office. Ignore the faithful singing in choir practice. Make your way down to the basement at seven-thirty on Wednesday night. This is where the transformed people are, the people who have been broken and repaired through spiritual experience. This is where the addicts meet.
The Sudden Alignment
Just as I arrived at Alicia’s rambling ranch house on the outskirts of Albuquerque, a minivan pulled into the driveway. Before the wheels had fully stopped, two curly-haired blond boys, who looked to be ten and twelve, leaped out. A trim man in baseball hat, black T-shirt, and jeans emerged from the driver’s side. But I was watching the woman who stepped out from the passenger’s side, who waved at me and strode over with purpose. For the domestic normalcy I had just witnessed was built on an entirely shattered spirit.
Alicia grew up in a safe, middle-class world, in an intact family that lived in the same house for her entire childhood. There were no obvious dysfunctions, until Alicia became an alcoholic. She was nine years old.
“I remember after everybody went to bed one night,” she recalled. “I went into the living room to look at the glasses and the crystal, and it was all so pretty. And I picked out this bottle that had blackberries on it, and I drank it. And I drank it until I passed out. I drank alcoholically from the very first time. But I also remember that feeling of release, that warmth, and that complete feeling of being okay for the first time.”
Alicia has little memory of the ensuing years, a testament to the analgesic quality of alcohol, until she dropped out of school in ninth grade. At fifteen, Alicia moved out of her family’s house to an apartment, sharing the $235 rent with other high school dropouts “who wanted to drink like I did.”
Soon, however, Alicia was outdrinking her friends, and one by one, they dropped away. Then she met Luke (not his real name), another teenager who was able to keep up, and their mutual addiction bound them together. Eventually they married, and the next decade floated by on a sea of scotch.
“It was just one big long drunk,” she said.“Round the clock. I didn’t have any days of sobriety