In his poem “Undressing”, Rumi writes “Learn the alchemy true human beings know: the moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given,/ the door will open./ Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade./ Joke with torment brought by the friend./ Sorrows are rags of old clothes and jackets/ that serve to cover, then are taken off. / That undressing,/and the naked body underneath/is the sweetness that comes after grief.”

Little did I know what I was getting into when, for the third or fourth time, I finally accepted “I am powerless over alcohol that my life has become unmanageable.” “I am an alcoholic and an addict. My life is unmanageable. I need help.      

“...the moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.” One door after another opened and the phrase, “more will be revealed,” became a way of life’s surprises and I looked into my life of alcohol and drugs. There was nothing glamourous about it.      Once I accepted the reality of my disease, then the learning began. The student was ready and the teacher came.

The door into my emptiness opened wide. The values I proclaimed to live by were gone and I did not see them go as I was having way too much fun. The door into my loneliness and isolation opened and I had to accept that I had pushed away many good friends and then began to believe “they were not real friends anyhow.”

And even as the door opened, one of my difficulties was in accepting the reality that I was now facing. “Embrace whatever is hurting you,” said my therapist. I knew that line. I too was a therapist. And yet, that is what was needed to bring about the healing of the torn body within.

“Joke with torment brought by the friend.” Learn to laugh. Learn to laugh at some of what you said did. Learn to laugh at your pride and prejudice. Learn to laugh at all those notions you had about yourself and your greatness. “You are one of us. You are a fellow traveler on the road to wholeness. . We all make mistakes and it’s okay. Let’s continue the with the cleanup.”

“Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, then are taken off.” I had bundles of “rags of old clothes and jackets” that served to cover my fears, my emptiness, my longings, my lowering self-image. The room that was once filled with strong values was now littered with broken promises, values that one were my honor were now shattered and broken.

And so, I asked for help, found a Power greater than myself that began to restore me to sanity and, more often than not, I call that Power, God. Good Orderly Direction. Gut Orientated Dialogue.

The direction I took was to follow the steps, become rigorously honest with myself, God and another human being. I wrote. I cried. I wrote and wrote and I laughed. I cried. This undressing was painful and, as yet, no one saw my nakedness but myself. There was too much grief for me to go naked into the world.

“The undressing / and the naked body underneath,/ is the sweetness that comes after grief.” The doors that opened to show me my past, that left naked on the floor the wrongs of an unhealthy way of life, now opened doors to inner strength, an inner awareness, that I was being healed. I had cried enough. Now it was time for gratitude. Today, I am a grateful alcoholic and drug addict. I am grateful that I am alive to tell my story, to make amends and “to seek only knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out.”

“…the sweetness [harmony; freshness, wholesomeness, lovability,] that comes after grief.” Put it another way “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half-way through. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.…. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

Séamus D.
Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Louisiana.