God's love is abundant enough for all people

By Don Addison
FROM HEART TO HEART for The Register-Guard
August 5, 2006

In a quiet Eugene neighborhood not far from the Willamette River and the rugged rock face of Judkin's Point, my growing-up years centered around escaping the sadness of home life with an abusive alcoholic dad.

First by avoiding him, then closing off to others, and eventually withdrawing into a fantasy land of daydreaming, music, books, radio and television, my goal each day was to become somebody else, doing something else, somewhere else. Then the sexual and drug revolutions hit, and as I jumped into the chaos, I lost myself in the process.

Help became available through various approaches, and eventually I found a 12-step program that worked for me. It still works for me, with 18 years clean to date. I don't speak for any 12-step program, so my opinion is from my own experience. Such fellowships are often mislabeled "self-help." I would alter that to "higher-powered help." Our Creator, by whatever name one chooses to call "him, her or it," is big enough, and generous enough, to help me when I don't know how to help myself.

By getting clean, I discovered that my real life was in maintaining a drug-free lifestyle by helping others, and because no specific religion is advocated by any 12-Step fellowship, I chose the Bahá’í Faith as the most universal and accepting and, therefore, most fitting for me.

With some remarkable parallels to recovery principles, the writings of Bahá’u’lláh provide me with the promise that not only is peace attainable within my innermost being, but also that peace among the world's peoples is inevitable. Both goals require carrying out actions such as respecting the nobility of all peoples - including one's self.

Just as I have witnessed my life slowly let go of the despair of isolation while being active daily in various recovery communities, the worldwide Bahá’í community exhibits how barriers between peoples can come down. Very deeply proud to be Native American, I also feel at home with members of other communities because Bahá’u’lláh came to bring humanity - with all our different cultures, beliefs and religions - together.

In this sense, addiction to me seems to be a spiritual disease - a disease of isolation: Bahá’ís believe spiritual problems require spiritual, as well as practical, solutions.

There is more to staying clean than just not using. The beautiful prayers of Bahá’u’lláh lift my spirit and bring me the inner spiritual peace I believe the world desperately needs. The Bahá’í Faith does not claim to be the "only true religion," just the latest.

As I began to let in the healing of my spirit by adopting a drug-free lifestyle, I began to feel at one with people of different faiths. And that feels good because as a Bahá’í, I am never limited - nor am I isolated.

Abdu'l-Baha, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, once said, "Of all pilgrimages, the greatest is to relieve the sorrow-laden heart." I think my God, today, is generous enough to bring everyone together because he loves us all equally.

Dr. Don Addison is a member of the Choctaw Tribe and is active in the Eugene Bahá’í community. This column is coordinated by Two Rivers Interfaith Ministries, a network of more than 35 religious and spiritual traditions in the Eugene-Springfield area. For more information, call 344-5693 or visit www.interfaitheugene.org.