The God Slot: Hitting rock bottom

By Fr Declan Boland

This reflection is really a follow-on from the last column which invited us to give up the need to be perfect and to learn to be at ease with our flaws and imperfections.

We do indeed hold the treasure of God deep within but we must never forget that we are earthenware jars as the scriptures tell us, or a better translation “common clay pots,” that hold this treasure. So welcome, dear friends to the common clay pot society! Membership is free and once you are born you are automatically included.

So we have gold within, the hidden treasure, the indwelling God. It is a pure gift and can only be received, not earned or achieved. It cannot be found at the top of some mythical ladder of perfection – which is often a spiritual climbing away from who we truly are. No, the gold is discovered and comes after we have collapsed again and again into the true honest and frail selves we find at the bottom of the ladder. The bottom is the place of discovery; it is where we come to our senses.

Interestingly that is the phrase used by the Prodigal Son when he hit rock bottom: “He came to his senses.” He could suddenly see that he’d been looking for the answers in the wrong places. He had been walking away from himself, and from his own treasure hidden deep within. He certainly would have felt very lost, beaten up by life, and more than a little bit humiliated, yet suddenly there was great hope and opportunity.

Rock bottom is a very apt description of the place at the bottom of the ladder. You can’t fall further than the hitting of that rock. But there is something else too. A rock is solid ground. A rock will not collapse. A rock is a place on which you can actually build. The psalmist tells us, “O Lord be a rock of refuge for me, a mighty stronghold, a God in whom I trust.”

I believe that the rock on which we fall is sacred ground because it opens us up to God’s love in a way that our climbing, our successes, our achievements cannot. The reason this happens is quite simple. When we have fallen, cracked open, and have everything stripped away, we momentarily see ourselves as we truly are, without all the layers, the grades, the achievements, the badges of honour, and all the many hats we wear. In this place status means nothing. We become naked, vulnerable, even ashamed, and at first it feels like death. In this place we can no longer rely on all the outward layers for they are shown up for what they are, precisely nothing. The amazing thing is that, though we feel as if we have died, we are now ironically more likely to hear the voice of the Divine within, inviting us to surrender to his power and his mercy.

The hitting of rock bottom is not an automatic reconnection to the Source within our true selves, but it can be. It can potentially be the most precious gift we could imagine, and therefore the bottom of the ladder is the place where we ought to stay, or at least visit.

It’s in doing it wrong – making mistakes, being rejected and experiencing pain – that we are led to total reliance on God. This is why Christianity has as it’s central symbol of transformation, a naked bleeding man, who is the picture of failing, losing and dying, yet who is really winning – and revealing the sacred pattern to those who will join him there. Everyone wins because, if we’re honest the only thing we all have in common is weakness and powerlessness in at least one – thought usually many – areas of our lives. There’s a broken wounded part inside all of us.

People in AA (Alcoholic’s Anonymous) know all about this powerlessness which is hidden power. They are brought to a point in their addictions and struggles to a place where they have to depend on a Higher Power. It is both humiliating and liberating. All self-reliance and self-deception has been kicked out from under them. They have been to hell and back literally, yet they are shining stars. The point of personal powerlessness (rock bottom) was the place where they began their recovery. This is a place where we all have to come and yet sadly organised religion fails to bring people there, often with false notions of perfection and a failure to adequately stress the utter need we have for the grace and mercy of God.

To sum up: Know that the real you is loved and held and valued by a God whom you will find down there in the depths, often when you have hit rock bottom, who will always be your strength and will never desert you.