The NewesLetter Vol 28 no. 2 ; June, 2024
[For the fully formatted version — complete with Spirituality Shoppe updates and pictures — download the PDF version]
Reflections: Monastery as Recovery
What does it take for a person to overcome chronic and severe substance abuse, especially when this abuse is accompanied by a traumatic past, and little family or economic support? I have been pondering this question a great deal lately. It is easy to proclaim, “they just need Jesus”; indeed, I have known a few who experienced miraculous deliverance. But they are few. Thus, just as I believe that appropriate spiritual disciplines facilitate godly transformation, so I also believe that appropriate structures, practices and relationships facilitate recovery. But what relationships and practices? Structured how and where? Needless to say, it’s complicated. My aim here is not to offer the latest research on substance abuse and mental health therapy. I just want to share what I have noticed about the mix of elements that foster healthy recovery.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a community of care. Alcoholics Anonomous has emphasized this for nearly a century. I think of the man here who overdosed and would have died had he not been staying in an encampment with others who were watching over him. Or the woman who needed to leave that encampment in order to be away from temptation and was welcomed by Christians into backyard trailers. One friend takes another friend night after night to recovery meetings because they know what it is like to be alone at this stage of things. Love is an investment. An investment a community makes because they must, even when the returns on the investment are uncertain.
Yet the community cares, not merely with empathetic acceptance (though this is important), but also an aim of formation. I love you for who you are, but I also want to see you change, partly because I know that you, too—when you are at your best—want change. So sometimes I get tough. Of course this gets messy at times, but the point is that care and formation, blended in the right proportion, are a valuable asset towards healthy recovery.
In practice this means that a community needs a certain degree of oversight. Not too much, but not too little either. I think of the encampment a local church here is hosting. Residents of this small “tent village” are interviewed by members of the church and the unhoused group before they are permitted to stay. Guests are allowed, but within limits. People can unpack their bags, but they can’t create trash piles. They have to clean up after their dogs. I know tiny home villages in other cities where the rules are so restrictive that the site borders on incarceration. But I have also seen “self-governing” communities that have collapsed for lack of oversight.
I consider it valuable when people have an opportunity to both receive and give. Again and again I encounter unhoused guests at our facility sweeping the sidewalk, shoveling snow, washing dishes. “I want to give back,” they say. I have watched unhoused friends give up their tent for someone else in greater need. Sure, there are those who feel “entitled” and who gripe when they don’t receive just what they want. But I think that giving promotes recovery.
And when all of this achieves a degree of stability, then we are really getting somewhere. When the necessity of moving from site to site (due to police pressure, internal conflicts, or economic vulnerability) is addressed, people settle down and actually have, in time, the opportunity to imagine what a better life might look like. People begin to think about sobriety, contact their families, and apply for jobs. Stability and recovery go hand in hand.
Along with stability, I would like to argue for the value of rhythm. Yes, “working the program” of self-care. But along with this there is a place for times of learning, times of prayer, times of good hard work. Many recovery centers intentionally make use of a blend of activities as a means of fostering recovery itself. Recovery is a process of re-grounding ourselves: in our communities, in our bodies, in our location, and in our minds.
But don’t get me wrong. I would never want to say that the goal of “recovery” for my unhoused friends is a successful pursuit of the middle-class American dream. Indeed, if you know Cheri and I well enough, you know that our own pursuit has been toward a distinctly alternative vision of the meaning of “work” and rhythm. And I know many—housed and unhoused—who share a similar alternative vision. Again, it’s complicated. Cheri and I made our choices out of a context of economic and educational privilege. For others, a step of upward mobility may be the most important step of their lives. The point I am making here is that recovery is not simply a matter of personal improvement, but also an appropriate relationship with the good-yet-fallen structures of this world. Our own recovery is inextricably caught up in the recovery of society.
You see, when we ask the question of what we are being recovered into, we begin to discover that “recovery” is not merely a matter of substance use cessation, but rather a process of, to use the apostle Paul’s language, “putting off,” and “putting on” (Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:8–13). Recovery is not simply a matter of transformation from something, but also to something. Ultimately it encompases a vision of the transformation of person, society, and more. Recovery programs like AA, Synanon and others have known this for a long time. Of course, here we get into the realm of values, and even Christian values. And though I would not argue that holding to Christian values is necessary for substance abuse recovery, I would maintain that a vision of recovery points toward—and can be enhanced by, and even profitably grounded in—a Christian worldview.
Finally I want to offer one more comment. I have seen well-designed recovery programs, complete with caring staff, beautiful facilities, and access to a wealth of supportive resources. Therein lies the problem: wealth. These programs are expensive. Where can we find such recovery programs that are affordable to unhoused folks?
That is the question. Where can we find such a combination of recovery-nurturing elements? A community of care and formation; of oversight; where residents can both receive and give; a place of rhythm and stability; a model of appropriate alternatives to society; which is rooted in Christian values; and on top of it all, is affordable?
My answer, as you might have guessed by the title of these reflections, is simply – a monastery. I could go on an on about this (see my website on Old Monastic Wisdom for New Monastic People). Let me just summarize.
Monasteries are meant to be communities of care and formation. The Rules of Sts. Basil and Augustine are explicit about their aim of monastic life as a vehicle for people to learn to live the great commandments of loving God and one another. The Prologue to the Rule of Benedict identifies their community as a “school for the Lord’s service.”
Nuns and monks—the residents of monasteries—both receive and give. They live together, eat together, and work together for the benefit of the whole. There is an entire literature in the monastic world about how to welcome the weaknesses of one another. When a monastery is at its best, we confess our faults, offer our strengths, and find our identities as individuals, but also as individuals within something larger.
This “something larger” is expressed in the [Christian] values and the structures which govern the oversight of the community. The monastic world often speaks here about a Rule of Life. Anabaptist communities often speak of an Ordnung. Rules, covenants and the like mediate between values and practice. They articulate how lines of oversight will be embodied. These foundational statements also often articulate their own particular way of seeing—and living—an alternative relationship with the larger society. And as they get worked out in particular groups (through customaries and constitutions), these broader values are revised to fit the conditions of each group.
Rules of Life give rise to ways of life: stability, common rhythms and practices, and a lifetime of mutually supportive relationships designed to foster the discipleship of the members and the witness of the gospel in the world. This is recovery: as narrow and as broad as it gets. And, by the way, monasteries are affordable 🙂 They only cost whatever you have.
There is one more thing I must say in order for me to make my point here. Monasteries—or Anabaptist communities or Christian recovery communes or whatever—are not simply “the past.” They are also “present” and “future.” I know groups alive today who—simply because they live in community—have the social and emotional bandwidth to absorb a few unhoused individuals into their homes. Some welcome addicted and mentally ill persons into memership. I know groups who identify relationship with an unhoused or recovery population as part of their identity. I am seeing people re-vision the past for the sake of the future. I am seeing people experiment into the future with an eye turned toward the past. Recovery of persons, society, and history. Yes, I am convinced. Monasticism can be a powerful vehicle of recovery.
This was the dream I presented to the pastor who is hosting folks on church property. And now I am presenting it to you. I wait to see what he—and you—will do.
May the love of the Father Son, and Holy Spirit be with you all.
By God’s Grace,
Evan B. Howard