Manning Monday

An old, broken man named Phil with three teeth in his mouth lived as a drunk on the streets for twenty years. Now he walks to the podium in a packed and quiet room. It's his first birthday. Nobody thought he'd make it. he starts to speak about once being lost and now being found. He suddenly chokes up and turns his back to the audience. A standing ovation starts. Men and women storm the podium. They kiss Phil on the lips, cheek, neck, and shoulders.

In his delightful little book Off the Sauce, Lewis Meyer writes:

If one could use only one word to describe the feeling of an AA meeting, it would be love. Love is the only word I know that encompasses friendship, understanding, sympathy, empathy, kindness, honesty, pride, and humility. The kind of love I mean is the kind Jesus had in mind when he said, "Love one another." Shoes might be shed, attention might be diverted, but there's a closeness between AAs, a closeness you seldom find anywhere. It is the only place I know where status means nothing. Nobody fools anybody else. Everyone is here because he or she made a slobbering mess of his or her life and is trying to put the pieces back together again. First things are first here... I have attended thousands of church meetings, lodge meetings, brotherhood meetings -- yet I have never found the kind of love I find at AA. For one small hour the high and the mighty descend and the lowly rise. The leveling that results is what people mean when they use the word brotherhood.

(The Importance of Being Foolish, page 101-102)

So, I think maybe Lewis Meyer hasn't been to the right churches. And I wonder what his family is like. Cause even if I don't find that kind of leveling in church (though I mostly do in the churches that I've been involved in), I certainly experience it in my family - yeah, not completely either (but AA ain't perfect, either), but it's there.

On the other hand, he's completely right. While love is supposed to be the defining characteristic of what makes us Christ followers, sometimes we fall hopelessly short. I think of the conversation I just had about another church and their leadership and how critical we were...yet, we're one body, right? Earlier in this chapter Manning talks about a time he an others at the monastery were griping about a whole host of things - and an old monk/priest/something sat there silently weeping and finally he said, simply, "They don't understand." Echoing Jesus' words from the cross. For Manning those words turn criticism into compassion.

Let love be the characteristic which defines us.

Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart. (Proverbs 3:3)

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' (Matthew 22:37-39)

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature ; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13)