Читать книгу Hineni: My Walk Into Beautiful Life - S. Joshua Mendel - Страница 8

We have a slogan in Twelve Step programs: "Service saves." I agree—it saved me!

I have done a great deal of service in my life. But the most important service in which I gave but received far more was the Cleveland Free Clinic Hotline.

For those not in the know, hotlines were an important source of accurate information and anonymous support in those ancient days before the internet and cell phones. The "Together Hotline" operated eight hours weeknights and twelve hours during the weekends. Two trained people would team up to field calls and offer each other support. The "hot" part of hotline was that you never knew who would call, when, or about what. The topics included health (usually sexual health) issues, family and relationship issues, sexual orientation and gender identity issues, substance abuse, and psychological problems. I even fielded calls on business and spiritual issues. It was rare but not infrequent that callers were considering suicide, although thankfully, this was usually a plea of desperation; a realization by the caller that s/he needed to seek help.

Like many of the most important contributors to my life, there was no rational, thought-out-before-the-fact reason why I ended up on the hotline. I worked at the Free Clinic as their first accounting person. Because I might answer the phone, I needed training on how to handle a possible suicide—you don't put a suicide on hold! So I took that hotline training class and just stayed on. Why? I don't know!

Between 1982 and 1995, I worked four hours at least once a week, listening to and counseling I estimate a minimum of two thousand people; none of whom I met prior or face-to-face. With all due respect to the training and the excellent hotline coordinator, I quickly realized that the success of a call did not depend upon what I was taught but what I called "The Connection". Today I would say that The Connection was a Trinity—the caller, me, and what I called at the time "a Third Party". My job was to match the tone, pace, and vocabulary level of the caller, to establish trust. Once The Connection was made, I would let go as a presence on the call. And when I let go, that was when the miracles occurred! It quickly came to me—how and from where I did not know—that I understood what was going on (or not going on) for the caller. I knew what was being said and more important, not being said. And I knew what I needed to offer the caller and how to do so.

Think about it—this whole situation was miraculous! Here I was: a young, shut down, self-hating, neurotic adult child of an addict; a nominally Jewish, closeted agnostic/atheist, unwittingly acting as The Voice for God. And a very successful one too! I rarely failed to handle even the most difficult calls and callers. I was so good at hotline that I was part of the teaching team for new recruits for over ten years.

Being one of the few Jewish workers, I took the shifts on the Christian holidays. The hotline coordinator and I laughed at my callers' statements that I gave them back the Spirit of Christmas, or that I had shown them the true meaning of Easter! (Note: This was about a decade before I explored Christianity.)

There are many calls I can remember in which the caller was helped, although I state again that it was not I who did the helping. I realized that the caller's problems were not mine to take or to solve. I merely needed to be present to complete The Connection. I was just a catalyst for the caller to experience Grace in that Third Party.

Of all the calls I took, this is the one that best demonstrates the truth of what I just wrote. It still gives me chills and brings tears to relate.

The caller had been a drug addict who stopped using by becoming a devout, orthodox Jew. Orthodox males of age are required to lay phylacteries (boxes that contain Hebrew prayers) on their head and left arm before prayers. During the period of his addiction, this man had tattooed his arms. Tattoos are a sin in the Bible and so this man was ashamed to "bare his arm".

We established a trusting connection but I apparently had trouble in letting go. I remember striking out for like 20 minutes, listening to him and saying nice things that I could tell touched this man's head but not where his pain resided. . . his heart. I was beginning to feel irritation and fear that I was failing. All of a sudden, these words came to my mind:

Me: "If you had been in an accident or had a disease that left you with scars as a result, would you be ashamed to bare your arm?"

"Of course not," he replied.

Me(?): "Well, you have had a spiritual disease, and these are your scars!"

We both knew that was the answer. Much of the rest of that call was both of us crying together in awe and joy. To this day, I do not know where that question came from. And I am astounded in the way it came to me.

I asked it in perfect, Talmudic format!

* * * *

The hotline gave me a forum to be present with people when I was afraid of them and myself. It gave me a way to be useful when I thought I was useless. But most important to the course of my life was that my callers taught me lessons about life and death; living and dying.

As a hotline worker, I heard a lot of grief and I learned there were two kinds. I had ample examples from callers where grief was anticipatory, preparatory, or a statement of deep appreciation and gratitude for what was once cherished and now lost. That grief was an opening to life and therefore, an opening to Grace. But with most of my callers, I heard people who clung to their grief for unhealthy motives. They didn't want to accept the impermanence and lack of security in life. They didn't want to face their present. They didn't want to face their truth because to live it would exact a price. In some calls, I could hear and even feel a hardening of the heart that can make change—and Grace—impossible to experience.

I call the former "clean grief"; the latter, "dirty grief". Clean grief gets you somewhere. Dirty grief just keeps you stuck. . . or drags you down.¹²

Almost all my callers had a clear solution to their problem. But here was the challenge: most of my callers wanted to sidestep their grief in order to avoid that solution.

These callers refused to believe that their life had just changed in an irreversible way. They would deny that a relationship was over. They kept a dead relationship—even a dead person—alive, by staying sad or angry at him/her. The caller kept himself/herself stuck in sadness, anger, shame, or guilt around his/her part in that change; that loss. They would deny their problems, avoid their truth… refuse to accept their sexual orientation. And to avoid the grief, these callers turned to addiction— including drinking, drugging, and screwing around. Suicides were the classic case of people denying reality, grief, and the need to change. . . to the point that they had painted themselves into an emotional corner with death as the only way out that they could see.

After speaking with over 2,000 callers, I honed my ability to reflect back the reality of his/her situation to even the most resistant caller. I like to think that more often than not, I could help a caller accept the need for clean grief during the call. I actually got an award during a volunteer banquet for this. So how could I be any less firm or successful with myself?

Eventually, the advice I gave my clients broke through my own denial. I would apply much of my advice to others in my own life: counseling, Al-Anon, coming out.

So the giver received and the healer was healed. Without my hotline experience, it would have been years (if ever) that I would seek and accept the help that allowed me to find myself. . . to prepare myself for Grace.