NOTE: Randy did not write down what he was going to say in his Homilies about the Beatitudes and the 12 steps of AA, so he submitted this short story he has written about the same subject. There is also a link to the mind map which connects the 12 steps to the coresponding Beatitude.
Matthew 5:1-12
February 24 and March 3, 2019
Randy Plett
Sermon on the Hill
Confession
Before anyone could say “fertilized”, my addiction began. That’s right, I was still a single cell. Many cells later, I learned that I was a “zygote”- a useful bit of lexis, if you want to win 79 points on a triple word score while playing scrabble with your first wife.
During my short life as a zygote, I was a simple import/export operation: import food and chromosomes; export waste. Thanks to my semi-permeable membrane, I was able to prevent unwanted incursions or excursions with relative ease. As an infant, I quickly learned how to express these primary functions: “mine” and “no”. Pretty much, everything has been “mine” and “no” ever since. Things I want, things I don’t want.
I don’t stop. Mine, no, mine, no… I just go on and on. So here I am, at on-and-on-anon. Seriously, here I am, at Selfaholics Anonymous.
Like every Selfaholic, I’ve had my share of threshold moments—times when I’m sick to death of being me. I wake up grumpy and guilty after an all-night ego binge; maybe I can’t sleep because of worry or self-pity or resentment or grief or anger—“no”, “no”. Managing this export business is more complicated than it was as a zygote, so I just weep and gnash my teeth, as they say. Alternately, I am up late fighting with my future ex, trying to force her to give me the love that I don’t have for myself, or worrying about money, or shopping for lust on-line—mine, mine… The import business has been compulsive since time out of mind.
One morning, I am at another of these intolerable threshold moments—you know the kind I mean—the kind in all of our lives when we wake up grumpy and check our Facebook while on the toilet, and our ex-girlfriend’s new ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend has posted a YouTube clip from a guy named John, and so we click on it. That kind of moment.
Step Zero: Repent,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
So I click. This guy, French maybe, ‘cause the caption reads Jean Baptiste. He looks earnest. He’s wearing a frizzy sweater. It looks seriously itchy. His pupils are too big, like an epileptic, psychopath, or saint. He says, “Repent”, and then his pupils get even bigger, like Gandalf’s when he says “Sauron is coming”, except this guy says, “the kingdom of heaven is coming”.
I haven’t slept well, so I’m ripe for the cuckoos. I figure yeah, it is time to repent. I will CHANGE MY LIFE! I’ll become male, agnostic version of Mother Teresa, all altruism and wisdom and well-being.
This is three months after my last break up, you see, which might have contributed to this
Grand Resolution after only 8-second, 8-word sermon from a mentally ill stranger.
(A little background- I thought my ex and I had been getting on pretty well, and then she said ‘I love you, but you don’t, and I can’t love you for both of us’. I wasn’t quite sober, so this confused me, and all I could think of to say was, ‘you can’t, or you won’t?’. That was the last time we spoke.)
So I close Facebook and attend to my hygiene, then I kneel in front of the toilet and look upwards, through the water-stained drywall, into the ineffable heavens, the way haloed figures do in Orthodox icons.
Later, at work, I watch the video clip at my cubicle, and then go to the bathroom to kneel in a stall and repent. The floor is sticky, but I do it anyway. That’s how committed I am to repentance.
Journal
It’s been a week since I first saw that John clip. Repented six times today. It doesn’t feel as good as it did at first. Maybe repentance is like smoking pot- you can never recapture that first buzz. Okay, like whatsername said, I need to take this more seriously.
Journal
Three weeks later. The more I repent the more I screw up. My brain stutters No and Mine all the time. Was it this bad before, or do I just notice the anger and greed now? I’ve been repenting more, taking it more seriously, but it isn’t working. I feel like a bug in a web, and every time I repent I get more and more stuck.
Journal
Bad day today. My supervisor again. Barely acknowledged me in the hall, then she got pissy at me ‘cause I hadn’t read her e-mails before the meeting. Can’t stop thinking about it.
It’s becoming clear that I’m not even Mother Teresa’s toenail. Repentance was a tease for a cure that doesn’t exist.
After work I pass the beer store on my way home and my evolved, many-celled brain says Mine! so I pull into the lot. An idiot honks at me ‘cause I forgot to signal, and my brain says No! so I give him the finger. When I get home I pop open a can, check my email, thinking I’m probably gonna end up looking at stuff on the internet that my ex would hate, but that’s why she’s my ex isn’t it? and I toast the monitor with my can.
My ex’s new ex’s ex has updated her status on Facebook. I click and she has posted something different. The dirty stuff can wait. I click. It’s not the same guy in the itchy looking sweater. This one is standing on a hill. He says the exact same thing: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near”. Then he jerks his head, as if to say come, I’ll show you, and he walks up the hill and then the clip fades out. I sit there and finish my beer and then I have another one and I feel bloated but sober. I click again, wondering what bugs me about this new guy. Then I realize it’s his way of saying “kingdom of heaven”; he says it like it might not be a bad thing. ‘Which annoys me. Like when my ex said that she loved me; makes me want to tell her to stop bragging. And what does he mean by jerking his head like that, as if I could squeeze into cyber space and follow him up the hill?
I shut down the computer and go to bed early, feeling fat and sober and annoyed.
Step 1: Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Journal
This morning my supervisor said good morning to me and I just walked by. Childish as hell, but it felt good.
Something has been bugging me all day, as if I’m trying to remember something, but I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be trying to remember.
Three days later, I’m taking a bus from work to a garage to pick up my car. I’m holding my cell phone and watching that new video clip again, wondering what is so familiar about it, and then it clicks. It’s the hill. It’s in Winnipeg, in the west end. Garbage Hill. Kind of a pretty hill, considering it’s a carpet of grass over a mountain of disposable diapers and beer cans. I feel gratified for a moment, having scratched an itch, but then, knowing that this guy is right here in Winnipeg, telling people to repent, I feel indignant. Because I have repented, and it does no good. I don’t have it in me to become anyone other than the Selfaholic I am. Telling someone like me to repent is like saying “hands up” to a snake. It’s just mean.
So I decide to go there, to Garbage Hill, and tell whatsisname to shove his mythical kingdom of heaven up his penitent ass. I know he won’t be there, but it’s a symbolic gesture. I’ll go to the hill and declare myself to the elements: Hi, I’m a Selfaholic; I’ll never be anything else; repentance is futile.
After I pick up my car I drive west down Sargent, then turn north on Wall, past a hardware store and some empty industrial lots. I’m looking for a place to park when I see that there is a small crowd at the foot of the hill. There is nowhere to park. I’m way up on Notre Dame before I find a place. I walk back, which is okay, ‘cause it’s a mild, overcast, late summer afternoon.
The people are still there, milling around. They look listless. They seem to be waiting for something. A handful of people have left the crowd and they are walking up the side of the hill. Someone is standing at the top of the hill. I recognize him. The sky is the dull color of aluminum siding, so I don’t have to squint. It is him, the same guy. This is very unlikely timing, but I don’t give it much thought, ‘cause I’m suddenly angry. I stalk up the hill.
Garbage Hill is just big enough to be an exciting toboggan ride in the winter, if you’re eight. But I’m out of shape, so I’m panting when I get to the top. Mr. Kingdom of heaven is there, peddling his snake oil. He seems perfectly dressed for Garbage Hill- in Salvation Army cast offs. He’s wearing threadbare polyester pants and an unmatched t-shirt. The shirt says Brandon Wheat Kings, in faded and missing letters. There’s a little collapsible table there with free coffee. His disciples, or whatever they are, seem restless. Some are smoking. It reminds me of twelve step meetings you see in movies. So I go right up to him and say, “I saw you online, telling me to repent. Said something about the Kingdom of God. You probably mean well by this, but that doesn’t make it good. Preachers like you don’t understand…” The guy in the Sally Ann duds is leaning forward. He seems genuinely interested in what I have to say, so it’s hard to stay mad. “…that you’re just setting people up for failure. People can’t change themselves, so your well-meaning little motivational blurbs just makes them more miserable. We don’t need people like you to say repent. You make everything worse. The disease just gets worse.” By the end of my rant I’m not mad at all, just depressed. This is what happens when selfish single cells multiply. Low pain tolerance. Sally Ann is smiling at me like I caught on to his joke. He looks at the others. Then he points at me, and says,
“Poor in Spirit here has got it. He’s absolutely right, repentance only makes your addictions worse. The kingdom of heaven is for him.”
What the hell? “My name isn’t Poor in Spirit”, I say, “what my name is is anonymous.”
“I’d rather call you Poor in Spirit. ‘Cause that’s what you are, you just said so. You said you don’t have what it takes to cure yourself.” I hadn’t said that exactly, or I had, but that was weeks ago, in my journal. “You have exactly the kind of powerlessness you need to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“I do?”
As if on cue, half the men and women drop their cigarettes and step on them. Sally-Ann laughs and says, “Go ahead, this is Garbage Hill, so go ahead and drop your butts.” Then he laughs again and says, “I’m dropping mine”, and he sits down. And he starts to teach us who we are. According to him we are, all of us, very lucky.
After a few minutes it’s time to introduce ourselves. One guy stands up and says, “Hi, my name is Poor in Spirit and I’m a Selfaholic”. When it’s my turn I say it too, and it doesn’t feel grand or saintly, just true.
Step 2: Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
When I leave my first meeting on Garbage Hill I am, at first, elated. I’m poor in spirit. I can’t cure myself. But this doesn't mean that someone else can’t cure me.
In the next few days a different reaction begins to develop. Why did I waste so much time, caused so much hurt? I’m still as dumb as a zygote. So much meanness and sadness in this world that I’ve done nothing to alleviate; in fact, I’ve added to it.
When I go back to my next meeting on Garbage Hill, my heart feels like a heavy sponge. From the crown of the hill, the crowd below look like farm animals who lost their farmer. Harassed by the damned congenital voices— Mine, No… Just like me.
“Hey, Poor in Spirit” Sally Ann says, so I snap out of it. “I see you’re making progress.” So much for his mind reading. But then he says, “No, it is progress. You are mourning! That’s the second step into the kingdom of heaven, where you will be comforted.” He gestures at the others with us on the hill. “We all hurt,” he says. “Name your pain, son.”
So I do, and the others do too. That’s what we do at meetings. We name our pain. Blessed are those who mourn.
Step 3: Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Journal
Now I’m really pissed off. How can he expect me to keep on naming my pain? I’ve avoided this stuff since the zygote days. If this is blessed…
Journal
‘Still naming my pain. I’m going to tell Sally Anne I’m done. At the next meeting. I’ll tell him I’ve been mourning for over a month now, and where’s the comfort you promised? I’m just full of regret. I don’t think I can do this anymore. How can he expect a Selfaholic to bear this?
“…You said so on the first meeting. I don’t have it in me to change.” This isn’t my journal anymore. I’m on the hill, and it’s my turn to speak. The sky is overcast and the breeze is icy. The air stinks, like the garbage under the hill is leaking it’s rot out of the gopher holes. “Sure, it feels good to get together like this and say we’re all poor in spirit and listen to each other mourn, but I don’t know how much mourning I can take. It seems easier to just go back to the other pain, the anger and greed.”
Again, Sally Ann is nodding, smiling, pointing his finger at me and looking at the others. It seems every time I realize what a loser I am this guy thinks I’m a genius. I don’t know how to feel about that. “You got it again”, he says, “Blessed are you, Meek.”
“Uh, I’m Mr. Mourning, remember?”, I say.
“I’ll call you Meek now. You’ve taken the third step toward the kingdom of heaven, so you get a new name. I think I need a new name too.” He’s right. I decide to stop calling him Sally Ann and to call him Teacher. He goes on. “You said it’s hopeless. You can’t become a new person. And so, look at all this,” he waves his arms to indicate the sky and the city and the horizons, “it’s all yours.”
“Thanks.” I say. What do you say to someone who gives you a planet? “But I haven’t done anything.”
“Of course not. What could you do? You’re hardly any good at all! Just the person I am looking for.” I love this guy!
Now that I’m Meek, the teacher tells me I’m ready for some homework. He gives me a prayer: “You are God, not me”. Pray this often the next few days, he says. To who? I say. To the higher power. He says. Who’s that? I say. You wouldn’t understand, he says. Which is a good point. So I promise to do the homework.
Step 4: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
for they will be filled.
The sun was setting as I walked back to my car after the meeting. A long, dim yellow kind of winter sunset. I stare at it like I just got out of prison and haven’t seen a sunset in thirty years.
I think back to before I first saw John Baptise on Facebook. If someone had told me back then that I’d inherit the earth I would have rubbed my hands together like a comic book villain. “I’ll be a god! Ha ha ha!” Now, I just take the joke for what it is, and get started with my homework. “You are God, not me”.
Through the next week, I surrender my will to God every moment I can. Such a bloody relief, not having to be God anymore. I say it while I’m driving, shopping, when I’m standing at the urinal. Believe it or not, I say it. The sticky web is letting loose, and it’s a relief. As if the real me, the one the teacher talks about, is stretching. I think it was always there, a prototype, inside the zygote, like a Russian doll. And it has a new vocabulary: Yours, Yes.
Yours and Yes. I want more of it. It’s good. I am hungry and thirsty, for the first time ever, for a character as selfless as the Teacher; a hunger and thirst for the well-being of others.
The next meeting on the hill the teacher makes a joke. He calls his teaching a sermon. I’ve heard a few sermons, and this isn’t one, this is just good news on top of good news. All he does is bless. These meetings are no more sermons than Garbage Hill is a mountain. His sermon today? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Again, that sense that he can read minds, or that he knows the nature of things so well that it seems that way. He looks right at me and says, “You have taken the forth step into the kingdom”. But it doesn’t seem like I’ve taken any steps at all, except for the first one. The moment I introduced myself at that first meeting, ‘hi, I’m poor in spirit’, and got blessed for it, I was off.
Step 5: Blessed are the merciful
for they will be shown mercy.
Journal.
‘Gave twenty bucks to a panhandler today and went without dinner. Why him and not me? Doing some volunteer work at Siloam too. This Teacher has done more for me than I could ever have asked or imagined. He’s never once asked me to do anything, but I can’t just keep getting filled up with blessings. Eventually something they are going to spill out.
Journal.
My supervisor seemed really stressed today. ‘Sent her a short email, told her she’s doing a great job.
Journal.
Brought extra coffee to the hilltop meeting today. The crowds down there seemed really thirsty. At the meeting, the teacher said “Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy”. I’m glad he finally gave himself a blessing. Meetings can’t all be about me, can they?
… 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1, 2…
For the next couple of weeks, I feel better than I’ve felt in years. Thanks to the Teacher. I’m thinking maybe I’ll be a teacher too one day.
At work, there’s a spring in my step down the hall to my cubicle. I boot up the computer and check my mail, and there’s a response from my supervisor. She has cut and pasted my short text from two weeks back: “You’re doing a great job”, and added: “I wish I could say the same for you. I’ve attached your October reports and highlighted the many careless errors. I’ve also informed regional about your consistently sloppy work.”
A couple of months ago, this would have made me angry. But now, after all this character development, my gall goes through the roof. I want to burn her alive! I hammer out a nasty email and hit send.
Then I reconsider. I’m not clear on what I wrote, and I’m scared to check my sent box. I feel foolish. I remember the Teacher, his worker’s hands, dressed in someone else’s cast-offs, his life-changing words, the way he seems to read my mind because his own mind is so clear and unclouded by self. I’m as far away from the kingdom as I ever was.
Let’s be honest, am I merciful? Was my original email to my supervisor, or my giving to panhandlers, acts of mercy? Or just more of the same old import business? It feels good. I’ve just developed new tastes. My motives are unchanged. If the teacher’s sermons are steps at all, I’m trying to ascend a descending escalator.
Journal.
I apologized to my supervisor. She made some dismissive snorty sound, but I just smiled. I’ve been doubting my progress lately, but maybe I was wrong. It occurs to me that when the teacher said “blessed are the merciful” a few weeks ago, he was actually talking about me. Maybe I’m ready for the next step.
When I tell the teacher, instead of looking pleased, he seems disappointed. Not in a mean way, but in a “that’s just how people are” kind of way. It’s hard to tell with him, ‘cause he seems sadder these days. “You seem to think I’m teaching you a technique”, he says, “but I’m not. Listen, Poor in Spirit. There is no technique for getting to the kingdom of heaven. No right motives or wrong motives. In fact, the only way there is with no motives at all.”
But I didn’t really hear him after “Poor in Spirit”. It seems I’ve slid down the rungs back to step one. And Poor in Spirit is right- Clueless, Frustrated, Impossibly Stupid would also be good names.
After the teacher leaves, some of the other disciples are finishing their cigarettes and talking. “Have you noticed how gaunt he looks,” someone says. “Is he eating anything?” Someone wonders. “Does anyone know where he lives,” someone asks, but nobody answers.
Journal
He called me Mourner today. He said it with a sad and ironic smile, “from one mourner to another, keep it up. Comfort is coming”.
If these blessings, these ascending steps are not a technique, then why is the teacher leading me on like this?
“Do you feel like I’m leading you on?” he says. Had I thought that out loud? I’m not sure. I’m alone with him at the foot of the hill.
“I don’t think that,” I say. “It’s just that I screwed up last time at being merciful and had to start all over and now I’m climbing these steps again and I’m scared. I just want to get well”, I say.
“Do you think I’m trying to trick you?” he says again.
“No, of course not”, I say. Too quickly perhaps, ‘cause he smiles. The teacher seems to be getting skinnier by the day, and his smiles seem more cryptic; the affection in the smile clashes with his sad eyes.
“Well I am”, he says. “I am trying to trick you.” He walks away. “Next week, Meek.”
Journal
“Help!” Is this a prayer or an anxiety attack? What’s the difference? The teacher called me Meek, and who am I to argue, but Common Sense would be another good name. I mean, logically, no one can escape Selfaholism by themselves. That’d be like getting sober by drinking. So I’m praying a lot these days – Help! I’m getting hungry again, and thirsty, to be like the teacher. Just like last time. And like last time, I find myself being merciful to others. It just comes naturally. And just like last time, I question my motives. And just like last time, I fall off the ladder.
Journal
Today is Halloween. When I was a kid, it always snowed on Halloween, and today is no different. The sky has dropped wet sloppy snow all day which quickly turns to ground water.
Today Garbage Hill is a blurry mound in the wet flurries. I don’t know if anyone will show, but the Teacher never misses a meeting. I slip in the half frozen mud on my way up, but there he is, waiting at the top. He is wearing a thin parka too big for him, with Bud Light written on the breast pocket. His body looks like a Halloween skeleton and his face a jack lantern, an effect exacerbated by his big smile, his big crooked teeth.
While I’m still climbing, he calls down, “Bless you, Poor in Spirit”. Suddenly it feels like I’m dragging cannon balls. I trudge to the top.
“What am I doing wrong?” I ask, breathing heavily, “Why am I back to being Poor in Spirit?” Is this whole cure thing a trick? Why? Why would anyone take pains to give false hope to a Selfaholic?
“Listen, you’ve always been Poor in Spirit. And as for what you’re doing wrong— Everything. You’re doing everything wrong.” His hand is on my shoulder. I don’t doubt his sincerity, but suddenly I do doubt his sanity. “This is how it works. You don’t climb into the kingdom of heaven, you slide there.”
“But how?”
“Blessed are the Pure in Heart, for they will see God.”
“Are you talking about me?” I ask. So hopeful. So full of myself.
“No, I’m not talking about you.”
“I don’t understand.” I say.
“I know,” he says. He is shivering. “I guess no one else is coming”, he says sadly. Then he walks away.
Three days later I read in the paper that a homeless man had been beaten to death in the north end. Five days later, at the hill, the others tell me that it was the Teacher.
Step 6: Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God
You have been reading the recollections of a friend of mine, who asked if I would finish this for him, since he is very busy.
After the Teacher was murdered, a bunch of us who used to meet on Garbage Hill got into the habit of meeting once a week at Salisbury House, for communion of coffee and toast. One look at us and anyone would guess we had become friends through a tragedy. What else would unite such unlikely people? My anonymous friend, the author of the recollections you’ve been reading, looks a bit shifty in his cheap suit. He used to work for Canada Revenue. The two brothers with the wild manes of hair collect E.I. all winter, but in summer they catch pickerel out of Gimli. They’re Icelandic. Maybe that’s why the teacher liked to call them Sons of Thunder. One of us is a PhD, another a GED. One is an aboriginal fellow. Don’t get him started on native self-government. One of the women used to be a sex trade worker. Another one is a mostly normal ESL teacher. But all of us are recovering Selfaholics.
My friend, who still wishes to be anonymous, took the Teacher’s death very hard. We learned a lot at the funeral that we hadn’t known before. Typical Selfaholics—we hadn’t ever asked. It turns out that the teacher wasn’t exactly homeless. He had a bachelor’s apartment on Selkirk Avenue. You remember the cold snap last November? The shelters were all full, so the teacher packed them into his place. He packed so many in, there was no room for him, or maybe he was out just to look for more tenants that night. I’m not sure. The thugs who beat him to death, turns out, had done the same to other homeless men. Maybe they were out hunting, and couldn’t find another victim, since they were all at the Teacher’s place. So, they just picked the Teacher. A substitute.
After the funeral, at Sals, we all decided to chip in for the rent on the teacher’s flat and keep doing what he did- giving the homeless a warm place to sleep. Anonymous, these days, works tirelessly. I don’t know how many places he’s rented by now. He feeds anyone who comes. Last time we all got together for coffee I asked him about it.
“Why do you do it?” I asked.
“You mean, what are my motives?” I’m not sure why, but he seems to find this word funny.
“Sure, what are your motives?” I say.
“Whenever someone asks me if they can stay in one of my apartments, maybe they are wearing badly fitting second hand clothes or something like that—I see the Teacher. Old Sally Ann. How cold I say no? Does a nursing mother have motives to feed her baby? For her, that word doesn’t even exist.”
Afterwards, waiting for a bus on Portage Avenue, I remembered something I heard the Teacher say to a guy. Someone who came to the hill at the beginning. Blessed are you, Pure in Spirit, for you will see God. Anonymous must be pure in spirit then, ‘cause it’s what he sees, working with the poor. God.
Step 7 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Journal
I went to see Anonymous in the hospital today. Some of his tenants had been fighting, and a knife appeared, and he got between them. Lost a piece of his ear. I guess the piece-maker beat the peace-maker, I told him. He didn’t get it, so I had to spell my joke. Then he said, “Actually, no. The peace-maker won. They stopped fighting, didn’t they? They had to, so that they could get me to emerg.” He seemed pretty happy about it.
Step 8
Journal
Saw a story in the Free Press about Anonymous today, so I went to see him at the hospital. Again. They should keep a room for him there. He had been beaten up by some concerned citizens who don’t like his shelters. They say it brings in the criminal element.
The resulting media attention got the city’s attention, and his tenants were all evicted. Anonymous too. Some trumped up charge, using a residence for unlicensed commercial purposes.
Anonymous sure reminded me of the Teacher today. Not the Selfaholic he once was. I put on my best teacher voice for him, and said, “Blessed are the persecuted, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” He laughed and said, “I already had the kingdom of heaven at step one. The teacher was right. It’s a trick, a wonderful trick.”