Faith, hope and love: A eulogy by (and for) Timm

Timm in Khazakstan, where he helped establish one of the first groups of Alcoholics Anonymous in that country.

In the 12-step recovery programs, at least two thirds of the people who come into them to get clean and sober do not stay. Many end up dying as the result of their addiction(s).

The following eulogy Timm gave for his friend Terry at his memorial service in October 2005. Terry was a heroin addict introduced to Timm in 2005 through his friend Ken. According to Ken in a recent email, Terry "just could not maintain sobriety. He was a believer who thought he had been called to minister but could not stay sober long enough to serve. They had a lot in common. They were about the same size and both very intellectual. It seemed like a perfect match for sponsor, sponsee material. It seems they really didn't connect in that way but did connect as friends. Terry had so much potential but never seemed to get beyond his addiction for whatever reason."

Himself a recovering alcoholic, Timm surely must have felt those occasional pangs of dark urges, to give up on the difficult work of recovery and seek that instant relief which would have started him back on the road to alcoholic destruction. Many that he worked with surely "went back out," wearied or bored or too afraid to do the hard work of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which are geared to root of the destructive characteristics of selfishness which so fuel the obsession.

Most who come into the programs do not stay, and when they leave, most never return. Yet it was Timm's quiet strength and determination to stay on the course of recovery for his last sixteen years, attending meetings and continuing to give back to others what he had found.

The essence of that commitment to keep working, striving and growing are found in the eulogy that follows.

Ironically, it wasn't return to addiction that killed Timm so early, but the depths of his heart -- that deep, genuine, difficult place he tried so hard to life fully in and from. Our faith in going forward was hit hard by Timm's premature death; it is his words here, offered in consolation to the recovering community, which tell us all the reasons why we should remain faithful, hoping and love and service to our God and to the world. And when our time comes, having lived a full and heart-ful life, the release into death should be seen as the ultimate freedom of the recovering spirit: To be rejoined, at last and in full, with one's Creator.

* * *

I want to take a few minutes to share some thoughts that I have been mulling over since Terry's death several weeks ago. For myself, this has been a year of many deaths, with Terry being the fourth since January. During this time I have heard many things and watched people react in many different ways, some better than others. But as I was meditating on the current loss a passage from the Bible came to mind and I'd like to take a moment and read it. Now, this is a passage that is usually read during a wedding and not a memorial service, but t here are some nuggets of wisdom that I think apply.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Corinth around 56 AD. Most of the book deals with a variety of questions around spiritual and moral problems whose answers became the foundation of much of modern church theology. But tucked in the 13th chapter Paul decides to put everything he in context by stating:

Love never fails. But where there are prophesies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Death often take it's toll on the "faith, hope and love" that Paul extols, three things that are so important to our lives.

Take a moment right now and think for a second about the importance that faith has played in your life. For those of us from a 12-Step ((recovery)) background, faith in "a power greater than ourselves" has been the key to our recovery. Faith that somewhere in this vast universe there is a power greater than us that was able to restore a semblance of sanity to our out of control lives. Faith that we could draw upon this power, faith that each time we admitted our complete dependence on getting through the day (or the next thirty seconds) without doing a line, jolt, hit or fifth was paramount to us.

But how often when we have lost someone close to us do we rail against God, "how could you have done this!? Why did you take this person from us!?" -- And ultimately choose to build a wall against our faith.

Be careful not to build the wall -- wrestle through, struggle, meditate, but give yourself time to work it through. For those of us in recovery, this is a matter of life and death -- to lose our faith in the concept of higher power puts our very lives in danger.

Akin to faith is hope, that stance we take of cherishing a desire with expectation. The belief we cling to that whatever we are facing - life will get better, that there is a future, that the steps we are taking will be the path that will bring us to life.

Perhaps nowhere was the importance of hope better demonstrated than the Nazi concentration camps of WWII, where Vikor Frankl was imprisoned. He relates this conclusion of hope in his book Man's Search for Meaning:

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future -- his future -- was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment -- not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more.

To lose our hope is to lose our life. We need to hold on to the fact that the storms we endure to day will pass, that the steps we practice will lead us out of our darkness, that even though addictions kill so many, that as we practice the principles we've learned we do not have to die in its throes.

Finally, the loss of a loved one can bring about a vow never to get close to another again. That addicts and alcoholics are a lost cause, that it just hurts to much to love another, to get close only to suffer the pain of another loss. What a tragedy it is for all of us when we stop loving. I remember when I first came into recovery I heard some old timers in a meeting state that "we'll love you until you're able to love yourself" and how my higher power brought a few people into my life to do this. Would I have made it if this wouldn't have happened? I don't know but I'm glad I don't have to find out. We keep reaching out - yes we set boundaries, but it is our love that motivates us.

One of the greatest memories I have of Terry was how much he loved, in spite of his addiction or other things going on in his life. It was his tender heart that marked him and was what I've heard so many times as the one aspect about him that stood out and drew people to him.

Terry and I shared the same Christian faith and hope that as we have both made a commitment to Christ that we will one day see each other again.

And it is the faith and hope I have that reminds me that death is not the end. That there will come a day when I will look into his eyes and see that he is finally free of the personal demons that haunted him, just as it states at the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation, where it states: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Free at last.

Timm with kids in a medical camp he served on his trip to Bolivia.