“My Yoke Is Easy” – This One’s for Fletcher

by Fr. Bill Wigmore

There’s a line in the Big Book that says: “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.” Well, many years ago in Louisiana, I was chairing a meeting and I was still pretty new and feeling very “gung-ho.” So I’m quoting that line and lording it over anyone there who wasn’t giving themselves 100% to this simple program. (Unconsciously, I’d started in training to become a Big Book Thumper.)

And no sooner did I let that Big Book quote fly out of my mouth but some old man in the back of the room wakes up and he hears me say it. From the back of the room he shouts for all to hear, “Oh, horse sh..!” he says, “I’ve been sober 35 years and most of it I got on half-measures!” That old man’s name was Fletcher Johnson. He was a recovered alcoholic, now long deceased but not forgotten by those his life touched. The man knew a thing or two about grace and he had the guts to shout it out to those of us who didn’t.

Fletcher had been to the dark side. He’d grown up in a home for orphaned kids somewhere in his native Oklahoma. He told me it was “a religious home,” run by super-religious people. He said they were “Bible Thumpers” and some of those people did some really terrible things to him – and they did them in the name of God. So when Fletcher became a drunk and landed on the doorsteps of the program, don’t you know “the God business” scared the living hell out of him. He couldn’t “turn his life or his will over to the care of God” because the God those people had taught him couldn’t be trusted. But Old Fletcher did a really wise thing – and it’s a thing that’s gotten me through some of the rough times when my own OLD IDEAS about God have gotten in the way of my letting Him get close to me.

Fletcher said, he just added “one more letter” to the name of God. He added another “O” right in the middle of the GOD word. And so wherever he saw the word God written in the Big Book, he just penciled in another “O” above it and wrote: “GOOD.” In Step Three, Fletcher turned his will and his life over to the care of Goodness. In Step Five, he admitted to himself, and to another drunk, and to Goodness the exact nature of his wrongs. In Step Eleven, he sought through prayer and meditation to improve his conscious contact with Goodness – because in his experience, Goodness was really worth getting to know better.

Some Christians might have a hard time with what Fletcher did; but my guess is people in recovery would not – and I’d venture a further guess that Jesus probably wouldn’t either. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy – and the burdens I’ll put on your back are light.” Back in Jesus’ day, the Jewish religion had grown really hard for the ordinary people to follow. Their leaders had figured that the road to God had to be difficult. God was so holy and people were not. So in order to get right with God they said you had to get busy and become holy yourself. Half- measures would avail you nothing.

Back in those days, Jewish scholars had complied more than 600 rules that people had to abide by if they wanted to get themselves anywhere near right with God. It was OK to eat this but never that. It was OK to touch this but never touch that. And if people screwed up – and surely they would - then they were considered “unclean” until a “sin offering” of some kind made them right once again with God. There were sacrifices of animals and offerings of money. If you were a prostitute, or if your money had come from ill-gotten means like a tax collector, then you were considered a hopeless case. You couldn’t even buy your way out of your sin because the money you needed had to be pure. The burdens placed on the backs of the people, especially on the backs of the poor, were heavy, maybe even impossible. People were starting to feel like Old Fletcher. They were giving up on ever getting themselves right with God.

But when Jesus came along, he said, “I’ve found another way.” Jesus was talking mostly to farmers so he used images they knew and understood. Once he used the image of a yoke. A yoke is like a harness. It’s made out of wood and you put around the neck of an animal – especially on some ox or on some cattle. You put it on them so you can lead them and guide them in the direction they need to go.

Jesus was a carpenter and chances are he made more than a few wooden yokes in his day. A good carpenter always went out to measure the necks of the cattle or the oxen that the yoke was meant to fit. It had to be just the right size. The better it fit, the more comfortable its wearer would be. “My yoke is easy; it fits just right,” Jesus says, “I’ve made it just for you.”

Carpenters usually made their yokes in pairs. They nearly always put two oxen in their yokes together. One ox was usually older and wiser. The second ox was new and inexperienced – he didn’t quite know what was going on. He was probably scared – and if he was an alcoholic-ox, like me, he was used to living life on self-will – used to doing it all by himself. I learned a lot from Old Fletch over the years – he put his yoke around me and showed me another way.

Now that I’ve got 35 years sober under my belt, I know that Fletcher was right all along. Sobriety is a gift. We’re sober through the grace of a loving and a very GOOD GOD. Half-measure days are OK by Him; he’s more than happy to do more than his share “Keep it simple,” Jesus says. “My yoke is easy – my burden light!”

Fr. Bill Wigmore is CEO of Austin Recovery. A complete copy of this series is available at www.austinrecovery.org. Send comments, questions and treatment scholarship donations to: Fr. Bill Wigmore, CEO / Austin Recovery / 8402 Cross Park Dr. / Austin, Texas 78754 or email: billw@austinrecovery.org