Outexist, outvegetate, outlive

“Faith without works is dead.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

And I, too, am dead without works, if not in a biological sense, in a spiritual sense.

The Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, in his novel Korrektur, takes the word outlive (überleben) and coins two more: outexist and outvegetate (überexistieren, übervegetieren) (page 33).

In surviving alcoholism, I do not merely want to outexist and outvegetate the version of me that would have died of alcoholism, in the sense merely of living longer, but actually outlive, make infinitely more of life.

That’s why I work the Twelve Steps on a regular basis: they cut away everything dead and leave me just with life.

In Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, he says that those who sincerely attach themselves to God ‘put away their deadness’.