Depression and Dependencies

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I am struggling with a pretty nasty bout of depression. In my post on "Resentment, Control, Anger, Depression, and Faith" I focused on my situation as a crisis of faith. It is, but in looking at Robert Fitzgerald's book The Soul of Sponsorship, The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., and Bill Wilson in Letters and at Bill Wilson's The Language of the Heart, I have begun to focus on another spiritual ill that contributes to my woes: dependence.

Glad Gethsemane

I have been reading Robert Fitzgerald's The Soul of Sponsorship, The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., and Bill Wilson in Letters. In discussing Bill W.'s depression Fitzgerald makes reference to Dowling's concept of a 'Glad Gethsemane', a joyful embracing of pain. The volume includes Dowling's magazine article How to Enjoy Being Miserable, which expounds on the idea.

Dowling says we have 3 possible attitudes toward the large and (especially) small miseries we encounter:

1. We can "be crushed by them and jump into the river or a movie or into a debauch of self-pity, profanity or resentment."

2. We can stoically accept them, cowboy up and carry on (presumably with a self satisfied nobility).

3. We can enjoy them. Not masochistically, certainly not in glorious theatrical martyrdom, but in a spirit of love and giving.

10 Years Sober

In Kirsten's comment on my “Some Thoughts on Resentment” posting she mentions the pressure AAs often feel on reaching milestones like 10 years. I find that comment interesting, in part because I have noticed a lot of stories about relapses occurring between 10 and 12 years of sobriety. I think Kirsten is on to something when she says that there is pressure to show (or at least feel) significant progress by your 10th anniversary. Having just celebrated my 10th anniversary this topic is of special interest to me.

It seems to me that there is an excessive emphasis on time in the program. Seniority is often carried almost as a rank. “Joe has 20 years, so he must be right/have great sobriety/be a spiritual person.”

The log in your own eye

"Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? - Matthew 7:3

It seems that old truisms are just that, true. Isn't it the way in AA that a person (me) can log on here and wax on philosophically about how to live and work the program, and all the while things are slowly spiraling out of control in their life.

Such was the case when I looked up yesterday and realized that that was just what I had been doing. I was logging in here and talking about resentments, and yet one was festering under the skin, growing in size and scope.

Some Thoughts about Resentment

My last post, about “Control, Anger, Depression and Faith” is about my experience of being blocked from the sunlight of the Spirit over the last few months. In my post I was examining my pain and the beginning of seeing some evidence of its source(s).

In Dave's response he rightly points to resentment as a major source of my spiritual problems. I'm not sure if he intends to say that it is the only source. If he does, I would have to disagree. Unless one expands the definition of 'resentment' to the point where it becomes almost meaningless, I cannot accept it as the sole source of spiritual problems in general or mine in particular. Egotism and attachment spring to mind as other major players, and they are not alone. But, that said, I have to face the fact that resentment is a major problem at this point in my life and that it is a major force in blocking me from the faith I was mourning in my last post.

Control, Anger, Depression, and Faith

Recently I have been having trouble with Faith.

For a long time I accepted the concept of faith that I learned from the nuns in grade school. Faith meant the acceptance of a body of concepts and the more absurd seeming the concept the greater the credits earned by accepting it on 'faith.' I have come to reject that notion of faith. There may well be some truth buried in there somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can see it. This concept seems to me to be closed, stultifying, opposed to any creativity and with that opposed to any joy.

Tolerance, Forgiveness, Sins, Sinners, and Punishment

Under the Sponsorship and Story from Work topics in this blog Dave and I have started a discussion of tolerance, forgiveness, repentance, and condemnation that is basic enough that it deserves its own topic. It probably deserves half a dozen topics, but let's start with one.

A story from work and the AA way of life

Last January I had an interesting experience at work. The small company I worked for was having trouble with a system that was being set up by two vendors. Predictably, when things got screwed up the two vendors pointed at each other. The mess fell into my area of responsibility, so I called the vendors in separately to work things out.