Let's stay scared

One of the meetings I attend just emailed members an article about the coroner's report on Amy Winehouse.  It is a very unpleasant reminder that we must work our program and continue to grow spiritually.  We either grow or face very unpleasant consequences.

Coroner: Amy Winheouse drank herself to death


LONDON —Soul diva Amy Winehouse died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood — more than five times the British drunk driving limit, a British coroner ruled today.
Coroner Suzanne Greenaway gave a verdict of "death by misadventure," saying the singer died of accidental alcohol poisoning when she resumed drinking after weeks of abstinence.
"The unintended consequence of such potentially fatal levels (of alcohol) was her sudden and unexpected death," Greenaway said.
The singer, who had fought a very public battle with drug and alcohol problems for years, was found dead in bed at her London home on July 23 at age 27. An initial autopsy proved inconclusive, although it found no traces of illegal drugs in her system or signs of injury.
Pathologist Suhail Baithun told the inquest into the singer’s death that blood and urine samples indicated that Winehouse had consumed a "very large quantity of alcohol" prior to her death. The level of alcohol in her blood was 416 milligrams per 100 milliliters, he said — a blood alcohol level of 0.4 percent.
The British and U.S. legal drunk-driving limit is 0.08 percent.
Such levels of alcohol intake could have stopped her breathing and sent her into a coma, Baithun added.
Police Detective Inspector Les Newman, who was called after a security guard found Winehouse, said three empty vodka bottles — two large and one small — were found in her bedroom.
Winehouse’s doctor, Dr. Christina Romete, said the singer had resumed drinking in the days before her death. Prior to that, Winehouse had stayed away from drink for most of July, she said, although she had been swerving between abstinence and heavy alcohol use for a long time.

Live humbly, love recklessly

Live humbly, love recklessly

I saw this slogan on a subway poster this morning.  Checking the url on the poster it turns out its for a church, which doesn't particularly thrill me, but the slogan is definitely a keeper.

Glad Gethsemane - how soon I forget

This morning a friend asked me about my understanding of Fr. Ed Dowling's concept of Glad Gesthmane. To put it briefly, this is viewing painful events as opportunities to give to others.  Everything we do sends out ripples, either positive or negative.  I think Mircea Eliade said that when we speak we either bless or curse.  (Boy, is that one I remember far too seldom!)  

My favorite examples of Glad Gesthemane come from extreme situations.  People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent their time in German concentration camps helping and supporting other prisoners.  An AA I knew too briefly came to our meeting in his last weeks, saying his only wish was to die sober.  He gave us the tremendous gift of his courage.

The concept, however, applies to the small, everyday things that bother and irritate us. These are the spiritually dangerous times.  As a friend likes to say, it's not the elephants that kill us, it's the mosquitoes.  I find daily irritations a wonderful opportunity to complain and spread the negativity.  I should be viewing them as opportunities to, at the very least, share perspective (humility) and make clear just how small the small things are.

Some thoughts on the passing of Steve Jobs

Since Steve Jobs died on October 5 we have all heard a great many opinions about him and what he meant.  Clearly he was an economic and cultural force for the last several decades.  Virtually all the obituaries and commentaries I have seen have been flat out hagiography.  They look to his immense creativity and his business skills and generally stop there.
There is another side, however.  An essential part of Jobs' marketing genius was his exploiting one of the spiritually damaging aspects of a consumer society: the tendency of people to define themselves to themselves and others through their possessions.  I use a Mac (which I do) so I am cool.  I have an iPod, cool.  An iPhone, cool.  An iPad, very hip and cool.  You get the idea.
In my opinion this is one of the most spiritually damaging forms of materialism.  To put it in terms of the 7 deadly sins, the quest for pleasure and fulfillment through the aquisition of wealth is gluttony; the quest for self definition through material goods is avarice. Few people would admit to being small minded enough to define themselves through their iPods, but in point of fact many do to a greater or lesser degree.
Our recovery is based on humility and love.  Neither of those is compatible with avarice.  To be clear, I am not trying to take anything away from the immense positive side of Jobs legacy.  His advocacy of good design and ease of use helped change technology for the better.  Let's not lose sight, however, of the fact that he did expose (and exploit) one of the dark aspects of our time, our culture, ourselves.

This bowl is broken

A friend of mine recently mentioned that a Buddhist teacher once, while holding his favorite (intact) bowl, said "this bowl is broken."  That is to say, look at it as already past, lost, broken and you won't be attached to it.

I need that kind of reminder a lot.  I remember when I first heard the AA bumper sticker "an expectation is a premeditated resentment."  What, aren't we supposed to have any expectations.  I twisted with that one for years before realizing that the answer was a simple 'yes.'  We can look to the future and plan, but to expect is to attach yourself to an anticipated outcome and attaching yourself is a dangerous thing.

Knowledge may or may not be power, but is sure can be an attempt at control

The doubt and fear that often overtake me come from a desire to know more than I can know.  To control more than it is my purview to control and to control it by know it, intellectually mastering it, neatly delineating it into questions I ask and answers I have.  I take on the universe, and try to make it human-sized, one person-sized, self-sized.  I persist in the notion that I can hold it all in my two hands, grip it tightly, make it mine.
Marya Hornbacher, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power  (highly recommended!)

I've written before in this blog about how I've come to see worry as a form of control.  Hornbacher's comment prompts me to think about how much I have used knowledge as a form of control.  My academic background is in Philosophy, so it's no surprise that I have sought answers to the 'big questions' all my life.  There was a valid spiritual quest buried in there but there was also a hiding from reality behind pride.  If you really think you can answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" you are assuming a pretty high -- let's face it, godlike -- status.  (Note for believers: the question includes within it the question "Why is there a god?").

The 'big questions', at least as I posed them, always set me apart from the reality I was trying to understand.  I was a separate being trying to understand reality rather than a simple part of reality trying to live it.  Living it, treating life as a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be solved, is humility.

So, I am working on a spirituality that is lived rather than merely thought.  I see what I'm aiming at as somehow related to Taoism, the spirituality of the Cloud of Unknowing ( a 14th century Christian text, one of the inspirations for Centering Prayer), and Dudeism, the path inspired by the movie "The Big Lebowski".  (That last is a good application of Rule 62*.  After all, if you can't laugh, you're not in recovery.)

The goal is wisdom, living a fuller, more loving life, not knowledge

*"Don't take yourself too damn seriously."  see Twelve and Twelve, page 149

The Second Step and Our Limits

I have written before about my misunderstanding the Second Step when I first got into the program.  Like a lot of people, I focused on the Power, demanding to know exactly what it was before moving on.  It took years for me to realize that the Step is fundamentally saying that there is a way out.  The only thing it says about that way our is that it is through a 'power greater than ourselves.'  So far, so good.  I had gotten beyond demanding a theological treatise, but I was still very much focused on that now fuzzy, ill-defined Power.

Over the last couple of days I've looked at the Step a bit differently.  I think it is valuable to see Step Two as a direct extension of Step One.  In Step One we said we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives were unmanageable.  We began to recognize our limits.  In Step Two we continue to recognize those limits and say "OK, there may be a way out, but it sure as Hell isn't me." 

For years as an active alcoholic I insisted that I was the way out.  I would use my tools -- reading, meditation, discipline -- and I would conquer this addiction and I would be happy.*  There is a saying in the medical community that the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.  Well, by that standard (and many others) I was a total idiot during my active alcoholism.

Moving from Step One to Step Two is a process of 'coming to believe' that I am not the only resource I can call on, that there are forces greater than me and that I can use their help in my recovery.  It is a gradual process and one that requires practice in every sense of the word.  Luckily, the First Step has relieved us of the burden of doing it all ourselves, since we just plain can't, and frees us to focus on our lives, our behavior and the people and things we encounter.  Gradually, through letting those powers in and doing the work we do come to believe.

And, unbelievably enough, the addiction comes under control and I do end up happy.  Even better, I end up quietly content.

*I now find the statement "I am happy' a bit creepy, since happiness and contentment are not solitary activities.  But that's a subject for another posting.

Steps 3 through 12 are how we get from step 1 to step 2

"Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  I heard someone say that at a meeting a while back and I think it's an interesting and, for me at least, fresh way of viewing steps.  

I've long said that step one without step two is a good description of Hell.  "Oh, so I'm powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable.  How nice."  Personally I knew that damn well for at least 10 years before I got sober and it just made me drink more.  My salvation was when a small glow of hope that there was a way out appeared.  Typically, I've always viewed that as an intellectual event.  I received the information that AA could help me and that gave me the hope I needed.  

Of course, that's not really the way it really happened.  My bottom came with heart failure induced by my attempt to go cold turkey off alcohol completely on my own.  Laying in an ICU bed I actually decided it would be better if I died, especially for my wife.  I was certain she'd be happier with a new husband.  I don't know what my doctors would say but I was and am convinced that if I had let go at that point that I would have died.  However, the thought crossed my mind that if I worked at it I could be that second husband and that would be a way to try to make up for the years of pain I had put my wife through.  A couple of days later a guy came into my hospital room and 12th stepped me.  That didn't go very well, but I did get a meeting book out of it.  I decided to try a meeting.  That's the point.  I didn't really have hope at that point.  I had a desperate need for hope and a path of action that might provide that hope.  

That, I think, is what the speaker meant when she said that "Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  It is by our actions and their results that we grow in optimism and faith in AA.

As the old AA slogan says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

A life second to none

I have often thought about this phrase that we hear so often at meetings.  For years I've thought about it in terms of equality: all lives are equally sacred and equally capable of joy.  Come right down to it, that's a pretty abstract concept.

At a recent meeting I heard another take on the phrase.  I have a life second to none, meaning I don't want yours.  That, to me is concrete and a challenge.

Another benefit of addiction

There are two themes that consistently pop up at AA meeting that recently came together for me.  The first is how much time we used to spend drinking and how surprising it is to find that time freed up.  The second theme is how drinking was essentially a means of hiding from the pain of life, a way of anaesthetizing ourselves rather than dealing with the problems and joys of being human.

It was only a couple of days ago that I realized that it wasn't just drinking, the actual consumption of that gloriously deadening liquid, that allowed us to hide from life.  It was the whole package: the time spent planning our drinking, figuring out which store we could buy from today so we weren't repeating too much and tipping the clerk off to our problem, the time spent figuring out how to dispose of the bottles, even the time spent hung over ("I'm in no shape to deal with financial planning now!").  All of these thoughts and actions, all of this time, is part of the addictive behaviour of the active alcoholic.  It is all part of crawling into our holes and hiding.

Which brings up a scary thought.  What rituals, what time-wasters am I using now to hide?  We talk about time spent 'pencil-sharpening' to avoid decisions and tasks for which we can be evaluated at work.  How about the rest of life?

"May you live all the days of your life."  - Jonathan Swift