Heard at meetings and random thoughts

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.

Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.

The only person you can ever be better than is the the person you were yesterday.

Happy New Year!

 

Listening and empathy

According to an article recently published in Scientific American (http://goo.gl/QgUn5) "Analysis of some 14,000 college student surveys over the last three decades finds that self-reported levels of empathy for others have decreased."  Fully 75% of college students scored themselves lower in empathy than students of 30 years ago.  
According to the article, "one possible explanation is social isolation—we tend to do more things on our own and engage in fewer group activities than we used to. Another possible cause is a decrease in reading fiction for pleasure. Studies have found that the number of stories preschoolers read correlates with their ability to understand other people’s emotional states."
Which brings me to one of the great benefits of meetings - especially speaker meetings.  Hearing other alcoholics stories and following the rule of 'identify, don't compare' helps us learn to feel how others feel.  This opens us up to ending our alcoholic isolation and learning to love.  It is yet another example of AA swimming against some of the negative currents in today's world.
Very nice.

Glad Gesthemene redux

I am reposting this note from earlier this year because I needed to reread it this morning and because I thought it might be a useful reminder to someone else in this season of joy and frustration. It may be especially useful during those family gatherings. As a member of my home group likes to say, all family reunions start out as Norman Rockwell and end up as Norman Bates.

Wishing and Willing

In Step 3 we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.  Most of us devote a lot of attention to the precise meanings of the word "God" in that sentence, point out the importance of the word "decide" and pretty much assume the words "will" and "lives" are understood.  This might be a serious oversight.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

We do not see things as they are.  We see things as we are.

If loving is like creating a child, forgiving is like raising someone from the dead.

Alcoholics don't need chaos in their lives; they demand it.

 

Meetings and meditation reinforce each other

The entire AA program is about personal transformation.  Soon after we enter the fellowship we realize that stopping drinking will never be enough; we have to become new people.  Going through the Steps gives us the solid framework for the transformation, but the transformation, the rewiring of our persons, only comes when it is hammered in through the repetition of meetings and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Steps.  Our trips through the Steps with our sponsors, at retreats, or in AWOLs tell us how we should view the world and behave, but that only becomes an ingrained part of us through repetition.  Spirituality has to become a habit and then grow into just how we are.

Unemployment lessons

I am unemployed and I hate it.  I knew I disliked it a lot, but I recently missed getting a job I could do very well and my reaction showed me that I hate being unemployed.  In fact,  I think I hate it a little too much or at least in the wrong way.  When I finally realized the potential employer was not going to call I felt like a desert wanderer who had been offered a compass and seen it snatched away.  I felt completely lost, unable to make any contribution to the world, of no use to anyone.  Obviously, I was trapped in the delusion that I am my work, that my work is my job and my worth is determined by that job and how other people value it.  Now that is a spiritual train wreck.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts (quotes edition)

Silence is the language of God -- all else is poor translation. - Thomas Merton
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. - Gandhi
The most important question we must ask ourselves is, ‘Are we being good ancestors?’ - Jonas Salk

AA is the anchor

The discussion of The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch this past weekend has gotten me to thinking about the role of AA in my spiritual development.  During discussions like this I find myself referring a lot to people like Thomas Keating, St. John of the Cross and Bernard of Clairvaux (and brace yourself for coming references to Beatrice Bruteau).  So where does AA and its literature fit in my spiritual path?  Do I think I've somehow graduated from the Big Book and the Steps and moved on to 'higher things'?

The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch

I have written before about the '12 Year Itch', that dry spot people tend to hit when they reach double digit sobriety, often leading to a relapse.  I firmly believe that this is a sign that we are reaching a new stage in our spiritual growth, in facing ourselves and seeing what and who we are.  


My observation (admittedly of the limited sample of AAs I know)  is that this itch can take two forms, depending on the AA's program. (I'm generalizing here.  There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern.)  For those who have spent 10 or so years 'just going to meetings and not drinking' it is a spiritual depression that almost always leads to a relapse, usually lasting years.  For those who have been seriously working the steps it leads to a deeply felt spiritual crisis that often includes a short but nonetheless extremely painful relapse, sometimes lasting as little as a few days.  This crisis is characterized by a feeling of confusion and loss and the experience that the program just isn't working. The AA is resolved to renew their spiritual journey but is usually at a loss as to how.  (Hint: You're REALLY ready for very hard, temporarily unsatisfying Step 11 work and a Step 12 that organically grows out of 11.)


As I have said before, this type of crisis is a known stage in the spiritual path, one that has been written about in popular literature (for example, Willam Styron's Darkness Visible) as well as in all of the great spiritual traditions.  In the Christian mystical traditions is often referred to as the Dark Night of the Sense and of the Soul.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

I am most dangerous when I am right.

It's hard to be here now when you're spending all your energy pretending you weren't there then.

"Call it by whatever name you like, that which gives one the greatest solace in the midst of the severest fire is God". - Mahatma Gandhi

 

Oh, that needy ego

In my last post I wrote about Thomas Keating's teachings on the false self, that bundle of high roads to happiness consisting of gratifying the instincts ingrained in us as children for security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval.  I am not a psychologist, so I can take no position on the scientific accuracy of this description of the ego, but I am an alcoholic and I can certainly assert that, for me at least, it is very useful.

One of the things I find most useful about this description of the false self is how every time I look at it it deepens.  When I look, for example, at my need for security I think of money.  Now, that makes some sense, since I am unemployed and have none, but I was shocked recently to read the following:

For example, the need for security can be expressed  materialistically in an overwhelming focus on possessions, emotionally in over-attachment to  people, intellectually in the need always to be right, socially in the desire for status, religiously in a legalistic attitude, and even spiritually in an attachment to spiritual consolation. This is all to the detriment of true human freedom. (David Frenette, Three Contemplative Waves)

Whoof!  Here I had been struggling to avoid all the little obsessions and projects my false self was building around money and possessions and I was ignoring all those other forms of Avarice that my ego had been offering as sure-fire get-happy-quick schemes.  

As always, there is a lot of work to do, a lot of grace to acknowledge.

I am not my ego but my ego thinks it's me

One of the gifts of the 11th Step is a gradual (at least for me) realization that I am not my thoughts, emotions, character defects, character assets, in short, all those things that constitutes what I normally refer to as my self.

This bundle of naughty and nice makes up what Thomas Keating calls the 'false self', constructed through our confusing happiness with the gratification of the instincts of the child: security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval.  The false self promises happiness but leads us to a necessarily unfulfilled life, in my case one where I was constantly slightly pissed off at the world and every bit as fun to be around as that implies.  But meditation shows me, in a very real, direct way, that while I have these characteristics they are not what I am.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

The difference between feeling grateful and being grateful is action.

What you are afraid to do is a good indicator of what you should do next.

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Spiritual is not the same as non-material

I think that a lot of the time when we talk about spirituality we are going off in a dangerous direction.  When we think or speak about the spiritual we tend to think in terms of the mind: reason, imagination, art, ideas.  We picture the ideal 'spiritual' person as someone absorbed in meditation, prayer, and 'spiritual' reading.  The more 'spiritual' a person is, the less concerned they are with the tawdry material world.   Spirit and body are split apart.  One is pure, the other at least a bit sordid.

Which image?

I recently had a conversation with a friend about her search for a new sponsor.  She specified the type of person she is looking for and we started to run through the women at our home group looking for a good candidate.  After a while I noticed that all the women we were talking about had programs that were strong in the same areas as my friend's program: very intellectual, a very open approach to the literature, a sensitivity to the historical circumstances in which the program originated, etc.  After a while I suggested we look in the opposite direction, at women who were strong where my friend was weak: those with a very strong background in the Big Book, those with a relatively strict approach to the Steps, and so on.

I think the 'look to your weaknesses' approach has some real value.  If we build on our strengths and on our view of where we should go and what we should be we are making ourselves in our image, not God's.  It makes me think of the story of the Tower of Babel.  If we single-mindedly build our way to heaven it is bound to end badly.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

Resentment is about not getting my way in the past.
Anger is about not getting my way today.
Fear is about not getting my way tomorrow.

Meetings are good; the 11th Step is essential

Last night an AA I recently met told me that he tried to stop drinking for 23 years.  All that time he came to AA meetings and followed the advice he kept getting: "Just don't drink and come to meetings."  He kept pointing out to people that this wasn't exactly working for him and the reply was pretty much always "keep coming back."  Finally someone suggested that he try working the Steps.  For 23 years the only tool he was offered was meetings.  Using the Steps he has now been sober for 5 years.

Feelings are not facts (or even character defects)

As I have mentioned so many times, I am unemployed and it gets to me in varying degrees at various times. I frequently let the feeling of depression overwhelm me and actually cripple me, keeping me from doing anything serious about the problem.  The fact is that I always focus on the unemployment itself or maybe the feeling of depression, but I have a lot of trouble looking at the real source: my ingrained belief that the path to happiness goes through economic security, respect or admiration from others, and power to run my own life.

The dangers of sponsorship

Over the last 6 months or so a friend and I have grown into a 'co-sponsorship' relationship.  He had decided to go through the Steps again and wanted a fresh perspective on them and I need someone to slap me around a little when I let unemployment get me depressed.  It's funny, because we both have sponsors, but this sort of arrangement on these particular issues just seems to work.
This morning I sent my friend some comments on his working of the 3rd Step and it got me thinking about just how careful we have to be when sponsoring.

Welcome Prayer

I ran across this prayer  this week.  I've been having a rough week and finding this is a gift I would like to share.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment
because I know it is for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,
persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God
and the healing action and grace within.
––– Mary Mrozowski

Music and The Spiritual Experience

Once upon a time I was a Grateful Dead fan. OK, scratch that… I was, and still am, a huge Deadhead. For most of my life I was following this group around the country, going from place to place, seeing America… if America were limited to a concert arena because that's all I really saw back then.

So the other day I was driving in to work and listening to the Dead and cranking the volume. I was cruising and singing at the top of my lungs, having a fantastic morning. Suddenly it it hit me, as epiphanies are wanton to do, that the way I have felt about the Grateful Dead's music and specifically what it does to me, is a spiritual experience. Moreover I experience their music spiritually and it has been instrumental in helping me overcome drinking…. just like Appendix 2 says it should.

The 12 Year Itch and the Dark Night of the Soul

Last Monday I gave a friend his 1 Year medallion.  He had been 2 months short of 10 years when he drank for 2 weeks.  In the months leading up to his relapse he did everything he could think of: he attended meetings daily, he spoke with his sponsor and warned of his increasingly dangerous condition, he prayed more and more desperately -- yet he relapsed.

As he described his feelings and behavior in those last few months before his relapse I was intrigued by the fact that what he was saying sounded exactly like classic descriptions of The Dark Night of the Soul, that stage in the spiritual path when one feels alone, abandoned, hopeless, with nothing working as it once did.

11th Step thoughts

Dave's posting on the Third Step and the Noble Eight Fold path has gotten me to thinking about the role of the 11th Step in the spiritual path of AA.  The connection is simple: when I think of Buddhism I think of meditation.
My home group meets at 6 AM and about 5 or 6 months ago we started holding a short meditation session in a separate room 20 minutes before the main meeting.  Now, admittedly 5:40 is a bit early, but it is striking that of the 50 - 70 people we get at the 6 AM meeting only 3 - 5 usually show up for the meditation.  I don't think we've ever had more than 7.  That strikes me as a pretty low figure.

The Third Step and the Noble Eightfold Path

Tonight I went to church with my family to attend a mass being said for my wife's grandmother. While there I found myself meditating on the Third Step, partially to give my mind a spiritual purpose while in church, and partially because Brian and I have been working on this Step together and it's where I am at right now.

Breaking down this Step, I found myself taking each term and reflecting on what it means to me.

Do the next right thing?

In the last couple of days I've had three conversations with AAers about the slogan "Do the next right thing".  I can take a hint - it looks like I should post something about it.

Some thoughts on religion and spirituality

From my very first days in the program I have been aware that there is a difference between religion and spirituality.  I accepted the slogan that says that "religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there."  I pretty much thought of religion as organized and ritualized spirituality.  I certainly saw it as essentially dogmatic and restrictive.  This was certainly colored by my having been raised Catholic in the time when Catholic kids were supposed to go to Catholic schools and never associate with Protestants, doubtless for fear of some form of contamination.  While I never actually thought of it in these terms, I think I viewed spirituality as dancing about like a kid at Woodstock and religion as that kid in a straight jacket and tied to a chair.  Hey, I never said it was a rational or fair view of things, just that it was mine.

Some thoughts on the concept of a Higher Power

The following are some 'thoughts in progress' on the question of a Higher Power.  They are not fully developed by any means.  In fact, they are not even completely consistent.  But they represent a direction my thoughts are going these days and as such I would love to hear people's reactions.

The Opposites of Joy and Sorrow

We can experience both joy and sorrow, even at the same time, for joy and sorrow are not opposites.  It is not joy and sorrow, but their opposites, that cause damage.   The opposite of joy is cynicism and the opposite of sorrow is callousness.  

Cynicism is rooted in the assumption that everyone is always in control and therefore everything bad that happens is the result of ill will or incompetence while everything good that happens is the result of someone's self interest.  

Callousness is the inability to feel that follows from the fear of losing control.

(I found this today among some notes I've made on Joy.  I think it is a variation on a passage from Thomas Merton, but I'm not sure.  In any event, I thought it was worth sharing.)

Some 10th Step Questions on Gratitude

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have some problems with gratitude. Simply put, I take most of the world and my life for granted and I don't spontaneously see the enormous gifts I receive.  Now, recognizing the problem and finding a way to address it are two very different things. I looked around for a while and finally found a suggestion that I ask myself three questions at the end of the day as part of my 10th Step daily review:

What have I received today?

What have I given today?

What difficulties have I caused?

Daily Suggestions

Did you ever wonder why, when faced with our many daily problems, that we don't just take some of the very practical, very easy to use, suggestion that the Big Book makes...

Page 87 - 88: "As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done."

The Steps in Later Sobriety

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am troubled by my lack of Gratitude.  The simple fact is that all life is a gift and I just have trouble seeing it that way.  Having a spiritual problem, I turned to the 12 Steps for help and looking at them with a problem like this in mind got me to thinking.  It strikes me that the Steps as outlined in the Big Book are fantastic tools identifying the presence of defects of character but they are less helpful in identifying the lack of character assets.  So I can assemble a pretty good list of my resentments, but not of my gratitudes.

This blog was started with a posting by Dave about how sponsorship changes in later sobriety.  I'm wondering if a discussion of how the steps might change in later sobriety would be useful.

Slothin' around

As I have mentioned here before, I was laid off at the beginning of this year and, given my age and specialization, that pretty much means the end of my career in textbook publishing.  After I got sober 10 years ago I was actually in a similar situation and ended up starting my own business selling fine art photography at art fairs.  In 2008 I made some bad business decisions in an unforgiving climate (it's hard to sell people things to put on their walls when they're not sure they're going to have walls).  As a result I ended up back in publishing for a few years, ending in this layoff.

Now, the obvious strategies to pursue are either to apply my skills in another industry or start up another business.  I've been trying the first but I am in an field (educational technology) that, like all technical fields, is rampant with ageism.  That's not a gripe, just a fact I have to deal with.  So, why haven't I started some new variation on my previous business, a business that is tremendous fun, uses many of my skills, and actually adds a little beauty to people's lives?  My theory has been that I am frozen in my tracks by fear of failure. I still think that is true as far as it goes.

This morning, though, I read a description of the traditional Christian view of the deadly sin of Sloth.

More thoughts on Anonymity

Anonymity is a funny thing. On the surface it seems like and old fashioned, unnecessary thing; a throwback to a time when there was a stigma on alcoholism (of course now thanks to People magazine and other entertainment-based media outlets, being an alcoholic is not only accepted but encouraged!). But seriously folks...

I personally think anonymity is the most well-known and yet the most consistently misunderstood Tradition we have. Partially because of the climate of secrecy that has been built up in AA as a result of people not understanding it in its full context.

"Steve spoke at the meeting last night."
"Which Steve?"
"Big Book Steve."
"Oh..."

Sure anonymity protects the newcomers when they come in, allowing them to feel safe that their identity as an alcoholic and will be kept confidential. And, as Brian noted, it protects AA as a whole from a possible black eye when someone has a very public relapse in the media and pictures of them passed out cold behind the wheel get plastered across the internet. But anonymity goes much deeper...

Some thoughts on Anonymity

A recent discussion and some reading in Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery got me to thinking about Anonymity.

Anonymity is not just about concealment and protection, either of the group or the individual.  Protection from exposure of the individual as an alcoholic and protection from opening the fellowship up to negative publicity are certainly important.  Few newcomers would feel comfortable coming into the fellowship if they thought it meant publicly declaring they were alcoholics.  Admittedly, this worry about exposure very often diminishes or even goes away completely over time.  Similarly, protecting AA from the negative publicity of an openly declared member relapsing is also important.

I think the real core of Anonymity as the spiritual foundation of our traditions lies in its link to Humility.  When I walk into an AA meeting I am Brian M, with no family name, no profession, no title, no social status, no political or religious affiliation.  I have let go of all the 'identifiers' our society puts on us and I have come to a place where I can safely open up (and discover) who I really am, my real place in the world.  This search for who and what I am should not end with the 'right sizing' we so often hear about in meetings.   I have to admit that I find that phrase pretty troubling.  I can't help but hear an implicit comparison in the phrase 'right sized'.  It sounds to me like we are looking for our proper size in relation to others, and that is not true humility, although it may be a step toward humility.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

"Bloom where you are planted"
"Just deal with what's in front of you"
"One day at a time"

Early in sobriety when I heard these sayings I interpreted them as "Live like there is no tomorrow!" which is what I had been doing a along while drinking, so it didn't seem I needed to worry about this one, right?

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." If living one day at a time was so simple then why was it important enough to mention it a couple of thousand years ago as one of the base requirements for developing a spiritual life?

I didn't need to worry about it until the first day in early sobriety when the cravings wouldn't stop and I had to hold on to those saying for dear life because I knew if I could just make it to bedtime I would stay sober for another day.

Happiness and Joy

We talk a lot in meetings about both happiness and joy, but we often fail to distinguish the two.  I hear a lot of people telling their stories saying things like "I could never be happy but now, in AA, I am."  I can understand not being able to experience much, if any happiness while drinking, especially in the later stages of alcoholism.  But being happy, while certainly not a bad thing, is not the point.  Happiness is bestowed by the world and like other things bestowed by the world (power, wealth, popularity...) it is transitory.  Circumstances can give it and circumstances can take it away.

Acceptance and Love

I'm reading Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery.  He refers to acceptance as nonresistance to truth, and as such an aspect of love.
Now, let's get clear from the start:  acceptance is not approval.

Neither Angel nor Beast

We who so often demand the truth from others, and call them on their hypocrisy have built layers of distortions (lies) of our true nature – the nature of an active alcoholic. It is in these lies of who we think we are, this mangled self image that our insanity dwells. Simultaneously we are the dictator of our world, victim of every conceivable circumstance, the most worthy of all praise, and the most unworthy of the smallest compliment. Let us not forget our coping skill to deal with this: ‘more’. We come to AA in this state, and it is in this state our “isms” lay; this systemic part of our psyche that demands extremes and cannot cope with the concept of balance. The truth is we come to AA not to get sober but to cope with sobriety and cope with ourselves in a most unnatural state of being sober. For many, if not all of us, were to be without AA, a dry drunk would be around the corner, and I can easily be persuaded that a dry drunk is as bad as a wet one (and sometimes worse). It is in our ‘isms’ that we find this perverse craving for chaos and misery. Our isms demand comfort at the expense of stability and happiness.

Fellowship

This morning at my home group we had a discussion about the Fellowship.  It was good to be reminded of what a special thing an AA group is.  People who have never felt a part of anything feel accepted.  People who are afraid of just about everything in life feel safe.  People feel comfortable talking about things they would virtually never discuss elsewhere.  People know they have somewhere to go for help, that every person in that room wants what is best for them.  It's amazing how you can bump into a fellow AA, someone you've maybe had a few chats with, sit down for a cup of coffee and very quickly begin talking about what is really happening in your lives, what you are happy about, what you are afraid of, and all at a level of reality you almost never reach with non-alcoholics.

It is just plain nice.

Why all this 'practical polytheism', gods/Higher Powers vs idols/Lower Powers stuff?

If you have read any of my recent postings, you've seen that I have been making a lot of use of the idea that people are 'practical polytheists', worshiping multiple gods or Higher Powers and idols or Lower Powers. Among the Higher Powers people worship are God, community, justice, love... and among the Lower Powers/idols one could find money, power, praise, possessions.... Why do I find this approach useful, rather than just sticking with virtues and vices or character assets and character defects?

Our lives become prayer

I have mentioned in some of my comments on the Second and Third Steps that I think that it is useful to view people as 'practical polytheists', that is to say, in our practical, daily lives we in fact worship many Higher Powers, what I refer to as Gods and Idols, but many might prefer to call Higher and Lower Powers. In other words, we value, follow, even worship and pray to many things that we are powerless over, both positive and negative. Some examples would be the economy, others' opinions of us, our jobs, money, justice, peace, love, security....the list goes on and on and differs from person to person.

Check Your Motivations

When I was in early sobriety I went through times, like most people, where I was full of confusion and indecision. I was unsure of about how to act in certain situations, where I could safely go, and which of my old friends I could spend time with without being in danger. I was given a pretty standard prescription from some old timers: "Dave, just check your motivations. You'll know pretty quickly whether or not you should go there." It seemed simple enough to do, except I couldn't quite get the hang of it. After years of Step work I now know why.

Bill's Boomerang

Every Thursday my home group discusses a reading from As Bill Sees It. This week we read "Boomerang" on page 185, where Bill describes how after his grandfather told him no-one but Australian Bushmen knew how to make and throw boomerangs he resolved to be the first American to do it. He worked at it for 6 months and finally succeeded.
What strikes me about the story is that Bill had no real interest in boomerangs, only in the attention and glory that would result from making and throwing one.

Love and the Fourth Step

There is a fascinating article, The Rigor of Love, by Simon Critchley in the August 9 New York Times. The essay is about the question of whether non-believers in a transcendent God can have faith. I will probably deal with his central concern in a later post but for today I'd like to think about one of the stepping stones he uses to get to his conclusion: Soren Kierkegaard's (Danish philosopher, 1813 - 1855) concept of Christian Love.

Being restored to sanity

When I was in early sobriety and trying to worrk the Steps for the first time in my life, I came face to face with Step 2. It took me months to navigate this mine field. In my mind there was no way I go on until I was willing to believe there even was a God.

Now mind you, everyone in AA was telling me I was trying to take off a much bigger bite than this Step requires. But nothing doing, I was going to "do it right dammit!". My problems were obviously bigger than my God at that time.

The 'innate violence' of modern life and the Third Step

A friend was telling me yesterday about how she felt overwhelmed by various forces in her life pulling her in a hundred different directions. She had so many things she had to do that she couldn't do anything. The resulting feeling of what I guess you could call besieged impotence had her parking in front of a liquor store, trying to decide whether to go in or to call another alkie. Luckily, she made the right decision. (Anyone wondering what the right decision was really needs to go to a meeting.)
One of the methods of execution used in medieval England was to tie the limbs of the victim to four horses and have them tear him apart. Our lives, or at least my life, can feel that way and it certainly seems like a good metaphor for what my friend was going through. I think I'm safe in saying that it's one of the worst feelings we regularly experience in today's world.

Two Spiritualities

In Finding God in All Things William Barry quotes John MacMurray as follows:

All religion...is concerned to overcome fear. We can distinguish real religion from unreal by contrasting their formulae for dealing with negative motivation. The maxim of illusory religion runs: "Fear not; trust in God and he will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you"; that of real religion, on the contrary, is "Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of."

I think this is a brilliant distinction and one that applies to some of the types of spiritualities we hear people express in meetings.

Approaching the Fourth Step

The Fourth Step is one of the two that really scare newcomers looking at the Steps. The other is, of course, the Ninth. In both cases it strikes me that the fear stems from pride, from a failure to see my place in things. Probably the best way to test whether we have done Steps 1, 2 and 3 well is to check whether we are still afraid of 4.
I am reading William A Barry's Finding God in All Things, a Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. He points out that saints consistently say that they feel more and more sinful the closer they come to God, but that far from finding that depressing, they find joy in it. What gives?

AA and the Culture of Narcissism

In the New York Times of Friday July 15 David Brooks had a fascinating column on the recent Mel Gibson scandal. Most commentators on the Gibson Tapes talk about the racism, sexism, and violence that is expressed. All well and good, but Brooks goes deeper, to the narcissism Gibson flaunts and what it says about our society.
I have often said that in many ways living the AA way of life puts us at odds with our current popular culture. Nowhere is this more true than in the contrast between the humility that AA tells us forms the foundation of recovery and a fulfilled, loving, useful life, and the self-centeredness culminating in full blown narcissism that our culture promotes.

The Three Legacies and Personal Recovery

Dave and I were talking about service a few days ago when he made the point that the Three Legacies, Recovery, Unity and Service are not only essential for the health of AA as a whole but are essential aspects of individual recovery as well. If I've heard that before I wasn't listening because it was a new view of things for me. OK, this is probably pretty much what my sponsor has been trying to tell me for months but hey, I'm a slow learner.

Angels and Drunks

When we choose things, rather than choosing God, it is ultimately our own wills that we are worshiping. (Harbaugh, A 12 Step Approach to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, p.15).

I am a little surprised at how true I find that statement, given the fact that my concept of "God" (if I can really be said to have one) is far closer to the Spinoza/Einstein/Hawking/Kaufman concept of the totality of natural law than to the more orthodox pre-existing, self-conscious, intervening Creator. When I use the word I am pointing to something much closer to creativity than to a creator.
That said, I find St. Ignatius's emphasis on seeing God in all things to be very important. If we are to have perspective we have to look past individual objects to the underlying reality. We have to look at the river rather than the flotsam, both in our metaphysics or theology and in our ethics.

Efficiency is a spiritual disease

Thomas Merton was once asked what he considered to be the major spiritual disease in the Western world. His answer: "Efficiency. The major spiritual disease in the Western world is efficiency because from the government offices down to the nursery, we have to keep the plant running and, afterwards, we've no energy left for anything else."

Avarice, Faith, Humility, and the Banality of Good

A meeting I attended last night had an interesting discussion of envy. Some very good things were said about how envy is the one deadly sin that gives no one any pleasure, about how it is the opposite of gratitude and about how it saps the pleasure out of life.
I had decided to pass when my turn came, until the woman who spoke before me mentioned that three women had recently asked her to sponsor them, citing the usual reason: she has what they want. She found that amusing, since she recently sold her house and left her job, leaving her with what most people would rate as pretty much nothing.

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.

Sponsorship in later sobriety

The birth of this blog came out of a conversation between myself and my friend Brian regarding sponsorship in later sobriety. For me the question itself started when I found myself at about 9 years of sobriety suddenly faced with having to find a new sponsor because my sponsor of many years suddenly needed to stop sponsoring people for reasons of his own.