Life in the Past Lane

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”
-Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Great pain and great love are called the disciplinarians of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. In my life it seems that point of origin from which willingness to grow spiritually springs is tremendous pain. “Pain is a root, not a flower.” When the pain gets bad enough I take action. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes tremendous love is operating in the origin of my willingness to persevere.

This is a story about love.

I have written about my unwillingness to carry on with the last part of my 4th step; my sex inventory. I have discussed it in more detail with other spiritual men. I have shared about it in a very general way at meeting level. I seem to have been in the grips of the faulty idea that I am so defective and so broken that I don’t deserve God’s help in forming the right ideal and seeking it. “No one will ever really love me,” became manifest in my life as a result of nurturing that faulty thought. “No one ever really did love me. No one ever could.” I see now how gigantically arrogant that thought is even though it has not completely been purged from my consciousness. Just like the drugs and alcohol, just like any area of my life that requires divine help, application of the principles of the steps is the solution and the solution is not really available to me until I have the first 3 steps down. I am powerless over people and the way I have related to them. A power greater than I can heal that secret wound, and that power, that I variously call God or my Creator or the Underlying Fabric of the Universe, wishes for me better than I wish for myself. It is the eternal power of Love that wishes for me to manifest the glory of that power which lies within me.

Though we had spoken of it before, this was not on my mind Saturday when I sat down with Brian, whom I consider to be my most spiritual friend. Where Jim, my sponsor, has great spiritual force (which is inspiring and exciting), Brian has great spiritual reserve (which I find breathtaking and clarifying). Out of the blue, Brian said, “You’re going to make an incredible companion for someone one day.” He went on to tell me about a writer who had profoundly influenced his own spiritual path and the relationship that had with becoming the kind of man who could have a wonderful intimate relationship. I kind of filed the information away in the mental folder marked ‘New Agey’.

Sunday morning I had my 8th step list out; the list of all people I had harmed. I started googling the names of some of the key people in my life in the 80’s. Some, I thought, might still be around, but I knew I was really looking at the result of the great plague that decimated the gay community. One who had been important in my life was Rick Saslaw. I met Rick in 1983, the first time I was exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous. He met my requirements for Rescuer status at the time. He drove a green Jaguar. He owned a 4-plex behind Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Ave. He was intelligent. He was politically active. He was a huge man; warm and safe. And he was amazingly kind to me. My life spun off in a completely different direction but while I was seeing Rick he impressed upon me that there was a spiritual life and a way to seek God that had nothing to do with being a mormon. The last time I saw Rick was in a parking lot on the south east corner of La Brea Ave. and Sunset Blvd. It was slightly awkward. I was married — to a woman — he had begun the heroic ordeal that was treatment for HIV in those days.

The next time I heard about Rick I was at a gay AA round-up in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1998. The guest speaker, Ira S., told his story of what it was like, what happened and what it’s like now. I was especially caught by a couple of things that Ira said about his turning point and the man who was there in his office when that happened. That man became Ira’s first sponsor. I approached Ira after his speech and he confirmed what I had imagined. His first sponsor was Rick Saslaw. He got sober while Rick and I were dating.

So Sunday, while I was dodging doing my sex inventory and instead was googling old flames, I came across only 2 listings for Rick; his obituary in the New York Times, and this blog post from another man who was also sponsored by Rick. It seems that Rick’s memorial service was officiated by the woman who my friend Brian had said was so influential in his own spiritual growth.

“Marianne (Williamson) paused her [Return to Love book] tour and officiated at Rick’s memorial at this postage stamp of a park tucked below Sunset Strip. All of Rick’s eccentric friends and AAs — crowded onto this petit lawn. . . Marianne salvaged the hour’s empty disposition, basically giving us an ACIM lecture, a discourse on Rick Saslaw. It was the most fitting tribute Rick could ever have had.”

The result of a thorough sex/relationship inventory is the clarity needed for one to ‘return to love’. That part of love that is eternal clearly wants better for me than I can understand. Needless to say, I have picked up my pen and started diligently working on my inventory and I dare say that a copy of ‘Return to Love’ will be in my near future. (Thank you, Rick. Thank you, God.)

312, originally uploaded by impala.1970.