September 2009

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Back from the dead

September 27, 2009 in Gratitude, Hope, promises, Service by Chris | 5 comments

I am really feeling grateful for my life today.  And I’m feeling especially grateful for the time that I spent with my sponsor up in Atlanta and everything that has followed.

Friday night I got to take one of my favorite people, Jill, the friend who let me detox at her house, out for dinner at my favorite restaurant, just to thank her for helping to save my life and get caught up.  Dinner was amazing.  Dessert was breathtaking.  The company was as dear to me as life and I left feeling revived; body, mind and spirit.

Saturday a friend with only 14 days sober suggested we go to McCall for the day.  Now, McCall is hardly a day trip so I called my parents and asked if we could use the cabin they have there.  We headed up, drove an extra 30 miles or so to go to Bergdorf Hot Springs and enjoyed the waters.  We headed back to the cabin, grilled a couple or rib eyes, went to an AA meeting, and talked recovery.  We were having trouble finding the meeting location so I pulled into a grocery store and walked in and asked the bag boy where the Nazarene church on pine street was.  He looked at me and asked, “Are you going to the 8 o’clock?”  Then he told us that he had a year and 2 days sober that day; a little indication from HP that we were on the right track and we were meant to be where we were.

On the way home this morning we continued our conversation about how to do recovery, the barriers to recovering, the problems we encounter and the lies we tell ourselves that take us back out.  We talked about the solution to those problems and about finding whatever formula works.

A few minutes ago another friend called to say that she is sponsor shopping and asked if I thought my own sponsor might take her on.  A little twinge of pride set it.  “What?  I’m not good enough,” I thought to myself.  But I shared some information and I passed along the phone number.  We’ll see what happens.

I feel like I’m back in “the stream of life” again, finally.

I’m dedicating Patty Griffin’s very first love song to myself.  I hope you enjoy it.

Old Ideas

September 26, 2009 in Faith, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous, page 58

Some of us have tried to hold on to them without even knowing that is what we’re doing, until it bites us.

I was thinking about my conversation with Chris Lawford a couple of years ago.  The last question he asked was, “What does God look like?”  He asked all of us the same set of questions and you can discern that from a close reading of the chapters in “Moments of Clarity”, and he has included the answers to that question from a few of the people he interviewed.  I remember Susan Cheever’s being particularly moving, though at the moment I can’t remember what it was.  Mine was not included, which killed me because I thought I had been so clever.

In the first place, I thought the question was kind of obtuse.  How, really, can one know what God looks like?  We can’t even agree on a definition of God, let alone agree on God’s existence, so how would I know what God looks like.  And that is what I said.  I said, “I don’t know, but when it is my time to go I hope He holds me in his arms and whispers something funny.”

It is a good thing it was not included, actually, because it is  not even an original line.  I stole it from William Finn; a line from the song “You’ve Got to Die Sometime” from Falsettoland. (None of my material is original.  Go ahead and check.  That’s not entirely true.  I did coin the term Googlyize, meaning to glue googly eyes on to something, but I digress.)

The thing is, at that time and though I wasn’t even conscious of it, I was still in the grips of an old idea about what God is, and though intellectually I professed something more abstract, my spiritual experience in the early parts of my recovery had never been inconsistent with the ideas of God which I had been given as a child.  I was taught to believe in God at approximately the same time I was taught about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and he was given a personality and a face, the same way those other fairy tales had.  (When my parents told me the truth about the Easter Bunny I proudly walked into class the following Monday and announced to everyone that, “My daddy is the Easter Bunny!”)

I guess this incredibly painful four month experience in letting go of that old idea, and the amazing relief I have at the moment having come through that and feeling again a spiritual wholeness, has me curious about what other old ideas I may be hanging on to that are standing in the way of my growth.

I suspect they will make themselves known when the time is right.

Queers & Weirdos

September 21, 2009 in Faith, Perseverance by Chris | 6 comments

“We don’t want anybody up here. We just tell people this place is nothing but a bunch of queers and weirdos,” my sponsor told me.  There is a kernel of truth in it, of course, but there is a sweetness about the place and the people there that is hard to describe.

I exaggerated about the indoor plumbing/electricity feature of the town.  Most of the people have running water.  Some of them even have HOT water.  And there is electrical service in the town which is serviced by its own small hydro-electric plant, but people don’t use it much.  Even so, it is remote.  I haven’t heard quiet like that or seen dark like that in a long, long time.

The first night we grilled steaks on a campfire. watched stars shooting through the night sky, and had dessert with some neighbors.  During the next day I listened to AA speaker CDs, CDs about the Eightfold Path.  I enjoyed the hot springs and the wilderness.  We had breakfast with friends and went for walks.  I took pictures of dead pickup trucks which are allowed to remain there to deter the Sun Valley people from discovering how wonderful the place it.  I read and napped and practiced meditating.

Why did I have such a hard time realizing that having a Higher Power does not mean having a deity?  I am more and more convinced that having a Higher Power without having a deity is necessary for me and that my path back to feeling connected to that Power  will largely be the byproduct of practice.  The small time I devoted to the practice certainly led me to believe that, as the book Alcoholics Anonymous says, “we can but clear the ground a bit” and that clearing the ground through a practice of meditation may be the hinge upon which my progress turns.

I was in a great place to begin a practice, not having the usual distractions of home and office around.  Even so, focusing on mere breath is not as easy as it sounds

“Somewhere in the process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.  Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and helpless.  No problem.  You are not crazier than you were yesterday.  It has always been this way, and you have just never noticed.”  Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

That’s a relief.  If there weren’t passages like this in the guide I was reading I would be sure, as I have always been, that I wasn’t doing it right.

Anyway, I imagine that things are as they should be, and I imagine that I am still on track, even if it does not appear to me that I am.  I just know that

In Plain English

September 17, 2009 in Faith, Perseverance, Willingness by Chris | 3 comments

I bought a book the other day, right after I vomited my insanity here; Mindfulness in Plain English.  And I’m encouraged because I finally found a definition of ‘faith’ that I can work with.  No GrandWizardMagicalSantaClaus required.  What a relief.  I have some nice, plainly written instructions to make a beginning, and then there are retreats, with advanced instructors.

Reading the course application, I wonder if I could even do it at this point, but I believe I could get there.

I am also considering getting rid of my television and limiting my internet time just to help reduce the amount of noise in my head.  My sense is that television interferes with my ability to think clearly and hinders my growth.

I’m headed to Atlanta, ID with my sponsor tomorrow afternoon to enjoy 3 days in the mountains without indoor plumbing, electricity, paved roads or telephones.

I appreciate all the feedback I got from my last post.  Looking back I can see that this is really an issue that I’ve held on to for decades.  The appearance of an old friend from when I lived in Sweden reminded me that there was a time even then that I was desperate for there to be something I could  have real faith in, and being surrounded by a religion that made no sense to me at all.

It appears then that it is in my nature to yearn for an understanding of or knowledge of something that I can only understand or know through my own experience.  Faith that makes sense to me isn’t belief in something because it is written in some book.  It is belief in something because I have observed it within myself.  If I’m going to have a relationship with that I have a great deal of observing within myself to do.

Trouble, oh trouble, haven’t slept a day in years.

September 13, 2009 in Honesty by Chris | 11 comments

When I chose my current sponsor one of the things that attracted me was that even with 36-odd years sober, he was still able to share the truth at meeting level, particularly when things are difficult for him.  You’ll hear him at a meeting sharing some tale of woe and how he has faith that it will be resolved and two days later he’ll hardly have a memory of it; the problem will have been solved, usually  by itself, and he will be right as rain.

I, on the other hand, have been mute in meetings and mute (or relatively mute) here, for some time.  I haven’t wanted to contradict what I’ve shared here for nearly the last 3 years.  I haven’t wanted to stray too far from the party line at meeting level – remember we have a solution on which we can “absolutely agree” and join in brotherly and harmonious action.

Blah, blah, blah.  Whatever.

Remember also that we “cannot fail” if we are earnestly seeking this “God” or “Creator” or whichever of the other names it is called in the book.  It promises that it is a “loving” power, but it also says it can be anything I choose, so long as it makes sense to me,

And there is the problem.  Loving doesn’t make sense to me.  Conscious doesn’t make sense to me.

It used to.  Before my surgery it did.

Now I’m just pissed of that I never had a Mojito before I stopped drinking and using.  Or Kettle One vodka.

I really get it, on a deep level, that my brain tells me this stuff; stuff like “oh, you can have a drink” or “hey! we haven’t gotten high in a long time.  doesn’t that sound like fun?”  I know my brain tells me these things and I know brom experience that it is always – under all circumstances – bad information.  They are ideas that are not to be acted on.

But I feel like a fraud for even having thoughts like that and I feel like a fraud for not believing in a conscious higher power and I wish it would just stop, just for awhile.  Five months of this is long enough.

9/11

September 11, 2009 in Ephemera by Chris | No comments

On this day, eight years ago, I was in jail awaiting trial on felony drug possession charges.  I was one of a handful of people awake in my dorm watching television.  I called my mom to tell her the world was coming to an end.  That’s what it felt like.  I was on the phone with her when the second tower was hit, live on TV.

I felt like the worst citizen in America that day, and for weeks to come.

I remember the first time I saw a commercial aircraft in the air, weeks later, and how hopeful that made me.

On this day, as on this day in 2001, my thoughts and prayers are with those who’s lives were changed forever.  May whatever God there is be with you and keep you and comfort you.

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