Spiritual Kindergarten

On Saturday morning I go to an 11th Step meeting.   The format today was to read from a book that is essentially a compilation of quotes drawn from our literature.  It's pretty irritating because you tend to get a real concentrated dose of stuff that is real irritating.  It's kind of a greatest hits book.  So whatever the irritating topic is gets jammed down my throat in great, irritating detail.

The topic today was Spirituality.  When the book came around to me the title of the selected page was Spiritual Kindergarten.  I was immediately suspicious.

"Spiritual kindergarten?" I thought.  "Strange that I'm the one reading about spiritual immaturity."  I thought this while I was thinking that I'm no where near kindergarten in my spiritual development.  Pre-school, maybe but that's still a stretch.  I paused a minute and looked around.  Did the chairman deliberately set things up so that the kindergarten page came around to me?  And if you think this sounds a little paranoid you should have been hanging out with me when I was very, very high.  They were definitely coming to get me then.  Lots of them.

It reminded me of a meeting I attended when I was getting sober that was held in a grade school.  The room had a sign on the wall that was directed at little kids.  It was a list of Dos and Don'ts.  It had stuff like: "No hitting.  No yelling.  No talking when someone else is talking.  Don't take someone else's stuff.  No getting up and walking around whenever you fucking feel like it."  I always sat down in my seat, took a deep breath, and read that list, which seemed to have been drawn up just for me.

It is, as I may have mentioned, all about me.