Religion V Spirituality

Religion and spirituality are two allied concepts, yet each has a different focus: 

Religion is concerned with the Person of God; spirituality is 

concerned with what God does. 

Religion has an important historical dimension; spirituality is most concerned with the present moment. 

Religion often has a speculative quality; spirituality is entirely practical. 

Religion focuses on God's relationship with humankind; spirituality focuses on a person's relationship with God. 

Religion is concerned with God's relationship with the universe; spirituality is focused on the way a person sees his own place in the universe.

When the alcoholic turns to God, he meets an old adversary. The prayers of the alcoholic, long uttered in the despair of loneliness, are unanswered—at least in a form he is prepared to accept. The resentments he has about God, and most alcoholics have many, make it very difficult for him to encounter God, even if he were free of the alcoholic haze. Whatever notions he has about God from his childhood, from his upbringing, from his adolescence, they all need to be relinquished, because—like everything else about the alcoholic—they have become part of his disease.

(So I'm with SuperK at a remote desert state park to do some hiking. One of the most obvious ways that my Higher Power reveals himself to me is through spectacular displays of nature. There are other ways, too: music, art, human kindness, but nature is hard to ignore. This park is in the no-shit desert category. Before I moved to California I thought "desert" meant sand dunes and nothing else but have since learned that there are five distinct varieties of deserts. From National Geographic: Although the word “desert” may bring to mind a sea of shifting sand, dunes cover only about 10 percent of the world’s deserts.  Some deserts are mountainous.  Others are dry expanses of rock, sand, or salt flats. We were in a rocky desert with hills and mountains, much of it populated by various cacti and bushes that thrive with little water although there are also big areas with nothing but dirt, sand, and rock.  Some of the plants appear to be dead but as soon as they get a tenth of an inch of water Boom! Blooms and new green growth.  The thing that I most notice is the quiet.  It's so quiet that my ears start to ring, searching for some familiar background clatter.  All that can be heard is wind blowing and the squinch of boots on sand and rock.  It's as if God is tamping down all noise so you can hear him mumbling.

On day four - our last day - in the middle of nowhere several miles from the small town which is also in the middle of nowhere I experience a big explosion of crap floating around inside my eyeball.  I will subsequently learn this is a condition called a Posterior Vitreous Detachment.  It sounds really awful - and in some cases it can be a signal of something really awful - but it's pretty common in people my age who are also nearsighted.  Nonetheless, it was distressing.  

My technique when I'm distressed is to walk the possibilities through to a worst case scenario (in this case blindness in my right eye) and then walk them right back through more plausible scenarios, calculating the probabilities of each case and the conditions I'd have to live with.  I know, I know - I'm an anal-retentive technical control-freak  - but you should try it sometime.  It works better than you might think.  If you can get comfortable with the most awful outcome it can be surprisingly calming.

Once we finished the hike and made a longish drive over dirt roads back into the small, tiny town we were staying in it was time for "the courage to change the things I can" so I made some phone calls: first to the staff of my eye doctor 250 miles away who recommended that I find an ER to have the condition checked.  While I was doing this SuperK found a General Practitioner in town - the one doctor serving a big rural area - who said he didn't have the equipment to diagnose the situation and recommended - wait for it - that I find an ER to have the condition checked.  At this point I decided to be a little more forceful with my own eye clinic back home and asked for a call from the doctor himself.  I think I was pretty nice about it but I just wanted to have some reassurance from the expert that things were stable enough to wait until I got back home the following day - the thought of an hour drive and then more hours in an ER wasn't appetizing.  I was more than sympathetic with the various staff when I was doing this - it's hard to diagnose a medical condition over the phone which is why I was getting the "go to an ER" advice.  Even if the medical professional suspects the problem is not acute it's scary advising that if the wait could possibly lead to a more serious problem.  People used to do this to me all the time when I was working - describe an issue with a complicated piece of machinery over the phone and ask me to recommend a solution.  I could guess - pretty accurately in many cases - but I couldn't say for sure until I saw the equipment.  They didn't want to talk to a salesman - they wanted their equipment fixed.

After a distressing night - with all of the impending blindness and everything - we made it home in time to see my eye doc who gave me the Posterior Vitreous Detachment diagnosis.  The good news in my case is that it's pretty common and easily repaired if it gets worse - the bad news is that my detachment was not the best kind so the next 72 hours will show if a more robust medical response will be needed.  I'm looking for "worsening symptoms."  I hate it when people say things like that.  I'm always looking for things to get worse and I'm usually sure that they are.

Now . . . something about "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change."