Spiritual Growth

One of the complaints that I hear all the time in meetings is that the spiritual angle can be tough to swallow.  Well, no shit, I say, pointing out that about half of the first 164 pages of the Big Book are all about spirituality.  The Founders knew that spirituality was going to stick in the craw of most alcoholics.  I mean in our major religious books we have people rising from the dead and raising other people from the dead and walking on water and parting seas and shit like that.  I mean . . . c'mon.  I'm a scientist and I like things that make sense in a sequential, logical way and walking on water doesn't fit in that category.  In my Quiet Time each morning I bid my very traditionally religious godhead good day and ask for a release from any doubts I have, while mumbling obliquely that this is all some pretty weird shit.  Hearing voices coming from burning bushes where the flames aren't consuming the bush?  Sounds like what happened whenever I took some bad acid in college.

I also hear that the routine of recovery - of life - can get awfully boring from time to time.  But I know that if I don't stick to some kind of routine I might find myself in trouble.  Of course it's irritating to spend so much time on recovery and spiritual growth.  Most of the time I suck it up and power forward, certain that I'll make it back to the point where I'm enjoying both of the above.  Either that or I find myself slipping on a glacier in Greenland.  Can't imagine that every getting boring.  Can imagine that becoming a pain in the ass eventually, though.  "We have to go out on that fucking glacier again today, goddammit?"

One of my friends at the meeting today - where we talked about God and routine, could you guess? - is a woman who's a lot like me: disciplined, controlled, regimented, organized, who attended A.A. as more of a completed task, something to check off her To Do list, than as something she wanted to do.  One day she came in and told me that she was going to start attending more meetings, that she always felt good after she came.  There it is: living proof of the old adage that we attend meetings until we want to attend meetings.