Widening Circles

I live my life in widening circles that reach out over the world.  I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.  I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

Rilke - "Widening Circles"

I go about  feeling sorry for myself when all the while I am being carried by Great Winds across the sky.

Ojibwe Proverb

Helping Someone Else!? Outrageous!

"Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help."

Big Book P. 84

Taken directly from a story in The Grapevine: "I used to joke that when I came into AA I had no principles but multiple personalities.  The greater truth is that I had grown up knowing the difference between right and wrong, kind and unkind, selfish and generous.  I don't remember much about my first few months in AA but I did sense the unvarnished authenticity of people struggling to be free and it made no difference who brought that message to The Rooms."

Back At It

 "There are three things that only God knows: the beginning of things, the cause of things, and the end of things."                                                                                                                                               Welsh Proverb

"When we have self-respect, we do not take what other people say and do personally.  We need to remember that every person we meet is a representation of the Divine and can teach you something.   Some teach us what to do; others teach us what not to do."                                                                       The Toltecs

Off We Go Into The Wild, Blue Yonder

Sometimes I take long trips to far away places.  When I figure out door-to-door times the figure of 24 hours comes up.  If I feel like can spend a bunch of time concentrating on the discomfort and lack of sleep and disorientation and inconvenience of such a long voyage.  I looked up the details of Charles Lindberg's first non-stop transoceanic flight recently - 33 hours and that was a solo flight.  It wasn't like he could catch a quick nap or anything.  I go a lot farther than he did and in relative comfort.

Maybe I should spend more time concentrating on the positive and not so much time pondering the negative.  I'm happier when I do that.

Here's the long form of Tradition Twelve from the Plain Language Big Book: "The last Tradition says that we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that anonymity is an idea that has huge and important spiritual significance.  It reminds us that our principles are more important than our personalities.  It helps us remember that we must remain truly humble at all times.  Staying humble helps us never take for granted our great blessings.  It means we will always be able to live in thankful contemplation of the Higher Power who watches over us all."

Squat

One of our more complicated Keep It Complicated members is a bit of a doozy.  He has been erratic and unpredictable which doesn't exclude him from our membership, that's for sure.   I think I heard that he had been in a bad car accident but that's unconfirmed.  He might have been a heavy drug user - some of the stuff making the rounds out there right now is scary stuff - or he might just have some kind of emotional or mental deficiency.  For a while when he shared every third word out of his mouth was effing this and effing that and was more storytelling than recoverytelling.  I myself have been known to drop an F-Bomb - even in a meeting - but when it's overused it can get tedious and I have to keep in mind that it's going to be offensive to some people.  He was called out about this at a meeting a while back and he reacted in a dramatic way - slamming out of the room in a hurricane of obscenity.  We didn't see him for a while but now he's showing up again.  He seems a lot calmer, a lot better.  I make it a point to always say hello to him but other than that I've been keeping my distance.  Dealing with someone like that is best left to our younger, beefier members.

Our Saturday meeting is larger than on any given weekday.  During the secretary's announcements before we pray out the woman who has that commitment on Saturday made a point of thanking this man for showing up early and setting up the room, no tiny task for a group that averages close to 60 people.  He got a round of applause and it was evident this attention really pleased him.  Then, as happens in our Fellowship, he won the raffle for a year's subscription to the Grapevine, our meeting in print.  For the gambling addicts among us that's a one in thirty-six chance.  The room erupted with applause and hoots and hollers.  Now our boy had a big smile on his face.  He's the kind of person that's vaguely off-putting so I wonder/worry about the effects of loneliness and isolation in his life.  Who knows?  Maybe he's got a big family and a wide circle of friends?  Still, I was glad to see the inclusiveness of Keep It Complicated.  Sometimes the meeting gets under my skin for being too gentle and accommodating, and then I see the effects on someone who needs to be handled with gentleness and accomodation.  

You know what I know?  Squat.  Squat is what I know.

At Peace, At Rest

"Rest is not a matter of doing absolutely nothing.  Rest is repair."                                                             Daniel Josslyn

I try to listen to my body.  It sends me subtle messages then not so subtle messages and then it screams loudly that I need to slow down, to rest.  I don't think resting necessarily means doing nothing.  It can be slowing down my pace, becoming less active, less tense and intense, saying "enough is enough."  I read an essay from an introvert who struggled to explain to her extroverted husband why she needed bursts of solitude and quiet: "When you see me sitting, looking out at the lake?  I'm doing something.  I know it looks like nothing but that's not the case."  Quietly recharging the mental and emotional batteries.

The Plain Language Big Book includes this phrase in its description of Tradition Twelve: "It reminds us that A.A.'s principles should guide us, not what individual members say, do, think, or believe."  Love it.  I always struggled when I heard "principles before personalities."

This Is The End, My Friend, The End

The father of my dear sincity friend, Spandex, succumbed to the inevitability a few days ago, a father with whom he was close.  Spandex is about twenty years younger than me so I can share my very real recollections of how the loss of both of my parents and my A.A. sponsor of twenty-five years - more of a everyday dad than my real father - affected me.  If a parent lives to a reasonably ripe old age the loss brings into sharp reflection that there really is an end game here.  People are going to get older and get sicker and then die.  We can speculate all we want about What Comes Next but there are no known examples of anyone cheating The End here on earth.  Death is a very real, very defined thing.  The person is gone and that, my friends, is that.  I try my best to live a good life and to treat people well because at some point there's not going to be a chance to correct wrongs, to make things right.  Some regret is going to be inevitable but let's all try to keep our side of the street squeaky clean.  Let's avoid those "I shoulda done this" and those "I shouldna done that" to a dull roar, to an absolute minimum.

I was at the endodontist yesterday to have a root canal redone - should I call that a re-root? - and this was the second root canal that had to be redone.  The endodontist shrugged when we were talking about why this was happening.  Sometimes stuff doesn't work out.  Sometimes people get cancer.  Sometimes people abuse their teeth for their whole lives and suffer no adverse consequences and sometimes people (Me!  That people!) floss and brush and water-pik and get regular check-ups and my teeth shrug - meh - and fall apart.  And I'm aware that at my age the ability of my body to repair itself gets more and more tenuous.  All I can do is to take good action and - when things don't work out the way I want them to - sit quietly with the results and learn whatever lesson is there for me to learn.  The doctor and I yesterday briefly talked about the misery that almost always occured to the few people who made it to my age who 100 years ago.  No novocaine.  No implants.  Crappy antibiotics.  No pain killers if a tooth needed to be extracted.  I'm assuming most older people were walking around with half of their teeth gone, gumming their gruel in the morning.  My jaw was damn sore last night - so what?

Thanks to Jim Morrison and The Doors for today's title.