Here Comes the Angel of Death

"It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly.  Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower.  We had sought to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us. "

12 & 12 p. 40

There's a game run by a demented P.E. teacher in a Simpson's episode called Bombardment.  Whenever he feels particularly vindictive he yells "Bombardment!" and starts flinging balls into the faces of little children, destroying teeth and noses in the process.  He's a big, fit guy so he does some real damage.  I know of a politician who does a thing he calls "The Weave" where instead of answering a question he just barfs out, rapid-fire-like, dozens of contradictory and inflammatory and irrelevant facts or lies so that the questioner is left gaping and gawking.  This is a technique in formal debate - bury the competition with so many points they find it impossible to respond coherently to all of them.  They freeze and panic and whatever point you are trying to make is lost in the wheels of confusion.  This was me when I was spiritually unfit - I threw shit against the wall to see what would stick but nothing would ever stick and I usually couldn't get off the couch, in my brain fog, to actually throw the shit so what I was left with were some buckets of shit in my living room.  I couldn't even be bothered to flush the shit down the toilet.  The shit did me no good whatsoever.  Maybe this is why I had very few visitors.   Maybe the buckets of unflung shit in my living room were off-putting.  

"Humans are mentally sick with a disease called fear.  If we can see our state of mind as a disease, we find there is a cure.  We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don't want to keep paying for the injustice.  Forgiveness is the only way to heal.  You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction.  That's the beginning of the free human.  Forgiveness is the key."

Toltecs

It is amazing to me how often the human battle with fear is mentioned in spiritual texts.  It's the fear itself that's the real problem - not the thing or situation or person provoking the fear response.  I'm going to be able to handle the scary thing.  I am not able to handle being afraid that I'm not going to be able to handle the thing I'm afraid of.  It's a riddle wrapped up in a conundrum.  It's a maze of circular logic.  It's like looking in one of those repeating fun house mirrors where you see an infinite number of Yous receding into eternity.  The only helpful thing I can do is to bust up that first mirror.  But what I do is try to break the 13th or 82nd or 133rd mirror, the mirror that is only an illusion in a diseased part of my mind.

It is also amazing to me how often the concept of forgiveness is mentioned in our spiritual texts.  The fact that forgiveness frees us comes up again and again as does the concept that when we learn to truly forgive others then we're finally able to forgive ourselves.

"We have entered the world of the Spirit.  Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.  This is not an overnight matter.  It should continue for our lifetime."

The Big Book p. 84

The Toltecs talk openly about the Angel of Death.  They are not doing this to scare the shit out of us - "omigod I'm going to die here comes the Angel of Death!" - but to lend some perspective to today.  Here's a fact: I'm going to die and so are you so let's deal with this, put it to good use.  If I can look at this somewhat unpleasant truth and not run screaming into the night, into the fog and gloaming, then I can live in today more fully. 

"That is the way I see life, that is what the Angel of death taught me - to be completely open, to know that there is nothing to be afraid of. The Angel of Death can teach us to live every day as if it is the last day of our lives, as if there may be no tomorrow.  And of course I treat the people I love with love because this may be the last day that I can tell you how much I love you.  I don't know if I am going to see you again, so I don't want to fight with you.  So the choice today is to use every moment to be happy, to do what we really enjoyed doing.  If we only have one week to live, let's enjoy life.  Let's be alive."

I used to reject this kind of thinking as gloomy and negative but today I find that it helps me live in this moment which is - after all - the only moment that I'm giving.

Roving Managerial Types

I went to Costco the other day.  I like Costco.  They treat their employees fairly and I enjoy buying a box of oatmeal that contains one thousand servings or a bag of raisins that would nourish the Army of the Potomac for a month.  If I can save a third of a cent per serving I say load it in my cart.  I also use a Costco credit card because it has some nice cash back options.  I used the card a ton this year so the rebate check they sent me was for $3200.

I try to be respectful of my fellow shoppers so I asked the attendant who verifies your membership card as you enter the store how I should handle my rebate.  I specifically pointed out that it was pretty large.  "Show them at the check-out lane.  They'll be able to cash that."  I enter the store full of positivity and bearing no ill will toward any one of my fellows but with the tiniest, smallest, quietest voices in the back of my head wondering at the already deteriorating arc of this transaction.  

I shopped.  The store was very busy and the check-out lines were long.  I showed the rebate to the guy manning the register who said:  "Whoa."  This wasn't particularly comforting.  He waved over a roving managerial type and said: "She'll take care of this."  The small voices were beginning to clear their throats.  

The managerial type took me to a kiosk, scanned the rebate check perched on my phone, and said: "Where's the replacement check?  This is Check Number One which has been replaced by Check Number Two."

I replied - quite reasonably, I think: "This check was sent to me a week ago.  There's already a replacement check?"  I handed her my phone and said: "They emailed me this check.  They did not email me a replacement check.  Where is the check?  Show me where the check is."  The voices were barking gleefully at this point.  They were no longer small or still or quiet.

She did not take my phone.  She did say: "Do you have the Costco app?"

What I wanted to say but did not say was: "No.  I have the check.  I have Check Number One.  You sent me Check Number One five days ago."  I'm pretty good with technology for an old guy.  I'm not afraid of it.  I'm semi-savvy.  But I am a Digital Immigrant and not a Digital Native like people who are weaned and suckled on electronica.   I have to think it through.  It requires some foresight.  It's a process It's not an automatic reaction like it is to those people who walk around glued to their phones all day.  I did not relish downloading an app on the fly and then registering my information on a public WiFi system.  The woman kind of looked at me with a "Fuck do you want me to do?" look on her face.  She wasn't being unpleasant.  She was not being helpful, grant me that, but she didn't know where the check was and that was not, at the moment, her problem.

I said "Okay" and walked away, directly into the line at the service desk.  I needed help and the roving managerial type was not going to give it to me.  There were, a course, a lot of people in line.  I was a little frustrated but not mad. I'm retired and my wife loves it when I'm out of the house for big chunks of time and I knew I'd get the money eventually but I wanted the money NOW.  I came to the store to buy some big bags of prunes and giant packages of Brussels sprouts and to GET MY MONEY.  I leaned into the woman a couple of people in front of me and quipped: "I'll give you $100 to let me get ahead of you" and the idiot thought I was being serious so instead of making her laugh I had to launch into an explanation as to why I was NOT going to give her $100.  She looked a little disappointed.

While I waited I managed to download the Costco app, got registered, and located Check Number Two.  I had no intention of going back and talking to the ultimately unhelpful roving managerial type so I waited until I got to the woman at the service desk who looked at my check and said: "Whoa."  I said: "Yes, I've heard that a few times already."  She replied: "It's going to be in twenties."  I had already done the simple math in my head and knew that would be 160 twenties.  That's a big stack of money.  Fuck am I going to do with 160 twenty dollar bills?  What am I?  A drug dealer? (Ed. Note: Not any more.)  One of those sketchy guys hanging out on street corners who will exchange twenty American for Iraqi Dinars?

She waved another roving managerial type over who cheerfully told me they'd be happy to write a check instead.  First time I had heard that and I was on my fifth Costco employee at that point.  As I was waiting the first roving managerial type drifted into my space and I said: "Look - I'm sorry.  I was getting a little frustrated."  She waved me off, no problem, as she should have as a customer service manager even if I had acted poorly which I do not think I did.

Took me all of what?  an extra half hour?  I DID get my money.

California Sober

I took a couple of phone calls from a very dedicated long-timer this week.  This man shows up at the Keep It Complicated meeting twenty minutes early every single day that he's in town and he's usually in town.  He believes that one of his most important contributions to our Program is making sure that anyone who shows up early to the meeting isn't going to find the room empty.  Many days he's alone except for the secretary who's responsible for opening up the church basement.  I find him an important member of the group and I really respect his contribution.  I also find him sorta dull and uninspiring.  He's one of those guys who talks often and talks too long, providing way too much detail about the excruciating minutia of his life.  He's one of those guys who tells you how to build a watch when you ask him what time it is.  I'm afraid one of these days I'm going to scream: "Get to the fucking point!"  The point is that his manner of relating his experience, strength, and hope doesn't really resonate with me.  I also know that it really resonates with other people.

Here's a line from the Plain Language Big Book: "We pointed out that A.A. members are more helpful to each other when they can disagree respectfully.  Learning to see things from multiple angles helps us become more accepting and tolerant."

There's an older man who has been attending for several months now.  He's kind of a hard case, a hard-headed guy, not surprising for someone who has continued to drink until he was sixty-five years old.  It came out recently that he smoked some weed.  His sponsor - another regular long-timer at the meeting - told him to reset his sobriety date and this pissed off the new guy.  No shit, right?  Both his sponsor and the long-winded guy didn't use drugs so drug use is pretty black and white for them vis-a-vis sobriety.  As I've mentioned I have spoken with our New York Central Office about this matter of drug use and they basically told me, in a very kind way, to mind my own fucking business, that a member is a member if he says he's a member and he's sober if he says he's sober.  We're in the recovery from alcohol business - not the recovery from drug business.  That being said my experience is that most members refrain from using illegal drugs or using legal drugs illegally procured.  Not every single one of us but most of us, myself included.  I share often that my A.A. sobriety date is about five months after my last drink.  Maybe you can smoke weed and grow spiritually but I sure as shit can't.

The long-winded guy called me a few days ago to relate a conversation he had with the hard-headed guy.  Out of the goodness of his heart he contacted the new guy and offered him some work at his house.  The new guy started talking about his drug use and veered off into some personal beliefs that our long-timer found offensive.  Well, the conversation deteriorated from there to the point that the new guy was a no-show for a few days at the meeting.  This distressed the long-winded guy.  We don't try to drive new people away but from time to time we piss them off and they drive themselves away.  I'm happy to report the new guy is showing up again but I can feel some tension.  I've found that most of the men and women I meet respond to positive encouragement better than to criticism, no matter how kind and gentle it is.  And I've found that sometimes we need to be blunt with people.

Apparently I was doing California Sober when I was living in Indianapolis.

Sin and Mercy

". . . we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt."

Big Book P. 62

My old view of God was based on the concepts of sin and mercy.  If I did something wrong I "sinned" and if I was forgiven it was an act of "mercy."  If I did something wrong and was unrepentant then God would punish me and if I did something good and didn't revel in it too much then God would reward me.  Pretty, pretty, pretty harsh.

I went to my local - shop?  It's not a barber shop?  It's not a beauty shop?  Fuck if I know what to call it? - to get my hair cut by the young woman with whom I had a discussion about recovery a few months ago.  As she walked out of the back room I asked if she remembered me and she just came right up for a hug.  Later, she told me that she still had my phone number pinned to her refrigerator.  We talked recovery again and I assured her I wasn't shilling for Alcoholics Anonymous, just making sure she knew I could introduce her to a bunch of women her age if she wanted to come to my meeting.  Maybe it isn't that bad for her at this moment in time.  Maybe it is that bad and she simply isn't ready to join a recovery group.  Maybe she's telling tall tales and half-lies about her dad who's in and out of jail and her mom who is siding with her ex over custody of their kids.  I'm pretty savvy when it comes to alcoholic bullshit but sometimes it gets by me.   Maybe I'm sowing seeds that will grow some day or will wither and die.  It's so hard to tell.

I like being awake as the day dawns.  I like seeing the light change as it goes from a suggestion of brightness to a dim, diffuse glow to full daytime light.  It's quite spiritual for me to see this happen.

Fade Into Black

I led the Keep It Complicated meeting on Saturday.  I read the section of The Big Book where one of our members was explaining his difficulties concerning prayer to a religious guy.  The religious guy suggested he pray for whatever person was currently annoying him every day for two weeks and to do this even if he didn't mean it, if he was just saying the words.  That section really is in The Big Book.  Try to find it if you dare.  I like daring people to find it because it's almost at the very end of the book so you have to read the whole book to find it.

After my fairly obvious comments I generally call on people.  I like to do this a la Portland, Oregon.  It keeps everyone engaged, more or less.  It's pretty embarrassing to get called on if you have no idea what the topic is.  I like to call on new people, visitors, and the members that are quieter, less likely to speak.  I don't call on the oversharers or the loud-mouths.  I don't call on people who talk too long.  I don't call on people I don't like.  Check that - I really have to call on some people I don't like because I don't like anyone.  At the end of the meeting I explain that my choices aren't based on some internal popularity contest, that I was new once and that I've moved several times in sobriety and I travel a lot so I know the feeling of being on the outside of a meeting.

The people that affect me the most deeply - after the new people - are those who have had a tough time with their families of origin.  I was once one of those people who was reticent about talking in a meeting.  Part of this is that when we're new we don't think we have anything to say.  Which can be true although new people can say the best things.  I know the feeling of lying low, trying to stay out of the spotlight and not attract any attention.  I was raised by two fairly normal people - if you met them you'd like them a lot.  They were very nice.  However - you knew there was going to be a however - there had some flaws that really affected a sensitive, anxious child like me.  My dad was a funny guy with no patience and a quick temper so I never knew what was going to set him off - he'd explode at some of the weirdest times.  And my saint of a mother was afraid of even more stuff than me if that's possible so any conversations I had with her ended up scaring the shit out of me - she could see the downside of everything.  So my survival technique was to try to fade into the background.   I could fade back out of the gloaming if my parents were doing something they liked - church and family holidays and sporting events that amused dad - but otherwise I felt like I had a big target on my back.

When I call on these people I hope I'm saying: "I see you.  And you're just as important as anyone else."

Seriously, It's Not My Fault - Clearly, It's Your Fault

 Here are a few reflections, a few impressions from Doctor Silkworth about Bill's spiritual awakening which are found in the chapter "Bill's Story" in the Plain Language Big Book: "I realized that he hadn't just changed how he thought and felt.  He had changed his entire being.  Knowing he was not alone had saved him from hopelessness.  Maybe God could guide these alcoholics toward a strength they could not find alone.  He just needed to accept that he was not the only person or force guiding his life."

Here is Bill talking to Ebby, his first guide and sponsor, about the amends process as it was originally devised by the Oxford Group: "I promised that I wouldn't blame these people or criticize them during our conversations.  I just wanted to make things right between us.  If I ever felt doubt or confusion, I should sit quietly and ask God for direction and strength.  If I prayed, I should not pray for myself unless I was asking for wisdom I could use to help other people."

Bill, of course, being a good alcoholic took the Oxford Group's six steps and doubled them.  Hey, if six is good then twelve has to be better, right?  You can sense the realization that it was going to be very important to keep everything on our side of the street.  When there's conflict or disagreement among humans it's very natural to try to pin the blame on the other person regardless of whether or not it's the other person's fault.  Intuitively most of us understand that apologizing and then adding that stupid, stupid word "But .  .  .  " is not going to work out very well.   It doesn't even matter what comes after the But.  It's the But that kills you.  The But changes the amend from "I'm sorry"  to "You made me do it."  Sounds easy, doesn't it?  Well, it's not and it's especially not when the other person has in fact behaved poorly himself.

Many meetings close with either "The Promises" or "A Vision for You" to stress that all is well, that  all is going to be well.  We can also find all kinds of promises scattered throughout the texts.  Again from The Plain Language book: "I began to make some important friendships and build a community.  It's wonderful  to feel part of a group that  understands what I've been through.  The work is hard but we actually have a lot of fun doing it.  Some people might be shocked to hear a group of sober alcoholics joking and laughing together, but the humor keeps us sane."

Insane:  Lacking the ability to think and behave in ways considered to be normal; exhibiting a severely disordered state of mind.

Grandpa Knows

From "Bill's Story" in the Plain Language Big Book comes this paraphrasing of Bill's growing realization that spirituality might be a big part of the solution to his alcohol problem: "I remembered how my grandfather believed that there was some great mystical force working in the world, but he didn't want the preacher to tell him what that force was or how it worked.  He wanted to make up his own mind about God and religion.  He didn't respect the people who went to church regularly and did exactly as they were told by the preacher.  ( I saw how) Everything worked in harmony.  Because of this, it seemed to me that there must be a Power greater than myself.  A Power that was guiding our world in some way.  So I believed there must be a God, but I had not made myself think about God's power or ability to help me.  But my friend told me when he connected with God, he was filled with hope and the courage to live and try again."

Here's an anonymous member sharing in "The Daily Reflections:" I was never known for my patience.  How many times have I asked: 'Why should I wait, when I can have it all right now?'  Indeed, when I was first presented with the Twelve Steps, I was like the proverbial 'kid in a candy store.'  I couldn't wait to get to Step Twelve; it was surely just a few months' work, or so I thought!  I realize now that living the Twelve Steps of A.A. is a lifelong undertaking."

Patient: Being able to tolerate delays, problems or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.

When confronted with one of our important words like acceptance or humility or patience I often quip snarkily something like "Yeah, well, I don't know what that means - I should look it up when I get home."  The problem is when I look it up I'm not thrilled with what I find.  For instance, I'm lucky when I can tolerate delays, problems, or suffering without killing someone else or myself, even.

I'm liking the Plain Language Big Book.  It isn't offensive or shocking at all.  It's almost as if I'm asking a good friend to explain what a passage means in his or her own words.  What makes Bill W so infallible anyway?  I bet he made a mistake every now and then.