Find a Mirror

 I do best when I'm looking inside.  God knows I like to look outside.  It's a hell of a lot easier finding fault in other people, places, and things than it is looking inward and trying to decide if I need to do some work and change something or if I've done all I can and now I need to sit patiently, quietly, and wait to see what's next.  I like working on you.  It's a lot less painless than working on me.

"The Serenity Prayer in your own words."

One of my good buddies at the morning meeting finally fed up with the homeless situation, called me, and unburdened himself, maintaining that we need to ban this one particularly disruptive guy.  He's a well-respected elder statesman in the meeting, not contaminated with the stink of being a grenade-throwing malcontent like me.  I told him I had his back.  I told him I'd stop by a church out in our neighborhood that I know is sympathetic to The Fellowship and when I did this they were receptive to hosting a new meeting.  When I told my friend he was awfully noncommittal.  Uh-Oh, I thought, here goes Charlie Brown barreling toward the football that he's finally sure that Lucy isn't going to snatch away at the last moment and I'm flat on my back again.  Got to laugh at ourselves.

I think that a big part of my general sense of annoyance at the world in general is a pretty deep frustration with the state of affairs in my country.  I totally get that we fiercely defend our personal liberty and the right to do what we think is best individually but after a while it just seems to me to be boorishly selfish.  I continue to go to my morning meeting and I continue to be irritated - not profoundly irritated but definitely irritated - and I suspect that I feel the absence of the people who left and I'm nurturing an indignation that they broke all kinds of laws and ignored the pleas from the medical community to avoid large gatherings is still alive and well.  The stuff that goes on in the meeting I attend isn't significant enough to explain my severe self-righteousness.

Find a mirror.  Look at the mirror.  See the problem.