"But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when we harbor such feelings we cut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of which we have not even dreamed." Big Book of A.A.
Our leader this morning asked us to share on our interpretation of the phrase "the sunlight of the Spirit." First of all, I believe that whenever a word is capitalized in our original literature it's a stand-in for God so in this case that the Spirit is beaming out some sunlight. Which is pretty cool. Theoretical physicists speculate that the fourth dimension is the mathematical extension of the concept of three dimensional space; either that or the fourth dimension is time. Which is an arbitrary concept in and of itself. In math, time can be defined as an ongoing and continuous sequence of events that occur in succession, from past through the present, and to the future. Time is used to quantify, measure, and or compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and even, sequence of events.
Okay, I'm a little off the recovery path here. My share this morning probably sucked. People probably didn't want to hear me drone on about my conception of theoretical physics.
This is how arbitrary time is: it has not been that long that time has been standardized in American life. Each town and municipality used to have their own time. If you said it was noon, it was noon. It didn't have to agree with the next town over. You could leave your house at seven, walk for three hours, and end up someplace an hour before you left. Pretty cool.
A woman came back to the meeting after drinking again. She had a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve and then "a couple" of mimosas the next morning. I felt a general sense of dubiousness when she said "a" glass of champagne and "a couple" of mimosas. Math and honesty aren't the hallmarks of a typical relapsing alcoholic. She then said this: "I asked my sponsor if I had to change my sobriety date." We are nothing if not astonishing. I was left wondering what she thought she had to do to relapse. Whew.
But then there's this: I walked on the cold beach this morning with a long sleeved polo shirt under a thick hoodie. Halfway through the walk I got hot so I removed the hoodie, took off the polo, and then put the hoodie back on. Perfect. I stopped for coffee - I was out of the sun - so I put the polo and the hoodie back on for maximum warmth. I read the paper. I got up, collected my things, went back into the restaurant to donate the paper, went to an off-site bathroom, then walked back to my car before realizing that I had left the brown polo somewhere. I retraced my steps and was amused/astounded/flummoxed that some asshole had picked up my polo and taken off with it. I paused for a moment to lift up the hoodie, revealing the polo underneath . . . still on my body. So I'm not going to spend much time criticizing some lying relapser. I'm glad I got home in one piece and fully alive.
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