Art and Music and Nature and Hope The Dog God

I often think of coming to understand that wisdom is experience plus knowledge.  I know I talk about this a lot.  Maybe that's part of the aging process - winnowing down what's important, what's significant, to fewer and fewer things that have greater and greater importance.  Maybe that's why we have half a dozen short phrases hung on the walls of our meeting rooms.  Keep it Simple, One Day at a Time, Live and Let live, and Let go and Let God.  You could build a pretty good life on those four slogans.  Lotta "lets" in there.

When I was early in my sobriety I attended a men's spiritual recovery retreat a couple of times a year.  I took a lot of good from my Christian upbringing but was overly concerned with the threats and warnings, the demand that I do Good or suffer for all eternity on a Lake of Fire.  This was not a great message for an anxiety-ridden depressive going through puberty and trying to figure out who he was..  A Lake of Fire!  What the hell?  Who came up with this crap?  So I drifted . . . 

At one of the retreats the retreat master, a crowd favorite, Father Tim, spent some time talking about the Second Step and the trouble a lot of people have coming to terms with the concept of a Higher Power.  Backs stiffen, hair bristles, hands are thrown up in angry despair.  Father Tim made some hands-on suggestions.

Go outside.  Be outside in the natural world.  The retreat center was on a large campus with open fields and stands of trees, all of it bordered by a small river carved into the surrounding hills.  This is why monasteries were built on cliffs and in the mountains and by the ocean.  It's easier to feel awe when surrounded by such beauty.  Sit outside and listen.  Sit outside and feel the air on your skin.  No phones.

Listen to music.  Listen closely.  Pull up a video of a great guitarist or pianist and watch their hands move over the strings and keys.  I'm not a musician so I confess at being confounded and astounded that someone can make those kinds of sounds, can remember how to move their hands and fingers to make those kinds of sounds.  Look up the African Kora.  It looks like a cross between a harp and a banjo and a stand-up bass and had to have been formed in the mind of someone on mescaline.  It's incomprehensible to me that someone could see this thing in their mind's eye without a nudge from beyond.

Look at some art.  I know only a little about art but still the otherworldliness is apparent at a glance.  I looked at a few paintings by Paul Gauguin this morning.  I realize that what he painted came about after a lot of studying of perspective and colors and composition but he also clearly had a talent that was far beyond what anyone could teach.  He was largely ignored while he was alive - like a lot of great artists he was ahead of his time - but today he's recognized as a master.  I'd like to have one of his discarded paintings today.  I remember like it was yesterday strolling around a modern art museum in Helsinki, Finland several years ago and finishing our visit in a room that had three paintings by three of the great artists in the Impressionist Era - I can't even remember who the painters were - but these paintings blew the room up.  I'm sure the art in the rest of the museum was of a high quality but these were spiritual miracles.  It almost felt like they were illuminated by kleig lights.  Klaxons started blaring.  It was that obvious to us that these were several notches above.

And, no mention of a Higher Power is complete without the obligatory mention of Hope the Dog God.  That animal .  . . .   That animal is in the moment.  That animal has internalized what it means to love rather than be loved.  I can hear that animal screaming: "Omigod - it's Seaweed!  Omigod Omigod Omigod.  He's back!  I wasn't sure he'd ever come back!"  I could hit that animal with a stick and it would beg for my forgiveness.  You trying to tell me my Higher Power isn't lurking behind those Mexican street dog eyes?  

Bullshit.