An Ass In A Seat

 Service:  The action of helping or doing work for someone; help, use, or benefit - "glad to be of service."

Nice word.  Simple.  Easy to understand.  Nowhere do the concepts of me, myself, or I show up.

The topic of the meeting this morning was being of service in The Fellowship.  One of the themes of the sharing was how completely unaware of other people we were while we were drinking.  The idea of doing something for someone else with no expectation of a reward was alien to me.  I was afraid that I was being taken advantage of.  Screwed!  Sure, I'll buy a pitcher of beer but I've got my eyes on all of you.  You're not getting out of here tonight without anteing up.

My off-repeated early-sobriety story about service occurred in Indianapolis where I was dabbling in my recovery.  You know the drill - show up late, leave early - so someone asked me to make coffee for the meeting.  With no artifice or barely disguised snark I replied: "I don't drink coffee at night."  Implied but wisely left unspoken was the addendum: "If you want coffee why don't you fucking make it yourself?"  The kindly gentlemen suggested that it might be nice to make the coffee for some of the other members.  What this service commitment did, of course, was force me to show up early and stay late so I got to know some people.  This was my first real start in my recovery.

The other experience took place in Chicago.  I volunteered for the coffee position at a big meeting there - I was learning a little bit about The Program and knew I needed to start being of service  - before I understood that I had to show up an hour before the meeting to get two huge pots started.  Apparently having the coffee done one minute before the meeting started wasn't the deal - people who showed up a half hour early to fellowship wanted a cup.  Then, to compound my indignity, I had to wait until everyone was gone before I cleaned the pots.  It was like a three hour commitment.  Again, I was there early and I stayed late and I got into the middle of the herd, into the flow of recovery.  I also learned how to deal with the irritation I felt and not being recognized with a special A.A. reward for Best Coffee in Dupage County.

A lot of service work in A.A. occurs under the radar.  Just being at a meeting so that someone who really needs a meeting has a meeting to attend is good service work.  Just being an ass in a seat.  When I was new and traveling occasionally I'd show up at a posted meeting site only to learn that the meeting had moved or been disbanded.  I'd have been thrilled to have one ass in one seat so that I could unspool my tale of woe.  Today I know I don't need to share something amazing  at every meeting.  I've mentioned over and over showing up at my regular meetings when we were meeting in person and standing outside with the smokers, making sure everyone is at least recognized when they're showing up.  Most people nod and walk on by but not everyone.  And then I'll often stand at the door to the meeting room afterwards and greet everyone who's leaving.  Again, most people drift by but I often get into a conversation with someone.  I have the personality to do this.  Not everyone does.  I don't have the personality to work with new people - I'm too dismissive of bullshit to be very welcoming or understanding so I leave that to the more patient members.

D'oh!

One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world asked me for some book recommendations.  His response to my suggestions was to start the thread by saying that he made a start on one of them and spiked it, immediately bored.  I thought the book was fantastic so this annoyed me - I considered typing some acerbic response.  "Well, some of us have more refined literary sensibilities," was my favorite, combining, I thought, acerbic wit with some educational arrogance.  Conversely, I spoke to Willie on the phone last night about a family matter that was upsetting him.   Normally we'll leave voice mail messages indicating we're just checking in so when the message from one of us asks for a return call to discuss something upsetting or confusing each of us makes an effort for a quick return call.

I've been talking a lot the last few years - some of my less enthusiastic fans might call it "preaching" - about the different kinds of love I've come to embrace.  I love both these guys.  With Willie, I think, nary a contentious word has e'er been spoke.  The conversations are smooth.  We're on the same page about everything.  With my book-loving friend the history is exactly the opposite.  Hyper-Competitive to a fault, we bicker and argue at the drop of a hat about important matters and the most inconsequential things.

I've known Willie a long time but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the length of my relationship with Mr. Contention.  These are two very different relationships and I value them both.  I need both of these men in my life.  They both help me and teach me, but in different ways.  This is what I'm trying to sort out when talk about love.  I love my mama and I love my wife and I love The Cincinnati Reds and I love a hamburger from Quatman's Grill.  No one would dispute these feelings and no one would equate them.  Different in all aspects.

Maybe I could take a sack of Quatmans to a Reds game with SuperK and the ghost of my mom?

Here's how my universe works when I'm active and engaged in my recovery and my spirituality.  As I was noodling over the level of snark to employ in my book response I paused to read my current Daily Reflection book: "Be calm, be true, be quiet.  Be calm always.  Do not talk back or defend yourself too much against accusation, whether false or true.  Accept abuse as well as you accept praise.  Only God can judge the real you."

D'oh!  

Gates of Insanity

To Wear The World Like A Loose Garment is such a great expression.  We've kicked around the idea that you can/should wear just about everything like a loose garment: work, marriage, A.A., your neighborhood.  You have a garment on but it shouldn't be too tight.  The leader of our meeting this morning was a long-timer who is hobbled by a recently fractured ankle.  She's not thrilled about this but she's keeping on keeping on.  I love this about long-timers - an almost universal ability to keep perspective on things.  I'm not happy that I suffered a Posterior Vitreous Detachment - my vision isn't impaired, it's affected - but I'm making do.  Balance.  Perspective.

The Daily Meditation referenced a scene from Zorba the Greek where Zorba and his grandfather discussed whether you should live your life like there's no tomorrow or whether you should exhibit the patience to take the long view of life.  Do you plant a tree that you'll never see bear fruit?  Is the benefit in the planting of the tree or eating the fruit?  The long-timers saw the beauty in both sides of the equation.

"Everybody irritates the crap out of me."  That was a comment in the meeting.  (Ed. Note: Fair Disclosure: I said that.  It was me.)

Astonish:  To surprise greatly; astound; flabbergast.

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.  . . . their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.  The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.  The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.  Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death."  Big Book of A.A.

Gates of Insanity would be an excellent name for a hard rock band.

Easy Does It

"Look to this day,

For it is life,

The very life of life.

For yesterday is but a dream,

And tomorrow is only a vision, 

But today, well lived, 

Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day."

Kalidasa, Sanskrit writer active in India in the 4th Century A.D.

So . . . here we have a dude . . . in India . . . only 400 or so years after the birth of Christ . . . who was saying, basically, as I see it: "One Day At A Time."  So . . . apparently . . . One Day At A Time is not a new concept.

"Be calm, be true, be quiet.  Do not get emotionally upset by anything that happens around you.  Feel a deep, inner security in the goodness and purpose of the universe.  Be calm always."

So . . . here's a book by Hazelden . . . written in the early 50s where someone is saying, basically, as I see it: "Easy Does It."

 ‘Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’

And here's a quote from the Bible.

The point is, of course, that basic spiritual principles are basic spiritual principles.  This is why most of us are so open-minded about religion and other spiritual philosophies.

Because, basically, as I see it, it's all the same shit.

Sponsorship

Sponsor:  A senior member of a twelve step or similar program assigned to guide a new initiate and form a partnership with him.  (Ed. Note:  This definition made me laugh.  I usually shake my head when I get a glimpse at how the outside world sees our organization.  I like the idea of a "senior member" which makes me sound like a managing partner of a law firm who is going to tell someone who won't do anything I suggest what to do; I love the use of the word "initiate" which sounds ominously religious; and the idea of a "partnership" which brings to mind some kind of commercial agreement made me roar."

The word "sponsor" or "sponsorship" appears nowhere in The Big Book.  The concept first appears in Step Two in the Twelve and Twelve and then it shows up frequently.

Step Two - finding some concept of a power greater than ourselves - has five categories of God Fighters and Deniers: belligerents; people who reject spirituality as the domain of the "holier than thou" crowd; those who had faith and lost it; the "I'm too smart for this god bullshit" faction; and the poor souls who still believe in God but are soaked and marinated in too much alcohol to understand anything.  It is - along with Five and Twelve - one of the longest chapters in the Twelve and Twelve.  If you're having trouble with the whole Higher Power concept you're in good company.

If you come to a good, solid, workable relationship with a Higher Power, one that's based on a real, deeply-held belief, and not an action you're taking because you have to, an action where you're "faking it until you make it" or "behaving as if," then you're right on schedule.

Steady Persistence

 So one of the ringleaders at the break-away meeting is a decent friend of mine.  He could rightly be called a curmudgeon.  He's one of those incredibly strong personalities which he makes absolutely no attempt to moderate - one of those guys who has a bunch of friends and even more people who just shake their head at his antics if they can stop short of actively disliking him.  I hear "That's Mark" often when his name comes up.  Nonetheless, he would show up at the 7 AM meeting an hour early, open the door, and talk to any newcomers that show up.  I don't care for his politics or his social attitudes at all while recognizing that he's one of those important figures in A.A.  We've got enough people like me: impatient, quick to dismiss anyone who I don't think is serious about recovery, someone who isn't going to get to an early meeting an hour earlier than that.  When I'm on my game I admire his contributions.  We always greet each other, maybe talk for a minute, but we don't get much further than that.  He gives me a lot of props as a long-timer in recovery but otherwise we're just too different as peopl.

I have been pretty exercised by this break-away meeting and I've imagined a steady stream of agitated conversations with him, one of the main ring-leaders of the split.  So yesterday I thought: "Huh.  Why don't you just fucking call the guy."  I have talked with him on a regular albeit infrequent basis over the years so this wasn't a big stretch on my part.  Why not call and be positive and affirming?  What do I know about how the world should operate anyhow?  We had, of course, a particularly ordinary and inoffensive talk.  He's committed to his meeting and he only brought up one mild, oblique reference to what I would call a conspiracy theory.  He seemed kind of excited that I called.  People generally know what I'm thinking - I don't make much of an effort to hide my contempt or disapproval.  I don't harangue people, preferring to go talk to someone else, but I'm sure he had picked up the vibe.  

"Spiritual development is achieved by daily persistence in living the way you believe God wants you to live.  Like the wearing away of a stone by steady drops of water, so will your daily persistence wear away all the difficulties and gain spiritual success for you.  Never falter in this daily, steady persistence."

Singularity

There's a great episode of The Simpson's where Homer gets elected as head of the Sanitation Department in Springfield.  His basic game plan is to spend unlimited amounts of money with absolutely no thought of the consequences.  He wins office with the campaign slogan: "Can't someone else do it?"  This is my kind of slogan.  This would be an excellent life slogan.

"We cannot fully understand the universe - the simple fact is that we cannot even define space or time.  They are both boundless, in spite of all we can do to limit them.  We live in a box of space and time, which we have manufactured by our own minds and on that depends all our so-called knowledge of the universe."

I tried to look up the speed at which our universe is expanding but I couldn't even grasp what the experts were talking about, and I've taken university level physics classes.  Let's just say the universe is moving, like Ferrari moving.  Apparently the farther away you get from earth it expands more slowly while it's also accelerating more rapidly  . . . or vice versa . . . or something else.  The words parsec or gigaparsec come up frequently.  Assuming that a parsec is something so big that I can't comprehend what it means the fact that someone is measuring something so large they have to add the qualifier giga- to it is a further be-goggling. Meanwhile, the universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years in diameter which means if you travel at the speed of light it would take you 93 billion years to traverse the diameter of the universe.  This is further than the distance between Parsippiny and Ossining.  

This is space.  Don't get me started on time which is never ending and started with the Big Bang.  What the fuck is the Big Bang?  It sounds like they asked a class of first graders to name the start of time.  And how about the number one trillion?  It gets tossed around all the time like it's a Nerf football and we can't really even grasp what that means, either.  For instance, one trillion dollar bills would stack up to a height of almost 68,000 thousand miles.  If you switch to $100 bills the pile would be 680 miles.  Think about it!  Waffer thin $100 bills stacked one on top of the other 680 miles straight up.  I'd be happy to get a couple of miles of $100 bills.  Very happy.

I got started on all of these unknowable concepts after reading some suggestions on how to deal with newcomers who were resistant to the concept of a Higher Power.  Look, we get it - it's hard to develop faith in an unfathomable concept.  Please just give it a whirl.  When our national debt is announced you don't break your brain trying to understand it.  You've accepted it.

I'm going to throw that equation in just for the hell of it.