The Bridge

 If your life is full of emotional pain, adrift with a lack of purpose, try being of service.  Be useful and do something for another person or community.  It helps me to be of service in doing things around the rectory that makes life a bit better for all of us.  I have a six month commitment to a meeting one morning a week for guys that are trying to deepen their spiritual life.  I make the coffee and run the meeting.  I find that service is a bridge between pain and purpose.  I try to cross that bridge every day.  I hope this blog is bridge-crossing.  

Sabbatical

When you go on a sabbatical it is for the purpose of learning something new to include recalling something you had forgotten or to deepen an understanding.  Teachers do this to make themselves better teachers.  Well, drunks go on sabbaticals too.  They stop going to meetings, working the recovery steps and what do they learn on their dry sabbatical?  If they live, they learn that they are real alcoholics for instance.  Life gets that bad on the sabbatical.  Then they come back with a new purpose and enthusiasm they lacked the last time around.  Some people do that with their religion.  They drop out and become “used to be” people.  Life gets bleak with no spiritual replacement and eventually they might come back with a new enthusiasm and focus on working their faith.  

False Gods

 Some people say that they don’t believe in God or don’t believe in false gods.  But if they tend to live in fantasy, then they surely worship a false god.  Fantasy is most often about oneself being omnipotent.  In the fantasy, you can do extraordinary things and are bowed down to by others.  Well if that is not a false god then I don’t know what is.  So if I am walking along and find myself passing the time in fantasy, I remind myself that I can do better during this going from one place to another than wallowing in false god worship.  Worshipping myself makes me a religion of one.  No other members.  

Enough

 Today is my birthday.  I will go to a funeral today for a priest who died last week across the hall from me in our rectory.  He was one month younger than me.  He is gone and I am here.  I have come to realize that life is a gift as I age.  It is a gift not so much for me as it is a gift for others.  I have a chance to be of some service to others, that they might have a better day because I am alive in it. Being also Palm Sunday weekend I will have the Evening service today.  We celebrate someone who is a Gift to many people.  The gift of life is not all about me, but all about all of us caring for one another.  So once again you get a blog to read.  And I get to open some birthday cards.  

One Way

 The problem with addictions is that the love only goes one way.  A drunk loves booze but the drink does not love the drinker.  And so it goes with drugs.  You are addicted to social media, but the media does not have feelings for you.  If it were another person, who did not care about you, then you would most likely give them up, unless of course, you are addicted to the relationship.  One way relationships tend to be addictive.  There is a reason we cannot give them up, and it is most often not about love,  It might be fear of loss.  I try not to pour something into me or pour myself into something if there is no back and forth, no mutuality of the heart.  Booze never cared.  

Plans

 When I get up in the morning and make my plans for the day, they don’t always happen as I planned.  Then I get upset, and consequences follow.  Why have a lousy day simply because I did not get as planned?  After all, it was only my plan and I did not check in with the world to see if we all agreed.  So when I wake up I first ask God what plans God has for me.  Since I am clueless, I ask that I be open.  I may still have plans, but it with an attitude of openness, that is, a willingness to surrender my will and life to God as I have come to know or not know through prayer.  

Domesticate

 I am a Christian who too often wants to domesticate the Gospel I read.  I want it to be comfortable and comforting.  I tend to have short term memory for what bothers me.  I tend to focus belief in that I am converted to believing the correct doctrine and tradition.  My shortcoming at these times is that I ignore the conversion of the heart.  I am shortchanging myself from a conversion of the heart that will more deeply affect my actions and attitudes.  Meditation opens me to listening to a Power, my God, who can ever so gently or more directly, point me in the direction of conversion of heart, such that my actions will not be from ego, fear, self, but from love.  I am a work in progress.  

A Restful Night

 When I wake up from a good night’s sleep, I am rested.  This good feeling can fool me into thinking that I am spiritually fine too, as if sleep healed all my shortcomings or took them away.  Sometimes, when I wake up rested, I think that I have all this energy and want to get on with the “doing” of an active life, saving the world and such.  I will pray “later.”  Then the day goes downhill with my ego in charge and my spiritual life starving and weakened.  So I try to wake up and remind myself that I am a spiritually sick person in need or recovery and that I now have the energy to pray first and then see about saving the world, or at least correcting all the shortcomings of others.  Prayer usually gives me a second opinion about what to do in the world of “action.”

Spiritually Sick

 If a drunk comes into church to pray, to feel quiet safety, a respite from the chaos of their life, and they do not act well, but even a bit badly, I don’t judge them or tell them to get out.  They are spiritually sick, and at that moment are trying to get well in as best a way that they can.  Why judge a spiritually sick person for bad behavior?  It would be like trying to throw a drunk out of an AA meeting who is there to get well.  This is the best they can do at the moment.  When my behavior is somewhat immature I reveal that I am spiritually sick at the moment.  I need help, not judgment.  

Time

 If the alcoholic thought about their higher power that got them sober as much as they thought about alcohol when they were drinking, then the Recovering Addict would become quite spiritual.  The idea that we cannot possibly be focused on a spiritual power all the day long is challenged by what debilitating stuff we do focus on all day long.  Spiritual recovery is getting away from “it is all about me.”  If you find yourself planning your daily destruction, then you are surely pretty focused.  Being focused is not the problem.  It is the object of our focus that makes or breaks us.  

Nothing

 “I am nothing,” is what we sometimes say when we feel so insignificant, or ignored, or seemingly forgotten.  “I am but a drop in the ocean,” is our self-image at these times.  But a drop in the ocean, though but a drop, is part of something much bigger.  We are all part of this something, drop by drop. The ocean is not an ocean without a lot of drops to make it I up.  So be your drop and do your part to make this ocean what it is.  You don’t have to be big, or noticed to be important.  Participate in the ocean of life.  Be kind to the drops around you.  

Ruts

 Why do people in addiction recovery programs keep going to meetings?  Why do religion believers keep going to worship?  Ruts.  Today, one may be sober or a believer, but if they do not work at it, meetings or worship, prayer, service, they will inevitable stumble into ruts, old behavior.  They may not drink that day, or lose faith, but they will practice  old messy dysfunctional behavior which makes their day and usually the day of others around them all the worse.  Ruts are the beginning of a slippery slope.  

Normal

Normal changes.  To live life on life’s terms is to be able to accept new normals.  If we can accept these type of changes then we have a better chance to flourish on a different platform.  If you lose a body part, you live a new normal.  You are not diminished, but changed in your everyday way of life.  If you are getting sober in recovery you are living a new normal.  If you have a conversion experience of any sort, it will affect your daily life.  Some things are dropped and some new things are embraced.  We cannot grab onto the past and still live to our fullest in the present.   

Inside And Outside

 I often speak of prayer as getting inside yourself, to your deeper self in meditation.  But prayer of this sort or any prayer is to help us get “outside” ourself.  Yes, we do pray to get things, but if we are on a spiritual path, what we want to get is in part to be of service to others.  Just wanting what I want when I want it for no other purpose than  to feel better is not getting outside oneself but rather feeding the self and becoming more insular.  This can feed isolation.  So if I ask God to feel better, I hope I have some purpose outside myself.  

Enough

There is a wrong path or a lack of path that is called “enough.”  It is the detour from a deeper, growth oriented spiritual life practice.  A drunk gets into recovery and does all the right things.  Then one day says, “I am sober enough.”  There is no enough.  It is delusional.  Go forward or you will go backward.  No standing still.  Try standing still in a spiritual practice and  you go from sober to dry, from daily practice to occasional to rare, to nothing.  People who used to believe or go to church or meditate all know this.  And they probably used to read my blogs.  If you don’t grow you go.  

Death

 Death is inevitable.  But we can postpone it by good behavior.  A drunk who sobers up and enters recovery, interrupts their death.  Someone who listens to their doctor or trainer and begins to live a healthier lifestyle of exercise and diet, interrupts their death.  I think that meditation does too.  In touching our depth it also heals the body.  I have found it so.  

Inconvenience

 One thing that moves us beyond our own inconvenience is being of service to others in need.  We don’t need much depth in a spiritual practice to be helpful when it is convenient or serves our own sense of worth, or makes us feel better.  These actions have their obvious rewards.  But without some depth of spiritual practice, some deeper meditation for instance, we won’t move beyond our own inconvenience barrier.  But this depth of practice will also protect us from overdoing, and burn out.  The Power always moves us and levels us.  

More Days

 One thing that sobriety and good health habits tend to do is give you a longer life.  The longer the life, the guarantee is that things will change.  We all would like to live longer, but many of us don’t want any change.  We have found a sweet spot.  We want life on our terms, the sweet spot.  Or we seek a way of life that comforts us sober and with good health, few aches and pains.  But life changes.  So I need to deepen my prayer life, solitude, meditation, reading, to be able to accept the changes that come without my permission.  

Tempered

 Those who are fired up by the spirit can do with some added solitude.  Why?  Because with solitude, the message you deliver will be sparse with words.  It will be clear and brief.  If I practice solitude, quiet prayer alone, and meditate on scripture, I hope to be “fired up” to preach, but with few words.  That is why my homilies are often praised for being short.  Maybe they lack depth, but they are short.  In meetings, if I am going to share, I ask myself how I will use few words to focus on the message.  When people talk on and on in sharing a message, should they actually have one, others tend to tune them out.  Match your message with a person’s capacity to listen.  Solitude can help you.  Happy Friday the 13th!

Fire

 What does fire do?  It tends to spread.  When someone gets all fired up, as we say, they tend to spread their enthusiasm around.  Or they tend to pour themself into whatever has caught them.  Runners do this in training.  In Religion and Recovery, both spiritual paths, people tend to deepen their experience by practicing, such as service to others, talking about their experience, sharing their hope and love.  Such people are important to all those for whom the fire has gone down to smoldering coolness.  The spark is there, but it needs others to blow it back up to fire.  That is why the Spiritual is often referred to as Wind.  

Weeds

 I went to the San Francisco Arboretum last month for the Magnolia Season.  Blue sky, no fog or cold wind.  Chamber of Commerce weather.  I watched the gardeners pruning the ground around the plants and trees.  Get rid of the mess, weeds, and such that get in the way of growth and nature’s health.  I thought of character defects and human shortcomings.  These are our weeds.  We are the plant or tree.  We are meant to be beautiful, but choke ourselves off with character defects, bad habits, and bad choices.  People in Addiction Recovery know of God the Pruner when they practice any one or more of the Twelve Steps.  No one prunes themself.  Though the delusional think, “I can do this myself.”  

Garbage Man

 When I go out early in the morning for a walk or run, I see the garbage man and the truck getting rid of all the mess we make each day.  God, your Higher Power, is the garbage man of the mess we make each day in all our imperfections, mistakes, and self-will run in over-drive.  The Catholic Church has a sacrament for this.  It is called Confession.  During Lent season a lot of Catholics go see the Garbage Person, God.  Addiction recovery Programs have a specific step for this.  It is Step Seven.  When you put out the garbage in plain sight, Garbage Power takes it away.  

Close Your Eyes

 God Power is obscure but not invisible.  What?  Well, why do so many people close their eyes when they meditate?  Why are eyes closed when you sleep?  To see better the visible, to be led to the unconscious, the depth of oneself and reality.  The open eye cannot see all of this Power.  God Power lives in your darkness, intimately.  This spiritual Energy lives in seen and unseen creation, trees, plants and so on, but that is not an intimate, most near presence.  In the darkness, eyes closed, you enter the obscurity of faith.  Now you see with the eyes of God.  Darkness is not so dark.  

Grace

 Grace is often spiritual power showing up in unplanned moments.  This power is always at work.  God does not sleep.  But it is most experienced in the unplanned moments.  You wake up and plan your day.  Grace is not so visible though you ask for, and expect, spiritual help.  But Grace is most experienced, felt, in the unplanned moments.  “I am going to do something tomorrow,” but then you don’t.  The drunk knows this one.  But one day you just walk into a meeting, your first.  This is Grace felt at work.  You don’t even feel like you did it on your own, like in planned moments.  You suddenly pick up the heavy phone, now grown lighter, and call someone.  You walk into a church or synagogue, “out of the blue” as we say.  Grace just wrote this blog!

Electricity

 Spiritual living people, such as believers in religion or recovery people, are pre-electricity people.  They are candles.  A candle is meant to be lit in the service of light.  And the candle will then burn down.  Prayer that leads to service, sacrifice for others, giving up of self, is like a way to keep the candle lit.  Without prayer, you burn out. Then you go from light to darkness for yourself and others.  So keep a balance. Time for self and time for others.  If you know your baptism date and your last drink date, then you know when your candle was lit.  

Tyranny

 Humility liberates us from tyranny of self.  People in recovery know this quite well.  Humility does not mind being ignored.  It does not crave attention, that is, the need to be the center of their universe.  Freed of this energy suck, we can spend ourself on being of service to others.  We are all miracles happening or waiting to happen, just not in the self-willed time line.  

Patience

Do you lack patience sometimes?  Or often?  Well then you very well may lack hope.  And you won’t wait until the end of the story as someone said.  Quick and negative judgments can get in the way of The Power’s ability to bring about “miracles.”  Miracles are not necessarily instant, but eventual, the slow kind that require patience.  Some people mature quickly and some take a lot of time with mistakes along the way.  And when someone or something seems like a “hopeless case,”. God may still be at work, but you don’t see it.  Maybe the story never seems to end even with death or extinction.  But then maybe there is more story, the beyond.  Recovery people never give up hope in one another.   

Expectation

There are some things you cannot change.  They are going to happen anyway, regardless of your preferences.  Yes, miracles in behavior change do happen, but they are miracles, that is, rare.  So I try to keep the daily expectation to accept the things I cannot change.  And maybe  God does not care to change either.  Why let annoyances be your primary emotion for the day?   

Do Not Disturb

Sometimes we think that God does not care because we get no response to our prayers, entreaties, spiritual wants.  Did you never get a “Do Not Disturb” sign or put one out on a door?  It means not now, but later.  God is at work but maybe not on your timeline.  We lack faith and hope.  People say they believe until they don’t get what they want.  God no longer exists once this Power no longer lives on our timeline.   The next time you put the “Do Not Disturb” tag on your hotel door or phone, say a thank you prayer to God for the hope and faith you might still have.  

The Patient

 I try to remember that in giving spiritual path advice, I am always the patient, never the doctor or healer.  It keeps me in touch with humility.  That I have any spiritual life is a gift more than something learned.  I can sometimes falsely think that if I do this I will get that, something gained on my own power.  So I simply tell people what I do, or what I did that did not work, rather than tell them what they “should” do to obtain some sense of healing.  And I tell them I have found a Power that is not me.  Connection rather than isolation is key.  

Fast Or Far

 As the saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go with others.  I have found this to be true in several areas of my life.  I can run all out by myself, but if I want to improve my stamina and distance running pace, I need to train with others.  I make a commitment to show up not only for me but for the “team.”  I always feel better when I go to church and there are others at mass, equally interested as I am.  Church is community.  It needs plural.  Recovery is the same way.  No one recovers their sanity from addiction alone.  You may stop the addition alone, for a time, but inevitably you don’t go far in recovery.  You need the group, the meetings, the contact on a regular basis.