Strangers

 When you walk into a new group or new worship community, everyone is a stranger.  It is like a new job.  You might say, “I will never get to know all these people, their names and stories.”  A way that I look at it is to say to myself, “These are friends I simply have not yet met.”  People like home parishes, home groups, anything with home in it because it is the familiar.  We feel part of.  OK. So then what about the “stranger” who comes into your “home” whatever?  How do you respond?  This new person is not a stranger, but a friend you have never met.  Get out of your comfort zone.  Get out of yourself.  Oh, and Happy April Fool’s Day!  

Been Around

 There is a “been around date.”  It is when you first tried something but then dropped out and went back to your old ways.  People get baptized, or enter recovery programs, or start a gym membership and attendance.  Then they drop out, disappear. Go back to the “before” behavior.  I meet a lot of people why used to be in AA or used to be Catholic.  “How’s that working for you?” I might ask.  Whatever their answer, I suspect they will walk away thinking about it.  A correct decision to become more whole will not work without discipline and trust and maybe some humility to ask someone for help.  Initial enthusiasm or desperation can and will disappear somehow. And we can be a forgetful lot.  I keep this in mind on my own spiritual path.  Lots of detours beckon.  

The Gym

 When you go to a gym on a regular basis, it can be unpleasant at times.  Not a lot of people smiling with joy as they tread along or push weights, or bend this way and that.  The benefits come later, over time.  Prayer and a more selfless lifestyle also have difficulties.  Such is our spiritual gym exercise.  We take time for prayer.  It may be boring or seemingly difficult.  but we discipline ourself to take the daily time.  We try to love when it is difficult.  We try to give when we want to take.  In my tradition, some people go to daily mass during Lent.  They don’t always want to go just as people don’t always want to do their physical workouts.  It is all one day at a time and you are not in charge of the results.  They will come if you work for them.  

Making Space

 Transformation takes discipline.  But it is not the same as the discipline you use in athletics, academics, or learning some new skill.  All this is your effort that will gain something.  It all relies on you.  But this is not transformation as in a spiritual practice.  You don’t so much master something, as you create a space in which some Power, not you, works to bring about an interior change that will then affect your attitude, and response to life on life’s terms.  The outward depends on the inward and you cannot do the inward by yourself.  That is why prayer and the practice of being of service to others is all part of this process of transformation.  In Christian circles, it would mean becoming mastered to the Spirit or the mind of Christ.  To the Alcoholic in recovery, it means making space for the Higher Power.  

Birthday

 Today is my birthday.  I have had a lot of them, but never tire of this date.  My present to myself is to focus on the big, good stuff that I have and not on the small bad stuff.  This is sanity for me.  To reverse it would be to go down a darker path.  The good stuff for which I am grateful is that I am alive, and still have friends who put up with me.  I don’t having a craving for something unhealthy.  I have the strength and health to be of service to others, such as these blogs read by a couple of people.  The bad stuff is small if I can remain sane and balanced.  If little things get in the way of the good big things, then I know I am insane.  So I work at this balance on a daily basis.  Oh, and I look at the weather reports in Colorado.  I live in a temperate climate here in San Francisco.  So I cannot complain about “the weather.”  

Tyrant

 Would you put up with a demanding tyrant?  No, you say.  Only an insane person or codependent person would do that.  Well, alcoholics who are drinking, or addicts who are drugging, are putting up with a demanding tyrant.  Now you know something about the insanity.  The tyrant, in one case is alcohol.  At some point, it demands the alcoholic drink.  It even provides a craving to respond to this tyrant.  So if you run across an alcoholic in recovery don’t ask, “Why do you still go to those meetings?”  They go because it gives them hope, which is a path of freedom from the tyrant.  Encourage them.  Hope needs a daily feeding and watering, but not with booze.  

Humility

Why do I still trudge the road of happy destiny?  Or, why am I not more perfect, but still saddled with defects of character, and shortcomings?  Well, it might be for the sake of humility.  I teach about prayer, and write these blogs.  But I do not teach from success, so much as from failure to be what I talk about.  I know failure much better than sainthood.  Teaching and writing helps me to see my shortcomings.  I am not a hypocrite as long as I am the first one learning from what  I do.  I have learned that humility is at the very top of the virtues.  At least it is so for me.