A Drink

Walk into a crowded bar or social event that has alcohol.  You don’t know anyone.  No one seems to know you are there or care.  You feel like an outsider.  Maybe you feel like you don’t matter or fit in.  Then you have a drink and maybe another one until suddenly, you feel a part of.  You feel that you matter.  You fit in.  Nothing has changed in the crowd.  Only you have changed.  It is the great delusion of alcohol.  The real thirst is for connection. Spare your liver.  Just introduce yourself to someone, anyone.  Well, anyone who is sober.  Or be of service and walk up to someone who is alone.   

Good Friday

 Today is referred to as “Good Friday” by a lot of people.  It used to be a church visit day, but is more of a “get away” day for the weekend.  If you are clueless about why it is called “Good” the explanation might be most puzzling.  It celebrates or recalls a miserable death by crucifixion of an innocent man who loved everyone.  What is so good about that?  Good question.  Well, what if you had nothing to give to people who hated you or did not even know you, or did know you but were pretty clueless about who you truly are.  Ignore them maybe?  Stay away from such people?  What if you gave your life for them, since you do not have money or things to give.  Or give all of yourself in service to people who you don’t even know.  Law enforcement or military, or a bus driver for school children who dies to save others.  We call them good, not crazy.  If you call their action meaningless, you might check your quotient of self-centeredness.  It is not all about you.  

The Messenger

 I try not to focus on the messenger, but rather the message.  It’s why I stay with the same groups.  I don’t always like everyone in the group or church for that matter.  But I am more interested in what message people bring to the group or church.  Sometimes, volunteers and people who do service in church or a group and not to my liking.  But the message they bring is important.  They are being of service as I should be too.  Or someone I don’t particularly feel drawn to, says some very important things that help me.  If a pastor has a message that helps me, I don’t leave and go somewhere else simply because I don’t much like the pastor.  Besides, the message might challenge me to be more tolerant.  Maybe the messenger is having a bad time, or a bad life, but my spiritual Power is using that person to speak to me.  

Geography

The problem with God for many people is geography.  They are looking for a god out there in the cosmos who is supposed to be fixing all the world problems, but is not, in their opinion.  They are not looking for the God within themself.  They have no meditative life and often their prayer life is fox-hole type prayers after some mess, often of their own making.  But they often blame the out there god for the mess.  Anyhow, I try to make meditation a daily part of my life.  It helps me.  And I am less likely to blame anyone for the mess around me.  Meditation helps me to ask what I can do to make the world around me a better place.  Being of service is not natural to me, but it is spiritual.  So I try to be spiritual-centered early in the day.   

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.