Blind Spots

 We all know blind spots in the side windows when driving.  Many a time I have been in the passenger seat and shouted, “Look out!”  I was the companion in the car who saw what the driver was missing, not seeing.  We all need passengers in our life travels to help us to see whatever we might be missing or not seeing, our blind spots.  Sometimes the new information comes across as “second opinions.”  We are blind to something in ourself or in another person or situation.  This is an important reason to have friends, companions on our journey of life so that we don’t destroy ourself and others.  Does my blog hit any blind spots?  

Baptism

 Baptism, like Recovery is dying to an old way of life and rising up to a new way of life.  It is spiritual, that is, you did not baptize yourself or get yourself sober.  As we get toward the end of the Easter Season, I reflect on my own baptism as a baby.  I received the Grace or Power.  If I am going to mature, then I must get in touch actively with that Grace or Power.  Lots of people got baptized and went on to live miserable lives for themself and others.  So how does one live this “Risen” life?  Some tips:  be of service to others, be prayerful, humble, kind, selfless, that is, life is not all about me.  If you are still falling into an old way of a miserable life, then you are turning your back on Grace and Power.  Baptism and Recovery are not events that happened in the past moment of time, like the date of your last drink or date on baptismal certificate.  It is an everyday work to stay risen.  

Gratitude

 There is a very common reason why one loses gratitude as a response to life.  They forgot where they came from.  When I wake up in the morning, before I get out of bed, I thank God for what I have.  I did not always have what I have, and getting it was hardly my own complete doing.  Big things, I have a career that I love.  I could have thrown that away.  I have people who love me.  I have family by blood and professionally.  Then I am thankful that I woke up, have the bed I am in and the room I am in.  Addicts are sleeping on the streets.  People with jobs are sleeping outdoors in tents.  I have a bank account that is plenty enough for today.  I was once almost broke.  I remember where I have come from.  Never forget.  

The Answer

 Most problems have spiritual answers.  You do not solve cancer or death in a family with a spiritual answer.  These are facts of life.  The spiritual answer is the response to the facts.  How you respond to the difficulties of life will depend on how connected the heart is to some spiritual power within.  Being an alcoholic is a fact.  One does not escape it, but the solution to living with this is a spiritual solution.  You find a higher power in working the steps, prayer and meditation.  The loss of health or a family death is a fact.  How you respond to these things is all important.  Rage, self-pity, resentment, hating your god and whining won’t change the facts.  But a spiritual response will make all the difference.  You learn to live with reality.  How?  Become more accepting, for one.  The alcoholic accepts their alcoholism.  It won’t go away but their response to it in a spiritual centered recovery program will allow them to have quite a full life.  Moping about it no answer.  

Connection

 Usually people say that the opposite of addiction is sobriety.  Maybe sobriety does not quite hit the right note.  In addiction one is terribly lonely.  It is the disease of loneliness.  Sobriety is better defined as connection rather than not being into the addiction.  If an addict is not into their addiction but has no real connection with people on a heart to heart level, then they are merely dry.  A big part of a home group is that you get to know people and are known.  You get together outside the hour meeting.  From this practice you learn to make friends outside of Co-addicts because you have a new demeanor and new social skills.  In religion people want to have a home parish where they can be known and know others on a more spiritual heart to heart level.  This is why it is so important for parish regulars to welcome the newcomer.  AA does this very well, because everyone was once a newcomer.  Part of recovery and ongoing sobriety is about connection.  If you want your meeting or parish to flourish then welcome the stranger.  

Get What You Give

 I think the Psalms of the Bible and the Big Book of AA need to be approached in the same manner.  I have heard people say they read some of each and “got nothing out of it.”  Well, I ask, “What did you put into it?”  These readings are not meant to get information, or to be finished quickly like a novel, or be read for a while and then immediately put down as you go onto something else.  In a sense, “finishing” is never the goal.  Transformation is.  These books must be read in a meditative way.  When something strikes you, stop and just be present to it, the thought, the feeling.  Let the words of the book speak back to you.  So in a sense, I never finish the book.  I put myself into the reading with time, patience, and openness.  I get what I give.  

Weak Power

When I am weak, then I am powerful.  So goes the quote.  What does that mean?!!  Well, an addict in recovery could tell you for example.  They know they will always be addicted.  So this is the weakness.  But in recovery they discover the 12 steps, fellowship, service, and they feel a power they did not have when out there actively into their addiction.  So they are powerful when they realize their weakness, and thus a need for some power that is not them.  The same for anyone on a spiritual path.  They come to realize their weaknesses and then their need for the spiritual power that can overcome this.  Who needs a God if you feel you have it all together? 

The Perfect Person

 Are you looking for the perfect person?  Well, I don’t think you will find such.  Why?  Because we are all human and such is imperfection part of being human.  We are not a god or higher power.  But there is hope.  You don’t need a perfect person, you just need someone who is perfect for you.  I am not a perfect priest and too many people would attest to this.  But I may be perfect for a certain congregation.  I help out at a church in the Sunset District of San Francisco.  So far they have not tired of me.  I am not perfect but am perfect enough for that congregation.  If you go to recovery meetings and you find that you are at home there, then those imperfect people are perfect enough for you.  I write imperfect blogs, except for people who keep reading them.  

Listen

 A lot of the meetings I attend, my demeanor is to be a “listener.”  I learn a lot by listening.  If people come to know that I want to listen, then they will tend to be more honest and open.  If I am going to be a listener, then I must stop doing other things while the person is talking.  Multi-tasking won’t do it.  Cell phone activity is a turn off.  So if you think that someone is not being honest, or talking at any depth, you might first ask if you are a listener.  Patience, acceptance, and calmness are a big aid in learning to listen.  I have found it so.  

The Question

 One of the reasons that young people are turned off by the church is that the church is answering questions that these people are not asking.  Clericalism has the downside of separating one from the people they are trying to reach.  Now you might say that these young people ought to be more concerned about what the church is teaching.  But they are not.  It is not about disagreeing with a teaching, but rather a disinterest in the subject relative to what they are interested in.  The Paulist Fathers are more about reaching out to people where they are rather than where someone might think they ought to be.  It is a bit of life on life’s terms.  

Beautiful Places

 I heard someone say that they did not think they were alcoholics because they drank expensive stuff in beautiful places.  Reminds me of people who go to beautiful churches, cathedrals, historic places of prayer and think they feel so holy in such a place.  But the outsides don’t fix the insides.  If you are addicted, the place and what you imbibe won’t fix you.  And you don’t need an expensive rehab to get well.  Nor do holy places make holy people.  It is all an inside job.  The mess is inside.  The wellness has got to be directed to the insides, the heart and soul.  

Happy Valley

Look at the names of the nursing homes, assisted living homes in your town.  They seem in the main, to get names that deny you are dying or getting old.  We do seem to have a desire in our culture to avoid thinking about death.  It is inevitable so why not accept it and then enjoy the days that you have?  All we have is today and it is one day closer to death, but I don’t have to become maudlin over it.  I am called a “senior” Paulist.  It means I am seen as a priest who is not so much expected to be full time on a staff, earning a salary from the parish, as I am seen as someone with a reduced capacity on the way to death.  No matter how busy I stay or how much exercise and good eating habits I have I am going to die.  So I try to enjoy the day.  It is a gift.  And maybe I can be helpful to someone else who is not having so much enjoyment.  Just because we die alone does not mean we have to live that way.  And if someone else is alone due to addiction or age, I have this day to reach out.  

Control

Do you not sometimes act like the clay that wants to control the potter?  Seems silly, does it not?  But when your prayers and actions are an attempt to control God, to get God to do something because of your prayer, action, you are the clay trying to control the potter.  Just be the clay.  God, the potter, works with what you are just like a potter works with the clay.  The potter adds this or that.  You don’t add.  You wait.  Meditation is when we are very much the clay waiting upon the potter.  Let God build you to what God wants, free of your fears and over-blown ego, and desire for control.   

Eastering

 Eastering means bringing life from death.  So Easter is a time of death and then three days later, resurrection.  People in recovery are Eastering people.  That is, they have hit a bottom that feels like almost the end of their life and then surrendered to their Higher Power.  Then they are raised to a new life they could not obtain on their own power.  They then seek through the steps, meetings, fellowship to become more fully alive.  Christians are supposed to be doing this by sacramental gatherings, community and outreach to others who are still suffering a lack of a full life.  So ask yourself, “What am I doing today to live the full life that is offered to me.”  Become an Easter person.  

Stay Connected

 Before Jesus went to his agonizing death on a cross, he gathered together with friends for a meal.  Lazarus, Martha and Mary were his friends.  I have learned that if I am going to have to go through some difficult patch in my life, it is best to get together with friends for some support, some sene of not being alone, of being loved.  Recovering addicts do just this.  They go to a meeting before they go through a difficult scene in their life.  They talk to friends  in the meeting about it.  They feel the love and the support.  They don’t feel so alone, and maybe someone else in that room has gone through a similar experience.  So if crazy alcoholics can do this, why cannot the rest of us?   You don’t need to do life alone.  

Emptying Out

 If God is self-emptying, as in creation, pouring the divine self out, how is anyone to know this, if it is so, because humans cannot know God?  God is beyond our small brains.  So what to do?  Become human.  So God becomes human as many believe, so that we can experience the human, in this case, Jesus of Nazareth, pouring himself out, surrendering, all that divine omnipotence, to die on a cross.  Would people then change and become more self-giving?  Seems not.  Jesus died pretty much alone on that cross.  What happened?  Well, God became human, but this was not convenient for us, because we did not want to change, to become less selfish, less fearful, less competitive.  I suspect that a lot of believers prefer their God to remain unknown.  They don’t want to change.  So they just make up a God that is convenient.  

Being Wrong

 I have found a joy in being wrong.  Yes!  When I go to confession in my religion, I tell all the wrong stuff I have done, and then I hear that I am loved unconditionally in spite of all the wrong that both God and I know.  I celebrate being forgiven for all my wrong.  And it energizes me to do right, to do better.  This is grace.  A person in recovery does a 4th step in which they discover all they do wrong, their side of the street.  They are amazed at the discovery, and humbled if not humiliated at their past behavior.  Then they tell someone, face to face, and experience, acceptance, love, rather than judgment or condemnation.  Recovery is a celebration of being wrong!  

Anonymous

 Do you tend to get upset when you are not praised and recognized for your “good” deeds?  Does being ignored bother you?  Well, if your self-esteem is taking a beating, think of your situation as being just like God.  God is pretty much ignored and certainly not praised for all the good stuff we take for granted.  In fact, God gets blamed for not doing more!  If you feel you are doing a lot and people complain that you are not doing “more” than you are just like God.  There is nothing wrong with anonymity.  Lots of people live in anonymity and they are doing just fine.  You can still be of service, pray, do the right thing and be ignored.  Praise is not the purpose.  

Forbidden Fruit

 God seems to like to hide, not be so easily found.  But the forbidden fruit is right out there in the open for us.  We tend to choose that which we prefer.  We choose the fruits we can see, touch and taste.  Easy. God, Higher Power, Ultimate Reality, we have to work a bit, have patience, trust, discipline in meditation, take time.  Spiritual growth requires a sorting of priorities.  That which is easy is not always that which is best, and especially if we are going to grow on the insides.  So if you are not having much of a spiritual life, sobriety, you might ask what your priority list look like.  

Sobriety

 Alcoholics think that their problem is they drink too much and cannot stop.  So they stop drinking, at least in the short term.  Why do they go back to drinking?  Because sober, they realize that their problem is with life.  Sobriety is their problem. If no work is done to change so that you can live life without drink, you are at best “dry.”  Alcohol was the symptom of the inability to live life on life’s terms.  The 12 steps and the recovery process is how a non-drinking alcoholic learns to live life on life’s terms and be selflessly helpful to others.  Substances are escapes, not solutions.  A pill to calm you down won’t teach you how to live life on life’s terms.  Few are the people who are willing to work at it.  

Washing

You wash your clothes and face.  This washing gets rid of dirt and debris to make things clean.  Meditation is the  washing of the mind.  The mind fills up with stuff, much of which you don’t need but which seems to take up space, like a closet full of clothes you don’t wear.  You need the mind to be clean or clear to receive some insight of a more spiritual reality, that will wait for you to make it some space.  I try to wash my mind on a daily basis.  Clothes once a week.  

Yesterday

 I won’t stay physically fit on yesterday’s exercise.  I have found that out time and again.  I won’t stay limber on yesterday’s stretching.  Whatever good happened yesterday is good, but I don’t bet on any carryover.  I will not stay spiritually fit on yesterday’s meditation.  Day’s off from the interior life is like coasting along.  You only coast downhill.  I have to meditate each day, stretch each day, exercise each day.  One day does not have to be a complete repeat of the day before.  I can vary  with both my outside stuff and inside stuff, but I have to do something physically and spiritually.  I come undone too easily.  Know thyself.  

Importance

 To think of your self as having some importance in the world can be a healthy ego sense.  You can be proud of yourself.  You have a sense of purpose and service to others by your presence and efforts.  All good.  But if your sense of importance is based upon what others think of you, that is not good.  Self-importance based upon other’s judgment seems to diminish what you think of yourself.  Your worth must come from within you and not depend on the whims of others.  

Habemus Popam

 What a good choice for a Pope.  He speaks Spanish, English and Italian.  An American who comes from working class South side of Chicago who worked years in Peru.  Can connect the Southern Hemisphere with the Northern Hemisphere. At a time when Fascism threatens Democracy, we get this fellow as Pope.  An American Pope can bring people in our country around to the needs of the suffering in our world.  He is very pragmatic and down to earth, so I think he realizes that governments are not able to do it all for everybody.  What is possible instead of “shoulds.”  An ear and heart for the immigrant, but also for trying to make South America a place where native people will want to live and grow.  His middle name is “Francis” his baptismal name.  Though American, he spent a lot of time outside The USA.  And he is an Augustinian.  Augustine is a favorite of many Cardinals and Bishops.  And Leo XIII in 1891 emphasized a “new thing” when he stood up for the working class in the Gilded Age of the rich getting richer.  And a Cubs fan.  

Empty Hands

 Addicts know what it is like to have empty hands.  No one wants to hold your hand and no one wants to shake your hand.  They just wish you would go away.  Recovery is about having hands that are no longer empty.  People shake your hand when you enter a room.  People hold your hand because they know, like, and even some who love you.  Your world becomes full of friends you have never met rather than strangers with whom you feel inferior and out of place.  

Desire

 You don’t change one desire until you replace it with another desire just as strong.  A person says, “I desire to stop drinking.”  OK.  But what desire is going to replace drinking desire?  You may stop drinking for one reason or another, but if there is no other desire to replace it, you will go back to drinking.  People go into and out of Recovery or drinking bouts all the time because they do not have a strong desire to replace the drinking desire.  What might that desire be?  The desire to live a sober life.  Not dry, which is simply not drinking.  But a sober life, which is a spiritual path, of steps, guides, fellowship and service.  Takes a lot of time?  Yes, but then so did the drinking, and where did that get you?

Tiny Containers

 I tend to place people in tiny containers.  I make a judgment about them and that is their container.They cannot be otherwise than I have judged them.  Why do this?  Because I don’t like inconsistencies.  Too upsetting.  If you are a jerk, then you are always and in every way a jerk.  I need to learn to embrace as, someone called it, “opposite truths.”  A person may in deed be truly a jerk in some ways, but then quite noble and uplifting in other ways or circumstances.  They would then be like most of us, inconsistent, with a bit of this and a bit of that.  I punish myself by putting people into tiny containers.  It limits my knowing them.  And throws friendship, much less intimacy out the window.  

The Dew

 Morning meditation followed by a self-willed life is like the morning dew prayer.  My spiritual life simply dries up with the daylight.  Why does this happen to some of us?  I think it is because meditation is to make me feel better at the moment or because I am disciplined enough to just do it.  What is lacking?  Surrender.  I don’t so much surrender myself in meditation as try to empower me to get my daily agenda done.  And when there is no surrender to my Higher Power’s will, and my agenda does not go as I planned later in the day?  You don’t want to be around me.  Pious me becomes the whiner, complainer, and full of self-pity.  So I try in morning meditation to say, “Lord, I surrender to you even my desire to feel good in this meditation.  Your will not mine be done.”  Well, it works for me.  

Fantasy Life

 The drunk sits at a bar or in a bar.  What is the drunk doing?  Living their fantasy life, while they try and escape the life they actually have.  They have turned their will and their life over to booze.  Sometimes they end up in bed with someone living out another fantasy.  People can live fantasy lives in a pew in church.  They think or promise their god that they will live much better lives than what is going on at the moment.  But too often there is no surrender, no abandonment to their God.  This is why the 3rd step in AA calls for turning your will and your life over to a Power that is not you.  Why?  Because that Power, God if you will, wants you to live the real life you are capable of when sober.  It is Grace.  It comes with surrender.  Fantasy has no power here.  

Gift-Giver

 I like the concept of God as the “Gift-Giver” who never ceases to give.  Why?  Because it shows God to be a verb, action, power, energy.  If you are always giving gifts then you are always active.  A lot of people stopped believing in the ‘Noun” god, up there in the sky, old, male, inactive about fixing their world.  I don’t pray to that God, but to the gift-giver.  I wake up and realize that today has been given to me as a gift.  What will I do with it?  I hope to be active, in service, such as writing this blog.  I hope to be loving rather than thinking about love.  Now is the only time I have.  

Troubled Waters

 There is a wise phrase, “The devil fishes in troubled waters.”  It means that bad stuff is avoided if we can remain calm in the storms of life.  A spiritual practice that reaches to the depth of heart is one that will keep us calm in rough patches of life.  Meditation helps in this.  So don’t wait till you feel upset to meditate.  It won’t work quite as you might like.  Do it early in the day before other stuff happens.  If your response to an event is to become restless, irritable and discontented, then you have upped the percentage that you will make a bad choice solution.  The mind and will can easily become captured by these types of stormy emotions.  Thus we make bad decisions, that mess us up, though they look great before we embrace them.  So avoid becoming troubled waters.  

Pride

 So what is the matter with pride?  Nothing, if it is pride in something that you did.  You are proud of yourself.  It is between you and your project, effort and results.  But there is a pride that is very destructive.  This is where you think you are better than anyone else.  You might in fact be better at a common task, but if it is a pride that measures yourself not against the task but against others, it becomes a slippery slope into judgment of others, and a forgetfulness of your own faults.  A pride that lacks any sense of humility, is one that will lead us off the spiritual path quite quickly.  You might be very good in this, but the this is not the everything.  Only the delusional thinks themself perfect.