Sitting In Our Space

 In some gatherings people like to sit by themselves, steeped in their self-sufficiency.  In other gatherings they look to sit with others, seeming to know their need for others.  That is why they came in the first place.  Churches seem to be where people come for God and not on another when they look for a pew space.  If they know some others well, they may sit close to them.  Strangers are kept at a distance.  In recovery meetings, good ones, newcomers are never left to sit by themselves.  In the pew, the person seems to be there just for God, but in recovery they are there for God in one another.  Jesus never said, “Sit by yourself and pray/worship,” but rather “Love one another.”  So who welcomes the stranger?  

Grumble

 Self-orientation is the hole we dig for ourself and the shovel is often silent grumbling. It is a situation of isolation.  I don’t want to be part of something at the moment.  The grumbling is because I ought to be part of something at that very moment.  Going to meetings where I will be with others who seek a more spiritual way of life is about connection with others and my God.  Self-orientation says no to all that.  Seems insane? So I pray for sanity.  

The Shift

 How do you know that your prayer life is growing and you are growing with it?  Well, you stop focusing your prayer on what you want God to do, to fix, to change, and shift to asking what God’s will is for you and the power to do what Gods wants.  It is basically a shift away from self.  The self-centered person is blind as to what they really need.  God is not blind and knows what we need.  So I start with thank you and what is your will for me.  Later I can get into what my preferences are. They usually change as I mature in the spiritual life.  

Fitness

 I exercise with walking, jogging, gym workouts.  I want to be in fit physical condition.  Fine.  But if I skip my spiritual practice of prayer and meditation, spiritual reading, then I won’t be in fit spiritual condition.  I need to have my priorities set, with fit spiritual condition first each norming and then I can work on the physical.  The physical condition is short-lived.  We all die.  But what if there is a spiritual life that goes a lot longer, as I believe?  Will I be fit for the long journey ahead?  

The Loss

 Sometimes we have to suffer a loss in order to be free.  For instance, we lose control over something.  We fight it at first and find no freedom there.  We discover that we lack the power to overcome this loss.  It could be a loved one, a job, an addiction, a physical issue and so on.  But then we are gifted with finding a power not our own, but near to us.  This is the power that helps us find a new life that has a new sense of freedom.  The loss will always be a loss, but the gain will help us to carry on to be the best person we can be under these new circumstances.  I find the spiritual path to be a key help in this.  Blaming the gods won’t do it.  

Trite Rituals

 Why hold out your hand to shake someone else’s hand?  Is it but a trite ritual?  Are you being polite without any personal commitment?  I  keep this in mind when I see someone at a gathering, a meeting, a ritual, whom I do not know.  A newcomer to me perhaps?  If I go over and shake that person’s hand, it means that I am making a personal commitment to that person.  I am here for them and inviting them to come back the next time.  If I am in a whining mood, or wearing self-centeredness, my busyness, I shake no one’s hand.  I am a comma without a sentence.  

Household Tasks

What is the matter with manual labor?  Jesus did it for 30 years.  It is done in obscurity, like most manual labor.  Look at household tasks.  No one has a tombstone or an obituary or celebration of life funeral, where people talk about all the household tasks they did.  No one says, “Mom or Dad took care of us while we sat around and did nothing but complain about life.”  I clean up after dinner at our rectory and put away all the food in sealed containers.  And throw out the old food that no one ate.  It is being of service and is holy work.  All household work is holy.  If I keep this in mind, then I don’t end up resentful and whining.  Well, maybe now and again.   

The Comma

 Do you ever feel like a comma in a wordless sentence?  You know you have a purpose, but it is simply not working out.  Stuff is missing.  You feel your value diminished.  Where did the sentence go?  Well maybe it did not go anywhere.  Maybe it is you who moved, wandered off the path.  Be of service.  Be a comma and go find a sentence that needs you.  

Blah Days

 It is tough to have faith in recovery on blah days.  Pink cloud is gone.  Willingness is weak and mind is forgetful of how you got sober.  Meetings are boring.  People say the same old stuff.  A bit like the pastor at church who says the same stuff in the mass that is always the same.  Drinking is not a solution, nor is skipping the prayer and meditation that is so boring and l-o-n-g.  We have sought of lost the way.  See it as a dry patch.  Trust that if you continue on a spiritual path, boring as it seems, all will work out in time.  Recovery is not all about feeling good, but doing good.  A drink might make you feel good…and then?  Disaster.  Boredom is not disaster.  

Obscurity

 There is an obscurity of faith.  You believe, but feel nothing.  Words seem empty.  Dogma does not uplift you.  It can happen to any believer.  I could be at a “sacred” sight, such as before a tabernacle in a Catholic Church.  And my heart and soul feel nothing.  This is faith in obscurity.  It comes and goes.  To some it may never come, but to many it does, but they don’t talk about it because it embarrasses them when around “believers.”  It can happen in a recovery meeting.  You go and sit there, believing in the process, the power of the meeting, but you feel nothing.  Don’t let obscurity of faith keep you away.  It might be a test of willingness, and humility.  

Just Say Amen

 Don’t be judging your prayer at all, because we tend to do so by the criterion of our mind and our emotions.  “How do I feel?” Or “What good thoughts did I have?”  Refuse the self-importance of how anxious or calm you are, which is simply asking yourself, “How am I doing?” It is fruitless.  You are not the Power in your prayer.  Human wisdom does not tell us the benefits of our prayer.  Show up.  Do it.  And just let Grace show up as needed.  God has surprises.  For Christians, remember the Resurrection came after the folly of the Crucifixion.  I doubt Jesus was feeling good on the cross.  

Amnesia

 I tend to have “Spiritual Amnesia.”  It is a bit like forgetful sobriety for recovering persons.  I might have listened in meditation with my ears, but not with my heart.  That is, I did not get quiet enough within my own mind, to let anything reach the silence of the heart.  I can be somewhat helpless in a prayer of listening.  The results? I forget what I learned and used the last time I did listen from the heart.  But I trudge along each day, asking my God to lift my spiritual amnesia for this day.  

Tools

 I need spiritual tools to deal with two aspects of life that come up all too frequently.  One is fear and the other is the uncertainties of life.  So rather than wait until they arise any one day, I take out my spiritual tool box early in the morning and go to work on me.  If I put this off, then I may not be prepared for the day, about which I seem to have too little control.  I cannot survive on the tool box from yesterday.  I need to go to it each morning.  I used to go to other tools, not spiritual at all, to deal with fear and uncertainty.  Made life worse.  What is in your spiritual toolbox?

Seeing Fit

 When you see someone who appears to be “spiritually fit,” you probably are attracted to it, whatever it is.  It is the way they are rather than what they say.  If you want what they have, and were to ask them how they got this manner, this calm, this living in the moment, you will find that they do a lot of work.  Part of this work is keeping in mind that their life is a “we” life rather than a “me” life.  Many people talk the spiritual talk but don’t do the work.  They do not attract.  They are “me” people.  They tell you to be like them, rather than to be your best self.  We are all uniquely made.  But all made to be “we” people.  

The Visit

 When I visit someplace, such as a Church, I have come to ask myself, “Am I going to linger, to abide or to take up residence?”  To linger is to walk around and look at things.  To abide is to sit, kneel, even stand and pray or listen for the Presence, the Power of the environment.  I make a deeper connection when I abide, but I am not yet changed, that is, going to take the experience with me when I leave.  To take up residence is to sit for quite a while, maybe eyes closed and just be present to the presence, without any expectations.  If so, I will take the visit with me into the world outside, a bit changed within and this benefits anyone I meet or things I do.  

FOMO

 FOMO is Fear Of Missing Out.  I used to have this as a bachelor living in an apartment in San Francisco.  This was before I went into the seminary.  I would get home from work, especially on a Friday, and have nothing planned.  I lived near a bunch of bars in the Cow Hollow Area of San Francisco.  Part of me just wanted to stay home and read, make something or get something to eat.  Sometimes exercise outdoors.  But then there was this nagging sense that I was missing out on something on the streets and in the bars.  I usually gave in to the missing out energy.  Invariably I was better off at home, exercising or getting something to eat.  Missed out on a lot of good reading by doing this, and practice cooking/shopping.  But I have learned to be with me and do healthier things on a Friday night.  

Everyday Daily

 Everyday daily is a gift.  Jesus, who is purported to be God did not mind living anonymously, as far as world frame and notable accomplishments, because he spent 30 years in a village of maybe 50 or so people.  Certainly not more than a few hundred, if that.  So my faith and Good News is that God loves the ordinary, the daily everyday routines.  Why?  Because in those routines is extraordinary life, the spiritual life, which is anything but ego focused.  In the everyday we get to accept people who we see on a regular basis.  We learn to be helpful, kind and loving.  If you cannot love your neighbor why talk about love for the world out there?  You learn to live in community instead of on isolation.  So if you see the same people everyday, even if you live single in an apartment, how do you relate to them?  They can be a gift in your life to expand and grow your best self.  So many people walk around starring at their cell phones, not wanting to miss anything.  While they are at the same time missing the hidden gifts in the ordinary moments passing by.  

Union

 We all want some kind of union. Alcoholics might drink to feel part of something, connected to others, as unreal as it is.  Teenage boy wants teenage girl.  We like to feel we are part of the inside group, however we measure “inside.”  A spiritual path  is one where the union is sacrificial rather than possessive.  It is one of the reasons people are told to be of service in the beginnings of any group that says it is on a spiritual path, be it in Recovery or a Monastery.  Jews and Christians know of this as do Moslems in the Koran.  Love is meant to be sacrificial or else we atrophy.  The beggar at the door of the rich person is Love waiting for the rich person to stop and give of themself to the beggar.  Love, God, the Higher Power, Ultimate Reality waits, loving us.  How do we love others?  

Annunciation

 Mary, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, is not the only one who has an annunciation.  If you are going to have a spiritual path to your life, you may well want to be open to your own Annunciation.  A spiritual path is a relationship with Love.  This Love is infinite, call it God, Higher Power or Ultimate Reality.  The beginnings of the spiritual path you learn how to live a sane, moral, healthy, seemingly normal life.  You feel a sense of control and familiarity with it.  Fear is no longer in control.  Then comes the divine intrusion.  Love asks of you something for which you are quite unprepared.  It does not mean it is beyond your capability, but it is beyond your preparedness.  Love is Limitless and wants to erupt into the limits you have set for your sane, sober, holy life.  Love is daring.  Will you run away?  Reject this annunciation?  Don’t get too set in your ways and plans.  It stunts who you can become, the yet to be born you.  

Feeling Feelings

 What is the matter with feeling feelings?  For some of us, a lot is the matter.  We might be afraid that if we feel a feeling it might control our day.  The fear is that we will feel sad or depressed, or resentful, or self-pity, and we don’t want to feel that because it will control our day.  Maybe, if your life is unmanageable and you are a bit insane.  But if on a more spiritual path of meditation, for instance, we learn that we can feel a feeling, but we don’t have to drink over it or let it control the day.  Feelings come and go.  On a spiritual path we turn over the feeling to God or a Power that can deal with it.  We admit to the feeling. But it need not control our day.  I might feel like moping about my room or house, but say no to it and do something a bit more interesting and even helpful to others.  Be kind and of service.  The feeling will pass, but the benefit to others by your kindness and service will remain.  

About Me

 Why don’t we listen to another person?  They are talking and our ears are hearing, but we are not really listening.  Why?  Because we are all about the self.  We are trying to think of what we will say in response to whatever the other person is saying.  Or we have decided that our “truth” overcomes their “opinion.”  We wait for them to finish so we can show how smart we are, and how right we are.  We want to look good, and maybe even superior.  Listening is about becoming an “us.”  I think when we truly listen, stay open, don’t try to fill our mind with responses, then we begin to build an us.  The other person will sense this.  Our response might be to ask a question or to ask for more of what they are saying.  If we are interested only in ourself and what we can get from a relationship we are bound to a life of loneliness.  

Comfort

 “ I want love,” I say.  Why?  Is it so that I can feel good, feel comfortable instead of anxious, fearful, lonely?  Well, then I am still all about me, my comfort.  Love is not about comfort.  It is about sacrifice.  If I am all about me, then sacrifice is “yuck!”  If the goal is my comfort, then companionship, friendship and especially dating, will be a mess.  The other person becomes merely a vehicle for my comfort.  I become a lousy listener.  I am not listening because I am thinking what cleaver thing I can say as response, so that you will like me and then I can continue to build on that to get the comfort I want.  Dating used to be all about me.  Relationship was all about how you made me comfortable.  Drinking made me comfortable, and the other person a casualty of this.  It was all about me.  Sacrifice did not sound so good.  

Wanting

 Wanting is not in the toolbox for change.  We can say I want to pray more or I want to be kinder, or I want to stop drinking.  Well, you need to open a toolbox of action with someone who knows how the tools work.  Wanting to pray or be kinder or stop drinking does not come with knowing how to do any of these things.  You can read a book but maybe you need to talk to someone who actually has had some success in whatever it is you are wanting to do.  You need to apprentice just like a person who wants to build some furniture or fix cars or become a CEO.  If I stop at wanting, then it won’t be much of a day or a life.  

Fast Food

 The Eucharist for Catholics, is not fast food.  A meeting for addicts in recovery is not just the hour.  Eucharist and Recovery need to be savored.  That is where watching on zoom does not cut it.  Maybe it is all you can do at times, but it is not as fulfilling as lingering with Receiving Eucharist or attending in person meetings.  In a meeting come early and stay after to linger and talk to others.  In Eucharist, don’t receive and then rush out to the next thing, obligation met.  There needs to be time to savor what you have received.  It is a precious gift, as is sobriety.  Lingering will make you a better person and will be helpful to others because of this.  Having to rush off is more about fear or ego.  The world cannot live without me, or it better not.  

40 Years

 Forty years ago yesterday I had a glass of beer in Vienna, Austria.  All it did for me was make me want another beer.  That seemed like a silly and dysfunctional reason to drink alcohol.  And I never really liked it all that much. I just liked the effect.  So today, forty years ago, I did not drink any alcohol and have kept up this habit ever since.  Being shy and introverted, I have not missed the big whoopee parties.  I am hardly noticed in a crowd of people now.  Unless of course I have my priest clothes on.  I can be alone and not be lonely.  I can be in a crowd and be lonely.  Alcohol could fix that, but fixed nothing else.  I go to bed early and get up early.  My blogs are one result of this seemingly “dull” life.  I live more on my insides than my outsides.  The insides are never dull, and I share my experiences with others in “talks” I give now and again.  I like my life and I believe God still has plans for me.  And people miss me when I leave places.  People used to be glad when I finally left.  Happy Anniversary to me.  

The Preferring

Prayer is preferring God.  This is why we take out fixed times for just oneself and God or Higher Power.  This is meditation, even if you do it in a group.  It is you and this deeper presence of Love within you.  Routine helps.  If routine gets interrupted, then take care of it and get back to the alone in meditation.  An atheist needs meditation because we all have interior needs that only this prayer can touch.  You don’t have to call it anything, but do the preferred alone in silence and stillness.  Ignore your thinking mind.  Life is a gift to be received both on the outside and the inside.   

Need

 We are creatures of need.  We need to give love and receive love.  When I wake up I am in need of something for me even before I get out of bed.  I need to be grateful for the gift of day, vocation, bed, health and so on.  So I begin with gratitude that some of my needs are being met.  They I get needed coffee.  Then read and pray.  I am taking care of me.  I may go to a gym or run early too.  But then the needs shift to being helpful to others.  Maybe I write a blog that someone will find useful, but even if not, I still am trying to be useful and results are not up to me.  I try to be helpful around the house and with people who I run into.  Even a hello and readiness to listen may be of service to someone at that very moment.  The spiritual path is in part, moving from my needs to the needs of others.  And if you have to satisfy the needs of others first, know that at some point you have to satisfy your own needs.  Otherwise, burn-out.  

Ice Cream Sunday

 I completely forgot to post my blog today, but 23 people found it anyway.  So I just posted it at 4:15 PM California time.  What happened?  Well, I got up and out to run and then to a meeting with meditation.  Then off to say mass somewhere.  Then getting car insurance issues fixed up, and laundry as well.  About 1 PM I could have posted my blog but forgot because I was on a mission to have an ice ream Sunday, chocolate, and hot fudge at a spot I had not visited yet, Ghirardelli Square.  After walking around I bought my Sunday.  Diabetes for sure as I sat overlooking the Bay, enjoying it and thinking nothing about my blog faithful. All about me.  But I realized I could not finish it and be anywhere near health or feeling good.  So half way through I walked over to an economically challenged fellow and asked if he would like it.  He took the Sundae with a thank you and smile.  So I am not all bad, and did put my blog out a few minutes ago.  

A Blessing

 It is a blessing for me to be part of someone else’s spiritual awakening.  With my blogs and preaching, at times, I will get a response in which the light goes on for someone about a spiritual path to a better life.  A parent can have this with a child.  It could be going to church or synagogue, or temple and you bring the child.  Something happens and they get absorbed into the whole experience rather than bored or indifferent.  You could be gardening or reading a book and someone is drawn to what you are doing.  They become gardeners or readers rather than social media/TV addicts.  So do what gives you life and allow that someone might be watching and attracted to what you do.  I am attracted to the lady who knits at a meeting.  

Awakening

 What is a spiritual awakening?  It is realizing that a solution is not physical or mental, or physiological.  It is spiritual.  Physically, an alcoholic stops drinking/drugging.  They mentally know that they cannot drink/drug because they are addicted, physically, and mentally with their craving obsession.  They have information.  More information can come from mental health people.  But even with all this they go back out to the addiction.  Why?  Because the solution is spiritual.  They need a Power not their own and they get into a deep enough contact with that Power, through prayer and meditation.  Now the problem of addiction is still there, but is overruled by contact with their God or Higher Power.  I cannot be a good priest just by wanting to or knowing what I need to do.  Gotta go now and meditate!

Clarity

The phrase is, “A moment of clarity.”  It means that you see things as they really are and not as you think or fantasize that they are or you wish they are.  Clarity overcomes wish-thinking.  It might be a physical exercise that you keep trying to do, with bad results if any.  You realize that you cannot do that.  Or you realize you cannot do something left to your own devices.  You need help.  Clarity is when an alcoholic knows they cannot stop drinking on their own power.  A busy person realizes that they cannot meditate just by wanting to.  They have to change their schedule to make time for meditation.  Just because you want to run a marathon does not mean that you can run a marathon.  The good news is that just because you cannot do one thing, it might open you up to being able to do another thing.  Sobriety has many benefits.  

Impatience

 I have bouts of impatience.  I lost the battle with a Subway BART door wanting to close while I was trying to get into the train.  My hand, dominant hand, got smashed.  I went to my dermatologist for a scheduled appointment, checkup.  He saw the wound I had bandaged and said, “We will stitch that up.”  It would heal faster and with no ugly scar.  Eight stitches and much pain after the pain killer wore off, I am on the slow mend.  I hope I have learned a good lesson.  God can be a tough teacher.  Isn’t my Guardian Angel supposed to cover for me?  I over ruled her with my impatience.  

Coincidence

 I don’t believe in coincidences.  I was at a wedding recently and on the way to the reception dinner I found myself walking next to a woman and we got to chit-chatting.  I had never met her before, but se had this or that in common from being invited to the wedding.  Turns out we were assigned to the same table.  We sat and talked here and there as we did with others at the big round table.  Then the band began to play dance music for everyone.  Without asking, I took her hand and she came with me to the dance floor.  She is a good dancer, very natural and at ease.  I only found out later that she had a fear of dancing.  She had a natural ability to dance, not too left feet.  But her emotional life and past history paralyzed her.  So maybe I was there to bring her out of that.  There are no coincidences.  

Consequences

 I like the phrase, “When you say yes to the morning, you then step into the consequences.”  Some things you can control, such as beginning a too do list, or start the next thing on your calendar, or just standard getting ready for the day.  But everything has consequences and those we do not control.  So I think it important to have a spiritual practice so that one can respond with some sanity to the consequences.  You get on public transportation or drive to work or some task.  You did not plan on a delay or breakdown in the train or bus or your car being caught up in some accident that brings traffic to a crawl.  You could have avoided all that by staying in bed and saying no to the day.  But even then there are consequences.  How we respond to the consequences will tell us about the depth of our spiritual practice.