Midnight Mass

Tonight I went to my first midnight mass, in the five years that I have attended, four of those as an initiated Catholic.

It was joyous, so beautiful. The service was like any other mass, but the people and the energy was different. There were a lot of young people. It's too bad they don't go the rest of the year.

The homily was of course terrific, about "humanity" being an idea, but that rather we are human beings: individuals who are special, unique, and infinitely loved by God.

It was important for us to be reminded that while principalities from above govern our world, we can have peace, that starts with us, autonomously.

We were told that God came to us as a helpless baby, and that having children is the miracle of this world. We were reminded that we are chosen by God to be pro-creators - to create on God's behalf, and were encouraged to thank our parents for saying yes to God, as Mary did, and for bringing us into existence.

It was wonderful to be reminded that reality is not about what we see on the outside. It has put my worldly disappointments into perspective. A child is born, and my spirit has been renewed. 

One Year

Stability wasn't in that time
but now it is complete.
Thank God this year is over
I pray, never to repeat

If I look too far ahead,
I surely will go mad
and demons could take over
and steal all that I have had.

The things in this time that I did wrong
had paradoxically,
led me to the clarity
I found in that insanity.

At first it took too long,
and then it got too tough
then stagnancy had a grip on me
but now here it is, in an unwelcomed rush.

Now what I haven't had is mine
in more than half my life.
Study, pray, attend, and give;
these things, they will suffice.

The semantics of recovery

In the Fellowship, we talk about the obsession to drink being lifted, about being "recovered", and some days I wonder if being healed is the same as being recovered. I do feel that the Lord has healed me via the grace required to make changes in both attitude and behaviour, but I am not as certain about being recovered; especially when I am having troubles in my relationships or work. And then there is the assertion that there is no cure. So what is the difference between heal, recover, and cure?

From Dictionary Reference:

Heal - "To make healthy, whole or sound; to restore to health. To bring about a conclusion; to settle or reconcile. To be free from evil; cleanse; purify."

Recover - "To cover again, or renew. To make up for, or make good. To regain strength, composure, balance. To reclaim from a bad state, practice."

Cure - "A means of healing or restoring to health; remedy. Successful remedial treatment. A means or correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental. To restore to health. To relieve or rid of something detrimental."

It seems to me that "heal" and "recover" are synonymous, and "cure" is the means to the result. (Note: "salvation" is also defined as means to an end, "act; source; deliverance" "to protect from harm, risk").

And yet, we are taught that there is no cure (Even though in the second account in Part I from the "Personal Stories" at the back of the Big Book, pioneer "number three" described himself as cured, and that he attended meetings only for fellowship, and giving back.) It would seem to me that if there is no cure, there is no recovery. Alcoholism is tri-fold: a bodily component where one cannot stop drinking, a mental component where one cannot stop thinking of drinking, and a spiritual component, where recovery is. God is the cure, the means to being healed. So essentially, to say there is no cure is to limit the answer, which is God. We are further told that "what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." Well, this is an experiential program, and I know from experience that statement is not true. There are many, many days the Lord protected me, when I did nothing to deserve it (failing to keep "spiritually fit").

Something I have been wrestling with is the question of what constitutes the real ailment? For myself, I have stopped relating to alcoholism as a "disease"; if anything, it is a spiritual affliction or oppression. I personally have outside issues, and that is my illness. Alcoholism was, in all likelihood, a method of maintaining that illness. I knew that in order to recover from my outside issue, I had to quit drinking: I had to quit masking what truly ailed me. This meant that I had to describe myself as an alcoholic. Well again, it is semantics, and sadly, this is where the sufferer gets tripped up (even though we refer to ourselves as defiant, we must label ourselves to receive help.) This though, is the paradox of the relief: we get better by taking direction; by, as one speaker eloquently put it, being obedient. Let us pause here to read that the definition of alcoholism is, "a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body."

When I bottomed out, the shortcoming of the utter despair of loneliness that led to devastating heartache, through my insane actions, lowered me to the floor. But then I was granted the miracle of escape, for I was able to permit defeat and start over. When I accepted my failures, I began to do the work, and as a result I became recovered. I am no longer an alcoholic. I was an alcoholic, who has now been cured by God. It is "the gift of desperation", and only the honest person will be able to heal, because only the honest person will go against his or her natural instincts - to act and even believe that nothing is wrong - to admitting that in actuality, he or she is so downtrodden, death seems like a reasonable solution.

But God gives life through His Son, ("I am the resurrection and the life"), and thereby when we are so humbled by the beating of whatever drives us to such destructive intake of what in truth is a poison, we become willing to receive such help. This aid comes at first through places people and things: meetings, sponsorship/fellowship, and books, and then moves on, for me, into imitation, and then into a genuine reception of the cure: God.

Can I become an alcoholic again, yes I imagine so, because I have a predisposition to cut myself off from God. However, I refuse to live life "an arms length away from picking up that first drink". Through working with others, in other words, through living the program, I can bravely accept that I am healed (and to not accept our recovery is actually blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which can be read about here), I can also bravely acknowledge a past which historically exists, I can accept that I do not have the luxury to let memories slide into an obsession when I recollect that past, which can come from an intentional "remember when", to having to revisit places, to right out of left-field. And I can bravely accept that I have recovered from a cure, which is not the meetings, or the sponsorship, or the literature, or the fellowship; it is through the desire that was gifted to us through grace to be healed that allows for the works that bear the fruit from that which we may then reap: from God who gives those things to lead us to the narrow path, and then who guide us to communion with him, where we may be saved (cured).

Coming up to one year, and having the ability to recognize that I have been saved, which I can see from the direct result of my thinking, acting, ethics, and relationships, I am no longer the desperate new-comer that I was six months ago, when I truly bottomed out. I now must question openly, and conclude openly, what I have come to understand. And I thank you all for reading. Amen!

Dying to self to be reborn

An expound of how Steps Three and Seven lead to direct contact with Christ, through the act of conversion, thereby relieving the sufferer of alcoholism, and illustrating how most in the modern fellowship do not recover from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

It is "seemingly" hopeless, because those sufferers do not have sufficient power in their lives, let alone in their program. The significant reason for our spiritual malady is the shortcoming that is not understood within the rooms: fear.

In Step Three, we pray to be freed from the bondage of self. In Step Seven, we pray for the removal of what cuts us off from the Sunlight of the Spirit. We know that selfishness is the root of our problems, but fail to recognize that selfishness is in actuality the fear that leads to the sins which are called "character defects". Our alcoholism, a symptom, is a linear chain of events, starting from infancy, maturing into a fatal mental illness which ultimately will take the spiritual member to the very gates of hell, and where only the honest alcoholic who is willing to have a conversion experience may evade.

We begin with our shortcomings, which is the selfish phenomenon of fear, which then increases into the acting out byway of character defects, which are our sins: pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, anger, and sloth, and eventually manifests into active alcoholism. 

We can extrapolate, then, that bondage of self is actually anxiety that results from self-absorption: the fear of losing something that we have, or not getting what we need and/or want. When we genuinely pray to be healed, we are calling upon God to relieve us of our fear. If we are given the grace, God will lead us to his Son, who repeatedly promised in the Bible that he was to give us rest from worry.

In order to combat alcoholism and addiction, we must replace the circumstance that leads to the first drink. We must replace fear (selfishness) with faith (trust in God). We must die so that we may be reborn; this is the crux of not only the third and seventh steps, but of the program of recovery as a whole. For Christ is all, and abandonment through prayer is the only Way out.

To be saved is not to recite, but to believe; not to be willing, but to complete; not to speak, but to connect; and not to participate, but to sacrifice. It is then and only then, that we become as open to conviction as the dying can be. The twenty-first century program does not have recovery, because it does not have Christ. The ruined do not have the courage to face their deaths, and this is why so few are now reborn.

P.s.

How did I get to see you
the way you really are
not like in your photos,
immaculate, but boring.

In a foreign land,
where I should have never been
so messed up inside and out
so open and yet so empty.

It burns to see you in this web
of drama and puffed up plans
You're so cool but I can see your truth:
You don't hide it from my ache.

We were never meant to be this way
this facade of darkenness
In a pit of relentless shit
why can't we just make amends

Helping Christ save the world

I was asking my Catholic/Calvinist online community if we can earn graces for others, essentially, if we can save the souls of our peers, though our own righteousness (self-control and self-denial).

A poster said this, which I found to be profoundly poetic:

"We become holy through Christ. He challenged us to be so, just as the Father is Perfect. Nobody claims to have the righteousness of Christ. Free will is a key element in this mystery. We are told by Christ to take action - take up our Cross, keep our lamps trimmed, be perfect, do this in memory of me - these are actions which we in cooperation with Grace take. It is instrumental to our ultimate justification - and it is fair to recognize individual goodness or conformity with Christ. Paul says to imitate people who are such people 

So yes, we can say 'yes' to God and help him bring others to the family."

True Romance

If I still had a heart
I would have left it on that rock
That gentle waves would try to lick
And where the lights glowed magnificent.

But I gave that all to God,
Not too long ago
So I'm both grateful for that time to grow,
But still raw enough for it to show.

Therefore my soul is safe
My character is sound
And a memory is now good enough
To not reap what I did not sow.

Eight Months

He said we would stay young forever
I didn't know he actually wanted to die.
Genetic advancements would tide us over
Until we met at the Gates
And gave a high-five.

Those restaurants I don't dare re-visit
The streets I won't bare to walk
And that old abandoned building I trespassed on
Even though by then,
you had moved on.

I awoke sobbing,
the morning of that day.
In my dream I was a prophet
rejected by all,
and the queen was sick.
And I had to go on.

And I am sorry
I acted aloof
And was absorbed in only my own loneliness
and I am so sorry
You were hurting so badly
but now, you will just have to wait.

Flying Saucers

I've been more interested in UFO's, the Reptilian agenda, the weaponization of space, and overt occult ceremonious black magic, to name a few, and so when I saw one of the links in my Disclose.tv emails, I made note to read it. The article, called "Top 10 Facts About UFOs", struck me with point number four, "The first country to depict flying saucers on its postage stamps was Equatorial Guinea." Naturally completely ignorant of this place, I looked it up (turns out it's in Central Africa), and what I discovered was so overwhelming, I had no idea what to do, but blog it.

Equatorial Guinea is "consistently" ranked by organizations to be "the worst of the worst" in honouring human rights, most notably supporting woman and child labour, and sex trafficking. (For those who don't know what that is, it's sex slavery, where the person is commodity for sex use. It's called trafficking because the victim is often transported). I've heard horrific things that happen in parts of tribal Africa; mutilation, child soldiers, savage warfare...but this I find to be interesting because why would a country so regressed and oppressed be even talking about aliens, let alone publishing paraphernalia? I shouldn't have to point out that the UFO culture is that of a liberal and free-thinking one.

THEN I see a picture of Barack Obama (and with Michelle Obama posing like an A-list actress on the red carpet) with this dictator, chumming it up. I understand diplomacy, but this is outright absurd, and outright in plain sight. I have complete faith in America, and so I believe that it will pull through this corrupted leadership, but I also am believing more now in the NWO puppet theory. 

I won't bother with that, though. I will leave that up for those who are better suited for it, and hopefully my blog will help shed some light. My direction is less bloody and more enlightening. I wonder, why is a backwards country so forward in what is becoming more readily science fact. Bizarre. 

Thy will be done

I'm able to better say "Thy will, not mine, be done." more genuinely now. I have reached a point in my life where the pain has just been too great, and I came to my breaking point. I have simply no other choice, should I want to live, than to surrender and be Christ's prisoner. The fight is over.

God both creates and permits evil, so I must now believe that everything leading up to this point has been God's will, IF, and only if, I may reap a greater good for my errors. Something that I have been trying to attain falls through again and again and again, and it's not even anything exceptional I'm striving for! Should I be where I am at this point in my life? No way. But did I make choices that placed me here? Yes way. 

However, God's grace is so great, and if I now walk the straight and narrow, I believe I will be blessed ten-fold for not only persevering, but for excelling through, as well as for my sufferings. 

God did not desire for his beloved creation to die to sin, but through Adam's fall, God's greatest gift was given to us: a display of his love so awesome that it conquered what had suffocated and belittled us. We were given victory over death. Sin was always in the world, it entered the world before man did. We fell to it because it was so much stronger than us and it waged a war on us, and so there were consequences. But now we gather a harvest that we did not labour for; we benefit in what is now ours that we would have never even gotten without the permission of death by sin. So when I want to wallow in self-pity rather than say, "Your will be done", I can pause and remember that there is a goodness in my cross, and it's okay again. I can trust God now.

Love is patient, love is kind. Love betters us, nourishes us, sacrifices and dies for us. Love never fails. So when I am convinced that I have, I remind myself that my will never worked out too well for me in the first place, and I need to give it up. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I do know that this life is nothing compared to the glory of heaven that awaits for my return.

The harvest

I asked the Lord why life is so hard. Why isn't it working out properly. And he replied, "The harvest is bountiful, and so I need workers to collect it."

In time, the Lord's helpers' will reap a bounty which we did not sow. 

Ascension of the Lord

As we near the end of Eastertide and approach Pentecost, we this week celebrated the Ascension of the Lord in the liturgy. On this solemn occasion, Christ rose up into heaven, but before doing so, he commissioned the apostles to be disciples unto all of the nations.

I experienced the greatest dark night of my soul on Tuesday, possibly not coincidentally three days before the Ascension. (Or maybe it was two days, but I'm going with three for the sake of symbolism). Though I did not know it, my spirit had been prepared by the Holy Spirit for this evening, for a weaker body might have terminated itself. 

A way that the Lord had prepared my soul, was to use the Lenten and Easter seasons to re-commit to His spiritual body, the Church. He then called me to fast for some weeks prior to my dark night, so that I did not have extra fats or toxins that could cause a physical, and therefore emotional hindrance, and so that I was physically and therefore mentally comfortable enough to sit still and meditate. 

Then He opened my heart so that I could detach from the romantic desires that bestowed so much frustration and pain into my being. For the first time in my life, I loved not myself enough, that I was able to be happy for someone else, even though my ego wept.

And on my dark night, in my desperation to get well, I shared for the first time two things that I kept buried, with people whom I trusted through circumstance, though with I wasn't well acquainted. The responses were not only painful, but in and of themselves crosstalk that was also inconsistent with the Spirit of God. 

I was not only ashamed, but terrified. I felt a loneliness like no other, it was unlike any alienation I had experienced. But the Lord had prepared me, and I knew what I had to do: go even deeper into what had me frightened. I trusted in my efforts, I trusted in Christ, and I went home, knowing that I would make it out on the other end of the passage. 

Before my dark night was over, I went to the Pope's Twitter page to draw inspiration, but instead I saw something alarming. I went onto Google to inconspicuously search for a meaning into what I had perceived to have found, but it was not God's will: it possibly would have been more of a burden than at that time I could have handled. So, I sat down to meditate. I asked the Lord to speak to me, and I heard a voice, "I hate you". I opened my eyes sharply. That was not God. I heard another voice, "Go to bed." That was God, and so I did. 

I retired for the evening, confident in my discernment, my safety, and my faith: I had been victorious.

I arose the next morning, thankful to be alive, and contrite for the selfishness and self-pity that had preceded my tormented soul..All of the pain that I had endured was not of God, but the messages that I recovered from it was. By this time I had been led to a second group of people who were strong and honest and caring enough to help me. I shared with them, and when I spoke, they nodded. I had found my people.

One man has taken me under his wing, and I have been getting stronger everyday, growing more in love, patience, humility, honesty, and forgiveness. This morning Father said that we are all disciples, called to spread the Word of God, come to heal the sick, bind the broken, comfort the downtrodden, care for the destitute, bring light to where there is darkness.

Every human plays a role: we all stretch out into different directions, retrieving the lost. I know what my role is now - to welcome those so assaulted, so alone, that they want to die. Like how I did. My soul went into Sheol, but it has arisen with Christ who now dwells within me. And I can show you how to get back, too.

The grace of God

The Church teaches that grace is unmerited, because God requires nothing but a willingness to believe that we may be healed.  We are not asked to work for it, we are not asked to desire it, we are not even asked to be a good person and thereby deserving of it.  Religious people are not necessarily virtuous: they simply have humbled themselves enough to believe that God can perform miracles in their lives: that they can have good lives and feel close to God, even if they are not exceptional people.

The first century Christians were no different than the twenty-first century Christians: they argued ceaselessly over who was saved and who wasn't, who was good and who wasn't, who was right and who wasn't, ad infinitum.  Fortunately for us, the hardest working apostle, straight from the stock of Christ, set the record straight on how to receive the love of God.  Hear it!

"You stupid people in Galatia!  After you have had a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes, who has put a spell on you?  There is only one thing I should like you to tell me: How was it that you received the Spirit - was it by practice of the Law, or by believing in the message you heard?  Having begun in the Spirit, can you be so stupid as to end in the flesh?  Can all the favours you have received have had no effect at all - if there really has been no effect?  Would you say, then, that he who so lavishly sends Spirit to you, and causes the miracles among you, is doing this through your practice of the Law or because you believed the message you heard?"

Galatians 3.1-5, The New Jerusalem Bible

On food

I switched my blog URL today, and so far I have had 50 hits. That's about the same amount I had in 2013 combined. Guess there were a lot of misguided searches...

Given that no one here knows me, it might seem irrelevant, but this entry is actually a pretty big shift in my interests and growth as a person. In these last months of my 35th trip around the sun, I began to have a more amicable relationship with food. I have always had really screwy eating habits, but, having been a practicing alcoholic, I guess the whole unhealthy facets in lifestyle thing was part and parcel.

So a brief introduction, I have been, for the most part, at a healthy or slightly below average weight, though I did go through an intensive sort of ascetic lifestyle for few years and was scary skinny, and then another time I had a rough season or two after being fired from a job and, though I don't like to admit it, was a bit over-weight (I am pretty sure: I am good at blocking memories, but I did see a picture from a wedding I attended...)

I follow this new-ager online who thinks she is from another planet, on her less humble days, but for some reason I am practically enamoured with her. She just had a baby and her work went more from spiritual to food-based, though raw organic foods has always been a big piece of her identity. I had always felt bewildered by what she said and recommended, and over-whelmed by her exotic recipes and items. But I have become increasingly more interested in food after having a real change in life events the past few months, and I saw how healthy eating heals me both physically and mentally, and thereby emotionally.

More recently after reading that she did not have stretch marks because of the foods that she ate during her pregnancy, accompanied by my wish to stop the aging process, I am becoming more interested in specifically fruits and vegetables; for it is with those that I have seen for myself their rejuvenating powers, felt satiated and energized for hours, and am able to enjoy them without much prep-work or know-how. Now that I have seen fruitful results (pun intended!), I can recognize how intimidated I have felt by food, and how inferior I can feel when it comes to making food choices. This is insanity to me, for food is a pillar of my very existence!

Everyone knows that obesity is a problem in our society, and I have heard time and again that it is not necessarily a consequence of bad eating habits, inactivity, or addiction, and on the latter, I will now agree. But I also now believe wholeheartedly that we as a people have lost reality with what and how we are to eat, and now know nothing about food or how it works with our bodies. And then we justify "healthy" levels of fat to validate our gluttonous lifestyles and (rightly so) poor self-images. I use my own experiences to make sense of this.

I maintain an average or slightly below average weight, because I don't eat much meat and I am an athlete, but all it takes is one day of bad eating and it shows. Then all it takes is one week of build-up, and I become demoralized. Given that I am not an unusual case, can one only imagine how easy it is for someone with a slower or average metabolism, as well as who is not athletic, to gain extra weight? I believe that we don't understand the dangers of certain foods in relation to our bodies, along with our eating patterns, because these habits started so long ago that the repercussions simply became normal.

So, why are we as a people over-weight? I assert that the human body was designed to consume very little food, and even less meats and dairy. But this means that what is consumed must be almost always, if not always, healthy (fruits, vegetables, grains, yogurt, and lean meats, the last arguably not even necessary with enough vitamins, fiber, and the protein that is found in a wide variety of fruits and veggies), and then lastly washed down, for the most part, with only  water. All the rest is merely comfort and decadent eating and drinking. 

That's about it!

Freeze

I will fight
to the death
to protect
the hurt
feelings
that make me
vulnerable
to you.

On this Lenten season

Wow, did I ever mess it up this month, but God is Good! He thirsts for those who thirst for Him, and I was parched and so He never left me, even though I deserved to perish in my sins. May I never be so philosophical and foolish again! I am comforted in knowing that regardless of what happens to my soul, the Devil will never prevail against Christ's Church, even if we all are sick enough to leave it. 

The Christian's Hardships

"We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, 

so that our ministry will not be discredited.  

Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: 

in great endurance; 

in troubles, hardships, and distresses; 

in beatings, imprisonments, and riots; 

in hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger; 

in purity, understanding, patience, and kindness; 

in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love, 

in truthful speech and in the power of God; 

with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 

through glory and dishonour, 

bad report and good report; 

genuine, yet regarded as impostures, 

known, yet regarded as unknown; 

dying, and yet we live on; 

beaten, and yet not killed; 

sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; 

poor, yet making many rich; 

having nothing, 

and yet possessing everything."

2 Co 6.3-10

1 Corinthians 1.26--9

"Consider, brothers, how you were called;
not many of you are wise by human standards,
not many influential,
not many from noble families.
No, God chose those who by human standards are fools to shame the wise;
he chose those who by humans standards are weak to shame the strong,
those who by human standards are common and contemptible  -
indeed those who count for nothing - to reduce to nothing all those that do count for something,
so that no human being might feel boastful before God."

The New Jerusalem Bible

"Hitting Bottom"

I am not going to lie about it anymore, via manipulation to myself or to others in my sharing. I did not have my bottom, and I never will. Such confidence, right? Isn’t self-confidence a liability though? Not in this case, for it is not of self, but of God.

I thought that I needed a “bottom” to be accepted by my peers. Like most alcoholics, we adjust to what is abnormal until it is normal, until we no longer see the rot within us. Deep down I felt like I wasn’t really sick. Look at me, this sweet pretty little girl, how could I be like those degenerates, how on earth could I fellowship with the broken and the vicious? Well, I was devious and dishonest, even to myself. The reality is that I would steal, cheat, and tarnish, all for the sport of it. So no, I didn’t need a bottom to fully enter into the program, I qualified by my own sheer wickedness. After all, the literature also says that we alcoholics can’t remember any pain from the not-so-distant past. How, then, could a darkness in my life possibly over-ride my mental illness, and what I had became chemically altered to do? The shameful acts that I committed, the friends that I lost, was enough to get me through the doors, but not enough to keep me sober: I was back out in half a year.

Then I had some more inconveniences, yes the hangovers, the little mishaps here and there, the emotional remorse, and I came back and made it ten months and one day, until I was out once more. But this time, something was different. This time I communed with people who had found Christ, and who handed me down enough tools and information in the few weeks that I was with them, to know what true recovery really looked like. And I had the closest to the bottom that I will ever have. My greatest fear came nearly to fruition, I could almost smell it. You think that’s a cliché, but it’s not in this case. I can still almost smell it; that sterile and medicated scent that a lot of us know.

I was led to my bottom, but I refused to go. I stood at the gates of hell and was taken there by people who I relied on. But Jesus of Nazareth got there first, and he said no, I’m not crossing through that threshold. I never looked back. I have experienced in sobriety what had always led me to drink and drug: that inexplicable heartache and the fear, dread, and disappointment that come from it; that inability to feel my feelings now had to be felt, and now I know that I have withstood the test of time: I have fully immersed into Christ, and he in me, and I will never be misled again.

And yes, I’m still tired. This time though, I rest in Him. Amen.

Hurricane

The anticipation has been exhausting
The letdown had been steep
but depression didn't take me
I just needed some more sleep.

In God's time

When I had put it aside

I thought I really didn’t want it

I thought I was just protecting myself

And only interested to flaunt it. 

But now that I see

I let fear keep me away

That I disobeyed God

And let the Devil lead me astray.

As if I didn't jump for joy
As if I didn't slightly tear
As if I didn't thank the stars
So grateful I persevered.

I can’t go back now

It’s too far in the game

I can’t get it together

I can’t catch it up and still make

The requirements needed

It won’t wait and I know

This was my own selfish doing

And by now, it is gone.

And I think what hurts most

Is not so much the wait

But realizing they don’t see 

By then it might be too late.

It isn’t even there

That idea that I could be

Normal in society

With instincts so healthy.

But maybe that’s just it.
Did I not complete that first step

And did I not take an oath
To sacrifice and relent

And then go out into the world
To proclaim the great news
So I may fish for those souls
Who have not yet been healed.

Those poor unfortunates
Who are just as I then was

So used up and alone

So disgustingly lost

I suppose it is good

That I can just take this time

To work and to rest

And give away what’s now mine.

The calm before the storm

Can you feel it?

Get ready.

The Rallying Point

I went to a meeting tonight at a special group for me: I had a spiritual experience there my first closed meeting January 2012. I don’t remember anything of that meeting at all, but I left with the earnest belief that I would never drink again. Of course that night I did, but I didn’t again for seven months, which was my longest stretch of sobriety at that point.

So it wasn’t strange that, in the tiny meeting of the night, I voiced up and said let’s do Step Two. And so we did, and I was grateful. I offered to speak first, and I read the first sentence of the last paragraph, “Step Two is the rallying point for all of us.” There were a few new men who were struggling, so I just went in for the kill. I said it’s new years’ eve, and we’re all here, so let’s for an hour pretend we have Step One down and go to what matters – God. 

While I had a spiritual experience of some sort my first night in that church basement nearly two years to the night, this time I had a complete psychic change, and I was ready to Twelfth Step. I think my best work was done at the end of the meeting though. One of the new guys said to me that he’s conflicted and that he is using the meetings as his higher power. I said okay, I did that too.

Truthfully, Step Two has taken me nearly two years to “get”, and everyone who I know whom I consider to be recovered also took years of continuous drinking and or relapsing to finally hand it over. But as it is written, “when all of our score cards read ‘zero’”; we truly do not move past Step One and truly enter the program until we are willing to admit we are utterly powerless, and that no human power can restore us to a state of well being.

It is normal and natural to use the program as the higher power, but it is not the intention to be a permanent solution. Step Two states some people have “begun” to solve their problem by using the group, and that members have “crossed the threshold” via a manipulation of a higher power, but once their lives transformed they “came to believe…(and) talk of God.”

I had to be nearly locked up to get deflated. I was too sick to just “get it”, but I was bright enough to associate with recovered people. I knew about God, though I didn’t believe. But I still went to meetings: even when I was out, I still had a foot in the door. Finally I got so desperate I actually put my ego aside just far enough to consider that someone might know better than me, and that maybe I should quit the debating society. Once I had a small gap between myself and my ego, and began listening to other people and start absorbing the information being Twelfth Stepped to me, God discretely placed some grace in that space. As the Step says, he “infiltrated” my life, and suddenly I was not in meetings in a shy whinny voice saying it seems to work for others, I hoped it would work for me too, I was becoming a confident mouthpiece of the Lord and saying YES this IS a religious program, BECAUSE we ARE BEYOND human aid and the ONLY thing that will relieve us of our sickness of body and mind is GOD, and He CAN and WILL heal us IF WE LET HIM!!!

And I have to be real, and in reality, I am accidentally harsh. I need to remember that I am only here through the love, tolerance, and patience of those who came before me, and it would be nothing short of evil for me to expect a person to understand in their minds or hearts the true premise of this program right at the start.

So I said to this newcomer to just keep coming back. I said that it took me and a couple of the other recovered guys who were there years to move past Step One and into Step Two, but what mattered was that we kept coming to meetings. I then told him that he needs to have his score card read zero, that he needs to realize he has nothing and nobody but God. Ultimately, that’s what having a losing hand is. Like King David being trapped in a cave, enclosed by his enemies, he just said forget it, I’m a goner. Lord, just take me. And the thing is, God does take us: in our defeat we have finally “rightly related ourselves to Him”, and he removes our rags, our old dead selves, and clothes us in his grace. We no longer have our own power, that power was useless, that power couldn’t keep us sober: we now have God’s power. 

We have become co-pilots to God; we’re no longer dead weight, we are ready to work through the Steps and clean up the wreckage of our past so that we may relieve the weight of others. That is our religion, and this is where you either come with us and live, or stay where you are and die.