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.

Freedom

Drove up to the lot. It looked like any other building, but the seats were benches of stone.

It wasn't what I had expected.
For whatever reason I thought
we would sit at a table and look at books.

But instead it was bulletproof glass
So if you really were Wolverine,
you hid it well.

Whatever it was,
Imma ride or die
Because I'm no longer afraid
Of that look in your eye.

And I'm not going to lie About what I've done, or how I even know you at all.

Because when the cards are down,
I'll show the face I want them all to see
But until those rare moments
I’ll just sit and be me.

And that me is corrupted And that me was dying And that me is ashamed But so desperately trying.

And now I'm free and you are not Suddenly I don't want to pretend That I don't even want you at all.

Vitiated

We love God, because he loved us first (1 Jn 4.19). We do not love God out of the goodness of our hearts, which means that we cannot love our neighbour out of selfless commitment, either. 

It seems that we have been created inherently depraved, and this is not a far fetched assertion, we need only look around to see more strife than brotherhood. my theological friend, on his way I'm sure to sainthood for what he has and will continue to contribute to the faith, would say that in becoming perfect we love God solely because he is Good. But to this I ask, how can we have fallen, and become so corrupted? 

I cannot successfully defend the Old Testament Yahweh against atheists, the best I can think of is, "Well, they deserved it.", or "We don't fully understand the situation", and these are insane rationalizations!

I can, however, defend my faith, I can stand up and with (almost) complete confidence say the words "Jesus Christ" (and this is partially because I feel his name has been taken in vain so many times by false prophets, that, for me, it is too difficult to differentiate when it is sincere or not, and thereby projecting my own insecurities onto others, wondering if they think of me the same, or even, what for me would be, worse - labelled a flake).

But I have as of late been returning to my pre-baptismal Gnostic thoughts, and am once more pondering, could the Father whom Jesus loved be a different being than the God of the Hebrews? Is this why Jesus repeatedly said that we do not know his Father, and therefore nor him?

However, Jesus said that if we knew him, then we would know his Father (Jn 14.7), for he and the Father are one (Jn 10.30); Jesus also said that the world did not recognize him (Jn 1.10). It could conversely be, then, that the Jews did not truly understand their God: they wrote about a brutal and seemingly unjust God in their scriptures.

Jesus said that he who loves him will keep his words (Jn 14.23), and that his words were actually his Father's words (Jn 14.10). His commandment was to love one another, as he loved us (Jn 13.34 + 15.17). The good shepherd dies for his flock, and we are to die to self when we lift up our cross, follow Christ, and embark upon a life of service and charity to others. Yahweh in the Old Testament would seemingly not turn the other cheek, he would give an eye for an eye. With Christ, we may learn that we did not truly know Yahweh, and that the Old Testament has as much folklore in it as genealogical history, that we should not confuse with God in and of himself.

What I have noticed over the years through social media, is a violent hatred toward Christianity, and in such, insultations against its adherents. More recently, I have noticed this defiance is influenced by certain passages from the Old Testament. Jesus was a prophet, and so perhaps this is why he said, "Now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father. But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in the law, 'They hated me without a cause.'" (Jn 15.24-5)

"'O righteous Father! The world has not known you, but I have known you." (Jn 17.25). Jesus makes a far more bold statement than we realize here. He is saying that Israel did not actually know their God (which again indicates that he is not the horrific deity that commands them to kill and eat their newborns, rape and pillage, and commit genocide). Jesus' statement is more than fiece, it is a condemnation, and reveals the Jews (and the world) need a saviour, who will do more than rule a nation, but who will be good because their God is good, and they will know him, "I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts (instead of stone tablets); and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Jer 31.33). 

The Messiah was to show Israel, and then after he had been glorified through his passion, the world, who the Lord really was - what Jesus was ("I and the Father are one" [Jn 10.30]), and that was gentle, humble, and someone who we may find rest in. (Mt 11.29).

Notwithstanding the beauty that our lives become once we give our lives to God, people who follow the Old Testament ought to ask themselves, who is this violent God, and was Jesus right when he said that we did not actually know him. Because if Israel did not actually know Yahweh, then who exactly were, and still are today, worshipping?

A moonlit moment

We watched the moon move in a slight curvature
And the Tower marked its travel.
It went so fast
I'd never seen it like that.

The Hip played on
Not too loud, but not too soft.
And we stood with a slight distance
between each other
and we watched in awe.

I saw you from my peripheral
Bobbing your head in that familiar comfortable way
We let the whole song play on like that
And I knew you felt it too.

That power struck right through us
That moment so very strange
That clarity that I believed
I would never know again.

And I felt so embarrassed
But I didn't understand why
And when I recollect it
The tears well in my eyes.

What was it about us
We could never really talk
Never say what we really felt
Or appreciate what was brought

And yes, I was right -
as I knew it to be true.
Never would I see again
that moon
in that light
with you.