Those here who know me know that I grew up in a traditional indigenous religion, with an education in a church-sponsored school.
As I grew into adolescence and saw more and more of the world and its evils, those teachings with which I grew up seemed more and more inadequate, myths created by Iron Age people, whether sitting in a middle Eastern desert or a North American woodland, attempts at explaining and predicting the world around them and their relationship to it. True child of the sixties that I was, I rebelled against these explanations, though not necessarily against the ethical codes they prescribed. I knew the difference between right and wrong, and no amount of alcohol that I later consumed could blur that. By the way, I believe that one telltale sign of untreated alcoholism is a remorseful conscience.
This go-it-alone philosophy of attempting to live my life on an ethical basis was far beyond my ability to carry out effectively. Bewildered at my inability to manage my life, I crawled deeper and deeper into alcoholism.
Those of you who are familiar with my story know that it is not a dramatic one, but after a period of rapid decline I found myself at the doors of AA at the ripe age of twenty eight. And imagine my chagrin when I was instructed to find God.
Oh, I had imagined that AA would be religious, but I was very relieved at my first meeting to see nicely dressed, healthy and happy looking people when I was expecting to see skid row dwellers being preached over by a minister with scripture in his hand. Of course, by that time I was desperate enough to have sat there and listened to it in vain hope that somehow I would get some help.
As I began to sober up, this quest for God became more and more troublesome. As I sneaked away from the beginners' tables to see what the "graduate students" (in my still foggy brain) were reading in those books, I was introduced to the second step, and to what is still my favorite chapter in the Big Book--"We Agnostics."
One sentence from that chapter, plus conversations with a stone atheist who at the time had ten years sobriety and died sober many years later helped me tremendously--the encouragement to find a concept of God that made sense to me.
I had looked through various pieces of sacred scriptures of various world religions with a critical and jaded eye. Much was made of an all-powerful but wrathful, vengeful, and downright spiteful supreme being; at least, that was the way it seemed to me. I listened at meetings, and one thought did pop out of all the background noise--for the time being, it would suffice for me to realize that there was some sort of supreme being and I was not it.
One day as I was puttering around in my dad's vegetable garden, it occurred to me that any sort of supreme being that I could worship would, at minimum, have to be less neurotic than me! So out went the nasty old judge in an office in the sky. Out too went the cosmic engineer who set everything into motion and then sat by and watched.
I devoured much material on the thoughts of various philosophers through the ages by reading voraciously. My sponsor commented that it probably wouldn't hurt me, and I could have fun like that provided I kept it simple.
For some reason I settled on some of the Spanish mystics of the fifteenth century, specifically St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila (not the Little Flower.) St. John's writings, summed up in his book "The Cloud of Unknowing," spoke much to my feeling that there seemed to be a cast iron plate in the ceiling. In it I learned to trust without knowing. One sentence in St. Theresa's writings jumped out at me--"Blessed be God, who has made me so incompetent." (This woman, by the way, was incredibly brilliant and a powerhouse of a mover and shaker, in a time when women were generally not thought of in those terms.)
And I even went back in time, in my mind's eye, to those Iron Age people in longhouses, listening to the stories of the elders and looking at the night sky, contemplating the Milky Way and picturing the road to that land where Creator dwells in peace. I watched the fire, its smoke rising upward like my prayers for faith. I went back to that prayer in our language that opens every gathering of my people, where we contemplate each feature of this world that we live in, and offer our thanksgiving and greeting to it, realizing that it finally is all a gift that was put here for our happiness by a loving and caring being who presides over us all. I sang this prayer in our language, on a cold and starlit January night deep in the woods, the smoke from a wood fire at our meeting house taking the edge out of the crispness of the pure winter air so diamond-sharp it hurt one's nose to breathe. I learned to trust in that infinite ocean of light and love, not bound by space or time, elusive of the attempts of the most inspired of humans to describe, too big for us to grasp, but inviting us to contemplate in quiet reflection, awe, and adoration, asking only that we grow in our ability to love, trust, and be inspired, ever upward, ever outward, beyond the bounds of time, space, and even mathematic explanations of the existence of the universe.
I choose not to share my journey to faith much, as it is eclectric and pulled from bits and pieces of things I have read, experienced, and come to understand. I have learned that each person's journey is unique to them, and worthy of respect from others, as the great Chief Tecumseh so aptly summarized: "Trouble no man about his religion, but insist that your views are similarly respected." And mostly what I have learned is that faith is not a feeling: It is an act of the will. It is the journey of seeking. And it would not be faith if it was provable by our senses, our instruments, or our theories. But I have learned this too as well, which is so well summarized in the last sentence of that chapter, "We Agnostics:"
"When we drew near to Him, He disclosed Himself to us."
Well, all I can say is, it was interesting. And I think I will never again tell a sponsee that if the SWAT team isn't surrounding their house, they don't have a problem!
Late last night a couple called a cab for a ride, and stabbed the cab driver in a robbery attempt. This all occurred less than a block away from where I live. Of course, neither my husband nor I were aware of the fact until the phone rang. It was a reverse 911 call (my county participates in that program) and the instructions were as such: "The Niagara County sheriffs are looking for a suspect that is armed and dangerous. Residents are advised to remain in their homes with their doors locked."
This is not exactly the type of phone call one wants to receive at 11:15 pm.
I am very grateful that Roger was at home last night: I am sure I would have been immobile with terror had I been alone, dogs or no dogs.
We looked outside, only to notice that the neighborhood was literally crawling with police. Two officers were in our driveway, walking briskly between our house and the garage. Prowl cars were driving up and down the street, casting searchlights into shrubbery and the wooded area near our house. As the old song, "Convoy" goes, they even had a bear in the air--the state police helicopter with the "eye in the sky" was flying brisk orbits around our neighborhood. They brought in bloodhounds, a German shepherd, and the SWAT team!
Life has gotten a little dramatic around here recently: A few weeks ago I was out walking the dogs when I heard two loud explosions and saw a flash of light several miles south of me. That phenomenon was the crash of Flight 3407.
We sprung into action, such as it was: I ran to the front door, Roger to the side door, and we made sure the deadbolts were engaged. For whatever reason, Roger got out his shotgun just as I was getting my longbow (yes, I do know how to use one and am quite proficient in its use) as well as a cast iron frying pan. The dogs were going absolutely crazy as they listened to the police bloodhounds baying on their search. I really don't know what we were all thinking, but we had no intention of having a possible home invasion occur without the perpetrators having a significant fight on their hands. And over all this confusion you could hear the whompa-whompa of the helicopter rotor as it circled round and round.
We are trying to housetrain Monty, the little beagle we adopted two weeks ago. There was no way I was going to open the door to let him or Rusty out. I put down papers on the new kitchen floor for them, grumbling a little under my breath that I thought if the perpetrators were caught, I'd like to fling the dirty papers in their faces for starters.
I normally get up for work around 5 AM. Sleep under these circumstances was out of the question: Even if I could relax enough to get to sleep, the baying dogs, my mutts barking, and the cops running around outside, not to mention the bear in the air, caused too much of a din to make sleep possible unless one was catatonic (which I am not.) I called, explained the circumstances, and told them I would be in around ten AM.
The fun and games continued until about two-thirty, at least, that's what the clock read the last time I recall.
When I woke up around six AM the cops were still out there, I didn't hear any bloodhounds, and the chopper presumably had flown off elsewhere. When I left my house, a squad car escorted me to the main drag.
When I got to work, I found out the cabbie who had been stabbed was a man I know farily well from our sailing club. He had been in surgery a couple of hours already to repair the abdominal wounds. Yes, he is alive, awake, and stable, but had some pretty extensive surgery. Infection is still a serious risk.
Anyways, the perpetrators were caught sometime this afternoon, right here about a block from me. The guy is a parole violator, and there is also a warrant out for him for armed robbery. The woman--I will leave it to the reader to assess her level of self esteem for having gotten herself involved in something like this in the first place.
I'm trying to wrest some gratitude out of this situation (nobody else got hurt, and there were some chocolate chip cookies that Roger hadn't eaten, ) but truth be told, I'm pretty worn out here, with a splitting headache to match. The way I feel physically is almost like the hangovers of yore. It took a lot of coffee to get me home safely tonight. I was too tired to go to class tonight, or to stop at a meeting, and I was apprehensive on the ride home as to what was going on here while I was away today.
That old acronym HALT--try to avoid getting too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, popped immediately into mind. I made myself a sandwich after letting the dogs out. I will be making this a very early night indeed. And I wish to thank all of you good folks who read this far for your assistance in dealing with the angry and lonely components of this. No, I have not picked up a drink today.
But between a recent plane crash nearby, and now the events of the last twenty-four hours, I would speculate that I'm just too damned old to be around any of this nonsense!
My DSL crashed a week ago, and I just got it fixed yesterday. Sorry I haven't been around here. Other than that, all is well. Hope the same is true for everyone here!
Several years ago, I heard of this tradition which occurs annually on New Year's Eve in Cremona, Italy:
At about 11:45 pm the fire department sounds a siren and the streets clear. The church bells strike the midnight hour, and as the twelfth bell peal fades away, windows open in every house, and laughter and shouts are heard, along with the sound of crockery and glass shattering. The tradition involves pitching out something that reminds a person of something painful, something symbolic of a resentment, something despised. And people are cheering and shouting for joy, happy at the prospect of starting the new year free of this painful and irritating reminder.
We don't actually have to throw something physically out of the window, but for the past several years I've chosen New Year's Eve as a time to make a concerted effort to get rid of the remnants of a resentment or a hurt (real or fancied.) It makes so much more sense to me than the hackneyed idea of making resolutions. And, needless to say, I've long since stopped making New Year's resolutions for other people!
I just want to wish everyone here a happy, healthy, peaceful, safe, and prosperous New Year--one day at a time!
Bring your resentments, and your muscle power! This free resentment workshop has three different formats:
You can help bail out my backyard,
You can help haul fallen limbs and someone's lawn furniture out of my driveway,
Or, you can hammer new shingles on my roof to replace the 1/3 of them that blew off during this past weekend's storm!
As usual, I'll provide tools and hot chocolate! And I guarantee that you will either work off those resentments physically, or be so sore and tired that you won't care about them anymore!
I would say, like the farmer coming out of the storm cellar in the Big Book, "Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowing?" BUT--the wind has kicked up again, and something is thumping against the back wall of the house. I'd go look for what the problem is, but I had to turn off the low voltage lights back there because most of the backyard is underwater, so it will have to wait for first light.
Anyways, so it goes: They are predicting sharply colder temperatures for New Year's Eve. So you can always come over the morning of the first and go ice skating!
I still can't believe I used to go out and drive in this cr@p voluntarily---drunk as a skunk!
