Hodgepodge...

Yes, I'm late. So shoot me already. Jeesh!

When I got up this morning I had a pretty good concept for today's post. It totally flew out the door by about midway through this morning's AA meeting. Had a group of youngsters from some rehab facility attending their first meeting. Youngest couldn't have been more than 12 years old. Wow! Really rocked me, and I sensed a lot of others in the room. Great that he's learning so early that the program is there for him, and today's was an exceptionally good meeting. But so sad that a youngster could be in that much trouble that early in life. I turned to the fellow next to me and said, "Now that really makes me want to go kick someone's ass." And it did. Oldest kid was probably 16 and I could tell at least a few were brothers. Parents are as likely as not crack-heads, and its really their parents or maybe the previous generation whose butts should be kicked. Except all of them, and us, and me - we're all sick, and spend about half our time kicking our own asses anyway - some by drinking and drugging. In the end, everyone gets what's coming to them. That's karma...

Had a sit down afterward with a fellow I'd met some weeks back but never really had a chance to visit. We'd confirmed that we were both, err...shall we say, "non-traditional" in our belief systems? And I knew that would be the focus of our visit. Having been in the program nine months now, I've developed a comfort level with the interesting juxtaposition of my non-deistic belief system with the semi-overtly Christian overtone of the AA program, at least here in Texas. I am guessing that it may be a bit less overt in California or Boston, but am not certain...

We ran through our histories with addiction and spirituality, and confirmed once again that there are many paths to every destination. He has been in the program for more than 20 years, came in a rabid atheist, and is now, I would say, pretty Buddhist in his mindset, although this wasn't something he really recognized in himself. He said that I was the first person he can recall who started on the spiritual path, then found his way into AA, which made me feel kind of special. I mean, I knew it was an uncommon route, but have long since dismissed the notion that any ideas or paths are really original. Nonetheless, the non-suppressed ego likes to think there's something special about itself. So I will indulge myself lightly...

My non-traditional path into the program is one of the reasons I am pretty reluctant to share my thoughts on spirituality in meetings that take that bent in discussion, and I explained this to him. I don't really want to proselytize my belief system, at least in that setting. These are fellow travelers on the path of recovery for whom life and death hangs in the balance, supported by their having a strong belief system. Given that I can't prove mine right or theirs wrong, I am very reluctant to sow the seeds of doubt into the structure they've built by exposing them to an alien, although admittedly to some, quite compelling, approach. Better, I think, to wait for the curious, like my lunch companion, to make themselves known and ask. At least that's my approach, and I feel good with it. Of course, my therapist would say that its arrogant of me to think that I could knock the hinge pins loose from someone else's belief system, and maybe it is. Not a a risk or responsibility I care to shoulder at this juncture...

I know I have friends within my readership in the program, some of whom share my non-deistic eastern spiritual focus. Would love some feedback on this. And I've discussed with my sponsor on a couple of occasions our shared notion that there are likely a goodly number of atheist, agnostic, Wiccan and other non-traditional believer addicts who wander into the "wrong" AA or other 12-Step meeting on the wrong day and get hit with a too heavy dose of prayer, and a god called "Him," and the whole powerlessness thing, and turn around and hit the streets again for another day or month or year or lifetime. Kind of bums me out, ya know? My first visit to an AA meeting room, probably 15 years ago, was exactly that experience and had exactly that effect. And I'm not such a big believer in the whole karma thing to buy into the notion that for me, or those other disenchanted visitors, that in every instance it was just not their time. Of course for me, it really wasn't - didn't have a problem and had no interest in quitting. Just went to shut the wife up and get her off my ass. Yes, that stage of my trek was very traditional...

To get back on track, the program's success isn't really about God, but about spirituality and humility. If God is part of that for you, that's super. But a belief in the caring compassionate interventionist Judeo-Christian God is not a requirement for success. Having some power higher than, and other than, yourself that you believe in and rely on? That is definitely a requirement. I often say that I'm not nearly so certain that there's a higher power as I am that there's no lower power than me. Insignificant human occupying an insignificant planet in an insignificant solar system for an insignificant micro-fraction of an instant, against the universe which is infinite in time and space and its myriad manifestations. How much less significant can I be? I mean, we're getting to the same place vis-a-vis higher vs. lower, but from a different perspective that some find a little less threatening...

Which approach was a little confusing to my lunch companion, as he knows that I participate in the Lord's Prayer at the end of every meeting, linked hand in hand with the addict to the right and left of me (lady's hand on my right today was really cold, which is rare - for someone's hands to be colder than mine, I mean...) I explained that I had been raised saying the Lord's Prayer, and felt that my joining in with the group was supporting the group, the vast majority of whom believe in a God that hears and answers prayers. He, on the other hand, not believing in the God who hears and answers prayers, but in some other God, which he described as non-interventionist, yet which/who somehow made a habit of intervening in a positive way, doesn't join in the prayer (but does join hands). He feels that saying words you don't believe somehow dishonors him or something. Different viewpoints, neither right nor wrong in my view. His approach does attract attention,which lead to our lunch date and new friendship. And it is honest. Hmmm, will have to ponder...

Which made me start to share with him my reluctance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, which was real and heartfelt for the longest time. Part of it was based on the whole "under God" thing, but equally I felt it was really a lie all the way through. I mean, "One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Really? The only words in the whole string which aren't lies are the prepositions, for God's sake! And this was more than a little bit difficult, seeing that for a while I was an elected official and every meeting opened with the Pledge. What was I to do? It wasn't my job to upset my constituents or to educate them on philosophy, theology, metaphysics, etc. My job was to keep them calm and represent their secular interests as related to municipal government. I worked my way through by mouthing the words (so it looked ok on cable television) and later was able to reach the point where I could say the whole thing, except for the "under God" bit. How? I finally read the damn thing through, parsing it like a lawyer,until I got comfortable with the notion that I wasn't pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth, nor to the nation as it exists, but to the ideal "for which it stands." Hey, worked for me...

So, prayer lying bad, pledge lying ok? Vice-a-versa? All lying bad? "Have you seen my wife lately?" Saw her in the lobby of a hotel downtown getting into an elevator holding hands with a man that wasn't you...

Sometimes life really is just like a box of chocolates. Thanks, Forest. I believe I will...

Oh, and kid. Keep coming back, ya hear?