Resolutions Begone

I've been absent. I'll not be. Or at least I'm not right now.

 

My parents were married 67 years, and my father's death on Christmas Eve ended the count, but we're at peace. His quality of life the last few years made them painful to watch, and Mother's doing okay, so all is well. But moving on, here's a poem I wrote instead of recommitting to the old list of resolutions.

 

Resolutions Begone

January first,
a day of beginnings they say.
A day of failures past, of guilt.
No longer the first of three hundred
sixty-five, a reprieve stands waiting.
One day. This day. Forget the second,
third, July 23, November 4.
Twenty-four hours of recovery.
One day, today, the whole future ahead,
guilt behind.

Simplicity

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." — Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

"My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements. Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness." (Bill's Story, AA Big Book)

The explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. (Occam's razor)

It's simple, recovery. 

Just surrender, 

abandon self,

bare your soul,

face your fears,

see how you caused

resentments dominant

all your waking moments

the last few decades,

tell people you've hated

for years you were wrong,

step aside as all your

traits that make you you

get stripped away so

you're more useful to other folk.

It's simple.

Not easy, not for the faint-hearted,

but oh, how worth the walk!
How blessedly simple.

If wishes were deeds....

We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 45)

I didn't do my reading this morning, just a quick prayer, and at this point all I've got is the Big Book, but of course that's plenty. My sponsor yesterday looked at a list of things I needed to get done and told me, "Do this list so you can be free. 'We don't shrink at anything.' p. 79 and also p. 80, BB." This portion of the Big Book, the one I started by quoting, is talking about wishing to have the benefits of a spirtual life, trying to get them through the thought process rather than what I was wishing in making the list, but the result is the same. Making the list, defining the ideals, these may be a step in the direction, but they're not getting there. There's that solid wall of the utter inability of thinking about something and having it done by that alone. Action is required, either simply cleaning up the stuff, writing the things, making the calls, etc., -- the things on my list -- or that big step I worked on all my life, establishing a really personal relationship with God.

 

It could be argued the latter, establishing the relationship, is just another thought process, or at least internalized, but absent putting it into practice, it remains an idea, a wish, a thought process. A long, long time ago, which I was a student in college, a wise woman said, "Too many people keep getting born again and never get around to growing up." I think she was talking about the physical acts necessary to reinforce the mental ones. Reading the literature, working the steps, using the tools of recovery, reporting to God each morning for our marching orders, asking for the pwer to carry them out, then listening to what he says we're to do during the day and doing it, not just making one more list. And it looks like a long day is -- well, a long morning -- drawing to a close, and I'm not tied in this chair as part of my job, waiting for people to bring things to me, so I'll go get the other meditation books and then tackle the list. It looks like both the sponsor and the marching orders are telling me that today. 

 

Here I am, God, reporting for duty. Keep on givng me power to plow through your work.

The More Glaring Personality Defects....

AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, having discussed the difficulties of doing inventories for the depressive and power-driven members and those in between, then proposes, "Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees." (page 48) These we can identify from our list of "serious violations of moral principles," "defects of character," or "an index of maladjustments." It approaches the list from the seven deadly sins. I've got plenty of them. Let's see...

• Pride - fascinating. It says, "Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts." (page 49) That one needs comment, but I'm not sure what to say, just that it rings so terribly true, the impact as I read it is to knot my stomach. I sit here with an almost overwhelming impulse to open a new window and type those three letters the computer knows so well that lead to opening my favorite batch of online games. I just want to duck and run. So, what I need to do is to figure out which ways pride has perverted my instincts. 

1. I have needs I need people to meet, needs I know they're more than willing to meet, perhaps eager because their own meet mine, but because communicating that might indicate a need on my part (wonder why!) I don't communicate, and the other person stays in their private shell as I do so we won't bother the other.
2. I don't remember names well, not just the ordinary absent-mindedness, but at a more basic level. Because I may be embarrassed by letting people know I don't know who they are, I just don't visit, don't engage in any but the most banal small-talk. I miss out on knowing people.
3. My pride -- meaning my fear of making a mistake -- leads to my procrastination, and therefore becomes an embarrassment for not having done the things I could have, should have done. I've no reason to think I'm not competent to make the decisions and do the work, but they build up.

• Greed - Something happened at work today. I confronted a person who had not asked my permission to change a procedure, and she should have. I got madder than I normally get, an anger that happens less than five or six times a year at work. While I was right in the fact she owed me the courtesy of discussing it first, part of my response happened because she was taking a responsibility from me, relieving me of some of my work, but in the process taking some power -- though I would supervise her in exercising it and was not actually losing power. Still, I have to think greed was part of the reason for my anger.

• Lust - I'm sure this is present, but it's not one of the biggies for me.

• Anger - My anger this afternoon was overt. Most of the time mine is covert. When I put on a show of being angry, usually it really is a show. Yet the people I am trying to make a point to ignore me and the others around, who know me when I'm not putting on the act, quiver in their shoes. That doesn't mean I don't stay angry a lot of the time. I was told a long time ago I was passive aggressive, meaning I don't get mad, I get even. I think it's a pretty accurate description. 

• Gluttony - Duh. Well, yeah.

• Envy - Oh! The big green giant. Yep. All mine. All mine.

• Sloth - What's slothful about a house that needs cleaning, an office piled with stuff that embarrasses me even when I'm alone in it? Yep. This one, too.

"Fear, a soul-sickness in its own right" and "fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build." (page 49) What a masterful use of the English language. And what a grasp of the meaning of fear in the lives of those of us who feel so isolated, so alone, so different. It's good to have a kindred spirit writing these words. 

"Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend too heavily on them." (page 53) This one is me completely. I have long recognized I had a three-tiered universe of people. The tiny part at the top were those people I idolized, those I felt I could never measure up to. And as I look at who they were in the past, especially, in light of the clarifying lenses of time, I don't understand how they rated so highly. Second is those equal to me who equaled, well, me. It was a lonely layer. Then the vast majority of people I felt better than. 

Well, I set out to describe some of my more glaring defects. Looks like I've got a fertile garden of them, as numerous as the termites eating away at my life-building.

The Union of Opposition

I read this phrase this morning, and I'm going to write about it, not sure where it's going to lead me. In context, to be honest, the text had set up the use of "opposition" in either the first or second of Merriam-Webster.com's definitions, not the third or fourth which automatically resonate with me when I hear "opposition." Here's the online dictionary's definitions:

1. a configuration in which one celestial body is opposite another (as the sun) in the sky or in which the elongation is near or equal to 180 degrees
   
2. the relation between two propositions having the same subject and predicate but differing in quantity or quality or both
   
3. an act of setting opposite or over against : the condition of being so set
   
4. hostile or contrary action or condition
   
5. a: something that opposes ; specifically : a body of persons opposing something b often capitalized : a political party opposing and prepared to replace the party in power
   

Moving on to Step Four in AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, these are the readings that catch my attention:

• "Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, tey drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives." (page 42)
  
• "Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities." (ibid.)
  
• "By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction." (page 43)
  
• "...we think it logically follows that sobriety--first, last, and all the time--is he only thing we need to work for." (page 45)

The Union of Opposition. The instincts are not wrong, they're misguided, overemphasized, out of balance. They differ in quality or quantity from where they ought to be. I guess the lesson of the morning is that what we need in Step Four is not a surgeon but a chiropractor. 

We're okay. I'm okay. God doesn't make junk. But sometimes what he makes gets messed up and needs realignment so he's in sharp focus again. 

Willingness is My Job?

Nothing is going to turn me into a nonentity. If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut. (AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 36)

I don't disagree with this (as a statement of something that's wrong) nor do I have any particular response to it, except it's neat writing.

But dependence upon an A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any baleful results. (ibid., page 38)

Interesting word, "baleful." I can't remember hearing it used, though it's not unfamiliar, meaning "full of deadly or pernicious influence or destructive." I did find this comparison from American Heritage Dictionary interesting: 

Baleful and baneful overlap in meaning, but baleful usually applies to something that is menacing or foreshadows evil: a baleful look. Baneful most often describes that which is actually harmful or destructive: baneful effects of their foreign policy.  

I'm assuming that baneful events are baleful as well, while some baleful things are not baneful. In this case, the usage is the more inclusive one, baleful. We're skittish people, afraid of our shadows though we're boastful and put on a good game face. But we are afraid of those things we perceive to be destructive, deadly, or pernicious. And A.A., O.A., and our Higher Power, depended upon, have not produced any baleful results. This doesn't just say they're not deadly, pernicious, or destructive -- it's not an empty representation. Instead, with about 15 years of history of A. A. groups and reliance upon a Higher Power, the proclamation is not an empty promise, but proof from experience. And since we understand each other better than we understand other people and better than they understand us, this is high praise and a reassuring affirmation. It's not an absolute promise but it's saying, "Our history bears out this stuff, this dependence, is safe." How reassuring can that be? Very.  

But now it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do. All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness. When he acquires willingness, he is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to do this is an act of his own will. All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will. (ibid., page 40)

I read "will" at the first of a long word, and it becomes "willpower" for me, so I had to read this a few times to realize that's not what it's saying. There's a huge difference in willingness and willpower--like pretty much a mirror image. And if I decide to get my will out of the equation, I'm pulling out too much, leaving the spiritual solution stranded, for the solutions needs none of my willpower but all the willingness I can muster either by surrendering or by praying for the willingness I can't find elsewhere. And developing willpower isn't even the end. There are other steps I have to take to support my recovery: The big one is "exert myself" and secondary but inherent in that is "sustain the exertion" and personalize the exertion to conform to the principles, and thereby to God's will. And all this is based on initially developing in my own circumstances the quality of willingness. So, like this chapter says at the beginning, Step Three isn't a decision step like Step One and Step Two but an action step like all the rest. 

Lord, I am willing, make me willing.

Faith without God

We can have faith yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents our first attempt to do this. (AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 34.) 

 

What an intriguing statement: We can have faith yet keep God out of our lives. It's not intriguing because it rings false but because it is so obviously true! Yet it feels like almost heresy. (My editor friends want to turn that around. I have considered it and will leave it this way.) That's what's so neat about recovery, though, is that heresy is not only permitted but ENCOURAGED! If we don't like the God we grew up with, if we don't like the preacher's God or the commonly understood one, then we pick a God of our choosing. We invent God. No, we define God. He's already invented, but we have to discover him and find him for ourselves. And at that point, when the God we're talking to/about/with is comfortable and right, we start looking at destroying the wall we've built up between us and the God of our culture, family, church, history. At that point the wall becomes superfluous, and at some point it actually becomes a nuisance. God, get me to the point that every time I throw up another wall, every time I resurrect the old ones, they're a nuisance and I actively WANT to tear them down!

 

...anyone, anyone at all, can begin to do it. We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. (ibid., p. 35)

 

When I first was pregnant, I was 30 years old pursuing an advanced degree, already having two degrees. The stories about pregnancy and birth bothered me some -- more than the concept of being a parent and having that awesome responsibility. But I dealt with the fears by figuring anything all those other women had done for all those years, I was fully capable of doing, so the fears went away. Somehow the idea that "anyone can do it" has always been meaningful to me. The wording here, though, is interesting: anyone, anyone at all, can begin to do it. I find helpful the theory that you should spend fifteen seconds every day on that big, intimidating project you want done. The time can even be spent thinking about doing something about it, but most days an action should be taken--and of course it's that first opening the file, picking up the notepad, whatever the first step is that's the hardest part, and once you actually open the file on the computer or whatever, you're going to spend more time, but to know that you only have to spend fifteen seconds to accomplish the commitment works. This idea, anyone at all can begin to do it. Just asking God to make you willing to be willing is a beginning to it, and that takes less than fifteen seconds. And the results are awesome.

 

Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness. (ibid.)

 

The first time you take the lid off the pickle jar, it may take banging on the counter top upside down, it may take running hot water -- or is it cold -- over the lid and heating the other part, it may take one of those gripping devices, but normally the second and subsequent times opening the jar is a breeze. I've re-opened this door today. Yesterday I didn't do what I should have done, could have sung along with Paul in Romans 7:14-25:

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

But I know that after that is the glorious chapter Romans 8. I lived Romans 7 yesterday. Today I'm in Romans 8. And I started this entry yesterday and quit, but today I picked it up and I've done it.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.