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Giblet and Dumpling consider Cargo Cults and Negative Consciousness. A Play in 47 Lines.

As the curtain rises, Giblet sits at the kitchen table downstage left, looking morose and drinking a cup of coffee.  After a few moments Dumpling enters, upstage right, and crosses to the counter, where a coffee maker sits, with several mugs on a sideboard.  Dumpling grabs a mug, fills it with coffee and stands, considering Giblet for a few moments before crossing downstage and joining them at the table.

DUMPLING:  What are you doing?

GIBLET (sarcastic and exasperated): What does it look like I'm doing?  I'm sitting here drinking a cup of coffee.

DUMPLING:  Actually, it looks like you're sitting, drinking a cup of coffee and thinking angry thoughts.  And scowling.  You're a great scowler, you know.

GIBLET:  Whatever.

DUMPLING:  What are you thinking about?

GIBLET:  Some guy at the meeting last week shared something that I can't get out of my head and ... it's really messing with me.

DUMPLING:  What did your sponsor say?  Oh, that's right, you don't call your sponsor.

GIBLET:  That's what's great about you, I don't really need to work my program, since you're always so ready to step in and work it for me.

DUMPLING:  That is an infantile evasion to an astute observation -- my remarking that you don't call your sponsor is not very different from saying you don't take your insulin, or you don't take your vitamins, or whatever.

GIBLET:  Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.

DUMPLING:  Wow, you are really a piece of work today.  So what is it that this guy shared which has your snark turned up to eleven?

GIBLET:  He was talking about having a hard time with his faith -- faith in God, faith in AA, recovery, his ability to "get" it -- and he compared the whole thing to a Cargo Cult, and the comparison is so apt it's kind of freaking me out.

DUMPLING:  How apt is it?  Remind me again what a Cargo Cult is, and most especially what it might have to do with a crisis of faith.

Giblet rises from the table while speaking, and goes to the counter, grabbing the coffee pot and returning, pouring more coffee into each mug.

GIBLET:  Well, he told the story of the Cargo Cults -- it's part history and part fable, so don't get worked up about how accurate the history bits are -- it's the larger point that's working me.  Okay, so during World War II the Allies' planes couldn't carry enough fuel to make it all the way across the Pacific Theater, so the military selected small islands along the way to build posts with fuel and supplies and such.  Some of these islands were actually inhabited, and so basically one day, as far as the natives were concerned, this big silver bird comes down from the sky, and out of its belly comes men, with materials and things, and the men build a long flat road and hang lights, which then makes for other, even bigger silver birds to land, and from those issued all sorts of things -- not just men and supplies, but things that the natives had never seen before.  Matches, chocolate, flashlights, cameras ...

DUMPLING:  Okay, sorry to interrupt, but my God, could this fable be any more condescending to indigenous peoples?  It's the typical Western arrogance manifest destiny thing which ...

GIBLET:  You are everything I hate about highly educated people, did you know that?

DUMPLING:  And yet you keep sleeping with me.

GIBLET:  Congratulations, you are part of my cycle of dysfunctional relationships.  Do you want to hear what's bothering me, or do you want to lecture me about western culture and crap like that?

DUMPLING:  Sorry, sorry -- go on.

GIBLET:  Okay, so the natives, they have no understanding of the war, or the world outside of their little island.  They're just grooving on all the stuff that is coming along with the men who come out of the big silver birds.

DUMPLING:  Chocolate and nylons.

GIBLET:  Will you stop?

DUMPLING:  Sorry, I really do want to help.  Please, go on.

GIBLET:  So the war ends, but that's all an abstract to the natives -- yet with the war over the military eventually closes the base and flies away.  No more silver birds with stuff coming out of them.  So the natives sit down, and with their best thinking try to figure out how to get the big silver birds to come back to the island so they can get the stuff again.  So they think about it, and they think about it, and they hit on a perfect solution:  Build another long road for the big silver birds to land on.  After all, that's what happened before, right?  So they tear down some trees and flatten a long stretch of land and line it with torches and congratulate themselves on their good thinking and their hard work and they sit down and wait.  But of course no planes come, because although they mimicked what it took for planes to land on the island before, they were completely ignorant of what was really going on. From their limited view they took the right action to get the result, but in the big picture they couldn't have been more off the mark.

DUMPLING:  Okay, wow, and this guy said all this in his share?  Where does the crisis of faith come in, and what about all that has gotten your knickers in a twist?

GIBLET:  What if we in recovery are like the natives on the island -- what if anyone seeking a conscious contact with a Higher Power in general is like that?  We have our little rituals and our writing and we pray and we this and that, but what if we're just performing a dumb show, and are as empty and misguided as those natives and will get an equally empty and dismal result.  What if it's all bullshit stage business completely divorced from a real ... well, a real anything?

DUMPLING:  You certainly like to torture yourself.  All this is a just a ridiculously complicated way to simply ask "What if there is no God?" or "What if AA is bs?"  Not to mention, there is so much needless drama, (conveniently ignoring the results we get from AA, by the way) with that line of questioning anyway.  And that interpretation of the story.  Personally, I can see a whole different point to your Cargo Cult fable.

GIBLET:  Not everyone gets results from AA you know.

DUMPLING:  I have.  And you have, when you're not throwing yourself around the kitchen, wringing your hands and wondering when it will stop working or if it's all pointless.  Not everyone treating their cancer gets results from chemotherapy, either.  Does that mean that no one should use chemotherapy?  It's a simple Program, sure, but addiction is not a simple problem -- so to reduce it to such a simplistic level is doing yourself, and your program ... and AA ... a disservice.  Because it's such a reduction that it becomes a distortion.

GIBLET:  Okay, maybe ... but the Cargo Cult story is still a good analogy for a group of people doing an empty ritual to no avail.  They built a landing strip, but they didn't get what they wanted.

DUMPLING:  Ah, but what did they get?

GIBLET:  What are you talking about, they didn't get anything, that's the point.

DUMPLING:  No, they didn't get airplanes with chocolate and trinkets, but that's not to say they didn't get anything -- they just didn't get the specific result they thought they wanted.

GIBLET:  Right -- they didn't get what they set out to get.

DUMPLING:  But that's not the same as them not getting anything.

GIBLET:  If you are about to say they didn't get what they wanted but maybe they got what they needed I am going to throw up right here and now.

DUMPLING:  Well go stand over the sink, because that IS what I'm saying.  Your little fable ends too soon.  It needs a Second Act, a Chapter Two, a ... a ... an epilogue!

GIBLET:  And what would that be?

DUMPLING:  Well, did they get airplanes full of crap?  No.  But in working towards that, maybe they learned other things, got other things.

GIBLET:  I'm going to be sorry I asked, but ... what other things?

DUMPLING (shrugs):  A greater sense of community.  A new understanding of engineering principles.  An insight that their leadership was screwed up -- the specific what-they-got isn't the point -- the point is that just because they didn't get what they set out to find doesn't mean they didn't get great stuff -- stuff that was ultimately of much greater value to them than chocolate bars and trinkets.  Thus, it doesn't even matter if there's something at the other end, it's the doing that's worthwhile anyway.

GIBLET:  I thought you said there was nothing on earth worth more than good chocolate.

DUMPLING:  Shut up -- I'm making a great point.

GIBLET:  Yeah, if you live in the Pollyanna Universe.

Dumpling slams their coffee mug down on the table and Giblet jumps.

DUMPLING:  No.  No, no no no NO.  I hate that and I reject that.  Just because something is a positive or uplifting interpretation doesn't make it any less valid or possible or important or substantive than your piss-all-over-everything negativity.

GIBLET:  I'm not negative.  I'm realistic.

DUMPLING (suddenly furious):  My God!  Have you met you?  You are nothing BUT negative!  You love to be negative!  It's bullshit, is what it is, because you don't have the balls to feel hope and embrace optimism and look for the sunlight!  It's easier and safer to just keep dragging around, acting cool and saying everything is crap -- then you never have to risk disappointment or rise to a challenge or actually do anything!  It's much easier and more fun to ponce around the house talking about how life sucks, AA sucks, God's a fantasy -- and every time I say anything positive you just make fun of it!  You know what, I don't need that!  Being negative is easy, any child can stomp on a sandcastle.  You know what's hard?  Building the sandcastle!  Keeping faith, even if you think it's silly or stupid or... or ... Pollyanna.  What's so stupid about looking for the good, anyway?  What's so unrealistic about that?  It's such a cheap trick, equating the negative with realism.  But you know what's really hard?  Constantly listening to your faux sophisticated cynicism...

Dumpling stops abruptly, suddenly hearing what they've said, realizing they've gone too far, and covers their face with their hands.  Giblet opens their mouth to respond, and then closes it.  Slowly Giblet rises from the table and stands, looking down at Dumpling.  Dumpling lowers their hands from their face, looks up at Giblet and seems about to say something.  With a roar Giblet whirls and throws their mug against the wall, where it shatters with a crash.

Blackout.

Curtain.

I don't have to "know" for it to work.

I went for one of my favorite walks.

It takes me past a long row of tall evergreens, planted next to the sidewalk, which slowly curves, following the road, so the trees progress in a graceful arc.

The sidewalk, and thus the trees, are set back some from the road, which carries little traffic, so while it's hardly a walk in the woods, it feels like I get my green fix.  I used to walk this route home from work five days a week, and it was often my favorite part of the day (or evening, depending on the shift).  "Hello, Ladies" I said then -- and again today --  when I pass these trees -- they remind me of Grande Dames -- it is a cliche to use the word "stately" to describe them, but it is too apt not to say it anyway.

Today, as I usually do on this walk, I brushed my hand along some of the needles and then raised my palm to my nose and took a good strong hit of the sap scent.  Mainlining evergreen.  I don't care where you're from or what your associations, there's something about the way that smell hits your olfactory nerve that shouts "Tree!  Alive! Tree!" all the way down to your DNA.

It has been my habit to make this bit of path a walking meditation as well.  The pine smell makes it easy -- it's like a key which unlocks a different way of thinking for a little bit.  Not about God, specifically, but about the connectedness of the natural world.  I think of the trees and then with my eye follow their branches all the way up, consider the sunlight as it comes through the needles, how the light dances a bit more, a hundred tiny peek-a-boos, as the needles move in the breeze -- it's sharper than the mellow green glow you get from other, regular leaves filtering the sun.  Seems fitting, really.

I imagine the trees drinking in the sunlight, the photosynthesis, the release of oxygen, the roots going down into the earth and drinking water from the soil ... typing it out here makes it sound like either a very bad rough draft by Rod McKuen or the intro to some 7th grader's science presentation, but walking, thinking, smelling ... it has a way of shifting my perspective -- pulling the camera up and back for the big long shot from above.

Before the walk today I came across a great article in "New Scientist."  You can read it yourself here, if you like, (it's not very long).  It talks about how people tend to ascribe their own bias to whatever their idea of God is.  (I made myself laugh, thinking about a magazine called "New Scientist" as if it was in response to a publication called "Traditional Scientist" or "Old Scientist" -- and then I started imagining what kind of articles "Old Scientist" would have listed on it's cover:  "Gadget Guide:  Six New Must-Have Sextants!" and "Flint is the new Tinder!" or "Bathysphere Babe: Dr. Millicent Farnsworth - Cutting edge research in the controversial new field of submersibles!  Don't ask her if she's going down!" I think these things and then I make myself laugh and then I realize I am laughing to myself out loud, and might have also said the last couple of things I was thinking out loud... and then I just hope anyone who sees me thinks I have a Bluetooth.)

The book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) talks about how we can pay for the presumption of assuming we know what God is thinking in all sorts of foolish ways (a rough quote, but the spirit is intact) and counsels us to make sure we include other people's input in our considerations before we decide we know what God is "telling us" to do.  The real trick might be to make sure I'm not just asking people who all think the same way I do -- then we'll all just have an agreement that our Higher Power agrees with us...

The article also mentions that the part of your brain which lights up when you talk to or about a friend is the same part of your brain that lights up when you talk to God.  I like that.

None of the science or brain research troubles me.  When it comes to the Big Question (is there or isn't there) I've let all the doubts in and let them chase me around the room.  I went toe to toe with the fascinating, witty and insightful reasoning of Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God" in which Ms. Sweeney -- who had been a lifelong Catholic, and wrote (very funnily -- which is a word but never sounds like it ought to be) about her brother's terminal illness and how her faith sustained her through his passing in "God Said Ha!" -- describes how she no longer believes in God.  She writes a wise and compassionate goodbye to her faith in that piece.  Frankly, I loved it, and the way it made me question.

And I'm okay with all of it.  That, for me, is the beauty and freedom -- and yes, power -- of what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me in the idea that I can make use of spiritual tools -- first to address my drinking and then to help me live -- via a Higher Power as I understand said Higher Power.

That freedom, and hearing people share in meetings about finding their old conceptions no longer suited them and they needed to get a "bigger" God, leaves me plenty of room to consider that what I believe today, while helpful, may not be right tomorrow.  It leaves me with the humility to say, "I don't know everything" which can lead to the wonderful peace of "Oh, I'm never going to know everything!"  And when my human foibles step in to taint the process, and I realize "Oh, that's not a spiritual connection, that's my ego talking on that one bit" I can understand that this does not mean I have to lose my entire concept or connection.  The open mindedness and its attendant humility allows me to chuck the bits that aren't a fit anymore, but not chuck the whole thing because of it.

In embracing that sometimes I may need to change how I think about God, AA reminds me to leave room to remain always open minded on all things spiritual.

Then, ultimately, it doesn't matter which part of my brain lights up when I talk to God, or if humanity as a whole often makes the same mistakes in whatever our belief systems are.

It doesn't matter because I am seeking -- it's a process -- and all of my "oops!" and "I don't know's" and doubts and conclusions and brainstorms and ideas about God are fine for me at each point along the road, because it works for me at that point, but the "as you understand" part keeps me in check from thinking that just because my conception works for me today then that must mean I've got it, I'm finished and I'm right! -- and ipso facto that means others are wrong.  "As I understand" also leaves me room to allow others their understanding -- or lack of.

I walk, I pray, I reflect, my perception changes and I have relief and peace --  the result is my proof for today -- and I will keep seeking and I will remain open minded.

Whatever science discovers is wonderful new information -- sometimes about how humanity approaches religion, which often has nothing to do with my own personal spirituality -- but I can use that information to guard against my ego secretly pulling the strings in my seeking, and to reach for compassion (through understanding) when the belief systems of others seem close minded and a little scary.  Religion has not always treated gently the people who arrive new to AA, and it can leave wounds which make any talk of spirituality offputting -- maybe the more I understand about religion and the brain, the better I can open my heart to people who have a negative association between God and prayer and some organized religions.   

Regardless, science may be right about some things, I may be right about others ... it is the open mind, the "I don't know" which frees me to keep seeking, to consider without threat or fear all new ideas as they come along, and while doing so keep my spiritual equilibrium -- and thus my sobriety -- since I don't have to "know" for it all to work.

 

I practically floated off the bus.

I smelled wet people.

I was working in Las Vegas at the annual Consumer Electronics show.  I, and many other attendees, had been waiting for the bus hired by the show to run the big circle from the convention center to most of the hotels close by.  That particular year some freak of desert winter weather brought occasional showers through the area, and one of those occasions coincided with sixty or so of us standing outside, waiting to get back to our hotels.  In short order the lot of us had been pretty thoroughly soaked.

The bus pulled up and we all piled on.  Unfortunately it had been designed to carry maybe 20 people fewer than our little mob, but the rain was such that the driver didn't make anyone wait for the next bus.

Crammed together, sweaty and tired from the convention -- and now wet -- this was not a scene which would make it into any vacation promotional material from the Las Vegas tourism board.

Work travel is not like a vacation, even in a city renowned for it's ability to entertain (or distract, depending on your point of view) thus I was already not having a good time -- in fact the city had depressed me.

I was lucky enough to have a seat on the bench that ran lengthwise along the side of the bus, in the front section behind the driver, which meant I was squished by my fellow bench sitters on either side and surrounded by people standing -- more like looming -- above us, gamely trying to keep their balance by holding onto rails and handles as the bus crawled through the rain.  Picture the seating configuration and the crowded conditions and you get that I was cheek to cheek with total strangers -- but different cheeks -- and not in a good way.

At that time in my sobriety I was always asking God "why?"  Sometimes it was in a sincere attempt to understand something, and other times it was little more than a whine, but in one form or another I was always mentally dashing off a note to my Higher Power:  "Dear HP, Why is X happening/not happening to me.  Please respond asap.  Thanks!  xo, Mr. SP"  While God has spoken to me directly on occasion, S/He (I'm keeping an open mind) has never been in the business of giving me a "because."

With no Divine Because forthcoming for my bus ride, and the smell of wet people becoming increasingly pungent, I started to get... self pitying.  Resentful.  Discontent.  I had a good job and I was traveling on someone else's nickel, and while the bus was crowded and uncomfortable it was hardly inhumane conditions -- yet my emotional maturity then (and it has only marginally improved over the years, on some spiritually unfit days, anyway) was such that a bit of rough going could dirty my diaper pretty quick.

At this point in my sobriety I had moved on from the sarcastic sponsor to the beautiful sponsor, and she had been talking to me a lot about meditation.  Naturally I had many books on meditation on my bookshelf, purchased specifically so that people who came to my home could see from their presence in my library that I was a very spiritual fellow.  I hadn't read any of them, of course, but I could sound like I had.  I had never really tried to meditate, figuring that before I could even begin I would need the right robe, a dozen organic scented candles made by blind monks from virgin beeswax, probably a prayer rug and possibly a toe ring.  I always have lots of school supplies, I just never go to class.

The beautiful sponsor told me that I needed to develop a meditation practice that I could "carry in my pocket."  That I could do in just about any situation.  She suggested that as a start in my meditation practice I try counting my breaths, and thinking only of the count and trying to deeply feel each breath.

Sitting in the human humidor I thought back on her words, and almost defiantly said to myself, "Fine. Fine!  I'll try this stupid meditation thing.  Fine!"

God's honest truth:  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said in my mind, "100."  Then I took another deep breath, and on the inhale said (in my mind) "ninety-" and on the exhale "-nine."

And then I lost count.

No, really.

It wasn't that I had forgotten that 98 followed 99 in my countdown, it was just that some other random thought popped up, and knocked my counting out of my head for a moment.  So I started over.  100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, POP random thought, lose focus.  I realized if I started over after every POP I would never make it out of the nineties, so, remembering some advice I'd heard about meditation somewhere along the line, I decided to just pick up wherever I left off, whenever I got interrupted -- or rather, interrupted myself.

My breathing slowed and got more even.  I sat still but relaxed.  I became more conscious of my breathing, my heartbeat, my self, and less conscious of the army of fannies hemming me in.  I became conscious of my conscious.

Honest to God, I reached 3,2,1 just as the bus pulled up in front of my hotel.  The doors opened and I practically floated off the bus.

The 11th Step of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests prayer and mediation, and in the literature it describes that "prayer, meditation and self examination provide an unshakable foundation for living."  Most people see meditation as a good thing, but they also see it as complicated, or requiring some special accessories and uncomfortable poses, or that it will be boring or like homework.

And by "most people" I mean me.  That was how I always thought of meditation before I had that experience on the bus.  Now of course I have a wealth of experience to the contrary.

From that brief and powerful lesson I have learned how to center myself in some very strange situations, and my spiritual life has been greatly enlarged.

(Which, going back to my whiney "why?" to God at the time, was quite probably the "because," I was asking for.)

Try it.

Metaphorically speaking, the evolution of my relationship with a Higher Power.

Metaphorically, the evolution of my relationship with God can be expressed like this:

I cried out "God! I'm starving!"

And a banquet appeared.

Later I cried out "God, I'm starving!"

And the food to prepare a banquet appeared.

Still later I cried out "God, I'm starving!"
And God said, "So?  You know where the supermarket is."

Alcoholics Anonymous suggests that, to bypass all the religious rhetoric and spiritual dogma many of us have been exposed to in our lives (and which generally we used as an excuse to justify resentment and willful behavior rather than looking for the deeper truths beneath) we create our own idea of what God is like  -- an idea of God that "works" for us so that we can then develop a faith that works for us.

But regardless of how deeply your faith begins or becomes, or whatever conception of a Higher Power is eventually meaningful to you, it seems that certain spiritual laws are always in place, (even though, try as we might, we never fully grasp them in their entirety).

And when it comes to alcoholics in recovery, chief among them seems to be:

God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, not what we will not do for ourselves.

Or, as a smart friend of mine puts it, perhaps a bit more succinctly than I: "God don't do dishes."

illuminating what you might secretly believe

To illuminate what you might secretly believe about your Higher Power, work backwards from how you feel (and what you fear) about what God's will is for you.

If you view "God's will" with trepidation, or suspicion, or alarm, if you're afraid that God's will might be hard, or boring, or painful, or unrewarding, then I believe the trick is not to work on letting go of the fear -- the trick is to change your belief about what God is; to re-examine how you understand God.

There can be a pretty vast difference between what I understand (that is, what I think I know), what I hope and what I believe.  And for me, before I can actually come to believe something (about God) I have to pull my deep down doubts up into the light and give them their day in court.

For years I had beliefs about God and the way the universe worked that I didn't even know I had.  I talked a great game about a loving Higher Power, but I was just parroting what others said -- I was actually disconnected from what I truly believed.  It was almost as if what I wanted to believe distracted me from what I actually believed.

The freedom that AA's philosophy offers, the "choose your own conception of a Higher Power" allowed me to stay, but it also baffled me for a while.  And in the vacuum of no particular dogma, my old ideas, the old fears and almost superstitious belief system I had about how the universe works, began to seep into the foundation of the new faith I was trying to build.

I was so busy working on the new super structure of a "God as I understood God" that  I didn't even notice the plumbing problem I was having under the foundation.

I've written here before about the stunning insight I had once, while praying the 3rd Step Prayer (which, for the new kids, is a beautiful request to God to "build with me and do with me as You will), that half way through the prayer I looked like I was bracing for a blow.

In a kind of wild, third person perspective I saw myself praying in that moment, and my body language betrayed a buried belief I didn't even know I had:  That God's will was going to hurt.

That was when I learned:  To illuminate what you secretly believe about your Higher Power, work backwards from how you feel (and what you fear) about what God's will is for you.

For me it turns out that I cannot change what I believe, in any substantive way, until I discover and confront what it is I actually believe -- not just focus harder on what I want to believe.  Without doing that, trying to change the nature of my faith is like being very busy decorating the top floors of my house with happy colors while the foundation slowly erodes.

The Scariest Sponsee on Earth: Prologue

1996

I was so, so sad.

I wasn't feeling sorry for myself.  I was sad.

Fortunately I had a wise sponsor (who has since passed but who I still hear, in my head -- or my heart, maybe -- and without who's patience and guidance I would likely not be alive today -- or at the very least not be the man I am today) who was able to understand the difference between sadness and self pity.  At that time he'd already sponsored me for several years.  He'd heard -- and clocked rather ruthlessly -- my self pity when it showed up.  He knew in this case I was not indulging myself.  This was no tantrum.  It was not the voice of King Baby inside me, wailing away over all he hadn't got.  No, this was deeper, and slower, and more dangerous than self pity.

"This too shall pass."  He told me.

"Don't quit before the miracle."  He told me.

I was maybe seven or eight years sober, and it felt like "quitting" was most definitely on the menu, though what form that might take was up for grabs.

"It's almost worth being where you are when you come out the other side.  God didn't get you this far just to drop you on your ass now."  He told me.

We lived in different cities at that time, but spoke on the phone every day.  Sometimes twice a day.

"I don't believe you anymore."  I told him.

"I know," he would say, "but do you trust me?"

I had to think.  "Yeah, I do."

"Okay, that'll have to be enough then."  I look back from today at the patience and kindness he gave me and I am humbled by how generous he was with his time.  With his spirit.

I still went to meetings -- a good amount even.  One doesn't shrug off a habit of give-or-take 8 years standing very easily.  I was even too sad to hate the meetings, though it seemed a pointless exercise to me.

It went on for a while.  My sponsor listened.  He suggested I pray.  I tried, but it too seemed pointless.

Truth:

Finally, late one night -- it's always "late one night" in these kinds of things, isn't it -- lying in my bed, I said to the God I didn't believe in anymore, "I don't believe in you anymore.  But ... help me. Please.  I'll do anything."  And in that moment I meant it.  Sometimes I think that's what makes the difference.  People ask God for help all the time.  Asking is easy.  Being willing to do anything to accept that help -- well, that's a very different proposition, isn't it.

My hand flopped down on the nightstand, and came to rest on a book there.  Of all things Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."  I'd bought it to look smart, more than anything, and it had made its way to my bedside in an effort to impress some repeat offender of a one-night-stand ("Wow, he must be good sex, he reads Whitman!") -- and also because while the language was beautiful in places I really didn't understand it, and thus a lot of it bored me, so I used it to try to fall asleep.  So much for the classics.

Truth:

Without any real thought I opened it at random.  The poem I started reading was split, part on the bottom of the page I'd opened to, and part on the next.  This is what I read:

O me! O life!
The questions of these recurring.

Of the endless trains of the faithless
Of cities filled with the foolish

Of myself, forever reproaching myself
For who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?

I had to laugh at that.

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renewed,

Of the poor results of all
Of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest, me intertwined

The question, o me, So sad, recurring:
What good amid these, o me, o life?

Then came the page break, and before I turned it I understood the mystery of poetry, that it wasn't about comprehending the words necessarily, though these spoke clearly and directly to me -- it was about understanding the feeling -- just like sharing, actually. 

I turned the page and this is what I read:

Answer:

That you are here; that life exists, and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

And just like that, my great deep sad was over.

Across a hundred or so years Whitman had echoed my feelings and my questions -- life can seem false and empty, people even more so -- what's the point?  Why go on?

And he answered it with the only real answer there is to those moments:  That there is you, the only one of you there is or ever will be, and if you choose to, you may help, you may make a difference -- and so I understood what my job was again -- my real job, not the fancy bullshit corporate job I had at the time.

I was free from the horrible, soul-sucking swamp of a sadness I'd somehow stumbled into.  My sponsor had been right.  God, The Universe or The Great Whatever hadn't gotten me that far just to drop me on my ass -- that this, too, had passed.  I felt free.  For whatever mysterious reason, of all things, as pretentious as it may sound today, Whitman's poem had reawakened within me a clarity of purpose, and I felt like maybe I could help someone -- anyone --  I was ready to try to contribute again.

I heard once in a meeting that ultimately all we have to offer each other is our stories, and they are unique to each of us, and it is possible to help -- even to save lives -- by sharing them.  It is not for us to judge, but for us to do.  "O Me! O Life!" brought that idea back to me and made it sing.

To make sure this new freedom stuck, though, and to give me a chance to get busy "contributing" right away, God sent me The Scariest Sponsee on Earth the very next day.

And now, a few words from St. Theresa

Regular readers know that I'll take my spiritual inspiration anyplace I can find it.  In the earliest days of my sobriety, the sentiment "If you don't understand God, then that's how you understand God" was a great comfort.  The fact that it came from an old episode of "Kung Fu" didn't phase me in the least.

(Caine was as quick with a spiritual nugget or a beautiful image as he was with a Crane Kick.  I found it enlightening as a kid when the show was first on, and then nostalgic and comforting later, when I was newly sober --  though undoubtedly it would be irritating as hell to be trapped in an elevator with him: "Yes, it is like sunlight upon a stream, the water moves but the light only appears to dance. We, like the light, only appear to move."  "Yeah, uh, that's great, Caine, thanks for sharing, but could you pull the Alarm Button now?")

Today was a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other day.  One in which outwardly I was calm, okay, business as usual -- but inwardly I was anxious, and consumed with self judgment.  Old fears and shames came to visit.  Thanks to the 12 Steps I don't see them as often as I used to, and over the years I've learned to unmask them, or try to ignore them, but they still carry a knife, and know just where to stick it in.  And turn it.

While my rational mind understands that this is a form of self obsession, and I took steps to get out of myself, (lunch with a sponsee, coffee with a sober friend, dinner with another sponsee and then went to one of my regular AA meetings at which I have a service commitment) being able to identify what is happening -- the self obsession, the self judgment, the anxiety -- does not always free me from the effects of these things right away.  Identifying what's happening and taking the right sober actions keep me from being overwhelmed  -- but it does not always take the knife away as quickly as I might like.

Does it even matter what set it all in motion today, mentally?  Emotionally?  A worry about the future, a wish for having made a different choice, the sting of a little rejection ... the news of the world ... I try to regain my perspective, which is of course an attempt to reach for humility.  Sometimes that solution comes to hand effortlessly.  Sometimes humility is a soft blanket -- but sometimes it's like one of those scratchy tags in the collar of a badly made shirt, and every time I turn my head it bugs me, and I'm mad for even having to have it.

But as I said at the top, I will take my inspiration wherever I can find it.  And so, it's ...

St. Theresa of Lisieux to the rescue!

Huh?

Yeah, I know, but roll with it.

According to a number of sources, when St. Theresa was a child, she was offered a handful of ribbons from which to select one.  She responded, "I choose all."

Terry, that is my kind of thinking.  My mother told me that when I was little she once scolded me with the old adage "You can't have your cake and eat it too" -- to which I responded "Then bake two cakes."  Ah, the budding ism.  So cute.

From a very religious family, as a girl Theresa was anxious to go into the nun business, as pretty much all of her sisters and one of her cousins before her -- so anxious, in fact, that she petitioned to get into the Convent early, a petition that was eventually granted. 

Theresa came to speak and write of "The Little Way."  She realized, sitting around the convent, that heroic acts and "great deeds" were not her path, but that she could still accomplish something worthy by making "... every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."   

If I'm not a rock star, if I'm not in Juarez, Mexico fighting drug gangs, if I'm not matching tissue samples for sick children ... I can choose to give greater meaning to the simple fabric of my life by "doing the least actions for love."  To me, that means trying to have a loving, spiritual intent behind every small connection with others.  Theresa's the saint, not me -- that's a high bar to clear.  And AA teaches me that it's the action which transforms me -- and my own experience strongly bears that out.  Yet if I take a page from Theresa's philosophy, those actions can be coupled with a loving intent which changes me -- heals me -- further.  Yes, to be clear, the action alone will change me -- and when I first got sober any change was a good, healthy one -- but eventually the action alone is a sterile thing, and the intent becomes more worthy of consideration.

To build muscle you must add weights and thus increase the effort.  Perhaps to build spirit we must do something similar.

Today, as those old pains and shames tried to gain traction I wrestled with some of the questions to which there are no answers (those questions always come down to to the foolish and fruitless "Why?" -- and in my experience God is not in the Because Business.  Religion seems to be, but God -- not so much).

Theresa found her answer to those questions in, as she puts it, "the book of nature."  She wrote:

"I have come to realize, that the radiance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the fragrance of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy ... perfection consists in being what God wants us to be."

I take my inspiration where I can get it.

This stops the questioning and brings me back to what I know to be true:  As a sober alcoholic the best of who I am is found in the 12th Step.  As it says in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book), when talking about working with other alcoholics, "You can help when no one else can." (BB, pg. 89)

Being sober, on some days, must be enough.

When I remember that as a recovering alcoholic I can be of service to someone with a terminal illness -- the very same illness I have been given a daily reprieve from, in a way that others cannot -- that knowledge frees me from comparing myself to "others."  It silences old fears and shames, and excises the pernicious "what if's" and "if only's" chasing each other around in a circle in my head.

It is a way to STOP -- and return to being content with simply who, what and where I am.  And that is what God wants us to be.

Mary the Bread Lady

I call her "the bread lady" because she used to work at a bakery, and at the end of the day she used to bring all the leftover day-old's to where I worked and give them to the staff.

Mary is 80 years old, and my neighbor.

She's quite trim, and stands about five feet tall.  Currently she wears her hair in a fashionable page-boyish bob, so it moves when she turns her head from side-to-side or nods, both of which she does with great vehemence -- she agrees or disagrees strongly.  When she speaks she makes sharp, declarative gestures, or great swooping expansive ones -- her hands always make me think of little birds circling around a nest.  Originally from Hungary, she still has her accent --  imagine how Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor sounded. ("Dahling!" and "Yah!" and "Sveetheart!")  She walks very quickly, smiles readily and laughs very easily.  To meet her, and chat with her for a while (there are no short chats with Mary once she catches you up in conversation), well, if you didn't know she was 80, you would think she was 60, probably, and a very healthy 60 at that.  But then you might see the tattoo and do the math and revise your original guesstimate of her age. 

Mary has a serial number tattooed on the inside of her forearm from Buchenwald, the Nazi Concentration Camp, where she was held during World War II.

Mary caught me on the street the other night -- summer evenings are beautiful and it is light quite late where I live.  I was dead tired, and I confess since there is no such thing as a short conversation with Mary, when I was walking up the street and I saw her, inwardly I sighed a little.  She was her usual chirpy, chipper self, filling me in on any of several developments in her life within the first three minutes after saying hello.  Writing this I am sure I cannot convey to you the energy of her movements or conversation.  It's as if she is powered by a miniature sun.  She had extra grocery bags in the back of her car, so I offered to carry them up to her apartment for her, knowing that, tired as I was, this would likely lead to at least a half hour conversation.

I wasn't just tired, I was exhausted actually, having gotten off a plane earlier that very evening, coming home from a cross country flight after attending a family function.  It had been a tough day, emotionally and physically (I'm not sure I'm such a great flyer anymore, and the "family function" was, in truth, a funeral Mass, so I was not wrung out from some casual business trip or family vacation, I was wiped out in every way possible, it felt like.)  But I'm crazy about Mary, and if you're the kind of guy that can walk past an 80 year old woman and let her carry her own groceries up two flights of stairs, well, we try not to be judgmental in AA but I don't think much of you.

I'm not trying to be noble here, or sound like I'm a hero or anything, I'm just trying to let you know when I say I was tired, I was dead tired.

But I sucked it up, because just being with Mary, and knowing her history, and yet watching her smile and laugh after some of the things she's been through, makes me feel good about God and the world and people in general.  I mean, if there's anyone who has a right to cop a little attitude after what she's endured -- and witnessed -- it's Mary.  If she wound up spending her life angry, or suspicious of strangers, or morose, who on earth could really blame her?  Yet she is as sunny and open as a child.  But sharp.  Oh my, she is sharp.  And devout in her faith, although she is not kosher, and thinks some elements of the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are crazy.  As much as she loves her faith -- and suffered for it -- she looks at her religion with an intelligent and gently critical eye.  (She is my role model in that, when it comes to how I try to view Alcoholics Anonymous.  I love it, I am indebted to it, I work to "practice its principles in all my affairs" but I want to view AA like Mary views Judaism -- with an intelligent and gently critical eye).  When I once (timidly) suggested to her that perhaps those keeping kosher found some spiritual strength in the discipline of it she laughed and gave me a a scholarly discourse on the what and the why of kosher and how it is (for her) very silly to live in the modern world by rules developed to keep food safe to eat in the desert thousands of years ago.  All this while sorting through flowers at the local Trader Joe's grocery store.  It is a picture of her I will always have in my mind.

So there I am, standing in front of Mary's apartment door with all her groceries, emotionally drained and physically exhausted.

And Mary is telling me about her new speaking gig.  You see, Mary, as engaging and animated as she is, makes a natural speaker.  And as a survivor of the Camps she goes around, for free of course, whenever asked, and speaks at Universities and Churches or Synagogues or wherever, about her experiences.  Over the years that I've known her she has shared with me anecdotes here and there about these little lectures.  She has no canned pitch, just goes and says some remarks and answers questions, I believe.  And it's not as if she has an "agent".  These speaking invitations come in fits and starts, with long stretches in between where she is not asked to do this.  Privately I've always thought it is brave of her to speak with what must be her usual candor about her own personal experiences in those war years, but I've never told her that... the opportunity to bring that up never seems to present itself, and it's an odd thing to blurt out.

So her new speaking gig is in front of high school students here in the city.  She was quite excited to describe how the kids react to her -- all slouchy and bored when she starts, but then more and more interested -- most of them.  Others remain aloof during her whole speech but this does not phase her.  And Mary was very proud to share with me how she's come up with some clever ways to try to engage the kids.  When she describes the Jewish faith as she was raised in it, she talks about how doing anything to the body was not allowed (my paraphrase, not her words), so when her head was shaved and the number tattooed on her forearm she explains about how it was not just dehumanizing, but a violation of her faith -- "It wasn't like when your Britney Spears decided to shave her head for a new look" -- she knows that she sounds funny saying that -- remember that's with a Hungarian accent, too -- and when the kids laugh a little she gets a huge kick out of it.

Seeing her delight as she described all this was worth standing there, tired and emotional after a long tough day.  Something about the goodness of what she was doing, sharing her story with a generation of kids, loving the care she put into trying to convey a message to them, really warmed and comforted me.  And that night I surely needed a little extra warmth and comfort.

And the kids write her letters.  Letters!  In the 21st Century!  Not like some assignment where all the kids in the classroom have to dutifully write a thank you note, but actual letters to her about what she said and how it made them think about things.  Some letters she gets from parents now, too.  Delighted and moved, that's what she was when she told me this.

"I want to ask your opinion on something." She said, standing there before her apartment door.

"Of course, Mary."

"The last time I spoke, one of the girls, during the question-and-answer, asked me a question, and I want your opinion."

I sat down on the stairs, and Mary did too, with considerably more ease and flexibility than I felt I had.  All her grocery bags were sort of piled on the landing a step above us. The steps are painted forest green, kept clean as a whistle by Mary herself.  Sitting knee-to-knee I felt like we were kids in a brown construction paper tree fort.

"She asked me, when I was in the Camp, and I could see the smoke, and I knew that it was the bodies of people, and it could also be me, did I ever get angry with God?  Did I ever doubt He even existed?"

I want you to know that in the moment she was describing this girl's question to me I felt like a lightning bolt zipped up my spine.  I flashed on all of the shares I'd heard in AA meetings over the years, all the dramatic (and melodramatic) railing against an unfair Universe and the questioning of how there could be a loving God when there were massacres and genocides and kids with cancer and Nazis.  It feels like people always, understandably, bring up the Nazis.  And here I was, knee to knee with a Camp survivor, a woman of faith, who had seen the very, very worst the world has to offer us, asked by a teenage girl the very thing I've heard countless AA's ask.

AA suggests I seek God as I understand God.  Religion, be it Judaism or Jehovah's Witness, offers me a view of how God is, specific to their faith -- but by either route one must ask, at some point, whether rebellious or devout, the same question that has plagued every thinking person of faith -- Why in this world is there Evil, if God is all powerful and God is Love?  In some organized religions the concept of sin explains a lot of the Evil, and of course, Satan makes an excellent patsy too.

But if I'm seeking God as I understand God, and I'm not really in the whole "sin and Satan" school... how can one not consider this question?  How can one not come back to it over the years of seeking, as you change and develop in your spiritual life, as sobriety and the world hand you your lumps and miracles.

You can imagine, in my exhausted state, how I felt like God had orchestrated this scene on Mary's stoop, just to give me the inside scoop.  "What did you say?" I leaned forward, and I think I might have whispered it, I was so exhausted, so overwrought, so focused on this moment.

"Well, I really thought about it." Mary answered.  "And I told them that I struggled with it then, and I still struggle with it now.  In my struggle is how I continue to seek God.  Then and now."  Suddenly she was kind of shy.  "Do you think that was okay to say?"

I remember my eyes were burning -- fatigue? emotion? I'm not sure and I was there -- I leaned back against the stair rail and closed them for a moment.  "Yes, Mary.  I think that was okay to say."

We stood up and I gave her a hug, and she patted my cheek like she always does and gathered up her groceries and went inside, while I slowly walked down the stairs and headed home.

I was right.  Sure, maybe I was exhausted and overwrought, but I was right.  God, the Universe or whatever, really did orchestrate that scene on Mary's stoop, just to give me the inside scoop.

I'll do anything, anything at all!

Bill Wilson, one of AA's founders, had a hell of a time getting sober.  Repeated hospitalizations, prayer and revival meetings, good counsel from trained physicians, the love and support of his wife... he couldn't refrain from picking up that first drink, and, as with any alcoholic, once he started there was no stopping.  Eventually he was unemployable, his health was shot, and his doctor, Dr. Silkworth, told his wife Lois that if he kept on drinking as he was, he had maybe a year to live.

Earlier, a former drinking buddy of Bill's, Ebby Thatcher, introduced Bill to the idea that a spiritual component was the necessary ingredient for getting and staying sober (Ebby had fallen in with an organization called "The Oxford Group" and it was that group which gave Ebby this foundation -- and also introduced the concept that you could seek God as you understand God -- which Ebby passed along to Bill).

When the "one year to live" diagnosis was given, Bill, in the light of his previous attempts at staying sober, and constant failures at it, was truly terrified.

In search of that "religious experience" Bill went to the Calvary Mission and, in an agitated state, took over the little meeting they had there for the down-and-outs and "testified" about how alcoholism was a cancer, consuming him, but his friend Ebby had gotten sober through God's help, and so Bill hoped he could too.

This experience of testifying left Bill very excited, and after returning home he felt the strong need to go to Towns Hospital, where he often wound up after a bout of drinking, to see Dr. Silkworth, whom Bill considered a friend now, and who had explained to Bill some theories about a sensitivity -- a physical allergy -- in every alcoholic that was activated when they drank alcohol.  Leaving a note for his wife, Bill set out to visit his doctor, excited about his experience at the Mission and excited about the prospect of God helping him stay sober.

Bill was so excited, in fact, that he stopped on the way to Towns Hospital and got four bottles of beer from a cafe at which he still had a little credit.  Three bottles in, he went from excited to elated at the idea that God would help him get sober.  Wandering down the hall at Towns, drinking his last bottle, he found Dr. Silkworth, who sedated him with barbiturates, administered a mild dose of belladonna (to reduce "stomach acids") and put him in a room.

When the beer wore off, Bill was more depressed than ever.  Another visit from his friend Ebby raised his spirits some, and they talked again of God and some sort of spiritual solution.  But after Ebby left, Bill slid back into a deep melancholy, reflecting on his poor wife Lois, his many triumphs (and failures) on Wall Street, and one time, in his youth, on the eve of combat in World War I, standing in Winchester Cathedral when he had almost believed in God.

The bare bones of this narrative is in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book).  Bill's story is told in much greater detail in the book "Pass It On -- Bill Wilson and the AA Message."

Bill eventually did get sober of course, and went on to be a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (which the early group originally wanted to call "The Way Out" -- but that's a topic for another post; I'll just sit here in silent gratitude that I do not have to go through my sober life as a "Way Out-er.")

Bill had, that last time in the hospital, a dramatic spiritual upheaval, a personal experience of the presence of God.  Bill himself, and many in AA, call this a "White Light" spiritual experience, in reference to how swift and powerful it is.

The book "Pass it On" describes this final low in the hospital and the miraculous spiritual "visitation" both in narrative form and with Bill's own words:

"Now, he and Lois were waiting for the end.   Now, there was nothing ahead but death or madness.  This was the finish, the jumping-off place. 'The terrifying darkness had become complete,' Bill said. 'In agony of spirit, I again thought of the cancer of alcoholism which had now consumed me in mind and spirit, and soon the body.' The abyss gaped before him.

In his helplessness and desperation, Bill cried out, 'I'll do anything, anything at all!'  He had reached a point of total, utter deflation -- a state of complete, absolute surrender.  With neither faith nor hope he cried, 'If there be a God, let Him show Himself!'

What happened next, was electric.  'Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light.  I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description.  Every joy I had known was pale by comparison.  The light, the ecstasy -- I was conscious of nothing else for a time.' "

Bill goes on to describe a vision of himself on a great mountain top, with a wind not of air, but of spirit, blowing through him.  Of no sense of time passing, but eventually seeing the walls of his hospital room again, and a great peace coming over him.  He then goes on to say:

" ' ... I remained in this state for a long time.  I seemed to be possessed by the absolute, and the curious conviction deepened that no matter how wrong things seemed to be, there could be no question of the ultimate rightness of God's universe.  For the first time I felt that I really belonged.  I knew that I was loved and could love in return.  I thanked God, who had given me a glimpse of His absolute self..."

I've always felt that the second miracle of that day was that when Bill described this experience to Dr. Silkworth, the good doctor didn't just administer another dose of barbiturates.  Rather, against perhaps all the training of any doctor ever, Silkworth said basically, "I don't know what happened to you, but you better hang on to it, it's a lot better than how you were."

If you read more of Bill's writing, you see that although he had this powerful experience, over time he was still plagued with self-pity, depression, resentment, guilt ...  in other words, as with any alcoholic when they stop drinking, he had to work to keep the spirtual connection he'd experienced, it wasn't a free pass.

But here's the thing, for me:

I find the image of Bill, at the very, very end of his rope, in that hospital room, crying out to God for help, compelling and powerful.  But the idea of saying, really saying, to God, "I'll do anything, anything at all!"  Terrifies me.  I'm willing in a lot of ways about a lot of things -- I'm wiling to go to any lengths to stay sober, and to help others get sober -- that's not nice talk, I kind of think I've got the 'street cred' to back that up, for the most part -- but to say to God, about any of the things I'm facing today, that I'll do "anything at all" -- terrifying.

I know that "God will not make too hard terms for those who seek Him" yet I wonder if that absolute, humble willingness isn't a key to healing from some of the deepest character defects, the most core issues, the most entrenched self destructive behaviors, that continue to pain us well into our time sober.

I suspect, to keep growing, I must look at what that "terror" of the absolute willingness really means for me.  What does that reaction say about my feelings about God today, and my faith, and what I think/fear/hope/expect God would ask of me...

Hafnium

I noticed an ad on the back cover of a magazine about the new "Breakthrough Hafnium Design" for chips from Intel. 

Hafnium.

I read it and the very first thing I thought was, "Oh, come on.  You computer people are just makin' words up now."

The ad was a description of how the new "Hafnium-infused" processor technology was "setting new benchmarks" and offered "amazing battery life" etc.  So I thought, "Hmmm. Hafnium. That must be a very powerful kind of chip. Next generation and all that."  Aside from thinking that the name was silly I completely, without resistance, believed the ad that a chip with Hafnium was better than a chip without Hafnium. (Imagine my chagrin to discover that Hafnium is a real element in the Periodic Table, and it got it's name from the the word "Hafnia" which was Latin for Copenhagen and I can't believe as I type this that I am boring you with such trivia.  I'm just kind of a word nerd -- plus, I really did think they made it up.)

Yet when it comes to believing that a Higher Power will not just help me get sober but will help me deal with all my problems (oh, how I inwardly mocked that phrase when I was new) I can sit in meeting after meeting and listen to direct testimonial from people that are living proof that some sort of spiritual force not only exists in the Universe but is available to them as a source of strength if they just do a few simple things and I can, even today, after all these years, still doubt. Discount. Disbelieve.

I have gone through periods of deep, rich, active, effortless faith, and I have had fallow periods where the soil was untilled and my faith was pretty barren, at best lip service and at worst a bitter void.

I trust that, as Thomas Merton once wrote, "All men of faith doubt."  Apparently it is part of the process.

In the book "Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light" a collection of Mother Theresa's correspondence over the course of her life (which, by the way, she specifically asked to be destroyed after her death, so that people would "think less of her and more of Jesus" -- man, even for Mother T, I guess if you want something done...) Mother Theresa once wrote, in a letter to her spiritual confidant the Rev. Michael van der Peet -- who apparently excels at the "spiritual" but falls a bit short in the "confidant" department -- "Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see -- listen and do not hear -- the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak..." 

And so the doubt is real and tough but I guess not at all uncommon.  All people of faith have a "dark night of the soul" (hat tip and a "muy bueno!" to St. John of the Cross, 16th Century Spanish Mystic for that beautiful and evocative phrase in describing spiritual development).

In the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) there is an entire chapter called "We Agnostics."  One of the main points of this chapter is to draw a correlation between how easily, in what would be considered a "scientific age" we discard old ideas for new ones, specifically ideas about the physical universe around us.  Yet when it comes to ideas about faith or God or spiritual principles we are almost blindly, willfully, stubbornly closed-minded, even when there is a form of proof about those things right in front of us.

I've always identified strongly with this passage from "Bill's Story", the first chapter in the Big Book.  It describes Bill's state while he was sitting in the kitchen, drinking gin, listening to his friend Ebby who'd come over to talk to him about a (spiritually-based) way to get sober:

"Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice.  The word God still aroused a certain antipathy.  When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified.  I didn't like the idea..." ("Bill's Story" in The Big Book, pg. 12)

And earlier in the same chapter Bill puts it beautifully when describing his reaction to "ministers and the world's religions":

"When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory." ("Bill's Story", pg. 10)

I find that it is possible today for me to believe that God helped me get sober, helps me stay sober (though it's up to me to do the footwork), but I can lack the faith that God will (really) help me with any of my other problems -- despite the stunning evidence of my own sobriety, and the countless examples I have around me in meeting after meeting after meeting.

But as I struggle against slipping backwards into that same familiar, over-intellectualized, cynical and fearful place in which I reflexively discount the living example of the people around me in AA meetings, I'm going to take comfort in knowing that I'm right where I'm supposed to be, even if I'm in the "dark night of the soul" -- I say "right where I'm supposed to be" because others have traveled this path before me, and people who's writing I deeply respect (both modern and ancient) have found this to be on their journey as well.  Apparently doubt is as much a part of spiritual growth as winter is a part of how the earth renews.

I can doubt, I can fully disbelieve, but I know it will pass ("This too shall pass"). And the other evidence that is right before me, right under my very nose, is that, regardless of whether I'm in the dark night of the soul or walking in the sunlight of the spirit, if I continue to go to AA meetings I'm pretty much going to be OK.