Mr. SponsorPants

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.