Mr. SponsorPants

punishing/rewarding -- as always, I speak only for myself here. my experience, my thoughts, my journey.

 

 

"...and eventually, I had to let go of the idea of a 'punishing' God..." the speaker was discussing their experience with the 11th Step, and when they shared this many heads in the room nodded a little, affirming their own journey along similar lines.

When they said it though, I was struck that while I, too, had crossed that same bridge -- identifying where in my attitudes I met the idea of a Higher Power with mistrust or fear -- the next step for me was to let go of the idea of a rewarding God as well. (Which, rather than meeting the idea of HP with fear, is about meeting God with expectations and an attempt to control It ).

In many ways, it was more frightening to let go of the idea of a God who would reward me than it was challenging to let go of the idea of a God who would punish me.  (I'm always looking for a way to control, a pay out or a guarantee.)

The recipe analogy came to mind:  I follow the steps in a cake recipe, and I wind up baking a cake.  But at the end of that process I don't pull the cake out of the oven and go "Oh! I've been such a good dooby, following this recipe as its written, that the Oven God rewarded me with a cake!"  I followed a process and I got a result. 

For me, AA's recipe is similarly devoid of "reward." (Though in a more poetic mood I can certainly use that term to illustrate some of the gratitude I feel for the life I have today.)  It's pretty straightforward, actually -- I follow the Steps, and live by AA's principles, and I get a specific result:  A spiritual experience which allows me to stay sober on a daily basis.  Additional benefits are a quiet(er) mind and a more open heart -- and perhaps a way of being which might maximize certain opportunities -- but that's just (forgive me) the frosting on the cake.  For me, it's not God "rewarding" me for doing AA.

(Because if I'm living with an idea of a Higher Power who is supposed to reward me for being good/sober, and then They don't... or They don't do it the way I think They should... well then, eventually, I'm in a lot of trouble.)

 

 

 

why why why

 

why

why

why

For the past few days at work people have been asking me, in various ways, "why?"

A teenager that worked for me was shot and killed.  A good kid.  A very good kid.  No gang stuff or any of the usual questions and assumptions which might come to mind.

One of the teen's parents also works for me -- which might sound odd, but in the restaurant industry I'm finding some things function very differently.  In some communities, if someone finds a good gig with a good company, they recommend other family members.  It's not nepotism, they're not in charge of hiring and firing just

Oh who cares about that shit a good kid is dead.

My team at the store is reeling and you can add Grief Counselor to my job description.

When people sincerely ask me "why" I've shared my beliefs, shaped by AA, without getting into AA stuff -- they don't need any of that.  When people ask me "why" but it seems a rhetorical question, I just leave them alone.  Some need an ear, some need to process on their own -- or with someone else.  I'm keenly aware that my brand is not for everyone. 

There is tragedy every day.  Carnage and injustice on much greater scales.

But that knowledge is an abstract, as good and as caring as I/we try to be.  This is personal, horrible and specific.

All I know how to do, what AA taught me, is to deal with my feelings and thoughts, then be of service in any way to those around me.  AA doesn't own that, it's just the way I best learned how to do that.

The parent is shattered.  I am holding their job for them -- which makes some things very complicated, operationally, but I can handle that.

The past few days have been very brief posts because of this.  I couldn't write about it here before now, because I was dealing with it all day, and didn't have it in me to then come home and bring it to the blog, as helpful as it has been over the years to share candidly about whatever I was dealing with here.

Tomorrow morning is the Mass and the funeral, and I will be attending before going in to work.

Life is hard, and a mystery, and having Faith at times like these can be both a great comfort and a terrible question mark, by turns.

I put one foot in front of the other.

I take the next indicated step.

I do my job and make an effort to be personally and professionally helpful to those around me, whenever and however I can.

 

There's really not much more to say on it tonight, is there.

 

Mr. SponsorPants 

 

 
 

purple shampoo

 

"You should use Purple Shampoo."  He had just finished cutting my hair.  I'd raced over after work to get in the chair before he left.

"What?"

"You should use Purple Shampoo."

"Purple Shampoo?"

"Yes, it will make all the silver in your hair really pop."

"Excuse me?"

He went on, oblivious to the ringing tones of outrage and grief now echoing through the salon.  "Oh yeah, if you're not going to color your hair -- are you going to color your hair?"

I bit back a withering 'Certainly not!' and managed a more civilized "No, I don't think so."

"Yeah, then, like I said, it'll totally make the white pop."

Dear God, I'd gone from silver to white in the course of four sentences!  What the hell was happening up there?  I was like one of those vampires in the old Hammer films when you stake them and they age to dust in under a minute!

"Thanks, I'll get some." <sigh>

My dead sponsor, he who shaped my sobriety and my life in such profound ways, used to wear a toupee.  I would say it was his one nod to vanity but that's probably not true.  It worked for him because it was a quiet toupee; practically a skull cap.  I could always tell when he was choosing his next words carefully because he would reach up and sort of smooth it down into place.

I miss his wise counsel every single god damn day.

He had well over thirty years sober by the end, and when people would ask him how he got that much time he would kind of peer over the top of his glasses and say "Don't drink and don't die."

Any outrage at growing older I display is mostly mock.  When you survive (one day at a time) alcoholism and addiction and the years begin to accrue you've seen too many people die young to seriously balk at getting older. 

It's like a kind of sacrilege to do so, actually.  A slap in the face to the people who couldn't stay sober and thus died of this disease.

I try to keep my perspective by thinking about all of them, sometimes. 

When I go out dancing (and it's been a little while, with the new job and all) I always secretly dedicate one dance to all my dead friends -- all the people I knew who died of addiction or AIDS far too young.  I imagine them (as best I can) on the dance floor with me.  There are far too many now to picture them all, but I think the trying's good enough.

When I do things like that, I can more gracefully accept getting older.

Looking older... now that's another matter entirely...

 

Ring Ring

 

Sometimes the greater challenge to faith is not that you don't receive Divine Help when you ask for it, but rather that you don't like the help which you receive.

Ring.

Ring.

Humility calling.

Questions via Email: Agnostic, Atheist and Antagonist mash up! Woo!

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

Based on my [Mr. SP edit: childhood], I have a hard time with any talk about God.  I'm new and I'm afraid this will blow me back out the door.

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

I refuse to believe in God, and while I know I have a problem with drinking, I can't stomach all the "god stuff" I hear in meetings and read in the book(s).

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

Don't you think a problem as serious and pervasive as addiciton should be addressed with something a little more reliable than "a spiritual experience"?

 

Dear Agnostic, Atheist and Antagonist,

Woo!  A Doubt Trifecta in my Inbox!  Thanks for writing, (even you, Mr. CrankyPants) since these are all things I've struggled with -- just this morning!

D'oh!

I think it was Thomas Merton who said, "All men of faith doubt."  (Leaving you ladies on your own I guess.  Chalk it up to a religious patriarchy and the era he lived in, as we so often must.)  I find comfort in that statment though.  Doubt is part of the package.

But what you're describing is a lot more than just doubt -- you're struggling with anything from disbelief to outright disgust (you'll forgive me if I cut your colorful emails down to the hearts of the matters, I hope).  When it gets between you and your medicine, it's not just a prickly metaphysical issue, it's life-or-death.  And that's not hyperbole.

I watched a video recently, a "talking head" type; informational, not entertaitional.  (I know there's no such form of the word "entertainment" -- there's no such word like that at all -- but my need for parallel sentence structure would not be denied!  Work with me, people.)

I liked what he said -- but I hated how he said it.

While the spiritual discussion was of great interest, there was a particular vocabulary the speaker used, terms which, for me, are heavily loaded and associated with organizations and people that have long troubled me.

But again, I want to stress, what the head said was great -- I saw value in the message.

It struck me that for a lot of people, that's how they respond when they encounter Alcoholics Anonymous.

All our "God talk" -- even though we offer a broad, inclusive, non-judgmental and completely self-defining idea about it -- is still, for some, simply unacceptable.  (I wonder even if our very openness -- sort of a too-good-to-be-true thing -- isn't suspect in such cases.)

If you're a regular Mr. SponsorPants reader you know I'm certainly not suggesting we change anything about the way AA addresses this subject -- for me the language is moving and healing.  The writing is both inspired and inspirational.

And you can certainly make a (strong) case for the idea that, if you want what we've got, do what we did... surrender and an "admission of powerlessness" are key components along AA's path -- if you're not willing to let go of stiff-necked, reactionary antipathy toward spiritual concepts you'll have a hard time with most of AA's Program of recovery.  (All we ask in this arena, after all, is you simply attempt to have an open mind -- and here are some thoughts I've put down about how to do that -- I hope particularly helpful to you, Mr. Atheist.) 

But if you flipped it, I would choke on even that reasonable request if my life depended on believing in the same way that the talking head in the vid I watched believed.  So I get it, what you wrote me about.  I get it.

There was a time in my life when I thought anyone who depended on God was weak of will, narrow of mind or slight of intellect.  And if you'd told me that a course of treatment for a chronic illness I suffered from would have to include a "spiritual awakening" I would have been cynically amused (or pretty frightened).

All of which is to say, upon reflection (pomposity alert! "upon reflection" is one of the top five most pompous things you can say in the 21st Century!) I have a new compassion for those who come to AA, know they're in trouble, know they need help, but for whatever reason choke on any discussion at all of spirituality.  Balanced against my heartfelt commitment to AA's suggested plan, today I don't feel very hardcore.  Today I feel that if you're a desperate alcoholic searching for a solution, the "there's the Steps or there's the door" Marine Drill Sergeant 'tude is less than helpful. 

You're catching me in Old Softy mode.  So allow me to offer a different way of looking at some of AA's spiritual concepts -- without some of the language which might make you feel like you're hacking up a psychic hairball. (gak!)

Please (please!) let these be the air bags which deploy when you crash into AA's "God talk" -- at least until you feel like you can make it through a meeting or the literature without a complete derailment.

• "Surrender" at the very beginning of sobriety, is simply connecting some dots -- in most cases it is an alcoholic's initial realization about the cause and effect of drinking upon the state of their life (be it external, i.e. lost homes and broken relationships, or internal, as in a profound loneliness, misery, depression, etc.).  Further, it's an admission to oneself that there is something fundamentally not right about the way one drinks -- either there never was (as in my case) or what control used to exist has eroded or is gone.

• An "admission of powerlessness" is less about submitting to an organization's particular philosophy than it is about looking down the road and seeing an inevitable, logical outcome to how things are progressing.  It is a gut level acknowledgement that there is an inescapable trajectory for the worse, again related to the way you drink and/or use.  And as has been said many times in many places, not just this blog (repeatedly) but meetings and AA lit too, the "Higher Power which can restore you to sanity" can be the collected sober experience and practical, real world suggestions of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who drank like you drink and have found ways to stop and stay stopped.

• Relying on prayer and meditation need not include any spiritual concepts at all.  Prayer can be the conscious self-direction to stop a particular avalanche of thought or tidal wave of negative emotion (fear, for example).  Functionally speaking, there is not a lot of difference between an alcoholic who is freaking out going into the bathroom at work, sitting down in a stall and saying "God, please remove these thoughts and help me turn my attention to what you would have me do and be" versus sitting there and saying to yourself "I recognize this thinking -- it leads me to freak out and self destruct.  I reject this.  I will not be victimized by my anxiety.  I will focus on the positive."  (Sure, the latter is a sort of affirmation, but if you are so jaded as to look down your nose and sneer at that concept too, then... fine.  Think your shitty negative thoughts and freak out all you like  No skin off my nose.)  I'm not trying to reinvent AA nor am I trying to remove what is an essential component (certainly for my Program) -- I'm offering, for an alcoholic starting out and still trying to put days together, tools or ideas which line up with AA's strategy, if not AA's philosophy.  The practice of meditation can be completely divorced from the spiritual if one does only a little reading on the topic.  More simply put, if you choke on "god stuff" consider prayer as a concerted effort, rooted in particular phrases, to think different thoughts when in crisis, and meditation as a brain chemistry reboot.

• Finally, the "spiritual awakening" as a result of the Steps (which Jung himself called a "psychic upheaval") can simply be a Profound and Ongoing Shift in Perception.

(And if you have a problem with Jung, too... well then, I guess you're never satisfied -- and... and... I guess we can't have nice things! **sob**)

Me personally, I'm good with God (today).  I understand though, how a strict religious upbringing, or so many fractious factions claiming to speak for Him/Her/It, or a desire for a solution to addiction which does not lean so heavily on what is ultimately a metaphysical foundation, might condition one to recoil from anything remotely related to the God concept as "medicine."  Try to look past that to the practical assistance, the body of sober experience, which AA can offer you.  AA doesn't require you to believe anything -- it makes suggestions which you might consider, it offers its own ideas and explanations for things -- rooted more in people's experience than anything else -- but you can do the whole darn deal and be as non-spiritual as you like.  You'll definitely have to suffer through the well-intentioned condescension of a few AA's (maybe more than a few, depending on your zip code) but the point is to get and stay sober, right?

Let this humble offering help you get started, should you be at a loss as to how to do so, amidst what might at first feel like a sea of spiritual terminology and concept.

Eventually you may consider things differently, but you don't have to.  Just don't pick up the first drink -- that's the only thing to focus on in the beginning.

 

A Higher Power as you understand them...

Recovering Jezebel posted this in the comment section recently:

So I've been wanting to ask you this anyway -- everyone keeps telling me, about my crappy Higher Power, "Fire that Higher Power and get a new one!"  But *how* do I do that?  Because I get it that I can't take Step Three with my current God [Mr. SP edit: Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him] with my current God, who is, I'm pretty convinced, just in it to screw me over six ways from Sunday, and then hide behind the proscenium laughing into Their sleeve.  But what's the technique or practice for making up a God I like?  If I just make up a pretty and kind and friendly God, how will I ever be able to believe in Them, since they're patently nothing more than a mere creation of my own little pathetic pea-brain?  So confusing.

Great question, R.J., one I think most people who embrace/try/reject/mock/love/hate the 12 Steps ask in one way or another -- that is, it's nearly impossible to come across the phrase "as you understood Him," and receive AA's blank check when it comes to a concept of God, and not puzzle over how to make this process real.

Let me tell you up front that this essay is probably going to let you down.  That is, I can pretty much guarantee that the feverish metaphysical musings of one relatively crackpot middle-aged alcoholic is unlikely to achieve any spiritual insights greater than those already mused by most of humanity, which has been tilting at this particular windmill since we first crawled out of the cave and began to wonder at the world around us (and within us). 

To state the obvious for a moment, many people subscribe to a particular religious doctrine which supplies a ready-made definition of God -- you may not like it, but at least it's there, clearly defined, complete with rules and conditions, do's and don'ts.  Against this specific picture, AA's carte blanche is baffling to many.

Though I've walked this road myself, and I sincerely want to help, it may be that not all of my experience in this will work for you -- I offer it freely, though, and remind you that the one sure-fire way to have an open mind is the word "maybe."  Maybe something here is right, and will work for you if you try it. 

("Whatcha doin'?"  "Building my Higher Power."  "Really?"  "Yeah."  "Wow!  Well, ummm, be sure and lift with your legs.  I can't even begin to imagine what a spiritual hernia would look like.")

Doing this is, of course, deeply sacrilegious to some people in the world, and in keeping with AA's general spirit of "no controversy" I apologize if anything I write here offends anyone.  To borrow one of my favorite lines from the Big Book, a discussion like this "... immediately precipitates us into a seething cauldron of debate."  (It's so dramatic and a little poetic - I just love it).  But that is not my intent -- this is just a recollection of what has helped me excavate a lot of tired old ideas about God (which I didn't even know I had and ran deeper than I realized), and what I did to begin to embrace new ideas which have brought me much peace and guidance, and sometimes a feeling of blissful connection with a power greater than myself, over the years.

First, though, a story about my dead cat.

(And let me apologize for this, too, as we come perilously close to too too twee when we bring pets into writings about God and such.)

Baxter was a dog-cat, and I had him for many years.  A dog-cat is a cat that comes when you call, let's you rub their tummy without incident, is friendly to strangers who come over, might even play fetch, etc. etc.  (Words cannot begin to describe the disdain Evil Old Cat had for Baxter while he was alive.)  Sitting and reading one time, I watched Baxter engage with a dribble of water from the bathtub faucet.  It occurred to me then, watching him, that he could experience that water with his cat senses in a way I could not -- that is, he had a particular way of understanding the water.  But then I thought about how I understood the water: How I knew about the fact that it could be liquid, solid or gaseous, how it was comprised of two hydrogen molecules and one molecule of oxygen, that it came into my home via a system of pipes handed down from the ancient Roman aqueducts ... etc., etc., etc.   Baxter had an understanding of the water, but his brainpan just wasn't big enough to grasp 1/1000th of what there was to know about it.

I keep Baxter and the water in mind whenever I try to wrap my mind around the Divine.  While I may have a particular way of understanding it, my brainpan just isn't big enough to grasp more than the most limited conceptualization -- at best I will only come to an understanding so finite as to be almost a distortion of the Ultimate Truth.

So relax -- we're never going to really get it -- the best we can do is find some crude analogies which open our hearts to a new understanding  of spiritual principles and maybe clear away some old ideas planted by lots of other people and things (the religion of our childhood, books, movies, TV shows, friends and enemies, billboards and greeting cards) which maybe don't apply to us at all (regardless of how much conviction those other people may have about their beliefs for themselves).

Now, for me, if I want new ideas, then I need new words and images.  I need a new language to describe the thing I've been thinking about -- especially when it comes to God.  I've written before (here and here) about Daniel Ladinsky's translations of (mostly) eastern poems about God, found in the book "Love Poems from God" (which, when you're frightened and seeking spiritual solace is a title which you embrace eagerly, but when you're feeling cool and on your game is the kind of thing you roll your eyes at). I am not saying this book alone will help you re-define your understanding of God -- I'm saying that it helped me.  It might not speak to you -- the bigger point here is that if you want to find new ways of thinking about God go to new sources and see what resonates for you.  That's all.

But since I got my copy of that book down, let me share two things from it which have always stayed with me.

The first is from Meister Eckhart, a monk who lived around the 12th and 13th Centuries.  It is a small thing, and it comes back to me often:

It is a lie -- any talk of God that does not comfort you.

That's it.  A small thing.  A small thing which rocked my world one day.

And then this, from Hafiz, the Persian poet who lived in the 14th Century, entitled "Two Giant Fat People":

God

and I have become

like two giant fat people living

in a tiny

boat.

We

keep bumping into

each other

and

laughing.

What a jolly, poetic, ridiculous image!  What a wise metaphor to illustrate, when I have eyes to see it, all the tiny moments in my day when I feel some Divine Hand guiding me.  To think of the moments when I "bump into God" with silliness and joy -- to think of God feeling silliness and joy -- that's the way I needed to start thinking about my Higher Power.

Also, something which sounds twee (there's that word again) but was very helpful to me for a while, is to stop giving God a penis.  I cannot escape the influence of the culture in which I have lived my whole life.  And this culture, Western culture, has a particular set of qualities which it values as masculine, and a particular set of qualities it thinks of as feminine.  Without getting into a debate about gender dynamics or cultural norms, I think it would be fair to say that if you listed a bunch of characteristics on a page, most Westerners would be in agreement over certain ones being masculine or feminine.  I'm not suggesting that, when people in a meeting say the Lord's Prayer, you make a big deal out of saying "Our MOTHER who art in Heaven..."  For me, though, thinking about God in the feminine was a good way to begin to think of a loving God, as opposed to a more judgmental one.  (Today I do not ascribe a particular gender to God at all, but you can mostly blame the Hubble Telescope for that -- after looking at those gorgeous pictures of the universe and beyond, the idea that Whatever made all that has a particular gender seemed, for me, quite ludicrous.)  But for the umpteenth time I want to stress that I do not think you should or should not believe what I believe.  I'm just saying that, silly as it sounds (and I know it does indeed sound very, very silly), looking at how I felt about male vs. female archetypes helped me begin to deconstruct some of my fears and negative ideas about God.

 

A few more thoughts and a concrete suggestion or two.

R.J., you wrote, "...If I just make up a pretty and kind and friendly God, how will I ever be able to believe in Them, since they're patently nothing more than a mere creation of my own brain..."

With respect I submit to you that you are already doing that.  You've made up a mean and unjust God who's out to get you -- but that is merely a creation of your own brain.  Don't tell me it's from this Sacred Text or that Learned Elder.  It's your brain, you're the one thinking it and dwelling on it.  The tough question to ask yourself (and I'm afraid it begs another even tougher one in a moment) is this:

Do you always assume that the negative voice is inherently more true than the positive one?  That is a mistake many people make.  Because I am sure that, in AA, you have met people who have suggested a definition of God which is quite, as you say, "pretty and kind and friendly."  But since they're describing a "nice" God you don't believe them, but when someone/something else describes a "mean" God you do believe them?  Believing the negative voice is inherently more true than the positive one, is, I assure you, merely a trick of perception.  The existence of the half of the glass which is empty does not negate the truth of the half that is full.  They are equally real.  It is only our mind which dismisses one and values the other.

And I am sorry, it is not my intent to imply anything nor am I trying to be snarky or offend, but that question does beg this one as well, offered only for your consideration, feel free to dismiss it as I do not know you personally, so I could be way off base: 

Is investing in the belief that God is out to get you ("...screw me over six ways from Sunday...") a device to perpetuate some kind of victim role, cosmically speaking?

Because another way in which I have been able to redefine "God as I understand God" was to pull the camera back somewhat, and not evaluate each individual twist of Fate as a Good thing or a Bad thing per se, but try and take a longer view.  This is a little hokey, but is a good illustration of what I mean.  Yes, sometimes bad things happen -- but sometimes things happen and I decide they are bad, which can feed the victim-loop in my head.

Now, if you're really serious about this trying to "fire" your old Higher Power and begin to find a new one, here is what you do:

Get a notebook, a highlighter, a pen and your Big Book.

Read Chapter 4, "We Agnostics," and after each paragraph, write in the notebook what you think the book was saying, and then what you think and how you feel about what the book was saying.  Then use the highlighter to mark all of the things which particularly strike you -- either that you especially like or you especially hate (cause I learn from both).  Don't let this suggestion overwhelm you -- it doesn't have to be this dreadful, arduous homework assignment.  Try a page a day.  There are 14, actually (if you count not the leaves in the book but each side of text).  If you do that, and sincerely ask God to open your eyes and your mind, in two weeks you will have a beginning -- maybe a very strong beginning -- on a path towards a Higher Power of your understanding which is indeed one you can come to trust and even feel a deep and powerful love from.

Sorry, one last thing:

Remember, if, by the end of the night, you don't drink, or use, or kill yourself, YOU WIN.  There is no "wrong" way to do any of this spiritual pursuit -- you aren't in a contest, you aren't in a race, your path and your process need not satisfy anyone else's measure or criteria.  For each 24 hours you just don't pick up the first drink, and if you do that and keep going to meetings the rest of this stuff will absolutely work itself out.

R.J., I hope some of this was helpful, and as always, thank you for reading and your wonderful comments.

Cheers!

Love,

Mr. SponsorPants

I cannot trust

I cannot surrender to a God I do not trust.

I cannot trust a God I fear.

confusing the cow

Often I believe that

confusing God with organized religion is like

confusing the cow with the butcher.

I pray

I pray

not for change in the world,

but for change

in myself.

It's working.

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.