Mr. SponsorPants

Last Monday night

It was a cool evening and I stood at the curb in front of my apartment, enjoying the air; looking at the stars, blunted though they were by the lights of the city.

A car pulled up and idled in front of me.  The tinted glass lowered, and the driver leaned his head down to see me more clearly through the passenger side window.

"Are you Mr. SponsorPants?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Get in."  He popped the locks and leaned over to open the passenger door.

Inwardly I chuckled, thinking, "Well, I guess my days of jumping into dark cars with strange men aren't over after all."

We introduced ourselves and he merrily cursed a driver who cut him off as he merged back into traffic.  "Sorry."  He said.

"No worries.  Are you a regular at this meeting?"

"I'm the co-secretary.  J. snaked you out from under me to speak, I was going to ask you next month when it's my turn.  We just got elected a little while ago.  I heard you speak at ..."

We chatted about meetings in the area, his day, my day.  Inconsequentials.  I was actually trying to get a fix on J., his co-secretary -- so far he was just a voice on the phone asking me to speak at a meeting.  I wasn't sure if I'd met him and forgotten, or hadn't met him yet, and the way the conversation progressed when we spoke hadn't left room for me to politely sort that out.  Didn't really matter, though. 

Never say no to an AA request.

We pulled up and he pointed to the meeting door, backside of a church (aren't they always?) easily identifiable by the Usual Suspects hanging out front, smoking and drinking coffee.  I thought that, apart from the vagaries of fashion and the progression of tech accessories, the look of a bunch of drunks outside an AA meeting probably hasn't changed much since the whole thing got started.

My driver went to park, and I headed in.  Down the stairs, turn right, down the stairs, turn right, down the stairs, turn right again.  Even I couldn't fumble those instructions.

Hanging over the stairwell was a giant portrait of Jesus, somewhat arresting in both its scale and subject.  I stopped, wishing I was more familiar with my Bible passages, to deduce what scene was on display.  An ornate frame surrounded the piece, with Jesus, I must admit, classically Caucasian and clean; brown haired and blue eyed (that is, the Jesus of my childhood), standing at a wall of some kind, facing partially away from the viewer.  With one hand He held aloft a candle (or maybe it was a lantern) and with the other He reached towards a door in the wall.  Something about His stance, the way He was seen in a kind of three-quarter profile, the lighting ... it made Jesus seem ... furtive.  I thought the artist was either unconsciously revealing something secretive about his own life in this work, or had stumbled across a long lost scripture, perhaps from the gnostic Bibles, entitled "Jesus Visits The Temple of Sighs."  Probably not that last one, but my giggle echoed up the stairwell behind me. 

The thing about going to a lot of AA meetings is that you become a connoisseur of church basements and playrooms.  This one was awesome.  Clean, with colorful walls, art supplies, and even a foosball table.  Cool!  Far end of the room, the chalkboard bore, in child's hand, the following declaration:

Good News!
We love God!
And our Church!
And Spiderman!

I didn't know this Parish, but I liked 'em already:  Sneaky Jesus, arts and crafts, foosball and Marvel comics.  Our Lady of the Not Too Uptight.

The meeting itself was a really mixed bag (my favorite kind), a true example of the Big Book's often quoted line, "we are people that would not ordinarily mix."

I spoke for half an hour.  It was what it was.  I never know what I'm going to say before I speak, and at this point I'm not too worried about how it's received (though there was a time when I lived and died over that.)  Along the way I've spoken at meetings behind bars and meetings IN bars, giant and tiny, rowdy and tame.  My job is to tell my truth and try to carry the message and to smash through the ego fears and vanity that inevitably rears its head.

Afterwords, on the ride home, my driver asked me to clarify something I had spoken about, and (somewhat alarmingly I must confess) abruptly pulled over and turned off the car.  Truthfully, I was kind of beat, and looking forward to getting home, but I composed myself and we sat quietly for a bit.  Might have been a minute, might have been five.  I already understood that this was the reason I was here tonight.  Not the meeting, not the speaking.  Whatever this man was going to say in the quiet of his car, traffic whizzing by us a few feet away.

Staring straight ahead, he told me a secret.

I shared my experience.

We said a prayer.

I observed that there was a time in both our lives that the idea of saying a prayer with an almost-stranger in a parked car of a Monday night was ... unlikely.  He ruefully agreed.

We finished the drive in companionable silence for the most part, and after we said our goodbyes and he pulled away, I thought about his courage, and his willingness to go to any lengths to stay sober, and I was pretty much awash in gratitude to have been allowed to witness it.

So I guess tonight this is just a declaration, scrawled in my own childish hand, that I love God, and AA ... but while Spiderman is cool, I'm really more of a Batman guy.

If you have a secret, and you are carrying it with you in sobriety, I can assure you from personal experience, both in my own recovery and as a witness to others, that the pain of carrying it is far greater than the pain of sharing it.

And if you do not eventually let it go it will kill you.

Courage.

An amazing resource

THIS is an amazing resource.

Many thanks to those who put it together.

The most dangerous words you can say in a prayer.

Well it's certainly not "please help me."  Those are simple to say and even easier to mean, when you're in trouble.  Drunk or sober, many's the time when my "please help me" was as heartfelt as humanly possible.

Nor is it "Thy will be done."  Kids, in a smackdown between you and the Creator of All Time and Space, while I'm most definitely in your corner, rooting for your continued success in sobriety (Go, You!), I'm gonna put my money on the C.o.A.T.a.S. -- for a TKO.  (No offense.)  But seriously, I'm thinking that the "Thy" in "Thy will" is gonna have it Their way, with or without your permission -- big of you though it is to offer it.

No, when you're in trouble -- real trouble -- and you ask God, the Universe or The Great Whatever for help, the most dangerous words you can say are:

"I'll do anything."

Be careful -- because if you say it, things will start happening.  The wheels of ... of the Something ... will start to turn.  And then "anything" is going to be presented to you, and you must stare down the barrel of just how much you might have been enjoying being stuck and not actually having to do anything about it.

Sometimes we like stuck a lot more than we realize.

When the opportunity to actually do something about your problems, whatever they may be, is presented to you from a Higher Power (as you understand Them) it can be a very rude awakening to see just how conditional you suddenly become on accepting Divine Help.

This is a little bit like waiting for an organ transplant, and as your Vital Signs start to fail, and the guy with the cooler races in from the heliport carrying your new liver/kidney/eyeball/whatever, reaching out from the gurney and saying, "Wait! Wait ... the donor ... were they blond?"

"I'll do anything."  I'm serious.  This prayer business is not all warm fuzzies and quiet moments -- be careful.  You just might tap into something that actually offers you the chance to step up and change.

Very scary.

Five Star Generals

Five Star Generals don't ask for help.

A friend of mine with 34 years clean and sober in AA often makes this observation when the topic turns to alcoholics with long time sobriety who either relapse or take their own lives.  The first time she said it I confess it took me a minute or two to catch her drift -- then I understood what she meant.  Think about it.

The Scariest Sponsee on Earth -- Or -- The Only Valid Reason To Let Go of ("Fire") a Sponsee

Physically he was all angles and long lines.
Square head, sharp cheekbones and what would have once been called a lantern jaw.
Shoulders so wide it looked as though he might have to turn sideways to get through a door.  But lean.  And tall.  On a good self esteem day when I stand up straight I'm over six feet, and he had a good bit on me.  From across a room you might have thought, "Hmmm, leading man type."  Up close though, he read as ... off.  That ineffable something that the animal part of us picks up on -- that instinct that says, in short, "Uh oh.  Careful here."

He materialized in one of my meetings, vibrating like a tuning fork.  I had never seen him before.  Nothing about the meeting itself stands out in my mind, and I recall very clearly that I just sat -- didn't read anything, share, speak... nothing.  Put a dollar in the basket when it went around, listened, that was it -- no different than the 30 or so other alcoholics in the room, really.  But after the meeting, he walked right over to me.  "Hello. Will you sponsor me?"

"What? I ... Uh, yeah, we can talk about -- I mean, yes.  Sure.  Sure, right, absolutely.  Yes."  I was a little flustered, but I got my feet under me and landed squarely on "Never say no to an AA request," even if I didn't quite "stick the landing" as the gymnasts put it.  To be fair, I was more used to "how are you" as the follow up to "hello."  Plus, he was really in my space.  Almost nose-to-nose.  I have a big personal space -- I like everyone to be no closer than about a hoop-skirt's distance away from me on all sides at all times (I've not taken to wearing one to enforce this, yet.  Don't think it hasn't occurred to me though -- probably serve to keep people at a distance a lot farther than a hoop-skirt's width, now that I think of it -- and cut down on the sponsor requests too.  Hmmm...)  So the sudden literal in-my-face also rattled me some.  But the reason you say something a zillion times is so that when you're thrown you don't screw your line up, and I'd been well trained in "Never say no to an AA request" by years of meetings, several terrific sponsors and countless repetitions to my own sponsees up till then.  So I stumbled for a moment, but I did not falter.

"Why don't we go out for coffee and talk?"  I suggested.  "What's your name?"

He told me.  I introduced myself and we shook.  He had a hand like a shovel with fingers.

"I don't have any money for coffee."

"My treat, no problem."  I picked someplace close that I was familiar with.  Off the beaten path and no table service, so we could sit for as long as we needed and not take up anyone's station.

Thus began my sponsorial relationship with The Scariest Sponsee on Earth.

We walked to the cafe, and I made with the small talk to get us there.  Long before I'd learned the secret to small talk, and so we had a pleasant enough stroll, though I did the majority of the talking, and eventually I found myself sitting at a table with what could only be described as a somewhat intimidating almost-stranger.

I got a muffin so that if he hadn't eaten he could have something to eat (I couldn't get a read if he currently was homeless or not -- he was clean, and the clothes fit and matched, but as I said in the beginning, there was something "off").  I put the muffin between us on the table.  "Help yourself." I offered.  I remember this very clearly:  He looked at the muffin for a minute.  Then he looked at me, and I got the distinct impression he was evaluating the sincerity of the offer.  He made up his mind.  "Thank you." he said, and picked up the muffin and put it whole into his jacket pocket.

Blackout alcoholics -- and I am most definitely one -- "come to" in some strange places and in the middle of some strange scenes.  In my case I might "come to" in the middle of a conversation, or an execution, boarding a plane, or assisting an exorcism -- in fact I'd already "come to" in the middle of a terrible beating, singing on a stage and having sex with, um, several very unlikely candidates for such an activity -- not all at the same time of course -- but when you're my kind of drinker you just never know where you'll wind up, so I had mastered the lack-of-reaction as a survival skill, till you could figure out what was going on.  In the grand alcoholic scheme his muffin pocketing wasn't that bizarre, anyway, so my only response was to say, "Napkin?" and offer him one from the pile I'd grabbed when I got the muffin.  "Thank you." He took one, and placed it in the muffin pocket.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you ask me to sponsor you?"

"I knew you'd say yes."

"Have we met at a meeting, or, I mean, I'm sorry, I can be terrible with names and stuff sometimes..."  I knew I'd remember if I met him, but I was trying to make sense of this.

"No."

"Then how..."

He shrugged, and looked at me. "Just knew."

I'm not trying to make him sound simple or the exchange spooky -- it's how I remember it.  And him.

We talked some more, I suggested that we start going through the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" together and he was very eager to start.  Turned out he'd been sober once before.

"Oh? When?"

"A while ago."

"Oh.  What, um ... how did you relapse?"

"I want to get to the 4th Step fast."

"Well, okay, it's actually in Chapter Five -- you probably knew that and we can..."

"There are some people I hate" he leaned in very close across the small table -- not big with physical boundaries, this guy, "I HATE them and I want to work on that."

"Uh ... okay.  Well, the 4th Step will..."

"What time is it?  I have a curfew.  I have to go."  And up and out he went, like a shot.  I had to chase him down.

"Wait! Do you want to exchange phone numbers or ..."

"What's your number?"

"Do you want to write it down?"

"What is it?  I'll remember."

I told him.  He did.

He called a lot.  Sometimes he called and didn't say anything -- took me a couple of those to figure out it was him though.  (This was long before Caller ID or Cell Phones, kids).  I'd listen to the silence on the line and I'd ask,  "Scary?  Is that you?"  Nothing.  I have no idea what prompted me to do it, but I started to fill the silence with encouraging words.  Not big soliloquies or anything ("Really, Mr. SponsorPants?"  I hear you ask.  "Are you sure about that? 'Cause I would have thought, you..."  "In the back there! Quiet you!  Usher, check their ticket please.  Usher!")   I would just say things like "Scary, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Scary.  Just remember, easy does it."

But that first night, after going out to coffee with him, I called my sponsor and started laying the groundwork for getting out of this.  (I prefer a hasty retreat, followed either by excuses or recriminations, but I'm perfectly capable of playing the long game if I have to.)

"Not too sure about this one."  I said.  "Might be more than I can, you know, handle."

"That's okay, Mr. SponsorPants," my wise Sponsor said.  "God gives us what we need, and just last night, if I recall, you said 'I'll do anything' -- and here's your anything."

"Right.  Right -- I'm just not sure I'm the right sponsor for him ... " After receiving miracles I have been known to try and weasel out of whatever I'd promised God, too.

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants, there's really only one valid reason you ever let go of a sponsee," my sponsor chuckled, all warm and knowing, like I was in on this great jolly secret with him.

"Oooh, yeah.  Right.  Right."  I said, playing along.  Bluffing.  Had no idea what he meant.  What this 'one reason' might be.

Scary Sponsee and I met once or twice a week.  I always arranged to meet him at the same cafe, I never offered to have him over to my apartment -- what can I say?  He scared me.  He never made mention of it, and it didn't seem to phase him at all.  And strangely, I never mentioned the silent phone calls.

I learned his story.  It humbled and frightened me and shook my newly refound faith in God.  He was raised by animals, is the most I will say about it.  Strangely (to me at the time) though, he held no anger towards his family.

That night I called my sponsor, "You know, he has all this stuff in his childhood and I don't -- I mean, not like that -- he should have a sponsor who ... "

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants," came the now irritating chuckle.  "You know having a similar childhood isn't that important in the grand scheme -- it might be helpful, but there's really only one valid reason to stop working with a sponsee."

"Right. Right. Of course."  When I start a bluff I see it all the way through.

Scary Sponsee was not good with boundaries.  Or impulse control.  Or people.  Once, while we were working on his much-anticipated 4th Step, while talking about one of the people he HATED he picked up his pencil and shouted, "I want to ... to... to stab him in the eye!"  And plunged the pencil forward, stopping an inch or so in front of my face.  God was right there, since I didn't flinch or move -- and let me tell you, that was DEFINITELY God working, that's not my typical reaction to something like that, I assure you.  I just drank my coffee and he lowered the pencil and I said, "Scary, that's not good.  When you do things like that it frightens people."  "Did I scare you?"  "Yes."  "I'm sorry."  "It's okay."

Over the years I have discovered that often, when you sponsor people, you grow to care for them very much -- to love them, in a way -- and I'm afraid Scary Sponsee was no exception.  Even as he indeed frightened and intimidated me, even as I was trying to find a "legitimate" AA reason to stop meeting with him, I grew to care very much about this broken-winged bird.  (Though he was more ostrich than sparrow, as that imagery tends to go.)

He'd been homeless twice ("I haven't been homeless, not really" I told my sponsor "But that's not the reason to stop working with someone, Mr. SponsorPants, is it?"  "Oh, right -- no, no, it's not.")

Scary had worked himself all the way up from a childhood that gave him nothing -- nothing -- to a real career, then lost it all to drinking and drugging, and wound up living in the park.  Got sober, and rebuilt his life -- relapsed, and wound up back in the park.  I was sponsoring him on his second trip back in and up from the depths.  Sadly, during his relapse he had clearly done something to his brain.  I had nothing to compare it to, but he was legitimately not quite "right."

"He's a really, really low bottom, and not right in the head and..." I told my sponsor, "maybe I ... "

"There's only one real reason..."

"Right."

And all this time, I was getting the silent phone calls, and I kept whispering encouragement into the quiet on the line.  "Scary, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Scary.  Just remember, easy does it."  I've never -- until writing about it right now -- told anyone that part before -- even my sponsor, when I was madly trying to find a way to get out of working with the Scary Sponsee.  For some reason I kept it to myself, and so it became this strange, sacred, precious, intimate thing, these calls in which I was moved to try and pour all the love and support I had gotten from AA over the years into this blank, silent line.

And then one day, he didn't show up, and the calls stopped.  I went to the cafe at our regular time for several weeks afterwards, just in case, but he ghosted.  AA is strange, (in a lot of ways, actually) in that you can develop intense, powerful, intimate connections with people and share deep, personal information with each other -- but have no real connection outside of that, and depending on how you bond, no way to reach someone if they ghost.  We'd been meeting for almost ten months, and had made it through the 11th Step, and ... he was gone.

You get closure in stories -- in life sometimes all you get is the dot dot dot . . .

Finally I cracked, and after resigning myself to the fact that I was unlikely to hear from him again, I broke down and asked my sponsor what the "real reason" was that would have made it okay for me to stop meeting with The Scary Sponsee.

"Oh, Mr. SponsorPants,"  he clucked his tongue, "let me ask you something.  Do you need to have similar backgrounds, or the same using patterns, or have had the same problems and hardships to sponsor someone?"

Trick question, I'm good at spotting those, "Oh no." I said, even though that was a nice summary of all the reasons I'd tried to get out of sponsoring Scary.

"And do you think you should stop sponsoring someone if they don't do what you suggest, or you don't like them, or they frighten you, or they're not the kind of person you'd hang out with?"

I was uncomfortable with the potential inference there, but I was on a roll with the first question, and I'm enough of an ass kisser sometimes to want my pat on the head.  "Oh no."

"And let me ask you, do you think, over the course of the ten months, that you helped The Scary Sponsee?  And did you feel differently too?"

"Yes.  Yes, but ..."

He waited, and I folded my hand and showed my cards.

"But what is it?  What is the reason you think is the only valid reason to stop sponsoring someone?"

"All that other stuff is window dressing people use as excuses, Mr. SponsorPants.  The only real, valid reason to stop working with someone is if you honestly, deep down, don't believe you can be of any help to them.  That you cannot in any way help them get and stay sober.  That's the only valid reason."

"But..."

"No.  I'm sorry, the 'But What About' Window is closed today."  He said, not unkindly, and ended the call.

----------

If you are new to AA, please believe this, and if you are not new, and are afraid to ask for help, always remember:  We are happy to help you, and I believe our help is valuable because it will really work -- but you owe us nothing -- nothing -- for that help, because we are infinitely healed in ways we ourselves don't always know in the act of helping you.

So by all means, please, let us in, and let us help.

----------

One last thing, in an already perhaps too long post -- but I have to share this with you:

Not long ago, last year, I had a very scary day.  It was unexpected, and it was medical, and I was scared in a way I hadn't been for a long, long time.  For some reason I flashed back 12 years ago to The Scary Sponsee, and those silent phone calls.  And in the midst of my fear, I opened my cell phone, and I said into the silence of the unconnected cell, "Mr. SponsorPants, it's all okay.  It's going to be okay.  You're going to be allright.  Easy does it, Mr. SponsorPants.  Just remember, easy does it."

And I thought about Scary, and how far he'd come, and I wondered what happened to him, and I wished him well with all my heart.  I was full of gratitude for the 10 months I'd had the privilege of knowing him and working the Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with him.  And as I thought of all that I knew that no matter the outcome, it was going to be okay.  I was going to be allright.  And I felt so, so much better.

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.

More with The New Kid

Schedule constraints and no small amount of newcomer drama have gotten in the way of sitting The New Kid down and beginning to go through the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) with him when I had originally planned to.  I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to get him started on that.

A recent conversation:

Me:  blah blah blah [suggestion] blah blah blah [suggestion] blah blah blah [suggestion].

The New Kid:  Yes, but ... blah blah blah ... yes, but ... blah blah blah ... yes, but ... yes, but ... yes, but ...

Me:  Ok, Kid, two things.  #1, either my rope has gotten much shorter than it used to be, which is entirely possible, or you are burning through it at a much faster rate than usual.  Either way, you need to know that, so you don't get blindsided if we reach the end of it, okay?

The New Kid:  Oh, uh ... okay.

Me:  And #2 -- and this is much more important than #1:  It's not that you necessarily have to do things my way, it's that you have to stop doing things your way.

Silence for a moment

The New Kid: Okay, yes, but ...

Me: Wait!

I hold up my hand

The New Kid:  What?

Me:  Do you smell that?

The New Kid:  What?  Smell what?

Me:  It smells like ...

I look him in the eye

Me:  Burning rope.

For a moment he is baffled, then chagrined, then amused, then annoyed; the expressions flick across his face as quickly as you could thumb through the pages of a magazine.  I think to myself what a terrible poker player this boy would be.  We chat a bit more.

The New Kid:  Well, yeah, sure, but ...

Houston, we have a problem.

Willingness and How To Develop an Open Mind -- which can then help you develop willingness.

In the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" (commonly referred to as the 12&12), it states on pg. 40, in the essay about the 3rd Step:

"... it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do.  All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness." 

A good sponsor can help motivate you, but motivation just makes being willing easier -- I would suggest that it is not actually willingness itself.

I have to say, on this point the 12&12 just sort of leaves you hanging -- so many other places in AA literature offer clear cut instructions as to not only what needs to be done (as in this particular case, the need for the individual to become willing) but also how to do it.

Involving the help of a Higher Power -- whatever that may mean to you -- is likely a critical component in this process -- and the discussion of the 3rd Step in the 12&12 is all about giving yourself over in that way.  But in reading this essay recently with someone, when we got to this paragraph they asked the very pointed question, "how, then, if I'm supposed to do it all on my own, am I supposed to 'develop the quality of willingness?'"

I started to make a flip answer along the lines of, "Well, you need to start doing things differently.  If you want different feelings you have to take different actions."  And yes, that's true -- very true, in fact.  To put it in Fischer Price terms, healthy actions bring healthy thoughts and feelings, sick actions ... you get it.

And over the years I've heard this truism expressed in a number of ways:  "Esteemable acts bring self esteem" is one of my favorites, for example.  You might even extrapolate this point out to a cornerstone of how AA itself heals me.  As I've both heard and shared in meetings, I have never been able to substantively change my thinking with other thoughts -- I've only been able to change my thinking with actions.  In fact, trying to change my problem thinking with more thinking is trying to use the problem to fix the problem -- not generally a successful strategy.

But it struck me that in some ways the willingness to do something often sort of precedes the new action.  And from what we just read in the 12&12, it sort of felt like the literature was, in this passage anyway, saying, "Ok, kid, this part is key.  Critical!  But you're on your own.  Good luck with that!"

So I gave it some thought, and sipped my coffee (ah, caffeine, boon to my inspiration!)

I think that for me, developing the quality of willingness has been predicated on developing an open mind.  I have to sort of be open to the idea that this new thing/behavior is going to work, before I become willing to give it a go.  It's not wholly a mental exercise of course, there is a "just do it" element, an "if you want what we've got, do what we did" thread running through this when we're new to AA.  But still, for me, an open mind has I think been hand-in-hand with my willingness.

Now, the good news is, developing an open mind is actually really easy.  There's only one word I've ever needed to do so, and even if I use the word grudgingly, or dripping with scorn, or laced with sarcasm, it still seems to work.

The word is:  Maybe.

If I try to embrace that word, however falteringly, it can allow a slender, needle-thin shaft of light to penetrate the tightly shuttered darkness of my closed mind.  (Oooh, how writerly!  Metaphors. Images. Fancy!)

Embarrassingly, in those times in my head, it can look like this:

Maybe I'll feel a little better if I try -- God knows, I couldn't feel much worse.

Maybe this won't completely suck.

Maybe at least one thing here can help me.

Maybe one of these people will say something useful.

(In that last one, the word "people" is not the word I probably used.)

If I can get to maybe, I have opened the door a crack.  And once I open the door a crack, I can reach through and grab hold of a tiny piece of willing.

From there, for me, that's how it builds.

My life has been transformed not with blinding white light experiences, although I believe some people have had such things.  No, for me, my life has been transformed most often by these tiny, infinitesimal, almost grudging, shifts in attitude and then eventually, consciousness.

Words shape my thoughts, my thoughts start my actions, then my actions reach back and change my feelings and my thinking.  It's a powerful process, and as with anything powerful, I can use it to help or harm.

But I don't have to be fully motivated at the outset.  When I start, I don't have to believe 100% in the power of this process to change me. 

To begin, I just have to get to "maybe."

It works, it really does. Which is too bad, actually, since now when I'm stuck in my resentments I'll have to own that it's my choice.

As I wrote about earlier, the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) suggests that we pray for the people we resent as a way to be free of the anger(fear)/guilt(shame)/regret(remorse) that swarms us like angry bees whenever we think of the object of our resentment.

(Did you get the trick there? The feelings named in the parens above are the outside-in, self-abusive reflections of those often outwardly directed emotions.)

And so, two weeks ago I embarked on a very formal routine of doing just that.

Right now my ego is goading me to rush to establish my "spiritual practice street cred" and assure you that I have a pretty strong prayer and meditation routine already in place.  Speaking candidly, if a little uncomfortably (strange, but there it is), I will tell you that I kneel down and say the Serenity Prayer, the Third Step Prayer, and the Seventh Step Prayer pretty much twice a day.  I use the Eleventh Step prayer as my in-case-of-emergency-break-glass prayer, as I do with the prayer attributed to Mother Theresa.  I don't worry so much anymore about praying "wrong" as I used to, thus I often give God a little piece of my mind while I'm down there on my knees.  God's big enough to take it, I figure.

Except when I don't. (sigh)  The same can be said when it comes to meditation, although that's a discussion we've already had to some degree.  (Always more to say on the topic though.)

The thing is, as with many habits and routines that are healthy and make me feel great, I can be rolling along and doing them without even thinking much about it for weeks/months/years, and then one day they just sort of ... fall away for a bit, and I wake up one morning and realize, "Oh! I haven't knelt down and said my prayers in a week!"  Rarely is it some temper-tantrum in which I stamp my foot and shake my fist at God and tell God to get stuffed -- it's more like one extra-busy skipped morning becomes two, one evening where I for some strange reason (out too late, or, ahem, company over for the evening) break routine and forget can become four ... and the next thing I know it's been a bit since I did whatever it was that was so healthy and made me feel so great.  (And by that point I'm usually half crazed, and looking for some arcane and complex reason for my unquiet state -- it's always such a "Duh!" moment when I realize it's as simple as accidentally having slipped from a healthy routine.)

All of which is merely a long-winded wind-up to reporting to you about the last two weeks of treating a resentment with some very specific prayer action. 

Sadly, I must tell you that it has worked amazingly well.

It would be fun and sophisticated to be able to pour snark and sarcasm all over this -- I wouldn't have been too obvious about it of course.  There's no art to being heavy handed about that sort of thing.  But there is a very nasty part of me that is still, after everything I've experienced and felt, after all the prayer and meditation and miracles, there is a part of me still waiting to pounce and say, "Ah ha! God and prayer really is for the insipid, the weak and the foolish! Remember the Nazis!"

And also, as the title of this post suggests, the fact that this has worked as well as it has means that now I am forced to confront the fact that when I walk around really consumed with resentment it is my choice to do so.  Is there no place left in my life for me to play the victim?  Sadly, it seems not.

So, for the past two weeks, as I said I would, I knelt down and prayed for the person I resent(ed).  When I forgot, and got in bed, I would remember as I drifted off, and, cursing a poor memory and the resentment itself, get back out of bed and kneel down and pray.

(Oh, and just to be clear, in my book you can pray kneeling, squatting, jumping or somersaulting down a hill if you like.  For me, I don't kneel down to get God's attention, I kneel down to get mine.)

Some nights, too, I would have to hold myself accountable to my own "Three Times In A Row" prayer rule.  Often the first time I say a prayer I'm just rattling it off, be it aloud or in my head, but I'm not really thinking about what I'm saying.  Instead I'm thinking about the day behind me or the day ahead or if my knees hurt or where's that draft coming from or did I turn off the outside light or ... any of a thousand ridiculous distractions.  Then I must take myself in hand and say the prayer a second time, reminding myself to think about what I'm saying/praying.  The problem then becomes that while I'm telling myself to pay attention I am not actually paying attention -- I'm too busy telling myself to pay attention.  So it's usually the third time I say a prayer, starting with a deep, slow, centering breath, that I can reflect on what I'm praying, and make it as meaningful and heartfelt as I can.

As I said, it worked.  I have had a profound shift in how I feel -- the resentment is all but lifted, and I have new eyes with which to consider the person and the anger attached to the resentment.

Does it work like a shot of tequila would?  No. It doesn't.  Yet even today I sometimes have unconscious and unrealistic expectations of how prayer actually works.  I so often expect hope that I will have a kind of "lightning bolt" experience, some sort of instantaneous (read: effortless) transformation, akin to what happens when a rush of alcohol hits my brain.  I want that same "aaaah" -- and while prayer and meditation have been profound and life changing practices for me -- I daresay that with due diligence they actually have altered my brain chemistry -- it is not the "instant fix" of a chemical rush.

And that's good, in fact, since those fixes don't last.  I just need to remember that.

I must close this post with what is, for me, one of the most powerful paragraphs in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous."  Now that I've re-learned this lesson about specific prayer and freedom from resentment, these words from the Big Book both move and challenge me.  What, after all, (on some days, anyway) is harder and scarier? Being stuck with no way out of the dark, or finding a light and being responsible for using it to get up and get out?

"It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.  To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while." -- "Alcoholics Anonymous," Chapter 5, 'How it Works,' pg. 66

How obscene to have my life saved only to turn around and squander it thus.  For me sacrilege is not cursing God or profaning what others hold sacred -- sacrilege is to be freed from the tyranny of alcoholism only to move through the rest of my days blinded by resentment and deafened by ego and fear.

Bet your life?

A speaker at a meeting recently spoke beautifully and eloquently about surrender -- having just gone through a deep surrender myself on an issue that has frightened me for years I felt like she was speaking directly to me.

(Funny how that always seems to work out, doesn't it?  I don't often go on as I've heard others do sometimes, gushing "I don't know how normal people out there in the world manage to do life without meetings!" I always want to respond, "Because, Dear Heart, they don't need meetings to 'do' life, and we do..." but on occasion I am truly awed at what a powerful and personal resource the 12 Step meeting can be for us all, and am grateful to the marrow of my bones for it.)

As the sharing went around the room, a man raised his hand that I've seen come in and out for maybe three? five? years now.  (I'm sorry -- really.  But sometimes it's hard to keep track of the revolving door folks, much as I want to be there for them when they come back. Again.)  He's a likable fellow, no small amount of personal charisma, and I've always admired his colorful job history -- he has some great stories, let me tell you.

In short, Mr. Colorful talked about how he just recently had to "surrender" his sponsor.  (At least he didn't say "fired" -- I understand the shorthand, but I'm no fan of that slang.)  He's back 24 days from his 4th relapse.  He's had this sponsor for 2 years or so (I don't know how many of the 4 relapses that span of time includes, other than, obviously, this most recent). Each relapse I've seen him come back from has taken him literally, visibly, closer to the grave.  During his semi-brief bouts of sobriety he's a vital mid-forties man.  When he comes dragging back in the rooms from the front lines he looks like an 80 year old with a hearse on standby.  Needless to say the collateral damage from his using has accumulated, and there are a couple of medical complications on his plate now too.  But as any of us who are addicts can tell you, those problems are not nearly enough to keep you clean and sober.

Apparently he and his sponsor are not just sponsor/sponsee but also "good friends" -- fine, fine, but that kind of thing already makes me a little nervous, personally.  Takes a special pair to be able to keep switching hats that way.  But it seems his sponsor/friend told him that should things reach this point again that it was his sponsor's direction that Mr. Colorful check himself into an in-patient, residency recovery program.  If he failed to do that then Mr. Colorful's sponsor/friend wouldn't/couldn't be his sponsor anymore.  Friend, certainly, but not his sponsor.

Mr. Colorful shared eloquently about how this just wasn't the right thing for him to do now, he felt.  (24 days sober.  4 relapses.  Near death. "Just wasn't right" for him).  He offered a compromise to sponsor/friend, some sort of out-patient deal.  His sponsor/friend, God bless him, held fast to the consequences he laid out.

Mr. Colorful, with all the considerable personal charisma at his disposal, and no small command of the language of recovery, constructed a really beautiful case as to why he wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't enter this rehab.  How could he put his roommate in financial straits?  How could he give up his cats?  Really, that was just the heart-string-tugging beginning.  And with what I can only describe as an opening gambit in his campaign to be elected "Mr. Humble 2009" he shared with a kind of awe-shucks, abashed tone that while intellectually he understood his sponsor's decision, emotionally he felt resentful and abandoned and how-can-he-do-this-to-me-doesn't-he-understand-I'm-only-24-days-sober.  (Direct quote, that last bit.)

Nodding away like a toy dog on the back dashboard of a car, Big Guy, recently back from his own relapse (again, I'm afraid, since last he made an appearance here), sitting next to him, looked like he was just about to hold up a fist and shout "Right on!" 

Me? I think I probably looked like I was sucking on a lemon wedge.  I try really hard to school my features into a sort of neutrality when I hear something I don't agree with in a meeting -- it's not for me to editorialize, endorse or condemn, with grimaces and frowns.  But I suspect the mask slipped a little on this one.

Mr. Colorful talked about how one of his friends he called said "Well you just prove him wrong, Mr. Colorful! Prove him wrong!"  He described how he feels like his former sponsor is saying to him "you're going to relapse!" instead of "supporting him."  (I think I might actually be making the lemon face again as I type that.)

I hear my own tone.  At best it might be called unkind.  The problem is, I think this is all a load of bullshit.  To my knowledge, dead roommates are even more financially unreliable than live roommates who must move out to enter a rehab and might be able to help find a replacement for themselves.  Cats, while they can strongly bond to people, are really only strongly bonded to live people -- the emotional connection becomes more tenuous post-mortem, I hear.

Mr. Colorful finally said something that I thought was unfiltered by bullshit, ego, unwillingness and alcoholism.  He said, "I hope I'm making the right decision."

I thought, as I tried to wipe the sourpuss off my face, "I sincerely hope you are too.  I hope I'm just a crotchety old fool, too full of himself and what he thinks to listen with any compassion to a newcomer's struggle anymore."  Believe it, kids -- I know full well that this post is slanted and I understand that this could all be my ego talking.

I really do hope he's right.  He's gambling with high stakes. 

Because it doesn't come down to something as simple as his betting that he is right and his former sponsor is wrong.

It comes down to the fact that he's betting his life on it.

 

_______________________

I've reread this post a half dozen times now.  I'm sorry, I know it probably sounds mean spirited, and small, and cold and sarcastic and judgmental.  And it probably sounds that way because maybe it actually is. I don't know -- but I can tell you that underneath those things, if they're there and I'm not tripping on my own words -- is a gibbering terror of the insanity of how an addict thinks -- because I know it's how I can think too.  And it's hard, and kind of exhausting some days, to watch people in the grips of what looks a lot like insanity to me, head down the path to jails, insanity, homelessness and ugly deaths.  And there's nothing to be done.  Nothing you can do, really.  You can't make people listen who don't want to or can't listen.  You can't force people to accept help they don't want.  It is impossible to instill willingness in people who are unwilling.  If someone is "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves" then there is nothing I or any man or woman can do to change that.  As has been said and said, AA is not a Program for people who need it -- it is a Program for people who want it.  I'm not going to change a word of the above, because that breaks a deal I have with myself about a level of honesty here on Mr. SponsorPants -- but I was compelled to add this.  I'm sorry if it offends, if you're new to the 12 Step world and you stumble across this I assure you that many, including myself, want nothing more than to help, and have great compassion for relapse -- it's just that along with my compassion, my terror rides shotgun.