Mr. SponsorPants

Mother Theresa: Do It Anyway

 

On my more challenging days I let my mind wander back over some of the things which have helped me the most.  This prayer (well, it's a prayer to me, anyway) and its message of what we do and why we do it -- which I seem to revisit about once a year here on the blog -- is especially right for me right now. 

It really helps me see straight.

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Mother Teresa: "Do It Anyway"

Mother Teresa is widely credited as the author of the prayer below, and it is written on the wall of her Home for children in Calcutta, India.  Some sources claim these words were also written on the wall in Mother Teresa's own room.  It seems to be based on a work called "The Paradoxical Commandments" by Kent M. Keith, though this version is more spiritually inclined, and has gained world-wide popularity due to its association with both Mother Teresa herself and the Missionaries of Charity, expressing as it does a philosophy very close to the spirit in which Mother Teresa and the Order, live(d) their lives.  In general the prayer is referred to as "Do It Anyway."

 

People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centered.

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.

Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.

Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten.

Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.

Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.

It was never between you and them anyway.

 

holding you back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions Via Email: Lost Higher Power

 

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

I am well over ten years sober, and I have two questions:

What happens if you lose your Higher Power?

What happens if you realize you may never have really had one?

Some backstory:

Some years before recovery I was working in a third world country.  I had gone down there both as a service to others and as a scenery change. During those years in the country I had seen some pretty amazing and terrible things. For most of the job I "self medicated" (as did many of the others working with me) to help keep my mind from the "terrible" part.

Now, years later and sober, I felt I was missing something, something that was nagging at me, so I decided to try counseling for once.  that was when it all started coming back to me, all of the events that transpired, both the great and the awful times in that country came to the surface.

It hit me hard a couple of weeks ago. I lost my sense of a Higher Power. My idea of God, of a divine sense of a powerful nature being controller of all things, just vanished. I felt like I was left alone right after a tornado came and swept everything away from me.

My recovery has depended on a Higher Power. I always knew in a small way that things were not right, but I managed. I am a sponsor and have a sponsor. I have been invited to speak all throughout my recovery. I have spoken about the importance of the spiritual base of this program, but now all of it sounds empty.

I am a little scared and have an intense feeling of grief. Any suggestions?

Thank you,

S.

 

Dear S.,

First: I understand.  Deeply.

Over the years my own faith has been a fitful thing; from bulwark to bullshit by turns. And it certainly resulted in the kind of psychic whiplash you describe, causing me to not only feel lost and Very Alone, but to question all that I had ever felt -- and shared with others in AA -- before.

I think it was Thomas Merton who said "All great men of faith doubt." And certainly, if you scratch the surface of almost any religion you will find much writing on the topic, from the New Testament's other Thomas (he of the topical nickname) to Muhammad on the night he received the revelation of the Koran.

(I mean no disrespect to any faith when I say that I have often imagined, from Moses to Joseph Smith, from Joan of Arc to "Joan of Arcadia," a universal moment of human emotion which transcended language and era in which each of those who received a revelation stopped, looked into the Light from which their Message came and basically said, "Seriously?")

So buck up.  You're in great good company.

I have had more than one crisis of faith as I have stayed sober, and each one has been experienced through a lens both personal and global, offering some surprising gifts along their dark and seemingly empty paths. I tell you this because I understand not just your doubt but your fear -- most especially your fear regarding a crisis of faith and being able to stay sober through it (the serious subtext of your email's conclusion).

So I am going to give you some very direct answers to your questions, and then try and share some more general experiences I've had which I hope will provide, if not a rowboat to climb into, then at least a buoy to cling to.

What happens if you lose your Higher Power?  Nothing.

Oh, certainly it is dark and lonely and your eyes may show a little too much white around the edges for a while as harsh reality and hard questions wash through your mind like cold waves from a rising sea.  You may be uncomfortable.  Tears are probable.  Anger inevitable (for what is Anger but Fear with its dukes up?)  But you got and stayed sober through doing sober actions.  Uncomfortable, frightened or bereft of faith, if you keep doing those sober actions you can keep staying sober.

I can pray without feeling.  I can meditate and let it be an exercise in stillness.  I can be of service to get out of myself.  I can write without writing a letter to God (though when you wind up writing letters to a God you don't believe in it will be a moment of high personal comedy, I assure you).  I can go to meetings.  I can share honestly about what I'm going through, both one-on-one and at group level.  I can pick up the phone and talk to other alcoholics about what is going on and find out how they are doing.  I can take a newcomer to coffee and listen, and draw from AA's wealth of common sense, practical suggestions should they ask for help.  I can do all those sober actions without feeling any connection whatesoever to a Higher Power.

I know this is true because I have done it.  Every single one of them.

I do not want to, when my faith tank is on "E," but as I have learned the hard way, "want to" and "willing" are two different things.

What happens if you realize you may never have really had one?  Stop.  Literally, stop.  Don't do that to yourself.  Today's doubt will always try to look back and erase whatever faith came before.  Neither you, nor I, were stupid or foolish or simple or duped or blind or in denial or anything else along the course of our spiritual development.  What I felt and believed then was valid for then.  My doubt now is valid for now. A building's foundation is not the roof. Each part of an edifice is its own part to make a structure as a whole.

A few last things:

Stick with therapy.  See this through.  AA and common sense both suggest that we make good use of all the healing tools available to us in the world. 

The first drink gets me drunk.  If you don't pick up the first drink you won't get drunk. Talk frankly with others about what is happening with you.  Keeping this a secret is not only dangerous to yourself, it denies others the opportunity to watch someone walk through a crisis of faith and stay sober.

Hang in there.  My spiritual deserts now are painful but not frightening.  I have been there before and I will in some fashion be there again.  St. Therese (the little flowers saint) had some wise insights into this:  After feeling a literal ecstasy of faith for years she experienced the other end of the spectrum and fell into a deep (what we might call clinical) depression.  What she decided was that, just as she had offered her joyous faith to God, she would offer her overwhelming grief and emptiness to God.  A sort of, "Okay, first you wanted me to serve you through joy, now you want me to serve you through sorrow.  Not really feelin' it, but okay.  I give this to you as I gave the other."  (As you can imagine I am broadly paraphrasing here.)

I believe that, as I have used my other difficult experiences to be of service to others (whether there's a God involved in that or not) I can use my lack of faith to show that I can be sober through practicing AA's principles one day at a time regardless.  And thus, there is a point to what I am going through -- which then in turn makes it easier to go through.

You saw first hand in the third world some hard truths about the Universe, and when you shake it down you are coming to "Why?"  As in, "why, if there is a benevolent God..." I will let you fill in your personal memories at the end of that question.

You may or may not find a "because" to satisfy you.  This is the part of the Big Book (my least favorite part, in fact, as the metaphor hijacks the point) which talks about the bridge of logic and the shore of faith and how logic alone cannot get us to a working faith.  For me, that means, I must find a belief which leaves room for some of my unanswered "Why's?"

While I may not always find a "because" through prayer, I always find a "how."  Even if you do not believe, and the words are sand in your mouth and you feel the Universe is a much scarier place than it was when you had the faith you used to have, if you pray "how can I use this dark, doubtful time in which I do not even believe in You to be of service to others?" then you will get an answer.

And it will be a good one and it will help you.

And you don't have to believe that as you read it.  As with anything in sobriety, you only have to try.  And also, while I understand what it is like not to believe, you can count on the fact that today I do. 

 

Good luck and please keep in touch.

Love,

Mr. SponsorPants

 

 

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There are more essays like this one in "Mr. SponsorPants: Adventures in Sobriety and The 12 Steps for AA's and Others."  Available as an eBook on Kindle via Amazon.  Download a Kindle reader for free on any device or platform, from PC to Smartphone, and enjoy eBooks anywhere you have time to read.

 

 

The first part of the 4th Step

 

 

 

 

This doesn't let them off the hook,

but it does,

(eventually)

set us free.

Shooters: Quick Shots from Meetings.

 

 

 

"The solution to stuck is still."

 

 

The speaker, in sharing this, paused and collected himself and then said it twice: "The solution to stuck is still."

It was something he'd been told by a sober member of AA and it had helped him immensely when he needed it.  When he shared it with us during his pitch the words carried all the quiet, tangible power of a personal mantra which had helped him past many a long standing wall.

The solution to stuck is still.

It only makes sense when we feel stuck to try and do more.  To put energy into getting UNstuck -- like when a car is trapped in mud, sand or snow and you keep throwing the gear from Drive to Reverse to try and create enough rocking momentum to gain traction and roll free.  But maybe - sometimes? - often? - always, in some fashion?:

The solution to stuck is still.

When I (we) find that, whoops, there's the wall, and holy-hell-and-ouch-not-again there's my nose pressed flat against it, while my feet keep slapping the ground attempting to move me forward but achieving about as much success as a penguin trying to walk across linoleum covered in cooking oil (no, I don't know where that one came from either) the answer, (always the answer) is to let God in.

Or pause and let the Universe speak.

Or just stop for a damn minute and collect yourself.

(Whichever of those scoops is your particular spiritual ice cream flavor.)

As we are fond of saying:

"More will be revealed." 

But how can that happen until I am still?

Rather than the exhausting, frustrating, disheartening exercise of spinning my wheels when I'm stuck, desperately trying to unstick, my new mantra will be inspired by his:

The answer to stuck is still.

 

 

And that, by the way, is one facet of why AA works, and why I still need to go to meetings.  Because the collected sober wisdom -- born from experience, not theory -- always has something to teach me.

And I will always have something to learn.

 

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There are more essays like this one in "Mr. SponsorPants: Adventures in Sobriety and The 12 Steps for AA's and Others."  Available as an eBook on Kindle via Amazon.  Download a Kindle reader for free on any device or platform, from PC to Smartphone, and enjoy eBooks anywhere you have time to read.

 

 

busted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Busted.

 

 

Just remember

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

once I let go of the idea of a punishing god

 

 

 

 

 

 But that doesn't mean I let go of the idea of God.

I just let go of trying to control

God and the Universe

by expecting

my spanking or some candy.

 

 

huffers on the bus

 

It was Saturday night, and I'd gotten off work later than usual.  Given the evening and the hour the crowd around me on the bus had morphed from the going-home-after-work general mill of folks to the It's-Saturday-Night-in-the-Big-City-and-we're-out-Looking-For-Trouble types, plus the regular sprinkling of interesting characters one finds on public transport in any metropolis.

One such character was sitting in front of me, in fact, in the area reserved for wheelchairs and special needs riders (the seats fold up against the wall and we're quite close to the driver in this area.)  She was not in a wheelchair, but rather on one of those motorized personal scooters used by people who have trouble walking on their own.  The brand name I'm most familiar with is "Jazzy" but I'm not sure that's the kind she was riding.

That certainly didn't stop her from bringing her own kind of Jazz to the party, though.  She was wearing purple.  I mean everything she was wearing was purple, from top to toes:  Purple barrettes and a purple plastic flower in her hair (I do not mock.  If you have trouble walking and have to Jazzy your way on and off the bus just to run your errands, and you can still feel festive enough to want to put a flower in your hair, plastic or not, then I think you are pretty terrific, actually.  Maybe not so much aesthetically, but definitely actually, if you follow.)  Purple eye shadow, scarf, blouse, spangled tube top -- worn over the blouse, in an interesting combination of layering and what appeared to be bust support.  Candidly, I think just going with the tube top alone would have been a mistake.  Every body is beautiful, in it's own way, but some beauty should remain a private matter, enjoyed in the intimate confines of one's own home, rather than on the #4 heading west at 10:30pm on a Saturday.)  Purple sweat pants, purple socks and purple Crocs. Purple purple purple.  She was a very big woman, and the unfortunate comparison to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's" Violet Beauregarde came unbidden and uncharitably to mind.  She was chatting away to whomever would listen, trying to draw anyone who responded into conversation with her.  The bus was crowded, we kept picking up more passengers, all seats were taken and the aisle was filling up as well, so she had plenty of people to engage with.

But even she wound down when the huffers got on the bus.

There were maybe six of them (at first).  Two girls, four boys, young and lean and dressed to impress, which, since this is the early part of the 21st Century, means that everything the girls wore was very tight and terribly tiny, and everything the boys wore was comically big and impossibly baggy.  I have no strong opinions on the styles, it's all mating behavior anyway.  Young people have been inventing ways to display themselves and flirt, with the sweet bonus of irritating their elders, forever.  If the young ladies want to practically flash me the good china when they sit and the young gentlemen want to show me what their favorite pair of underwear is it's no issue to me.  I'm saving my outrage for things that seem outrageous in the world, like [insert outside issues here], not for the vagaries of urban fashion.

But, proving that some styles are not only fashionable but functional, the young men produced a veritable wet bar of mood enhancers and party supplies from within their voluminous attire.  A small bottle of vodka, half way gone.  A couple of cans of beer, already opened (dexterous!  As an old drunk I always admire the coordination involved in sneaking an open beverage around in your pants without looking like you wet yourself.  As a man I hoped that the cans weren't cold though.  Ouch!)  And an aerosol can of some cleaning product, which one boy turned upside down, held to his lips, depressed the nozzle and took what appeared to be a deep and -- for him -- satisfying hit.

Enough people were on the bus now that the young partiers were standing, pressed around Princess Purple and myself, and the rest of the riders in the front, once the party began, started the standard urban defense posture of looking at nothing, so as to neither witness nor engage.  

The huffer and friends were boisterous, but without malice or challenge to most of their banter (thankfully), and as they chatted, drinking and huffing and teasing each other, it came out in their conversation (impossible not to listen to as it was occurring right over my head) that one of them was going into the service in a few days (weeks? wasn't clear) and a part of this evening's party was a bit of a send off for him.  Looking at them with the practiced eye of an old drunk, though (and that would be my eye, not some hypothetical eye) I could tell that this send off, while real, was just tonight's excuse.  These were not kids doing any of this for the first time.

More young people got on the bus, a couple of other young men already feeling no pain.  The huffer amiably offered a hit off the can to them, one declined and one shrugged in the universal language of "sure, anything that gets me loaded" and took a hit, though he needed some instruction from his host.

Princess Purple was not staring out into the distance, pretending not to see or trying to be invisible.  Princess Purple was watching.  Not frowning, but not not-seeing, either.

The revelers noticed her noticing.

"Would you like some, M'am?"  the practiced huffer gestured with the can, no snark in his tone at all.

Huffer courtesy!  Who knew, right?

"Oh my Lord, no!"  P.P. replied.  "But it breaks my heart to see you doing it.  You're so young." 

He shrugged and smiled -- his gaze a little glazed and his smile kind of lopsided -- and said, "I'm a victim of society." 

Seriously, that was his response.  The future service member had had enough to drink for the mood-change to happen, and was talking about how his old man never did anything for him, so why should he do anything for his old man, right?  Right?  Every so often one of the girls would break off from their own conversation and offer a "Right." in response, so he kept going.  They all could have been ugly, or aggressive, but they weren't.  Princess Purple chatted on with the young huffer, who would shrug or shake his head and kept offering his "victim of society" response, but had pluralized it now, and commented that we were all just victims of society.  As he said it, he eventually looked at me, and I looked back, my own lopsided grin offered in answer to his and said, "No, man.  Society is a victim of all of us."  Both a word trick and a truth, I guess.  (My stock in trade, maybe.)  That seemed to give him pause, and he nodded, considering.  My stop came up.

Huffer and company realized that they hadn't been paying attention, and had missed theirs, so they got off, not waiting for the light to cross the street, but rather darting through the traffic to catch the bus going the opposite direction and drop them closer to whatever club they were aiming for.  Princess Purple disembarked as well, which is a lengthy process on the Jazzy, involving the handicapped ramp extending like a tongue from the open door, while some insurance company mandated safety sound beeped too loud and too long. 

The bus pulled away and the Princess and I stood, waiting for the crossing light to give us the little white man rather than the angry red hand.

"It just breaks my heart."  She said again.  We were bonded now, it seemed, given our ride and the huffer.

"I understand."  I said.

"So young."  She said.

"Yes."  I said.

"Such a waste."

"Yes.  A shame to see them wasted."  A ghost of a smile probably floated at the corners of my mouth at the pun, and the Princess caught it and laughed. 

The little white man flashed into life, giving us stick figure permission to cross.  I could easily have outpaced her in crossing, neatly and neutrally severing our connection, but I kept pace with her Jazzy as we made our way.

"I'm going to say a prayer for them!"  The idea seemed to strike her as a surprise.  The exclamation point is warranted.

"That's nice."  I said.

"You should too."  The princess looked up at me from her Jazzy throne.

"Oh, I do."  I said.  I thought of all those circles I've stood in, over the years, holding hands with friends and strangers alike, offering, often sincerely but sometimes by rote, a prayer for "the alcoholic (or addict) who still suffers" at the end of every meeting.  "I do."

Just because you're young and party hardy, drinking in public, clubbing with your friends, does not at all mean that you are an alcoholic or an addict.

I think it's a little unlikely, however, that anyone just huffs socially, though.  I think that might be, as the expression goes, "a flag on the field."

"Good night."  And she turned her Jazzy east, and I turned west toward home, and after a few steps decided that the flower actually didn't look half bad.

 

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There are more stories like this one in "Mr. SponsorPants: Adventures in Sobriety and The 12 Steps for AA's and Others."  Available as an eBook on Kindle via Amazon.  Download a Kindle reader for free on any device or platform, from PC to Smartphone, and enjoy eBooks anywhere you have time to read.

 

 

 

plugging your ears

 

 

 

 

 

The greatest emotional pain of my life

has always resulted from

willfully ignoring a truth.