Mr. SponsorPants

Rabbi Kushner is correct

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was drinking, and then when I was newly sober, I would hear about people doing kind things, being of service, etc., and I would think things like "Why would anyone want to do that?" 

I certainly liked the idea of being well thought of, and I was always happy to position myself to look like a nice person, but internally I had no connection between the kind act and the transformation of the spirit.

But after the fog lifted, and I thawed (so, so slowly!) I took AA's advice to heart, that it didn't matter how I felt, or if the action made sense to me, that I would just do it anyway.

 

And it was then that I got it.

 

There is something... right... about being of service. On a very fundamental, nearly physical level, I got it.

I understand why people are puzzled or too afraid or shut down to be actively kind and helpful on a daily basis -- and certainly "no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints." -- but when you do the work, the result will amaze. 

In my experience, Rabbi Kushner is correct. Something inside responds.

 

 

Thomas reminds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to be vital

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can lead the meeting blah blah blah.

I can share at meetings blah blah blah.

I can Speak at meetings blah blah blah.

(or blah blah Conferences blah blah blah.)

I can write and write and write blah blah blah.

And all that blah blah can certainly be good and worthwhile and helpful.

 

But if I want a powerful, vibrant connection with the spirituality I blah blah about then the recipe for that is clear: Self sacrifice and unselfish, constructive ACTION.

When I first showed up in AA they told me that I couldn't think myself into right action, I had to act myself into right thinking.

That principle applies to my faith as well. I can't talk myself into a conscious contact with a power greater than myself, I can only act myself into it. I must act like an unselfish person would act. I must act like a person who sacrifices their own convenience and time and energy to be helpful to others. And when I do, my faith comes alive. My faith becomes vital.

(Worth repeating: Willingness does not mean "want to.")

I'll be honest with you, kids, I was really hoping I could find a loophole around this one, since some days I would much prefer to talk about it than do it, but twenty-seven years in this is still the only equation that works.

Or, as it says elsewhere in the Big Book: "It works. It really does."

 

 

Hey, did you get a haircut?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just walked in the door, got the cats fed and sat down to write this.

Spoke at a meeting a zip code or two over from where I live. While I suppose it's a nice way to wrap up a three-day weekend -- which already had more than my usual dose of all things 12 Step -- I've been speaking a lot lately and feel a little burned out.

(Miss Bobbie B., a powerful presence in my first few years of sobriety, and a gal who spoke all over the country for a while, used to talk about feeling a little empty after speaking so much, but that it wasn't for her to judge the requests -- "baby, that's just my ego talking" -- she said it was for her to say yes when asked and turn the rest of it over. I still follow her counsel to this day, lo these many years since her passing.)

But although I said yes, as per Miss Bobbie's suggested commitment to AA, I can't say I was especially eager. An evening in was what I would have preferred.

The meeting was nice, held in what appeared to be a cozy private library in one wing of a sprawling, Mission Style church, complete with a tiled courtyard, several fountains, saintly statuary and plantings which seemed both random and cultivated. The format was a Big Book study. Read for five minutes from wherever they are in the book, then the speaker shares for 15 minutes. The church was really quite beautiful, the landscaping in bloom, and the fountains serenely gurgling away around the courtyard. Big french doors with thick, beveled glass framed the scene as I looked out from my chair at the front of the room. It was so picturesque I could easily imagine Mother Teresa or Jane Austen -- or, given the Mission flavor to the architecture, maybe Zorro -- strolling past the fountain beyond.

Before the meeting started I went to the restroom to both use it, splash a little water on my face and say a prayer before I spoke, as was my habit. Ablutions and supplications accomplished I exited the bathroom. A woman was waiting to use it next -- it was a one-at-a-time either-gender sort of bathroom.

"Is it safe to go in?" she asked.

"As safe as it will ever be, I suppose." I answered.

"Did you poop?"

I blinked hard for a moment, but that was my only Tell. "Nope."

"Are you the speaker?"

"Yep." I was getting a sense that this gal, who was somewhat older -- which means she was roughly my age, I suppose -- very colorfully dressed in prints that, if you squinted, sort of went together, and make-up that I will charitably suggest was hastily applied -- was one of the interesting "characters" you often find at any AA meeting, regardless of zip code. My personal goal is to resist the urge to do a low-grade shun with these folks and aim for a sincere respect or warmth when talking with them, rather than that one-foot-out-the-door surface courtesy they are (understandably) met with sometimes.

"Do you live near here?" Each question came quickly on the heels of whatever answer I offered.

"Fairly close by. But this is my first time at this meeting." I was willing to answer her questions, assuming that, since she had been waiting to use the restroom her bladder would wrap this up for me before I felt the need to excuse myself. But that didn't mean I would passively suffer being peppered with questions, either. "Do you live near here?" I returned her question to her.

"Oh..." she waved in a direction and named a street. "Over along there."

"That's nice." I said.

"Are you a hairdresser?" She asked me.

I blinked again, then gave her a smile. "No." I said.

"Oh. It's just that... your hair..."

Ladies and gentlemen out there in blog land, I should probably say here that my haircut is nothing special, nor am I sporting any unusual colors or accessories, no excess of product; neither a cutting edge style nor a bold new trend is in evidence. While I did come of age in the '80's, my Flock of Seagulls hair remains far in the past, when the Gulls themselves were actually on the charts, which made her question all the more comical to me. I let her try and find her way back from this interrogational cul de sac she raced down. Wacky or not, she dug the hole, I wasn't going to help. But I was going to take some mild enjoyment watching her try and figure a way out. Her strategy was to try a new tack. "What do you do?"

This had never been a conversation. Enough was enough, I thought. "So many questions, one right after the other! You should be a reporter! Are you a reporter?"

"No. I..." 

"I think I'm going to go in to the meeting. See you in there!" and off I went, thinking that while she had the usual boundary issues many of our more kooky members display, she at least was blessed with a cast iron bladder.

The meeting was very nice. A monied crowd, so their problems were, while real problems, of the slightly more self indulgent bent of people who don't have to worry about making ends meet. When the share starts with, "So I was sitting in my hot tub, thinking about buying cocaine..." it's generally at a meeting where the survival issues are strictly related to addiction, and not to things like rent and bills. Financial struggle -- while more common than ever -- is not ennobling; nor does having money mean your struggles with addiction are any less deadly. In fact sometimes money makes it harder to get or stay sober. Addiction, like any other disease, is no respecter of class or cash. If you die of an overdose it really and truly doesn't matter if your corpse lies there cooling on dirty linoleum or Italian marble.

I spoke. It was what it was. The sharing was nice, if brief. The format was that everyone got to share for one minute. I feel like I've been to a lot of those meetings lately. No doubt some enterprising, recovering speed addict will come up with a meeting where the shares are 45 seconds, which will engender some kind of temporal arms race, until we finally arrive at a format in which we all go around the room and select one word which reflects our experience strength and hope for the night. The Five Second Share. Coming soon to a meeting near you.

It was early enough, and nice enough out, that I decided to walk home. I knew from looking at the Mapquest when figuring out how to get there (thanks, Uber!) that it was just a hair under two miles, and monied AA crowds tend to have their meetings in monied municipalities, so I knew the walk would be through city gardens which at one point would include actual rose bushes to stop and smell.

I was perhaps three short blocks and one gentle hill from my front door when I heard my name called from the shadows across the street.

"Mr. SponsorPants!" it was said (obviously my name, and not my monicker) with such a hiss that at first I thought it was someone's lawn sprinklers turning on.

Then again: "Mr SponsorPants! It's me!"

I know a lot of people. "Me" doesn't really narrow it down much.

They stepped into the light.

"Oh," I thought. "It's you." Forgive me, my friends. It's been a long weekend. I suppressed a sigh. "Hey there. Are you...?"

They stepped further into the light and I decide "Are you okay?" was a pointless question.

"I'm so glad I ran into you!"

What followed was the circular thinking and rapid emotional flickering of someone on Crystal Methamphetamine. Tears. Laughter. Voices. A deceptive moment which appeared to be rational, then back to Tears, etc. He spent a good amount of time complaining about the kind of help people were offering him. I did not waste my breath to point out how fucked up that is. Tears Laughter Voices a flicker of rationality and then back to Tears.

All I ever do when I deal with someone high or drunk or just generally out of their mind (my life is exciting!) is to pick one suggestion and then broken record it. It's only a fifty/fifty chance it will penetrate, or that if it does they will act on it, but at least it saves me from pointlessly trying to engage with someone who is unable to engage back.

"I think you should probably go home." "It's a good idea for you to go home." "You'll be safer if you go home." "Go home and get off the street." And this, the one that hurt: "Do you want me to walk you home?"  Say no. Say no. Please say no, I thought with weary guilt.

"Do you think I should go home?"

"Yes. I think you should go home."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going home. I think you should go home."

Tears laughter insanity for another ten minutes.

"Okay. I'm going to go home."

Thank God.

"Good idea. Are you okay to...?"

"Thank God I ran into you. I was always jealous of you, you know. When you got that little job at that restaurant. Why don't I get a little job like that I thought? Why not give up [insert glamorous career here] and just have a simple, small life like that?"

I nodded. None of this fazed me. Whatever I feel or fear about my path in life, I sure as hell wouldn't trade it with him for his. I was low on patience, that's true, but not on compassion, I think. I felt nothing but sadness for his exhausting relapse cycle.

"You should go home." I said.

"I'm going home." he said.

"Here. Which way are you going? I'll get you started..." I knew generally the direction and started walking, hoping to sort of get him moving in my wake.

"Hey," he said. "Did you get a haircut?"

Exasperated, I stared in the general direction of the heavens -- sometimes I hope there's a God just because I need someone else to be in on the joke. What the hell was it with crazy people and my hair tonight?

He started to follow along a step behind me, and I chuckled all the way to his front door. And then felt nothing but weary gratitude for my life and my sobriety all the way home to mine.

 

 

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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 via Amazon.

 

 

transform any circumstance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tricky part is remembering this truth when

riddled with fear

and "survival mode" is in high gear.

 

I honestly hadn't realized it was "Giving Tuesday" when I wrote this. Seems to fit, I guess.

 

 

 

 

He has a thick, regional accent, equal parts Deputy Dawg and Sheriff Andy Taylor. If you're a bitchy sophisticate, as some in the meeting are (working through their issues, one hopes. prays.) then you not only suppress your smile when he shares, but you make sure people see you suppress your smile when he shares. (Some of us are so fragile we pose by reflex, I think, with no more conscious thought about it than the heart requires to beat.) I've watched carefully to see if he's tuned into that but blessedly he seems not to sense it.

He showed up several weeks ago. He says all the right things. Cynical old fraud that I am, I can't help but listen for the baited hook when he talks either one-on-one or at meeting level. Is he telling his truth, or working the crowd for fives and tens?

I gave him money a couple of times. He said he was broke, hungry, homeless and newly sober. (Believe me, he looks the part.) Been in town almost two weeks. Has a sponsor he says. We exchanged phone numbers and have talked and texted -- general encouragement and information, mostly. He is still waiting for housing to come through -- sober living, or one of the homeless agencies (who are, of course, stretched far, far beyond their extremely limited means), and in both those scenarios it's generally about paperwork and waiting lists. And while you're waiting, you are, as they used to say, "living rough."

In years past I might have offered him a couch commitment. Let him crash at my place for a night or two to get in out of the weather. 20 plus years ago I used to offer that quite a bit. Now that I'm older and a little more nested I find my heart slightly more closed on that score, which makes me... sad? guilty? prudent? Sure, one person can't save everybody -- and if you're trying to there's a Program for that (several, actually) -- but I am pretty sure the "can't save everybody" angle can be used to not get involved in helping anybody. I flirted with the idea of more-or-less sneaking him into the empty apartment next door for a night or two -- again, just to get him in out of the weather. But that seemed fraught with more bad consequences than good ones, so I didn't bring it up to him. It made me think about that statistic, though, about the number of homeless people versus the number of empty houses -- it was something crazy like 20-to-1.

I mentioned to a friend I had read that statistic somewhere and he got so mad, practically turning red in the face and attacking me. He said that was an oversimplification, and how we shouldn't give things to people who don't earn them and mocking what he thought my source was. It surprised me, how intense he got. I know there's that thing now where we have so many choices for information that we tend to gravitate towards the news and information sources that reflect our personal beliefs; and how there have been studies done focused on when people have a belief and there is information offered to contradict it then the first reaction is to doubt or attack the source. I look within myself and I see those things operating inside me and I get scared. It's so easy to come from that place.

I'm sure that whatever the statistic was, and whatever I said that set my friend off, there's some truth to the "oversimplification" argument. But then I think about all those people with no place to sleep, and all those empty houses, and I don't know what I believe.

He hasn't pushed, but he has put it out there, in general, to anyone who asks how he's doing. And again, I wonder as I listen, is he sincere, or another in a line of crafty users who blow through sometimes, working the rooms. I've seen my share, over the years. Still, each person deserves a blank slate, right? Just because the last guy might have been a fake doesn't mean that the next one is, right?

I must stay open.

I must be ready to help.

I must be willing.

To work at being those things is the agency thru which I am transformed, yes?

My human nature and my alcoholism combine to whisper in my ear about being a sucker, and naive, and how the world really works, and what ugly things usually happen to people who are open and ready to help. I recognize those inner voices for what they are, but that recognition does not always make them easier to ignore. If every lie is born pregnant, spawning more lies to support the first falsehood, then I think some days that every one of my doubts is born expecting, too; each one containing a tiny seed for the next cynical consideration, chasing each other through the foundation of my faith like some kind of spiritual vermin; rats in the walls of my House of God.

Dreary doubts and ever present fears not withstanding, I've grown to believe over time that service should... not hurt, exactly, but occasionally stretch you a little. It's easy enough to hand him a five, or a twenty even (it was all I had in my wallet one day, and I thought, "eff it, give till it hurts a little, Mr. SP"), but to disrupt your life and open your home is something else. If I had a yard, with a little shed in the back... but no. Stay on my sofa and you are right in the middle of my life. Nowadays that's a giving bar too high for me to clear, I guess.

This essay is not, I hope, an exercise in either justification or guilt. ("Rrrreally, Mr. SponsorPants?" I hear some of you say.) After all, I sit here alone with my cats, typing away, no homeless alcoholic currently curled up on my sofa, living slightly less rough for the next several days.

And I should add that, intentions and wishes and musings aside, it's pretty unlikely I'm going to drink over not letting this guy crash here for a few nights.

When it comes to service and sofa commitments and letting people into one's home, be it for only an hour of reading the Big Book or for several nights charity, my first counsel to my sponsees is that you have a right to feel safe in your own home. Yes, we are all responsible for the hand of AA being there for the alcoholic, but that does not mean you sacrifice your common sense and your boundaries for what is right and safe and appropriate for each person to do. If there is a God (and today I vote yes, but with a small "y" not a capital one), then They've got it covered, on the service front. Give till you stretch yourself, but don't stretch beyond what you're capable of.

And then there's the matter of whether I even believe him or not. If he's a con then offering him help is... a waste? Proves I'm stupid? Dangerous, even?

That's what I realize I'm looking for, when I listen to him and try to suss out where he falls on the sincerity scale. Because if he's not sincere then my help is wasted, yes?

No. As I write this I know that that part, at least, is clear. AA -- and many of the best spiritual philosophies humankind has come up with -- teaches that to help others is to transform myself. Thus, I suspect how sincere someone is -- or someone wants to be (survival mode, after all, brings out survival instincts) -- does not matter. What happens to me when I am of service is untainted by whatever the recipient may have going on. To withhold help because I doubt the person who needs it is thinking which I believe comes from the same angry and fearful place my friend was coming from when he got so mad at me as I talked about the homeless and all the empty homes: Fear of a world out of control. Baffled frustration at the scale of our problems. A desperate, panicked need to find a way to make sense of things. A fragile ego reflexively positioning myself as, if not "better than" then at least not "other." It's so easy to come from those places. And that is so scary to me, how easy. And how blind I am to my drivers, sometimes.

Alcoholics Anonymous suggests -- and after all this time I believe it to my core -- that sober alcoholics drink again because they fail to enlarge their spiritual life.

Now, there are a number of ways to do that, obviously, and we're all in different places on what we can, should and are willing to do. But if I want to stay sober and grow then I must keep working to find the right way for me to enlarge my spiritual life. To keep stretching just that little bit past where it is comfortable; even now, at more than 25 years sober.

 

As I finish this essay I look out the window. We are having some real weather here right now. And I wonder where poor Deputy Dawg is sleeping tonight and I can't help but wish that I was maybe in a different place -- literally but mostly spiritually -- and better able to offer him help beyond a five and a twenty and some encouraging words (though I know there is real value in all those, too.)

I wish that for his sake, as, ponderous self obsessed and insecure spiritual ramblings aside, the dude is homeless. That's just a fact, and if I reached out to him right now and said "Come on over and crash here tonight!" then his life would get 100% better in the time it takes to read a text.

And I wish that for me, too, because although I've done my share -- and continue to try and do so -- I really would like to be a man who is less cynical at times, and less fearful.

Sometimes the road behind me seems long. Sometimes I feel the mileage. Sometimes, as I attempt to keep moving forward after all these years, I feel the cynicism and fear still trying to latch on, still trying to impede me, to grow on me, like barnacles or bed sores, slowing me down and stiffening me up.

Ultimately I want to be even more open and willing. Not as a lofty goal. Not as bullet points to add to my spiritual resume. But because I can sense how that will feel. Because maybe AA has given me a glimpse of what it's like to be even more open and willing as a way to live.

To deeply connect not only to a power greater than myself, but... to everything. And everyone. 

I suppose if I keep coming back then someday I'll get there.

 

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Post Script:

No sooner did I click "Save/Publish" on this essay -- I mean literally the second that I clicked the mouse -- than I received a text from my former neighbor, he who had to put all his stuff in storage and "stay with friends" for a while -- the reason there is even an empty apartment next door for me to consider sneaking Deputy Dawg into. He needs to borrow my parking pass for a few hours (city living) and wants to catch up.

I'm always good for a cup of tea and to be an ear, but I guess it also goes to show that if I ask the universe to give me the chance to grow in the arena of being of service there is always, always another opportunity. But I read his text and immediately struggle with what I wrote above: Wondering if there is more to the request than might be on the surface.

But it is not my inner struggles which define me, it is my actions

I pray to be open and ready and willing to be helpful... and another chance is immediately at hand.

And so I attempt to be what I say, to give these writings gravity and reality. To be what I pray: Willing, open, ready; to come from love and not from fear. To be unselfish with my time and my space.

I pray.

 

And so it goes...

 

 

 

Mr. Rogers doubles down

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sounds sappy, I know, but that doesn't make it any less true

 

 

 

 

 

It sounds really sappy, I know. But that doesn't make it any less true.

So much of my alcoholism and addiction was trying to "fill the hole inside" by pulling things into my life to change how I felt; to feel better. To feel "good." To feel happy. But the more I got the more I wanted. Needed. I was in a constant state of acquisitive desire and some kind of freaky soul hunger. The fix never lasted. Never.

It wasn't till I reversed the flow -- by giving -- that the size of the hole (the scope of my hunger, the depth of my need) -- began to lessen. To shrink.

Probably no one is more acutely aware of how sickly sweet this sentiment is. And God knows, I wish I had something cooler to offer on the topic. But I cannot deny the truth of my experience: Service keeps me sober.

And service brings a rich happiness, eventually -- to my great surprise (and a little dismay), turns out it's the fix that lasts.

 

 

 

Williamson on success

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we rise

 

In a thousand different belief systems and philosophies,

over almost the whole course of human history, from every land

on the globe, a few spiritual principles -- expressed in slightly different words,

but at heart speaking the same message -- continue to shine with Truth: