Ray A.'s Blog, page 7
May 9, 2013
Man Knows Not His Time
“There will be a memorial for Mark at the American Legion Hall . . .” someone announced. I had recently returned North and started attending local meetings again. I had only known one Mark here, Jimmy’s sponsor, and as we read and discussed the 10th Step over the course of the next hour at Blue Mountain, I wondered if it was he. When the meeting was over I approached the chairperson and asked. Yes, it was that Mark. He had died of a brain tumor. Fifty-five years old. Thirty years sober. Gone. Just like that. I was stunned.
A few weeks earlier, while I was still down South, Larry had come over to my house to deliver a service contract for the building’s management company. We talked about his wife, who was hospitalized with a serious illness. He asked about my health and I said I was well. Hey, that’s what’s important, he said. Two weeks later he was dead. A heart attack. He was about my age.
So was Tony, an old friend from my days as a young rebel in New York. She too had moved down South and when she came up to the city during the summer we would all get together at a restaurant and hold a reunion in her honor. The last time she came I couldn’t make it. I felt bad, but I thought, Well, there will always be another summer. But there wasn’t. Tony died a few days before Christmas.
And with the last snows of March there was Margaret, whom I had met the fall of ’96. I had never gone back to Iowa to see her again, much as I wanted to. She’s not there anymore. Pancreatic cancer.
Just days ago a relative told me she wouldn’t be able to come up to visit on this particular trip to the area. Next year for sure. For sure? I thought of Mark, Larry, Tony, Margaret.
We take life so much for granted. We think there will always be another summer, another year, another opportunity. So we keep putting off those amends we’ve been meaning to make; or forgiving that person who hurt us; or making peace with our father or mother, our son or daughter, our brother or sister; or making that trip, paying that visit, or seeing that friend. And then they’re gone. Or we’re gone. For we don’t know their time, or ours.
A few weeks earlier, while I was still down South, Larry had come over to my house to deliver a service contract for the building’s management company. We talked about his wife, who was hospitalized with a serious illness. He asked about my health and I said I was well. Hey, that’s what’s important, he said. Two weeks later he was dead. A heart attack. He was about my age.
So was Tony, an old friend from my days as a young rebel in New York. She too had moved down South and when she came up to the city during the summer we would all get together at a restaurant and hold a reunion in her honor. The last time she came I couldn’t make it. I felt bad, but I thought, Well, there will always be another summer. But there wasn’t. Tony died a few days before Christmas.
And with the last snows of March there was Margaret, whom I had met the fall of ’96. I had never gone back to Iowa to see her again, much as I wanted to. She’s not there anymore. Pancreatic cancer.
Just days ago a relative told me she wouldn’t be able to come up to visit on this particular trip to the area. Next year for sure. For sure? I thought of Mark, Larry, Tony, Margaret.
We take life so much for granted. We think there will always be another summer, another year, another opportunity. So we keep putting off those amends we’ve been meaning to make; or forgiving that person who hurt us; or making peace with our father or mother, our son or daughter, our brother or sister; or making that trip, paying that visit, or seeing that friend. And then they’re gone. Or we’re gone. For we don’t know their time, or ours.
April 11, 2013
Dying to Self, or Ego Deflation
Some seven summers ago I was playing a game of cards with a dearly loved relative when I saw a side of me I didn’t even know existed. I’d been winning game after game night after night and hadn’t thought anything of it. I’d always played to win in whatever I did. I had looked at it not so much as wanting to win as striving to be good at what I was doing, striving for excellence.
This time, however, I could tell from the expression on her face that Connie wasn’t having a lot of fun. It hadn’t occurred to me (because I usually tended to win) that if you keep losing all the time you couldn’t possibly enjoy yourself a hell of lot. I realized for the first time that I was an extremely competitive guy and that in my concern to win, I had never paid any attention to the experience that the person I was beating was having. I had been totally self-centered about the matter.
That’s when I decided that, from then on, whenever I played a game, I would interrupt any winning streak I was having and allow the other person to win enough times so as to keep more of an even score. He or she of course wouldn’t know the difference. I was beginning to think less of myself and more of the other person.
That worked well for a while. Then one night, the shoe was on the other foot. Connie just kept on winning and after a long string of loses I felt defeated and demoralized. At first, I couldn’t understand my reaction. But as I took inventory and meditated on the experience before going to bed (Steps 10 & 11), I realized what was wrong: it’s harder to lose naturally (to actually be beaten) than by design.
When I play and I have won a few games in a row and then I make a decision to lose a game so as not to make my opponent feel bad, I don’t really feel that I have lost. I don’t feel beaten. The other person has not played better than me. My ego has not been bruised. I had made progress by getting to the point where the way the other person feels is more important than my feeling good about myself by winning. The next step in my dying to self was not to feel bad when I really did lose but to feel good for my “opponent” (shouldn’t even see the person in those terms) instead. This is harder because it involves the emotions more than the will.
I also found that, in exercising the will to lose for the sake of the other person, if I don’t take care there is the risk of being tempted to pride by virtue of my virtue: I am still “better” than the other person, I am just not letting her see it, and this very “humility” shows how “superior” (in this case morally) I am. That of course is a disguised form of pride, which, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, is essentially competitive.
That’s why I need to always act out of love rather than out of a desire to be good or virtuous, for apart from other-directed love such a desire can easily become self-serving. That’s also why in any good that I do I need to give the credit to God as the Higher Power who does it in me. Make me a channel, says St. Francis. No more. And no less.
This time, however, I could tell from the expression on her face that Connie wasn’t having a lot of fun. It hadn’t occurred to me (because I usually tended to win) that if you keep losing all the time you couldn’t possibly enjoy yourself a hell of lot. I realized for the first time that I was an extremely competitive guy and that in my concern to win, I had never paid any attention to the experience that the person I was beating was having. I had been totally self-centered about the matter.
That’s when I decided that, from then on, whenever I played a game, I would interrupt any winning streak I was having and allow the other person to win enough times so as to keep more of an even score. He or she of course wouldn’t know the difference. I was beginning to think less of myself and more of the other person.
That worked well for a while. Then one night, the shoe was on the other foot. Connie just kept on winning and after a long string of loses I felt defeated and demoralized. At first, I couldn’t understand my reaction. But as I took inventory and meditated on the experience before going to bed (Steps 10 & 11), I realized what was wrong: it’s harder to lose naturally (to actually be beaten) than by design.
When I play and I have won a few games in a row and then I make a decision to lose a game so as not to make my opponent feel bad, I don’t really feel that I have lost. I don’t feel beaten. The other person has not played better than me. My ego has not been bruised. I had made progress by getting to the point where the way the other person feels is more important than my feeling good about myself by winning. The next step in my dying to self was not to feel bad when I really did lose but to feel good for my “opponent” (shouldn’t even see the person in those terms) instead. This is harder because it involves the emotions more than the will.
I also found that, in exercising the will to lose for the sake of the other person, if I don’t take care there is the risk of being tempted to pride by virtue of my virtue: I am still “better” than the other person, I am just not letting her see it, and this very “humility” shows how “superior” (in this case morally) I am. That of course is a disguised form of pride, which, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, is essentially competitive.
That’s why I need to always act out of love rather than out of a desire to be good or virtuous, for apart from other-directed love such a desire can easily become self-serving. That’s also why in any good that I do I need to give the credit to God as the Higher Power who does it in me. Make me a channel, says St. Francis. No more. And no less.
March 2, 2013
Experience, Strength, and Hope
“Each day, somewhere in the world,” says the Big Book, “recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.” This is what Bill W. shared with Dr. Bob, in the open and candid soul-baring that gave birth to AA. It’s the seminal and distinctive feature of 12-Step spirituality.
How can we understand this typically AA expression?
Our experience is how we lived as active alcoholics before we came into AA and, having changed, “having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps,” how we are living now. This is our story: “what we were like, what happened, and what we are like now.”
Our strength is the spiritual principles like gratitude, honesty, and humility that we gradually absorb from that experience, assimilate into our deepest self, and integrate into our character and emotional make-up so that they come to define the persons we have now become.
Our hope lies in a promise and a vision: that if we are “painstaking” in the practice of these principles and our “relationship with Him is right,” God will do for us what "we could not do for ourselves," and that “great events will come to pass” for us “and countless others” as we “give freely” of what we find in our journey of recovery.
This, says the Big Book, is “the Great Fact” for us. Our experience, our strength, and our hope are grounded in God and what he can do for us, in us, and through us, as we work a faith that works through the AA program of action.
How can we understand this typically AA expression?
Our experience is how we lived as active alcoholics before we came into AA and, having changed, “having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps,” how we are living now. This is our story: “what we were like, what happened, and what we are like now.”
Our strength is the spiritual principles like gratitude, honesty, and humility that we gradually absorb from that experience, assimilate into our deepest self, and integrate into our character and emotional make-up so that they come to define the persons we have now become.
Our hope lies in a promise and a vision: that if we are “painstaking” in the practice of these principles and our “relationship with Him is right,” God will do for us what "we could not do for ourselves," and that “great events will come to pass” for us “and countless others” as we “give freely” of what we find in our journey of recovery.
This, says the Big Book, is “the Great Fact” for us. Our experience, our strength, and our hope are grounded in God and what he can do for us, in us, and through us, as we work a faith that works through the AA program of action.
February 23, 2013
When We Change
Let us say that when we drank we had a character defect which triggered a particular response in someone we were in a close, long-term relation with—our spouse, for instance. Let us say we were inattentive, not good listeners. Our spouse would often complain about this, especially when differences came up between us. “You never listen,” she would say, despairing of her ability to get through to us.
Being drunk and clueless, we of course didn’t see it that way. We would feel attacked and become defensive. Our spouse was just being critical, too demanding. We would psychoanalyze. We would end up getting into big arguments which would overshadow whatever the original issue was.
Then we get sober. We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Going over our relationship with our spouse, we remember her complaints about our failure to listen and pay attention when she spoke. A little clear-eyed now and equipped with some honesty, we find that she was right after all. We really didn’t listen. We weren’t mentally present half the time. Maybe we were too self-involved and our minds were someplace else. We might have tended to obsess, and the internal chatter prevented us from hearing her. At times we might have been too busy thinking about the point we wanted to make to defend or justify ourselves. Or maybe we just didn’t know how to listen, had never developed the skill.
Whatever the exact nature of our wrong, we admit it. We want to change, to be attentive, to listen, to be present. We share about our problem at meetings and maybe talk about it with our sponsor. We work the Steps and practice paying attention and concentrating on what others are saying—especially our spouse. By the grace of God, eventually we become reasonably good listeners. It make take us years, and we may not be totally perfect, but we do pretty well—as well as the next person.
We may then make an interesting discovery. Though we no longer have the defect, the other person may continue to act as if we did. She may continue to be sensitive to our defect long after it’s gone. Any sign that we may not be listening may be construed as evidence of the fact. Of course, she may occasionally be right, but most people at times fail to listen and be attentive. But “at times” doesn’t rise to the level of a defect of character. Yet our spouse has become so used to our shortcoming that she still expects it to be there. After many years of experience, she has developed a habitual way of looking at us in this area. Her response is a habit, though now probably with a higher threshold, not as easily triggered over our perceived lapses.
What are we to do? Accept it. The effects of our shortcomings on another person can be long lasting, sometimes permanent, depending on the extent of the harm we have caused. We cannot change this. Not even after we have made amends. Nor can we convince the other person that we really have changed. Any verbal attempt to do so will put us back into our old defensive posture and will usually backfire. All we can do is persevere in right action now. In the case of a shortcoming like inattentiveness, being considerate and listening, caring, being there. The rest is out of our hands. The other person may eventually take note, and if so we can be grateful. In any case, we will be helping to build a healthier relationship, and that’s what really matters.
Being drunk and clueless, we of course didn’t see it that way. We would feel attacked and become defensive. Our spouse was just being critical, too demanding. We would psychoanalyze. We would end up getting into big arguments which would overshadow whatever the original issue was.
Then we get sober. We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Going over our relationship with our spouse, we remember her complaints about our failure to listen and pay attention when she spoke. A little clear-eyed now and equipped with some honesty, we find that she was right after all. We really didn’t listen. We weren’t mentally present half the time. Maybe we were too self-involved and our minds were someplace else. We might have tended to obsess, and the internal chatter prevented us from hearing her. At times we might have been too busy thinking about the point we wanted to make to defend or justify ourselves. Or maybe we just didn’t know how to listen, had never developed the skill.
Whatever the exact nature of our wrong, we admit it. We want to change, to be attentive, to listen, to be present. We share about our problem at meetings and maybe talk about it with our sponsor. We work the Steps and practice paying attention and concentrating on what others are saying—especially our spouse. By the grace of God, eventually we become reasonably good listeners. It make take us years, and we may not be totally perfect, but we do pretty well—as well as the next person.
We may then make an interesting discovery. Though we no longer have the defect, the other person may continue to act as if we did. She may continue to be sensitive to our defect long after it’s gone. Any sign that we may not be listening may be construed as evidence of the fact. Of course, she may occasionally be right, but most people at times fail to listen and be attentive. But “at times” doesn’t rise to the level of a defect of character. Yet our spouse has become so used to our shortcoming that she still expects it to be there. After many years of experience, she has developed a habitual way of looking at us in this area. Her response is a habit, though now probably with a higher threshold, not as easily triggered over our perceived lapses.
What are we to do? Accept it. The effects of our shortcomings on another person can be long lasting, sometimes permanent, depending on the extent of the harm we have caused. We cannot change this. Not even after we have made amends. Nor can we convince the other person that we really have changed. Any verbal attempt to do so will put us back into our old defensive posture and will usually backfire. All we can do is persevere in right action now. In the case of a shortcoming like inattentiveness, being considerate and listening, caring, being there. The rest is out of our hands. The other person may eventually take note, and if so we can be grateful. In any case, we will be helping to build a healthier relationship, and that’s what really matters.
February 1, 2013
Love and Service
In an honest desire to be of service, sometimes we may assume a position of responsibility or acquire a leadership status that seems to bring out the worst in people. Slings and arrows strike from all directions. After a while we just want to quit and say the hell with it.
We scan our AA brain for an answer and the expression “love and service” bubbles up. Paired this way suggests that the two go together, that one doesn’t work well without the other. True, it’s hard to see how we can love people who patently wish us ill or even hate us, especially when we are trying to be of help. But this is because we think of love primarily as a feeling.
However, if we think of love as a principle, as it appears in Step 12, then we can try to practice it whatever the circumstance. For, in practice, love is expressed concretely in such virtues as understanding, kindness, forgiveness, and generosity, character qualities which, once acquired, we can exhibit toward all. Seen this way, we can love even our enemies, respond to evil with good, and persevere in a life of “love and service” with complete equanimity.
We scan our AA brain for an answer and the expression “love and service” bubbles up. Paired this way suggests that the two go together, that one doesn’t work well without the other. True, it’s hard to see how we can love people who patently wish us ill or even hate us, especially when we are trying to be of help. But this is because we think of love primarily as a feeling.
However, if we think of love as a principle, as it appears in Step 12, then we can try to practice it whatever the circumstance. For, in practice, love is expressed concretely in such virtues as understanding, kindness, forgiveness, and generosity, character qualities which, once acquired, we can exhibit toward all. Seen this way, we can love even our enemies, respond to evil with good, and persevere in a life of “love and service” with complete equanimity.
November 17, 2012
Surrender: Transitive and Intransitive
If we have trouble with the idea of surrender, it might help us to reflect on the fact that we do it all the time. When we hold a grudge against someone, we are surrendering to a character defect and diseased emotion. The choice is between surrendering resentment, and surrendering to resentment.
We are frequently faced with such a choice: surrendering to a flaw in us or surrendering that flaw, giving in to one form or another of our disease or giving it up, holding on to it or letting it go. We can yield to anger, fear, dishonesty, intolerance, and our self-centered passions and desires, or we can turn them over.
One form of surrender perpetuates our disease and keeps us in bondage to conflict and contention; the other releases us and sets us free to live in peace with ourselves and with others.
We are frequently faced with such a choice: surrendering to a flaw in us or surrendering that flaw, giving in to one form or another of our disease or giving it up, holding on to it or letting it go. We can yield to anger, fear, dishonesty, intolerance, and our self-centered passions and desires, or we can turn them over.
One form of surrender perpetuates our disease and keeps us in bondage to conflict and contention; the other releases us and sets us free to live in peace with ourselves and with others.
