I’ve struggled to come up with three things to post today. It’s one of those days when the weight of the world feels heavy on my shoulders. I am grateful to know that I don’t have to shoulder that weight alone. ...
Feelings can be so intense. This morning I was supposed to take my son fishing on a charter out of Menemsha harbor. I woke at 6:30, made coffee, prepared lunch and snacks, and got him up for the adventure. We walked down to the appointed meeting point, the Menemsha Texaco, arriving at 7:50. Plenty of time to grab an extra snack and a T shirt for the boy who was wearing a sweatshirt with nothing underneath in August. Plenty of time to catch the boat. ...
dogma |ˈdôɡmə| noun a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true I have a long standing distrust of organized religion. I grew up going to Catholic school. The Catholic’s had all the answers, and they were entirely sure that they were the only ones who had the answers. In my daily religion classes, I learned that Protestants were not true Christians, that Jews had missed the message, and we didn’t talk about Islam. I learned that there was “one catholic and apostolic” church. I learned that all other religions were “less than” Catholicism. And while I wasn’t in a practicing Catholic family, I eventually received the Sacraments and was confirmed when I was in 10th grade, even though I am confident now that I really didn’t believe. Now, in 1986, a new house was built on the vacant lot next door and Norman moved in. Norman was a born again, fundamentalist preacher who had two kids and a wife. He drove a Mercedes (which was really odd for anyone in Taneytown, MD at the time). His wife was an attractive lady and I always had the sense they should be on PTL. ...
He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how. — F. Nietzsche Twenty-eight years ago, I was attending high school at a small Catholic school in a small town in Pennsylvania and we had daily religion class. Religion class was something I’d always dreaded from the time I started attending Catholic school in the fourth grade up until 1988, when religion class suddenly wasn’t about “religion.” In the final two years of high school, the religion class curricula focused on real issues rather than ancient biblical text and stories of some rabble-rouser preacher who claimed to be the son of God. In 11th grade the main topic was that of finding meaning in life as related by two Holocaust survivors. In 12th grade, the topics were to social justice and a study of marriage and vocations. The text for our 11th grade religion class consisted of Night by Elle Wiesel and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Both books detail the experiences of young Jewish men who were taken captive by the Nazi’s and who survived the concentration camps. Night was short and we read it first. To be honest, I don’t recall much of the book because it was over-shadowed by our study of Frankl’s book, which we studied from approximately October to May of the year. ...
As I drive down Maryland Route 140 from Westminster toward I795, the sun sets in the rear-view mirror. For years I tried to let the sun set on my youth. I felt out of step with the world growing up in rural Maryland. And in a lot of ways, I was out of step with the world. But now, I’m finding that venturing back to where I grew up is not as painful as I might have imagined it. I’ve just had an amazing reunion with a very special teacher, one who saw something in me and helped me set my life on a better path in high school. Through the miracles of technology, we have been reunited and have kept up with each other over the past 8 years or so. We met one other time, before I went off the rails. ...
"As we seek balance in our meditation practice as well as in our lives in recovery, one of the things we have to look out for is this tendency toward extremes." (1) When I first started to contemplate the 12 steps, I struggled mightily with language that I perceived as evangelical. If you're anything like me, you may have struggled with specific words too, perhaps God and Him. I counted the number of steps that talked about something related to God and came up with 6 that used these words. I gave Step 12 a pass even though I thought spiritual awakening sounded a little too much like being saved. I saw things as absolutes. Black and white. On or off. Binary. And I was repulsed. All I wanted was to stop drinking, I didn’t want to fall down some rabbit hole and become a holy roller. People told me that I didn’t have to believe anything in particular. I heard incredibly stupid things, like, “you can make a light bulb your higher power if you want.” ...
On Twitter, I’ve been fairly open about the fact that I’ve had some concerns with “the program” as of late. In meetings, I’ve said things like, “I’m not sure this program is right for me,” or “I don’t have a problem with a Higher Power, but I do have a problem with what the author wrote,” in reaction to readings from Daily Reflections. Over the past few days, I’ve given this a lot of thought and I think I’ve come to terms with what’s been niggling me. It’s true that I don’t have a problem believing in a higher power, or a God if that’s what you call it. I actually attend church on a relatively regular basis, though I will confess that there are things about it that get under my skin. What I have been struggling with is that I feel that there is an under current of fundamentalist evangelicalism in some of the AA literature that I’ve been reading. There seems to be a notion of “being saved” by a power greater than me – a notion of redemption. And that is exactly what doesn’t sit well with me. I posted this to StopDrinking on Reddit last night and got some good feedback. A few people suggested that perhaps I was reading too much into things. And maybe I am. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have never bought in to the idea of being saved. I believe too strongly in the idea of freedom of will and in personal responsibility to accept the notion that a higher power can “save” me. ...