I’m grateful for another gloomy morning. I’m grateful for knowing what letting go feels like. I’m grateful for seeing which stories I was meant to write. I’m grateful for dinner and a meeting with some terrific Sponsees. I’m grateful to be sober today.
It’s Friday the 13th! I’m not sure what that significance that might have for you, or should have. I kind of embrace it and fear it—which now that I write that, is my approach to quite a number of things. Anyway, I have long considered myself to be pretty superstitious—but in kind of an odd, eccentric way.1 I have long believed that “13” was my lucky number and when I believe something, well, I believe it. Here are some examples of my dedication to the cult of “13:”
My alarm was always set to combinations that would add up to “13.” E.g., 5:26, 6:43: 7:06, etc.
My jersey number, when I had a choice, was always “13”
I lived at the intersection of 13th and R streets, nw for nearly ten years
There are lots of other examples, which I’m not going to disclose for security purposes, but also in the interest of moving this along. Suffice it to say, I embrace Friday the 13th. This may be a foolhardy declaration on the morning of such a day and the kind of thing that makes for poetic justice and what-not, but I do. It helps quite a bit that it’s a mysterious, gloomy morning.2 I’ve always gotten this weird sense on days like this; that there is some kind of cool opportunity out there. It’s hard to explain the feeling, maybe it’s like going into a game late in the 3rd Quarter and you’re already down a lot against a team that you know you’re probably not going to beat. There’s a fair amount of freedom in that particular moment.3 I guess that’s how I feel about cloudy, rainy, gray days generally, but add in the spooky, disaster-might-be-lurking vibe and I think you’ve got something.
That’s not the only pillar of my spiritual tent. Other notable elements of my spiritual universe include: a “New Testament-y” love and divine energy are in each of us type of thing and some force in the Universe that is capable of instilling hope, encouraging courage and providing redemption, salvation even. I think there is some kind of a weird, mysterious, indescribable force/power/thing that somehow makes it possible for us to go through the world looking at things with love, being inspired to hope, sometimes being persuaded to believe. Isn’t the capacity for hope alone pretty compelling evidence of the existence of some kind of benevolent power? How does that exist in a brain that mostly decodes chemical and electrical signals?
I don’t know the answer to that. Also, my Higher Power, which to me is the organizing power behind the whole universe,4 gives fairly enigmatic and kind of quirky directions. But fight fire with fire. I have devised a number of methods, receptor-type devices,5 to help me divine and interpret the signals that are being beamed at me, that are equally odd and enigmatic.6 I’ve discussed some of these methods in detail (ad nauseam if you’re going to be that way) and to quickly summarize these beliefs: They involve finding pennies and having certain songs play on the radio (or Spotify):
FM Radio, Prayer and Listening for the Universe
Scoff, if you’d like, but it has led to an actual communication from the Big Guy to me. I received this communication in the locker room of my gym (where I also have seen Neil Patrick Harris, so there is already some pretty strange magic brewing there ) and I was instructed to:
Do the thing you don’t know how to do.
For sure it lacked the poetry of the whole “come unto me, ye who are heavy laden…” thing.When I got that instruction, it didn’t make a ton of sense to me at first, but it became clear pretty quickly. Old ways of thinking about things had to become old ways of thinking about things. I took things for what they were, instead of writing my own story around them. I realized there were lessons and growth in facing fears and despair and sadness; that there was beauty and peace in facing fears and despair and sadness. I began to believe that there was a part of me that was still indeed divine, had not been too despoiled in all of the alcoholic funhouse days, a shaky, slightly unsteady pilot light that could still be tended.
Those were all things I didn’t know how to do. I didn’t know how to live a life trusting that the next moment was going to be ok. I didn’t know how to live a life that didn’t have me at the center and I certainly didn’t know how to reign over that self-ish kingdom without Queen Kim Crawford.7
Somehow, that locker-room exhortation (Rocket Rod never got my attention like that) led me to listen to someone who had clearly been sent on a mission to show me a lot of things I needed to see, to teach me a lot, and then I’m doing this, and there’s a podcast, and more crazy coincidences and opportunities, more people making unusual, but necessary, entrances and exits. I celebrate a third year of sobriety and life takes on a greater level of richness every single day. My conception of a higher power involves some kind of a beacon of energy that you can connect to. If you’d like to think “light from a lighthouse” that’s cool. I tend to think of it more like a science fiction tractor beam; but you do you.
How do I know when I’m connected to this tractor beam of love and growth and okayness? That’s where the pennies come in. You know the story. I started picking up pennies sometime in my very early efforts at sobriety. Those were pretty dark days for me; dark enough that finding a grimy, God-knows-where-it’s-been penny on the street was enough to inspire little flashes of light and hope and love. I saw those pennies as reminders that when life is approached with humility, there are an endless number of little miracles that spring into sight. Looking for pennies was a filter that made the world brighter and more hopeful-looking to me.
So, I pick up a lot of pennies. I find them at meaningful junctures, when I’m feeling down and a little lost. I find them when I’m happy and doing something I love, something that sets me free. I find them when I do the next right thing. I find them when I let the things that are supposed to happen, happen.
Last night, I went to a meeting downtown with the Sponsees and we got to hear a really excellent qualification. A story of someone who was living two lives, one increasingly more desperate and untenable, and one, placid, untrue and serene. A spiritual awakening, a bright light that showed life just couldn’t go on that way anymore. The big finish to this incredibly moving, well-told story? She started picking up pennies in early sobriety; began seeing them as nearly worthless, cast-away messages of hope that improbably carried the prospect of redemption.
There was an audible laugh from the corner of the room where we were sitting. The Sponsees are well-versed in my crazy, nonsensical ideas, and here was someone else saying the same thing! They also know the power of the Program. They both have seen some pretty dark days, bad relapses and lived for a pretty long time with the gnawing fear that they would never be able to get sober; that this dark, twisted, completely alone, shell of a life was all they were going to have. But they found the Program and got sober. S celebrated a year last month and D is running hard at 9 months next week. They are living, sober proof the Program works.
They laughed last night when they heard about someone else finding their way out of the madhouse by following a trail of dingy, value-less pennies. Things began to change for me when I began to see the not-spendable discards lurking next to curbs and in puddles, as bespoke way-finding beacons, cleverly disguised by a Higher Power with a sarcastic, sort-of-juvenile sense of humor. Inedible breadcrumbs to show me I was still on the right path, even when that seemed pretty improbable. We walked out into a dark, rainy, gloomy night after the meeting, perfect for the eve of Friday the 13th. We chatted as we walked to the subway. I think we were all hoping to find a penny, secretly scanning to be able to triumphantly show that little Lincoln-headed piece of serendipity as the capstone for the evening. None of us found a penny in the rain last night. That’s okay, it’s possible we found something way better.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
As if being superstitious is not already a bit odd and eccentric.
imho: New York is at its best on foggy, rainy, gloomy days and nights. Also, shouldn’t “imho” always be lowercase?
Perhaps a bit more than coach Rocket Rod would have preferred. “Rocket” Rod managed to coach me for two separate seasons of my illustrious basketball career and he obtained the “Rocket” nickname courtesy of me. Rocket Rod also taught Driver’s Ed.
Hope that makes it clearer.
If the picture in your mind’s eye is a crystal radio set from Radio Shack purchased in roughly 1974, then we should probably talk.
Didn’t the Germans call their code-making machine the “Enigma? That was just asking for it, imho.
Ok, maybe “Queen Consort,” given the legalities.