I’m grateful for a library day ahead. I’m grateful for balance and reserve. I’m grateful someone taught me the “measure twice, cut once” thing. I’m grateful to be forced to a different coffee choice. I’m grateful to be sober today.
And now for the dreaded lecture on “Initiative.” haha. The first thing I would like to say is “thank you” to the people who said some very nice things. As I mentioned, I was originally not going to write about that whole God-talking-to-me thing. Early yesterday morning, as is my custom, I was sitting on the little camp chair at the end of the “pirate balcony” (a 3 foot wide balcony that runs the magnificent length of my apartment).1 As I was finishing up what was going to be the thing about “Initiative,” the thought occurred to me,
“if you really believe that God talked to you on 86th Street, shouldn’t you maybe write about that?”
Before we go too much farther, I need to make sure we’re clear about who some of the speakers are here:
God/Higher Power/Mysterious Universe-Running Force (“MURF?”)
Actual nature unknown. Possibilities include George Burns/Lilly Tomlin style-sage wisecracking deity who makes very occasional, out-of context appearances, mostly with a message of “hang in there.” Or it could be the Old Testament version, 2raining locusts down on Egyptians and turning people into pillars of salt. Just “yikes” on that one. Or it’s a semi-malicious thirteen-year old somewhere in the multiverse with a really powerful computer and a pretty 13-year-old like imagination.3
If you think I’m cracking wise here, these are some of the actual possibilities. The church I grew up in, the “American Lutheran Church,” has you say this thing about “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” pretty much every Sunday.4 Which I have come to understand means that no one really knows why we’re there so early on Sundays. Now, the agnostics and atheists will jump in here to say, “see, it’s all just made-up nonsense!” The drunk ones will also see this as the chance to push the whole AA thing away. I know this because that was what the “Olden Days TBD” did.
I choose to believe there is some force that animates and binds together this universe and whatever else there is out there. I’m very hazy on details and can’t really prove any of it. I just know that when I listen and wait, things pop into my head and sometimes there are actual instructions. Now, to get back to the other speakers, there would be me.
I speak to myself a lot. Out loud even. I think I can trace that back to the old speech and debate circuit days, where I was often required to participate in something called extemporaneous speaking. You would draw a topic, usually connected to current events and you’d have 20 or 30 minutes to come up with a 5-7 minute speech. This is pretty excellent training for future lawyers, by the way. After I would come up with my outline in the “prep room,” I’d move to the hallway near the room where I’d eventually give the speech to the judges and spectators.5
Then, I’d pace back and forth and kind of recite the speech in my head. So, now I do something similar when I’m trying to figure things out. I realize it’s kind of a disconcerting thing, and what amplifies that is that I think a lot of the things I say to myself are funny and then I laugh out loud. I know.
The point of this is that I have realized how critical those self-communications actually are. I’ve come to understand that those little speeches I give myself can be really powerful. What amplifies their power is willingness. I like to sit out on my chair on the Pirate Balcony and just let my mind wander, it usually settles on stuff that’s bothering me first. Olden days TBD would carefully dissect who was responsible for the irritant, come up with a quick list of other deficiencies in that person, and hate them kind of silently while I waited for the bartender to come “splash” my glass of wine.
Now, I ask myself, “Self, Why do we feel that way?” Sometimes I’m irritated with someone else, but the question then becomes why? I know sober TBD is sounding a bit three-year-oldish. But it’s being genuinely curious about my feelings that has generated the shift in my perspective and the change in my life. It’s part of the 4th Step inventory process, I think. Trying to not judge feelings as good or bad, but as things that “are,” and understanding, as best I can, why they “are.”
This is a process I’ve developed in sobriety and as I’ve worked the Steps and done lots of other stuff, too. It’s a big part of what’s changed my life. The difference is this: As I sit out on the Pirate Balcony and reflect, as I let my mind wander, ideas pop up. Some of them are writing ideas, or parts of what could be a joke, there are moments when I connect things, see that this was related to that. But the ones that come pretty frequently and are the most life-shifting are the ones where I suddenly realize there is a whole other way of looking at something.
These moments always include a physical-affect for me, a relaxed, slumping of the shoulders, a deep sigh, and then I think what follows for me is what they call in the business,
“Acceptance.”
Acceptance sometimes implies ingesting something horrible and having to smile while doing it. Olden Days TBD would never sign up for something like that. These days, I think acceptance is just a way of seeing things that asks the question, “am I sure I’m seeing the real issue?” The answer is usually “no” for me on the first pass. But that’s when those pesky ideas pop-in to that alcoholic brain, prompting me to look inside again before I decide about things on the outside.
I think these ideas are burst communications from my Higher Power. I don’t always have a lot of signal strength when they come through, I’m not always on alert for incoming message traffic. And the Olden Days TBD sprinkled a fair number of landmines that still come to the surface here and there.6 That’s where sitting on the camp chair at the end of the Pirate Balcony comes in. Or the fast walk up 84th street past the doggy-daycare with coffee and the music blasting. Or anytime I quit talking and do some listening. The next right thing usually pops into my head at some point, I just have to let it.
On Monday, when God talked to me, there was a voice along with the words. To be honest, the voice was a bit underwhelming and more nasal than I would have guessed. I just know it wasn’t mine. Those ideas that pop into my head aren’t mine, either, they’re the messages that are always waiting for me if I connect to the MURF wifi.
It’s popular to talk about “unplugging” as a form of self-care. For this alcoholic, it’s exactly the opposite: My sobriety, my new crazy life, the deeply-satisfying time on the Pirate Balcony, is all because I’m plugged in. Plugged into what? I really have no idea, it’s a love that passeth my understanding for sure. The thing I do know for sure, it’s not exclusively found on the Pirate Balcony. These days, it’s everywhere I look.
Many of the images you see here are from said balcony. I think it means I really love and am inspired by the view, not that I’m a recluse.
I know this is super inappropriate, I feel like that HP-version could definitely say something like, “f*** me? No, f*** you” and then vaporize the Golden Calf.
I not only was once a 13-year old boy, I once had a 13-year old son who played a lot of Zoo Tycoon for the express purpose of turning formerly-caged raptors loose on paying customers and more docile zoo animals. All to deep, chortling belly laughs. Again, yikes.
A little inside Lutheran baseball. The ALC was the pretty liberal, midwestern based liturgical powerhouse of the Lutheran Church. The LCA folks (“Lutheran Church in America”), like my Aunt Trudy, were still cool. Then you had the Missouri Synod and I’m just going to point you in the direction of “Davey and Goliath.” My early Sunday mornings were Bach organ preludes and a minister with a Phd who had learned Aramaic to better share the word with his flock. Not a talking dog. Today it’s all this ELCA?
Debate was huge in Iowa. The Des Moines Register actually had a Top Ten Poll of debate programs in the state on Sundays. Truth.
This was the plot of an episode of Gilligan’s Island.
MURF ☺️ I love it
"the MURF wifi" 😂
I've heard Melody Beattie call it "the UPS man" -- Universal Power source -- which also makes me laugh.
I always know it's God talking to me if the voice is saying something I don't like, don't want to hear or do, disagree with, or makes me defensive. Like, ugh, this wisdom AGAIN? Where does this shit come from? (Thank god it comes. I'd be lost without it. I just don't always like, often resist it, etc., etc., etc.)