SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA: Ampersand Edition
| Five Things… [ 5 best bands with a &]| "Me & the Promises" |"Anyone Anywhere" AA Meeting | "We Have Met the Enemy" | | Much, Much More |
I’m grateful for an adventure and ferry rides galore. I’m grateful for a sunny, warm weekend. I’m grateful for when the ideas hit. I’m grateful for a pretty clean desk. I’m grateful for the Sunday paper. I’m grateful to be sober today.
It’s the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend and hopefully you’re getting a break from whatever it is you need a break from and hopefully that does not include the Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza! Still no cheesy slogan!! Next question: Why on earth are you calling this The Ampersand (&) Edition? Thank you for that thoughtful question. I’ll try to be concise:
I’m pretty sure no one has ever called anything “The Ampersand (&) Edition1
Both of my children attended colleges with ampersands in the title.
It mostly just popped into my head and I’m not complaining but coming up with this “5 Things,” every Sunday is getting to be kind of terror-producing and I’m at the point where I’m just going to run with any semi-plausible idea I can remember long enough to write down.
Without further ado, we present:
Some bands insist on using “and” in the title and I can’t understand that decision to use “and” when you could choose the super swanky and slightly enigmatic punctuation know as the “ampersand.” So that we’re clear on the appropriate usage, The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) reminds us that;
Ampersands. No space is left one either side of an ampersand used within an initialism.
**Question Mark & the Mysterians
A truly great song. A punctuation-based name. An ampersand.2
**Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
“Wooly Bully” also appears on the “Zombie/Monkey Apocalypse” playlist
**The Ampersands
I don’t really know anything about them. But the name...
**&&&
I feel like we should both know better.
**Eastbound & Down
Not a band at all, but a pretty funny show and one of the best examples of what the Ninth Step is not about:
Me & the Promises
If I was to have a band, and that is a deeply-held desire that will likely never come to fruition, it would not be called “Me & The Promises.”3 We were reading the second half of “Into Action” at the “Anyone Anywhere” meeting last week and we covered the famous “promises” section of the Big Book:
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone.
Big Book, p. 83-84
This is a pretty astonishing and beautiful prospect and it is for me, the thing I’ve found in sobriety. It didn’t come from stopping drinking, though, and I think that’s the frustration that is often felt around this passage. I’ve heard people in early sobriety say things like, “when are those promises going to start showing up?” I know that’s how I felt. The thing that changed is that I couldn’t wait for the promises to show up, I had to show up.
Meaning, I had to do the work to change myself before myself was going to experience the many-splendored benefits laid out on pages 83 and 84. It does start out with the words, “if we are painstaking,” and it does come in a section that contemplates the successful completion of the Ninth Step. So, the full weight of the promises might take a little bit of doing. And what changes when the promises come true:
Me.
The feelings of uselessness and self-pity have disappeared. I’m still working on losing interest in selfish things—but we’re getting there. Self-seeking is starting to slip away, replaced by self-awareness and empathy. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Ummm, yes. Is this pain-free? No. As bad as things were in my life, it was still my life and a version of me that I loved (whether he loved me back is an open question).
And that version of me thing is at the heart of the rest of the promises. As I frequently discuss, there was an equation of my life that had fully integrated and was completely reliant upon drinking as a tool for self-management. That whole version of me had to go. I think that’s the point of the Sixth and Seventh Step. But letting go of that person was critically important for me. That person certainly had a place in the world, but that person and the alcoholic survival system he employed would always fear people and the feelings of apartness and aloneness they inspired, would always fear the coming financial catastrophe (would be more likely to experience one for sure), was always baffled by situations and people and would always try to assume the entire burden himself. In secret. That version of me would never know serenity or peace. That version of me would probably end up drinking again, sooner or later.
There is emotional upheaval and discontent in this process and even though fear is noticeably ebbing away, let’s just stay it still has way more than enough stabbing ability. The promises are there to incent us, and they sound pretty f***ing fantastic, because they need to be. There is some hard and wrenching work to be done. I might also point out that while I usually attribute the brilliance of the Big Book to Bill W., of course, much of it came from our beloved Dr. Bob. In a section that starts out referring to a “painstaking” approach, we should note that Dr. Bob was a proctologist. That’s a different level of painstaking, people.
Anyway, like I said, the promises didn’t start coming true when I stopped drinking. They started coming true when I finally saw how lost the alcoholic me was, how far away he’d gotten from where we were supposed to be. The promises started coming true when I found me again. It took some doing and it’s definitely a work in progress, but when I start to take too much credit for the transformation, I need to remind myself to read that last sentence:
We will suddenly realize that [our Higher Power] is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Big Book, p 84
It was finally not me trying to change things. It was me being changed.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
“Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous!
Tuesday nights at 7pm
The “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous takes place on Tuesday evenings at 7pm (edt). It is an “Open” meeting, meaning all are welcome and that definitely includes you! If you’re curious about what happens at AA meetings or have been looking to check new meetings out, it’s all good with us. We’d love to have you join us.
Zoom: 873 5565 4347 secret code: 1234
From the TFLMS Archives:
See you on Tuesday!
I haven’t done any research to confirm this, just feel like I’d remember it, if I saw it.
Please note the spacing when not used in connection with an “initialism.”
One of the big problems, aside from the musical talent part being pretty thin, is that we would likely play mostly weddings and our playlist just isn’t everyone’s idea of wedding music. We would probably kick off the first set with this: A perfect wedding song.
I do love a good ampersand. Thank you.
A super read, TBD! Of course, there was so much more to this post than the &, but I too love an ampersand!