86,000 Seconds

Today you have 86,000 seconds of life. You can begin your day or begin again at any time. But 86,000 seconds of life, energy, attention, being.

How will you use them? Who will get most of your seconds? Are you choosing where they go? Or are they just spilling out? You get to choose. 86,000 seconds.

What's next?

In Defense of Late Shoppers

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. I’m ready to start my Christmas shopping.  For a long time I was ashamed to admit that I prepared for the holidays with less than a week to go, but the truth is, this is the best part of Christmas.

No, I didn’t procrastinate.  I know all the advice about how to make Christmas shopping easier. But there are some things that don’t get better just by being easier. I’ve read those How to Get Organized books, but I’ve also lived through enough tragedy to know that trying to organize one’s life is an illusion.

I grant you that yes, there will be a moment when I’ll envy those who had their gifts wrapped in August.  But that’s kind of like having a good report from the dentist isn’t it? All very wholesome but where’s the fun?

No, those of us who begin our shopping this week will enjoy the real spirit of Christmas: We get to watch humanity test itself and we’ll see kindness and patience and grace enacted –or honored in the breach-- next to the stack of 30% off cashmere cardigans.  We will also endure the “I was done in August” folks who just learned they need one more thing; they will typically be the ones cutting in line or sighing heavily or making lots of eye contact wanting everyone to share their misery.

We who start our shopping now know that we are engaging in a holiday ritual that is very close to the original: It’s cold out, traffic is as slow as a lane of donkeys, there is no room in the parking lot, and we get to watch a young family with a triple stroller searching the mall for a baby changing area. It makes you want to drop to your knees and pray.

Yes, shopping in August could make Christmas nice and tidy. But real life is anything but that. Consider the Holy Family: There was no plan; Mary was days away from delivering a baby; they had to go on a long trip, and then she had to give birth in a barn. No tidy and not neat. 

The crux of that first Christmas is that sometimes in the midst of mess and stress and fear, angels show up and miracles happen.

But in order to experience the miracles you have to be willing to put yourself where human beings are being human. Yes, it’s a gamble, but relationships are like casinos: You must be present to win.

So this weekend I’ll be where humanity is. I’m heading out to the mall, bundled up, and bracing myself for mixed encounters with my fellow man. I’ll be trekking in from the outerloop of the parking lot, looking for a few gifts and the real spirit of Christmas.

Can You Say That at Work?

Here is a mini test to see how well you are bringing your recovery with you to your workplace. On any given day at your job are you able to say:

*I was wrong.

*I don’t know.

*I made a mistake.

*I’m sorry.

*It’s my fault.
*You’re right.

Bill and Ebby Work the Steps

Today is a special day in AA history. On this day, December 14, 1934, Ebby Thatcher came to visit his old drinking buddy, Bill Wilson, and in Bill and Lois’s Brooklyn kitchen Ebby gave his testimony and took Bill Wilson through the Oxford Group conversion process. This is what, today in AA, we call steps 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. It was Ebby’s gift to Bill and the gift that has been passed on to all of us.

In the Oxford Group one could take all of those steps in one evening: The inventory, the confession, the examination, and then making the list of people harmed. Then encouraged by a sponsor new members went out to make restitution—later called amends. Ebby was Bill’s sponsor. It began here December 14th—one drunk helping another. Bill was willing. He saw something in Ebby. He wanted what Ebby had.  From this start we get Bill W. committed to sobriety.

 From a cold flat in Brooklyn to the rest of the world.  We know that Ebby later struggled. But he was well used by God. Thank you Ebby.

I am not God--or Am I?

You have heard the saying, “All I need to know about God is that I’m not It.” It’s one of those newcomer “keep it simple things”, and we often hear it told as in, “When I asked my first sponsor about God he told me, “All you need to know is…”

And fair enough. Before recovery and in early recovery we acted like bad gods—ruining our lives, trying to run other people’s lives, so we needed that jerk to the back of our collar.

But then we enter a spiritual path and begin the long, long journey to a personal Higher Power and there are some surprises along the way. We start to discover the still, small voice within—and realize it is, in fact, within us. We re-read the literature and there is Dr. Bob and Bill W. talking about meditation to hear our Higher Power by listening inside ourselves.

Then maybe we join a faith community or we begin to read and learn that ancient spiritual teachers like Saint Augustine in his autobiography says that he searched everywhere for God only to realize that, “You were more inward than my inmost self, and superior to my highest being.”

And the Franciscan theologian, Saint Bonaventure, wrote in his Soliloquy, “God is the One who is closer to you than you are to yourself.”

Or you discover a modern theologian like Ilia Delio who writes, “If the will of God is God’s love for us, then we would have to admit that the will of God is not outside us but first and foremost within us.”  She also writes, “We do not have to search high and low to find God’s love. We we simply have to look in a mirror to see who we are, because in who we are God also is.”

And so you begin to ask again, “What about God?” And now, in later recovery the answer may truly be, “All you need to know about God is that you are (in)  Him.”

Hope is...

I have always loved words like Joy and Peace but recently the word Hope has come to me again and again.

“Hope is a waking dream.,” wrote Aristotle, and maybe from that I assumed hope was a weak word, something that could alight like a bird but then equally take flight like a bird. Too iffy for me.

But I have always loved this quote from the former Czech president and playwright, Vaclav Havel:

“Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

That, it turns out, is close to what Thomas Aquinas meant when he wrote about Hope. Aquinas studied all of the virtues, Faith, Hope, Charity…etc. and when he described hope he said “Hope is located in the will.” Which means that he believed that hope is a choice; that we make a decision to have hope. Having hope is within our will, within our choice.

Because of his belief about hope, Aquinas also said that there are two sins against hope. They are despair—having no hope—or making the choice to not hope, and interestingly, he said that the other sin against hope is presumption—the stance that, “I can do this myself.”

Isn’t that fascinating? Doesn’t it resonate with “Made a decision…” and “Our will and our life.” It’s a choice. Not dependent on mood or emotion or circumstances. Hmmmmm. And it is also giving up ego, “I can do this myself.”

So here is what I am doing with hope this week: I am practicing gratitude as much of the day as I can. I am teaching my will. It seems that a life of gratitude is oriented toward hope. Practicing gratitude is a way to teach the will to choose hope.

How Can I Know God's Will?

Maybe this is one of the questions that comes up over and over in recovery. Newcomers ask their sponsors: How can I know God’s will? We raise surrender as a topic. We talk in meetings about turning our will over to God and then taking it back. Over time we know that total surrender is impossible so we suffer less over the “taking it back” part but just remind ourselves and each other, “Um, maybe Step Three on that and turn it over.”

There is a lot of wisdom around the rooms on God’s will and surrender. My favorite slogan or bumper sticker is “I didn’t quit, I surrendered.” That’s the biggest difference in the world. I finally came to understand that difference with food. It also happens that some people stop quitting and really surrender before they come into a 12-step program. Many times it’s the giving up quitting and finally surrendering that gets someone to AA. We hear those stories.

Our founders had a lot to say about this. We are most familiar with things Bill Wilson had to say, but being the quieter guy we sometimes miss what Doctor Bob’s contributions were.

Here is Doctor Bob’s guidance on learning to determine God’s will. It comes from a pamphlet he wrote for the Oxford Group—remember his first step into recovery wasn’t to AA (it didn’t exist) but to the Oxford Group. His advice goes like this:

Get a pen and paper and think about the situation you are struggling with. Quiet down and meditate for a few minutes, and pray. Silently ask God’s will on the situation. For example, “What should I do about my son, my job, my debt?”

Then write down EVERY answer that comes to you. Write down every single thought that comes to your mind. Ask the question again and see if any other thoughts come. Write them down.

Some of those ideas may be good and some may be crazy. Some may be God’s will and some (likely) are not. So next, you must subject every item on your list to these questions:

Is it honest? Is it pure? Is it loving? Is it unselfish?

If the answer to all four questions is yes then likely it is God’s will.