May 16, 2012 (this day)

Back from a family wedding.  My younger cousin got married, and Carole, Nicholas and I drove the 400 miles, and Erika flew.  We dealt with bigger cities than I ever hope to deal with again on a regular basis.

All my cousins on that side of my family are younger.  In addition to the one getting married, another is expecting a baby in August.  My mother and her three siblings are all still with us.  This was really my family of origin, since I’m an only child, my father died young, and my grandparents, aunts, uncles and then cousins were a big part of my life.  I moved away and back several time, and now away for most likely good fourteen years ago.  My mother moved away from them about five years ago, and it will never, of course, be the same.

The older generation got drunk and …… not too crazy.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it would be.  There was lots of awful drama leading up to the wedding and I just don’t know why people can’t decide to be happy, look on the bright side, give people the benefit of the doubt.  But it wasn’t too bad.

While we were there, we took the kids to their grandparents’ house.  They passed away, in their 90s, within a few weeks of each other, some months ago.  Since the trip is so long and difficult, I didn’t know if they’d get there again before their possessions are done away with, and I wanted them to have the chance to get any mementos they might want.

It was very spooky and surreal.  Like an estate sale, but nothing for sale, just most of their possessions there where they had left them.  A whole world and life now done.

I won’t draw too much of a contrast between their son, my ex, the father of my children, and myself.  He was, at one time, at least six years sober, successful in business and at least fully functioning, if not outrageously happy, or happy enough.  He’s not functioning now, and I hope that my kids at least get what their grandparents meant to give them, but whether they do or they don’t, no one has taken anything from them, or from me.  They’re both doing really well and I have no reason other than a mother’s anxiety to think they’ll go the other way.  It’s like the world balancing on the razor’s edge.  Two paths, one decision that leads to another.

And I haven’t been back to work since last Friday, but I’ll be going tomorrow.  Today Carole and I shopped briefly for a stained glass window to put in our house in honor of our 15th anniversary, which will be June 5.  Of course that anniversary isn’t a legal one, since we’re not yet legal.  Because we’d set a bad example for the children?  Because this is against one or another religion?  Because ………….?

And Can We Bring New Purpose (Step Twelve continued)

And can we bring new purpose and devotion to the religion of our choice?

Good question!

I’ve written a lot throughout the blog about my experience with religion.  Short version, I was born and sort of raised as a half-assed, half-hearted Lutheran.  I was forced to go through with confirmation against my will, and after that I left the church, and pretty much God, for good.  Through many years of suffering not being able to stop drinking within the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I came to accept a higher power and even to return to church.

I want to say I returned in an abbreviated form, but that’s not accurate, since I got married in the church, had my children baptized there, attended there and even taught Sunday school to the little ones.

Around my mid-30s, I thought about leaving the Lutheran church, since I was not fully participating.  I could never get behind sacraments, for example, or creeds, things like that.  I started to look into the Quaker religion, since I think it most closely resembles my thoughts about these things.  But I fell in love and met my wife (in that order) and she was president of a Lutheran congregation, and so I stayed.

Now thirteen years have gone by, and as I come upon this question in my considerations of the Twelve and Twelve, I’m again thinking about the Quakers.

So, in answer to the question posed, I would have to say that yes, definitely, I was able to bring new purpose and new devotion to the religion of my choice.  The fact that I can even choose, or have any capacity to hope or believe, is due to the program.

Now, I know that it is character defects that keep me from exploring the Quakers more fully.  I’ve attended a Quaker meeting three times, I’ve read a book or two.  And that’s it.  I do believe it is ego holding me back.  Twisted, stupid, ridiculous and useless ego.

The Cultish Aspects of AA

I’ve gotten some thoughtful responses to my post Is AA a Cult? and I’ve published them though I haven’t answered any.  It’s important to understand that I am a complete and total fan of AA.  I honestly feel like I would give my life to defend it.  Without it, I had no life.  I need it to be there for my future and for the future of my family and friends.  I don’t pretend to be objective.  I started AA young and I’ve stayed very long.  In that every other aspect of my life springs from this, it is the most important thing in my life.  Readers may take my experience and my viewpoint with an entire salt mine full of salt.  This is where I’m coming from.

Antonahill wrote a very thoughtful rebuttal of my opinions and I’d like to answer the points as much as I can.  This will take a few posts.  I asked my wife to do it for me, since my thoughts are already pretty much out there, but she said the comments made her think too hard.

>However, the common, popular first meaning of the word cult does not apply to AA. It is not a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader. Examples of these cults include The Manson Family, Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidian, and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. These are extreme in their negativity.

You forgot Scientology (which has no sexual component and does not remove itself or its members from society) and The Family International (which does). Your opinion is a bit intellectually dishonest. No, AA has no specifically religious culture or rite, but it is actively theistic. Sure it hides that with phrasing such as “…as you understood Him”, but the implication is clear. To call it a religion is perhaps a misnomer, but to call it religious is accurate. And what’s this about charismatic leaders? How about the founders? Sure, they’re not around to deliver sermons, but neither is Jesus nor Buddha.

I’m not interested enough in Scientology or The Family International to look into them, but I’ll take your word for it.  I don’t think it’s accurate to call it religious.  It has no monastic or religious order, and the rites and observances are not sacred.  Sure, individual AA members or whole AA groups might get their knickers in a twist if someone suggests something out of the ordinary, but people are free to start a new meeting any time they want.  The Twelve Traditions are incredibly loose, and they define policies and procedures very broadly, and I have seen AA change and evolve with my own eyes.  As a society it flourishes, I believe, because the boundaries are so broad, the punishments for nonconformity nonexistent.

>Here’s the gist of my understanding of important ways in which AA differs from cults. I believe that Bill W and those who now follow him closely are very careful to say that AA is NOT the only way people find sobriety. The dire warning to follow or die comes when all else has failed.

This may be true to some degree, but in my experience, the assumption is that AA is the only way. And this is constantly preached. Not only does the internal culture reflect this, but our culture at large, which is my issue. AA automatically receives wholly undeserved merit and respect. Any criticism is at least frowned upon if not outright blasted.

I constantly preach this, but it is limited to my experience when I speak it at a meeting.  AA is hard, and most people I know who have been successful with it tried diligently to find something a bit less strenuous.  The internal culture of AA reflects this, well yes, you’ll mostly find people who found AA to be the only way populating AA meetings.  As for our culture at large, I find plenty of criticism of AA.  I’m here to say that the merit and respect are not undeserved.  I really think that our culture at large doesn’t know what else to do, just as people through the ages have struggled with this problem.  Alcohol plays a huge part in so many human tragedies.  Sure there are alternatives to AA, but none of these fill the need of the compulsive drinker so fully.  Therapy is once a week, and expensive.  Drugs require a doctor, and adherence to a regime.  Alternative programs have not had the (small) success AA has had because they aren’t as good.  If they are as good, they will flourish.  One may some day overtake AA in attendance and success stories.  Meanwhile our society has no better answer for the irresponsible drunk who is getting out of jail and may soon imperil you and me and our loved ones on the road.

More to follow.  Keep coming back!

Organized Religion

This is the view out my bedroom window, and the church with the lighted cross is where we have our meeting.  The telephone pole turns nicely into another cross in this view.  I’ve written before about my experiences of becoming cynical, atheist and agnostic before AA, and how AA opened my mind and let me reenter the church.  That’s the way it happened for me, and for lots of other people in AA, though certainly not for all.  The people I know now in AA go to church, or don’t, they go to the religion of their childhood, or they don’t.  Some practice other religions and sometimes the religions are what I would consider “out there,” but it really doesn’t matter.  The higher power concept is what I needed to achieve sobriety.

Because, I think, there’s a certain kind of very very warped ego that engages in alcoholic drinking.  I suspected I wasn’t invincible, but I kind of hoped I really was.  On the other hand at times I wished I would just die without having to do it to myself.  So in a way, I thought I was the highest power of my particular life.  And I wasn’t.  I do not have power over the human nature of my body.  I cannot drive with under the influence.  I can’t drink unlimited quantities without throwing up and passing out.  I cannot act badly and have the people in the environment forgive me endlessly.  There is a power greater than myself.  It may not be some sort of entity, it may just be the laws of nature.  But I had to bow to it in order to get sober.

Since it’s been a while, I went back and took the beliefnet quiz that tells me what religion best conforms with my beliefs.  My results are always something like this:

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (95%)
3.	Neo-Pagan (83%)
4.	Secular Humanism (83%)
5.	Theravada Buddhism (78%)
6.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (76%)
7.	Reform Judaism (72%)
8.	Mahayana Buddhism (71%)
9.	Orthodox Quaker (69%)
10.	New Age (67%)

That’s mostly because I rank most things as “don’t know” or “unsure.”  And I rate social issues as very important, stressing gay rights, equality of the sexes and taking care of people who need help.

I’ve recently read the first part of A History of God, and I haven’t gotten much beyond the first part.  So far it’s interesting to me that there seems to be some sense among many humans from all times that there is ‘something’ out there.  Until this time in history, people used the something to explain lots of things we now know are “natural,” though what causes the nature, we don’t really know.  So the organized religion that was passed down to me has a bit of mumbo jumbo within, and people used it to explain good and evil, sickness and health, disasters and good fortune.  We know now, pretty certainly, that germs cause certain illnesses.  People before us had other explanations.

Taking the religion quiz, it interested me to see that many religions have very exact beliefs about the after life.  That sums up most of my problem with organized religion.  I do not see how they can profess to know that, or to favor one scenario over another.  I don’t get it.

AA has given me a bit of a framework to use to put my religion into perspective.  Or maybe I should just say it lets me tolerate my religion enough to get by.  I’d rather live as if there is a God, and be wrong, than live as if there isn’t a God, and be wrong.  Where the physical fingers meet the plastic keyboard, guided by the unseen mind to communicate very complicated ideas to other unseen minds – I’m awed and stymied.

Right now, there are two very good reasons I can think of to attend the church I do.  One is something the pastor pointed out to me, that when a disaster occurs, the huge church organization can respond using my money I’ve given, whereas I alone cannot really respond.  The organized church supports and enables things I hopefully believe in.  The other is that the pastor is a professional.  She’s studied and graduated and practiced the study of the texts, history, and contemporary thought, and she should and usually does boil it down usefully for me, in a way I can’t do for myself.

My organized religion doesn’t fit me closely right now, but it doesn’t have to.  I do have to get myself to church more often.

April 19, 2009 (This Day)

It’s Sunday.  It’s going to rain after a wonderful weather day yesterday during which I planted more grass seed.  The grass is for the dog to go potty on.  I hope it works, or Carole will surely spend money and chemicals on our so-called “lawn.”

Tomorrow is her 13th anniversary.  God willing.

I lost two more pounds for a total of 17 since January.  Eleven (or so) more to go, but one or two more will put me in the “healthy” BMI zone for the first time in a long time.

I have a bit of a happy oldtimer dilemma.  On the one hand, I am severely aware of the danger of pride and cockiness.  Just one harrowing story of even one oldtimer who had more time than me, who kept current with the program and who drank again is enough to scare me straight.  Truly, it is.  I know it is because I have made it this far.  I could change, or slip, or decline or decay, but if those things don’t happen today, I’m not drinking.  The oldtimers who do and who I hear about seldom were still current with meetings.  I almost always make one, often two, sometimes more meetings a week.  That isn’t enough for some oldtimers, but it’s good for me.

Anyway one part of the dilemma is when someone very near and very dear to me disparages my sobriety in a mean way.  It hardly ever happens, but it does.  In the course of my human relationships, my sobriety is a sort of rock I stand on, and it isn’t dependent on any person or thing.  There is no one in my life anymore who knew me when I was drinking – except for my mother, other relatives I don’t often see, and one AA friend who I see from time to time.  My sobriety is longer than all of my other relationships.  It was there before them, and if those relationships end before I die I plan for it to be there after them.  God willing of course.

Of course I think God wills it.  Saying “God willing” is sort of like knocking on wood.  An acknowledgment that although I strongly suspect I know God’s will this time, in this human existence I cannot be 100% sure.

To go along with that, 25 years of sobriety is a big target for someone who wants to hurt me to shoot at.  All you need to do is say “25 years” in the right tone of voice to make it a slap.  And OK, I’m not a shining example of all a member of AA should be.  I’m not living according to many interpretations of how the “first 164″ says I should live. I’m not living according to the local “shoulds” of the program.

I don’t drink.  I go to meetings.  There’s lots more, but that’s my bottom line.

Another oldtimer problem – someone reacts to someone else’s sobriety, or to mine, in a way that shows they are astonished at the length.  “Well, so-and-so said, and she has 23 years,” things like that.  These statements are meant to convey that we should respect the person, and give extra credibility to what they say.  I agree with that (easy for me), to a reasonable extent of course.  My personal problem with it is the very human reaction that someone and everyone will reveal the man behind the curtain.  At the end, all I really have is my time to stand for me as a fact of my sobriety.    I can’t let the length of time convey any more respect or credibility than it should.

In my culture, 25 years is a milestone.  The only thing I don’t like about it is that it means it is closer to the end.  Other than that, I wouldn’t go back for anything.  It’s so much better.

I very much want to be that role model in that I can honestly tell people who have less time than me that for me it truly gets better.  It’s easy for someone with 2 days or 2 months or 2 years to find packs of people to say it gets better.  There are fewer and fewer people ahead of me on the road.  I can tell people with 12 or 22 years that for me it gets better.

A criticism of AA is that it supersedes religion, and in that way it is wrong.  For me there is no religion without AA.  I was incapable of stopping drinking with religion, and drunk, I cannot practice any religion.  Or live, if you get down to it.  That weakness gave me a new and useful life almost 25 years ago.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure that today will suck in many ways.  I can’t think of a cheerful way to end this day or my post about this day.  Sometimes, it just sucks.

More About Religion

Last Thursday, I was at a discussion meeting where they ask for three topics and then discuss them.  The topics given were “God as I understand him,” “powerlessness” and “expectations.”  As they started around the room, I noticed a picture of the Last Supper on a bookcase.  It was not put there by AA and had nothing to do with AA, it was just in the room.  On the opposite wall there was an AA picture of the man on the bed. There was also someone attending an AA meeeting for the first time, sent there by the courts after having gotten a DUI.

Some of the people talked about having been brought up Catholic, and how that influenced their AA.  I thought it was important to point out that AA is not a religious program, since here we were talking about religion, God, and praying the usual prayers.

The two pictures gave me an excellent metaphor.  The Last Supper represents God as I could never understand him.  For me, the picture has meaning and symbolism I can’t begin to understand.  The man on the bed, however, represents God as I can grow in my understanding of him.  To me it represents how it works.  The three could not achieve sobriety alone, only together, and what they did has flowed down through uncounted people to me and the people sitting in the room with me and many of the people reading these words.

In my last post I wrote about how AA softened me up and lead me back to church.  It works that way for many many people.  That’s not the entirety of my experience though.  I did start to attend a Lutheran church at that time, and I still do so.  I don’t, however, agree with all the tenents and teachings of the Lutheran church.  I don’t take communion and I don’t recite the Apostle’s Creed.  The list of what I don’t do is lengthy.

I mostly don’t believe in that stuff, but for me, it’s OK and I can still attend.  At one time I was looking into attending Quaker services.  On one of the online “What is Your Religion” quizzes I come out as mostly liberal Quaker.  My wife attended a Lutheran church, though, and when I met her she was heavily involved in it, so I decided to stay.

So although my AA experience made it possible for me to go to church again, I haven’t embraced it totally.  And I do want say again that this is only my experience, and AA does not demand a belief in anything at all.  Through the years I’ve met many people who have found AA to be compatible enough with their various religious beliefs that there is no conflict, and many people are able to appreciate their religion much more due to the influence of AA.

The Notion that We Would Still Live Our Own Lives (Step Seven continued)

The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate.  Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude.  Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help.  But now the words “Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works” began to carry bright promise and meaning.

I’ve addressed the question and concept of God and the higher power in several other places.  I’m so sorry that it turns some people off to the life-altering program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I want to stress again that no one is required to say or believe anything at all, and everyone who has a problem with alcohol should give the program a shot.

I arrived there disbelieving just about all my church and “religious” upbringing had told me to be true.  As I didn’t drink and practiced the program I came to believe in a power greater than me, and I call that power God.  I became willing and able to return to church, though I don’t believe much of what goes on there.  In my life there has come to be a greater reason and understanding of all this.

I once told the pastor of my church almost every Sunday, she said something that fit my circumstances and something that reiterated to me what I am to do and why I am to do it.  She said that she didn’t say those things, that it is God working through her.  I’ve had a friend thank me for introducing her and her partner to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I can say that I did not introduce it to them, that God did it through me.  Really I suspect that they had many previous opportunities to change their lives in this way.  For whatever reason, in that time and place, I was there when they were ready.  By living the program I could have that solution ready to give to them when they were ready to take it.

There are other good works that I do.  My career and my work days are filled with good works, but it is only because I have been blessed with abilities and means that I can use these things to benefit others.  As I write, five (5!) “rescued” animals tell me that according to their calculations, it is time for dinner.  In supporting AA, in caring for people with disabilities, in providing for the formerly homeless animals, I do what I feel to be God’s will for me.  And for them.

The rewards for these things cannot be measured.  They exist in my material possessions and in a quality of life for me that is beyond anything I could have imagined.  That’s one way I understand the phrase above that inverts to tell me that by putting God first, I am able to receive God’s help.

I see that I was very narrow minded to condemn organized religion the way I did.  I was also narrow minded to condemn religious people.  That’s something I continue to struggle with, especially when their “religion” teaches that my life, my life style, my very being is “wrong.”  I have to continue to try and accept that there are parts of this puzzle I will never see.

One of the best ways I have to put God first is to continue to practice the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Before I got sober, I was a menace to society.  I risked my life and yours by driving drunk.  At the very least, I would have been a burden to society, and I had no prospect of supporting myself for any length of time.  By doing this I hopefully give.  I won’t be so prideful as to say that I give more than I take.

Tradition Ten

No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues–particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion.  The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one.  Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.

implicate -

1.	to show to be also involved, usually in an incriminating manner: to be implicated in a crime.

2.	to imply as a necessary circumstance, or as something to be inferred or understood.

3.	to connect or relate to intimately; affect as a consequence: The malfunctioning of one part of the nervous system implicates another part.

So here’s the thing.  I’m a Democrat.  I’m a Lutheran.  I have opinions and I express them.  My political life and my religious life are informed by AA, they are made possible by AA, they are intimately tied to AA.  For me, only.

I understand that there are bloggers who take this tradition to mean that they should not, while identifying as an AA member, express views on politics.  Some express views on religion but not politics.  Some do both.  Some neither.  Some one or the other.

It is the word implicate in the tradition that leads me to conclude that I can express these views as part of my personal story and my personal journey.  I do not now, nor have I ever ever, spoken for Alcoholics Anonymous in any way shape or form.  I have no degree or certificate.  I am not in contact with AA officials.  More than that, in all my time in AA including everything I’ve read and everything I’ve heard there are no official AA positions on politics, religion or any other matter.  AA is no way implicated in any opinion I express.

If I thought these things violated the tradition, I would quickly take them out of this blog.  I would not break a tradition or denigrate AA in any way, ever.  I truly believe that they do no harm being here, and that they are important to my story.  There’s a bit more about this here.

Belief in a Higher Power

I like to say I came into church through the basement.

It was by the church basements of AA that I was able to go back.  I had been brought up as a very half hearted Lutheran.  My mother took me to Sunday school sometimes, not often, and to church, almost never.  I did go sometimes on Easter and Christmas, and that was it.

In a truly disturbing scenario, I was confirmed against my will. I told my mother that I did not want to be confirmed.  I told her I didn’t believe in the stuff.  She said too bad, I had to, and after that I did not have to go to church ever again, if I didn’t want to.

I told the pastor that I didn’t want to be confirmed.  We had, as an assignment for confirmation class, to write an essay about why we wanted this.  I wrote that I didn’t want this.  He gave it back to me, told me to write a real essay, and that was that.  I went through the ceremony resentfully, and decided not to go back.

I was as dismayed as the next atheist/agnostic teenager to find people praying and speaking of God within the AA rooms.  I didn’t pray when they did, and of course they didn’t make me.  They did tell me through the years, though, that prayer is a powerful tool of recovery.  Sometimes, when I was in very desperate shape, I did repeat the prayers of my childhood, just because they told me to and I couldn’t think of any other way to go on.

The concept of the people of AA as a power greater than me made sense to me, thank goodness.  I saw the reality that they had solved a problem I so absolutely couldn’t, it was going to kill me.  I understand now that newcomers have to admit the reality of God, or admit the reality of something greater than themselves, or they won’t be able to stop drinking.

Lots of the concepts around this began working on me.  I understood I should not say, “No, never!”  I understood that when I criticized so called religious people, I was denying the reality that they had usually done some good a remarkable things, whereas I had done nothing.  To throw out all religious people because there are some bad ones is silly.  It made me pause to think that people far brighter than I am accepted God in many manifestations and through many ages.

It was not hard to figure out which would be worse.  What if I lived as if there was no God, and there was one?  What if I lived as if there was a God, and there wasn’t one?

As my time sober increased my open mindedness increased, and I did things simply because AA told me to and I believed in AA.  I began praying in meetings when appropriate.  I considered the “coincidences” as possible signs.  I had my children baptized, and when I went to have my son baptized, when my daughter was three, the pastor told me that I had promised, at her baptism, to take her to church, and it was time.

I researched the Lutheran church a little bit.  This was in the days before computers and the internet, so I made due with books and such, and it was tedious to learn things that way.  I was mostly concerned with social issues.  It was very important to me that the church treat the sexes equally.  In the late 1980s, the church was beginning to form an opinion on people with AIDS, and it was open.  Things like abortion, certainly never a good thing, did not send a person to hell or make them unable to belong to the church.  That was good enough for me, and so with about four years sober, I began to attend church again.

There are many, many aspects of every organized religion that I don’t agree with.  There are many within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to which I “belong.”  I put that in quotes because I attend church with Carole, and have done so since I moved here, but I never formally joined, and I became a part of it by osmosis.

I characterize myself firmly in the “I don’t know” camp of a supreme being.  I don’t know.  A higher power?  There are many.  One of them could be a supreme being.  It’s vital that I don’t forget that there are many powers greater than myself.

Prayer, for me, might be communication with this power.  If not, it may just be me taking time to articulate to myself where it is that my head and my heart should be.  It may be practice learning the principles.

AA’s openness and willingness to let me believe or not believe let me be open and willing.  I can join in some of the rituals of organized religion in a similar fashion to the way I join in AA rituals.  It interests me that when AA tells me to do something, I do it.  Something like say the Lord’s Prayer.  When religion tells me to do it, I balk.  I don’t say the Lord’s Prayer at church, only at AA meetings.  Same prayer.  Different organization.

Some are sicker than others.