A Sunrise in the Soul

My writing room faces east. I’ve seen a lot of sunrises this winter, because suddenly I’ve become an early riser.
I wake up in the predawn darkness, make a cup of Italian or French roast, and come into my all-glass room. My shades are drawn for privacy, so I turn on the light and open my blog.

When the sky overhead lightens to a purple-blue, I turn off the light and raise the blinds. My desk overlooks the northeast and a huge oak that’s 500 years old or more. I watch the oak become visible in the twilight of dawn. I watch the sky over the eastern hill change color.
I’ve seen fluorescent red dawns, purple and pink dawns, yellow dawns, dark gray dawns.
Several times I’ve tried to describe in a poem the transformation I see. I keep trying, because there’s something deeply spiritual about the inexorable journey toward dawn. The breakthrough moment of sunrise, when that ball of fire lifts its face over the horizon, always feels like a victory.

When I was a practicing alcoholic addict, I saw a few sunrises when I had stayed up all night partying, as we called it. I can remember the sense of exhaustion and chemical tweaking that went with it.
Usually the nights ended with me collapsing on the bed, hoping to be dead to the world for a few hours, at least until the world stopped spinning. At the end of my drugged career, I was often sick with the poisons I had pumped into my body.
Dawn meant misery.
Last night I got some material ready for a woman who wants to begin work on her 4th Step. She’s like me, someone who was clean and sober for years and then relapsed when she stopped practicing the 12 Steps in her daily life.

In an inventory, we uncover the causes and conditions that led us to drink and use. That step allows us to begin work on the resentments and fears that drive us to do what we do.
I thought my childhood caused me to self-medicate. I thought maybe I was mentally ill and doomed. Whatever, it was not my fault, and I was hopeless.
That wonderful 4th Step inventory showed me that my problems originate in my mind, in my way of viewing and interpreting experiences. If they originate with me, then I can do something about them.

The 12 Steps give me a sunrise in my soul. With each step I take, the dawn grows brighter, transforming my world. Each morning, I am new again.
Dawn brings hope. As long as I practice recovery in my life, my hope is renewed daily. It’s a spiritual hope that just for today I will dwell in the sunlight of the Spirit. And the Spirit never disappoints.

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