Thank God My Car Was Smashed, Not Me

A tank destroyed my rear end this week. I’m grateful that it was my automobile’s and not my own posterior.

I didn’t see that at first. My initial reaction was a lot of effin’ this ’n’ thatness when the young lady in the souped-up Suburban plowed into us at full street speed, having failed to notice the cars ahead were stopped at a pedestrian crosswalk. Her apologies seemed inadequate to my shocked and whiplashed self as I confronted our seriously wounded beautiful car.

Afterward the 12-Step training kicked into gear and waged a rousing battle with resentment, armed with those formidable “Thank God” weapons. It’s not a walk in the park to be grateful in the face of crap, but it’s doable. Thank God for insurance on both automobiles, for no serious injuries, for credit cards and car rentals and trustworthy auto-body specialists owned by AA friends.

We’re off now to spend Thanksgiving amid the blessings of family, friends, and our old AA home group. A study of gratitude made the news today, finding that gratitude is good for the brain and the body’s well-being. Alcoholics Anonymous has preached that for 75 years. May you swim in thanksgiving, no matter what adversity you face.

"Every decision I make is a choice between a grievance and a miracle. I relinquish all regrets, grievances and resentments, and I chose the miracle."

(Deepak Chopra, “The Soul of Healing Meditation”)

Disaster!

My computer was DESTROYED Monday in a freak accident, along with the rest of my electronics, when my beloved husband set a hose-end sprinkler outside my office window and 20 minutes later discovered the hose had gone ROGUE and was VIGOROUSLY shooting into the window, watering my desk!!!! And a houseful of guests were about to arrive for a Labor Day barbecue and croquet game.

The resulting collision of water and electricity blew the circuit breaker and fried everything, including all the files relating to four stories I must turn in tomorrow to my magazine publisher. Everything is kaput...laptop, copier, scanner, printer, photo editing software...

But I'm blessed!!!! My hard drive survived, so the nice tech guy salvaged my files and they're somewhere inside this external hard drive if I can figure out how to extract them. I had accident insurance, so God knows when eventually I'll be reimbursed for my laptop. There's some money in savings to buy this here unconfigured cheap empty frustrating replacement computer and a new printer. I'm still married too (although I can't get my hubby to come out from under the bed where's he's been hiding since yesterday).

We had to scrap the croquet game yesterday, due to my driving need to get my computer to the tech store for a diagnostic, but we had a nice meal with our family anyway. I'm thankful to have a 12-Step program that keeps me from wigging out when crap happens. I didn't make anyone's life miserable yesterday or today, including my own. So blessings on your day, take a minute to back up your hard drive if you haven't done it in a while, and watch out for rogue sprinklers. I'm off to set up a new printer and wrestle me a grizzly or two...

That Jumping-Off Place

I’ve had three hours of sleep, and today I’m thinking about bliss. I even looked up the word to be sure I knew its correct definition: complete happiness or a state of spiritual joy, according to the dictionary that accompanies the Word program.

I’m thinking about “following your bliss,” a phrase coined by myth master Joseph Campbell as he discussed mythology and the hero’s journey with PBS journalist Bill Moyers in a series aired in the late 1980s. It means something like discovering you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be in this life, doing exactly the right thing for you to be doing, and finding fulfillment in it.

I’ve had about eight hours’ of sleep in three days; yesterday began for me at 6 a.m. and ended around 3 this morning. I was doing the work needed to compete in the final floral competition at our local fair. I signed up to do two separate, complete wedding flower displays. I don’t know what I was thinking. At 2:30 this morning, the work still wasn’t finished, but my body made me give up.

This morning I wrapped up the last bits at 7 a.m. and my husband helped me haul the pickup-load to the fair. I was content with the work I’d done and immensely grateful for many things. Friends let me harvest flowers from their gardens because my main bloom is still a few weeks off. The strength to work on my feet all day and all night was there. The inspiration was there, and the problems I encountered had simple solutions. Mostly, I was grateful to have found the desire to do a thing I love to do and follow it through all the friggin’ way, even when the work was hard.

Someone asked me at the flower building this morning if I would give her some tips on floral design. All of a sudden, the years fell away and I was 16 years old, living in a small desert town. My brief stint at McDonald’s hamburger joint had come to an ignominious end. My spirits couldn’t keep up with the busloads of tourists on their way to Las Vegas wanting burgers their way right now. I promptly went across the street to the town’s flower shop and offered to work for free if they would teach me how to arrange flowers. The owner looked at my little application, lifting her glasses off her face, and then she put them back on and looked at me. “Come back Monday morning,” she said. “We’ll pay you minimum wage to start.”

That was my first "jumping-off place." For the next five years I worked for her after school and during summers while in college, learning how to arrange flowers for every occasion. I went to college in the first place to study floral design and horticulture, which I promptly abandoned after the first semester to become an English Lit. major. English Lit. gave me a wonderful career in magazines, but I worked in flower shops off and on over the years between jobs. What’s not to love about working with flowers?

I’ve been blessed over and over throughout this summer’s floral competition by the awareness that I’m exactly where I should be, at this stage in my life. I’ve received bountiful gifts from my Higher Power, in the form of joy, ideas, flowers, weather, prizes, love, and memories. It’s been a spiritual experience, leading me to the discovery that joy has returned. Another "jumping-off place" has happened.

This is what Joseph Campbell says about bliss: “I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. "Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”

The judges liked my wedding work, pictured here. Now I’m going to enjoy the refreshment of a nap and say another prayer of thanks.

***
Several hours later….

Couldn’t sleep, so I got up and cruised around on low speed, cleaning up here and there after the explosion of floral detritus over the past 10 days. My house looks like a tired flower shop on Mother’s Day: stems, leaves, vases and buckets of aging greenery and unused flowers everywhere. I even swiped the vase that normally sits on the corner of my desk with something in it all seasons, and the blank hole there bugs me. So I arranged yet another vase of flowers, which I later took to an AA meeting tonight and gave to my sponsor in thanks for letting me have trimmings from her redwood, eucalyptus, Japanese maple and pine trees for my greenery. Can’t bring myself to put another vase together tonight. A nice chore to look forward to in the morning.

The AA meeting got me thinking about the tie between a couple of my life’s jumping-off places and being sober. “We stood at the turning point,” the Alcoholics Anonymous text says of that moment when a person is suddenly driven to ask for help with her drinking problem. There’s a willingness at that moment to surrender to anything that promises an iota of relief from the misery of drinking oneself to death.

I drank to change how I felt, to feel more of something, to feel less of something. I did that from the time I had my first drink. When alcohol hit my bloodstream, something inside said, “Oh, yes!” It never stopped saying yes with an exclamation point. I couldn’t picture my life without it. But some mysterious awareness had bloomed in my brain, which told me that alcohol might be the source of my misery instead of being the solution for it. I discovered I wanted to live, and I found myself seeking out Alcoholics Anonymous and teetering on the brink. I can’t live with booze, and I can’t live without it, I metaphorically said. The people in the AA meetings said, “We know how you feel and we have a solution that allows us to live sober, happy lives.”

I took that leap of hope. Today I can do all the things I thought I’d never be able to do without at least a little buzz. AA saved my life and gave me a life, as I’ve heard said in meetings, a gift I didn’t foresee when I stood at that jumping-off place in the doorway of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in May 1990.

And I’ve found that it’s true what I heard said in those early meetings: You walk in the door with a little list of hopes—just to stop drinking yourself into misery, stop being so very ill from alcohol poisoning, stop losing parts of your life like your job, your spouse, your self-respect. You think that’s all you want. But you’d shortchange yourself if you settled just for that little list, because sobriety brings with it an enormous list of miracles. People are reborn.

Inner Weather

Around here in June, they say if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. I thought about that today, not because of the outdoor weather, although it’s been reliably irregular, but because of what it’s like to be a human being.

My inner weather is whimsical, affected by the least little breeze stirred up by outside circumstances. One of the things that attracts me about Alcoholics Anonymous is its promise that I can lead a life of serenity in spite of what happens around me and to me, if I stay focused on gratitude and helping others.

Live in an attitude of gratitude, they told me as a newcomer. You don’t just have a drinking problem; you have a THINKING problem. Your head is not your friend even though it’s attached to your neck. Address the problem of the mind, and you’ll straighten out, physically and mentally.

All of that, I’ve found in my experience to be true. But it does take work. Ten minutes after an uplifting AA meeting, I can be a sad sack all over again because a foul breeze blew in from outside. Someone looks at me wrong, my shoelace breaks, I have to do something that I don’t enjoy.

This week a woman said she fell into a bad place in her head and it made her start isolating at home, where nothing got any better, surprise, surprise. A man said he got a bill that was higher than he expected, and he was bummed out about it big time.

It takes so little to make our emotional weather go south on us. I have a lot of aches and pains this week, I’m fatigued by a new medication, gosh, life is hard. Next thing I know, I’m oblivious to all the grace in my life.

I’m working with a new sponsor, who has assigned me the task of maintaining a written gratitude list that I add to daily. I’m not batting 1000 in that area. But it has made me conscious of my inner weather. Today, I’m grateful for food in my refrigerator, for the way cats’ eyes change in the light, for living in a home that has flowers blooming in the yard. A foul breeze may in the next instant blow that gratitude all to hell, but hey, I can start all over again!

Each day brings its own bucket of challenges. I’m grateful for the 12-Step program tools that keep us going when life happens. I couldn’t do life alone. Without my AA fellowship, I’d be stuck in my head like a shoe in a dryer. I haven’t had a shoe in the dryer in a long time. Thanks, God.

The photos in this post are snapshots of northern California taken on my trip to visit my niece. Thank you, God, for landscapes.

Living with Sorrow

One thing you can depend on is that nothing will stay the same. Life will throw you a curve ball, a slider, a fastball you never saw coming. And everything will be different all over again.

My family got hit with a triple whammy this month. To respect the privacy of others in my clan, I can’t talk about details except to my trusted advisors. I haven’t known what to say in my blog. So I’ve said nearly nothing. But the itty-bitty-shitty committee in my head has been blabbing nonstop. I was told by oldtimers early in my recovery from alcoholism that my head is a bad neighborhood and not to go there alone. But at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., it’s just me and the darkness and the chatter in my head. It’s a form of torture.

I’ve tried: counting sheep; counting steps on a green path in a forest; guided imagery; breathing; prayer; telling myself imaginary stories; herbals like melatonin, valerian root; tryptophan; wrestling with God; making gratitude lists; reading; even watching late night science programs about recycling. Nothing shuts off the committee.

A nasty bug has been making the rounds here in my town, and many people are falling ill for two weeks, a month, at a time. It settles in the chest and results in pneumonia in some people. I caught it and have stayed home for nearly three weeks trying to fend off another bout of pneumonia.

I’ve resorted to watching television, catching up on films I missed in their theater releases. So far I’ve seen “Revolutionary Road” (what a wrenching movie!), “Julie and Julia” (Meryl Streep’s tour de force), “In the Electric Mist” (James Lee Burke paired with Tommy Lee Jones!), “Nell” (give Jodie Foster an Oscar!), “The Duchess” (wow!), “Secondhand Lions” (loved it!), “Flawless” (another wow!), and “Masterpiece Classics” on PBS. I haven’t watched TV in years, being an avid reader instead. But reading has become difficult. I have, however, worked my way through one-third of award-winning David Brin’s “Sundiver” sci-fi classic.

Being ill, I’ve hit maybe four or five AA meetings in three weeks, and I’m accustomed to six a week. At least for an hour in a meeting, the itty-bitty-shitty committee falls silent. So I browse through what we call the “Big Book,” AA’s textbook, and the “Good Book,” my other “textbook for living.” I’m trying to concentrate on a few passages they contain:

First, on the subject of the “magic magnifying mind” that enlarges whatever it dwells on, there is this:
“When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases. … I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance [of things as they are] and off my expectations [of what things should be], for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance.” [Pages 419-420]

And this from the Good Book, as it has been quaintly called:
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. [Philippians 4]

I’ve heard it said (by Robert Louis Stevenson) that any man can carry a burden until nightfall which would overwhelm him if he tried to carry it forever. Therefore, focus only on this one day, doing the next right thing a moment at a time, and leave the future in God’s hands, where it rightfully belongs. In my life at this moment, all my needs are cared for. For that, I am grateful.

Happiness: The Pros and Cons

I was asked to write about happiness. I remember having a thought: I just want to be happy. I don’t know how many times I had that thought, but I know I wasn’t happy when I thought it.

Happiness was a long quest without a map, looking for the missing element in me. The quest for the missing element, in hindsight, proves I was a believer in the myth that joy could be found Out There.

Leap through the years, the circuitous journey…

Happiness is an emotional state of joy…a smile, laughter, pleasure in the moment. Emotional states vacillate with the influences of circumstances and other people. I enjoy the pleasure of happiness, but I know it will pass, as all emotions pass.

What gives me lasting joy now is what I have come to know as contentment, a state of mind, a belief, a method of looking at the world.

Contentment means that I believe my life is fundamentally good, like soil can be good if it has the right composition, no matter what the weather is like above ground.

Contentment means that I appreciate and cherish the elements that comprise the soil of my life…my daughters, my husband, my home, my significant others. But also I value the intangible too: my poetry, my history, my memories, my character and personality. Contentment means that I am aware of these gifts and consider them treasures.

Contentment means that because I am surrounded and filled by treasures, I feel grateful, no matter what the weather is like above ground. The absence of complaint, yearning for more or resenting what is, makes a large room in my life for contentment to abide, take root and grow. Contentment, it turns out, is what I have wanted all along.

Happiness has its moments. I’ve thought about them and written some of the moments down. I'll save it for another day… But what is happiness to you?

Got Any Money in the Bank?

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, and today is money in the bank.”
Red W., AA oldtimer

I sobered up in a dingy AA clubhouse in the Los Angeles area 20 years ago. I showed up in my designer high heels, with my $100 haircut and boutique clothes, straight from work in my publishing house, right before the 6 p.m. meetings started so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. I found a seat at the acres of long folding tables, metal chairs, and metal ashtrays and waited, staring into the middle distance with an eff-off lift of my chin.

I sort of liked the grimy place. It was a broad open space with a podium and a battered metal desk on a small stage at the head of the room. Hung on the “off-white” walls were signs in inexpert calligraphy announcing profundities like “First Things First” and “Easy Does It.” It was far better than the first hole-in-wall AA meeting place I had stumbled into, which had been the size of a bathtub stuffed full of bikers and gray-skinned heroin addicts who scared me.

I made $65,000 a year editing a fitness magazine for a world-famous bodybuilding firm. From a small-town girl, I had made myself a denizen of LA’s sophisticated side. I was 36 years old. On Saturdays, for fun, I spun around the LA freeways in my new little car with a bottle of Stoly’s and the windows down. Now I drank vodka in the morning before work, and I drank all day long, all night, weekends, everywhere, all the time, and I was ready to try AA.

In those meetings at that clubhouse, someone would get up, sit at the desk at the head of the room, and talk about alcoholism for a while, telling his story. A long-haired musician from Detroit. An aging make-up artist from the film industry. Some guy from PG&E. Then he’d pick people to go up to the podium to say a few words. The things people said were honest and searching and I could relate. I drank coffee and listened. Came back four evenings a week and on Saturday mornings at 9.

One evening the Mo-town musician looked down the tables and pointed his finger at me. I went to the podium and looked at all those people. I didn’t know shit from Shinola and words stuck in my throat. So I dropped the defenses and just told them the truth. I’m new. I drink all the time. I need help.

After the meeting a bossy, expensive little woman told me to come with her. She led me across the room to a corner table, to a white-haired elderly lady in heavy make-up surrounded by other women. “This is Helen,” she said. “You need a sponsor.” Helen told me that from now on I was to sit at her table with her “gals.”

Everything changed.

Eight years later I stood next to her bed while she died of pneumonia. Twenty years later I stood next to my mother while she died of pneumonia. I’ve been able to part of the human race. I’m not afraid of life or the dying that goes with it.

Every morning I get this day right here. Today is money in the bank. I don’t have to solve all the problems in the world. I get to do my best with what faces me now, be kind to the people who come across my path, and try to remember to say thanks somewhere along the day, the more often, the better.

This Is Me on Steroids

The treatment for my pneumonia requires that I take steroids along with antibiotics and inhalers. I seem to have a lot of energy, and I am in a really good mood. Here’s what I do on steroids:

Write a 2,500-word brief for a law professor that a) details the civil-rights violations of hospitalized Alzheimer victims, and b) advocates enforcement of state and federal self-determination laws by imposing punitive measures against medical facilities for violations. Compile copies of the pertinent regulations, rejoice that the guy is interested, and send the package off.

Indulge in an act of shoe repair to mend my favorite slippers.

Cross-examine an old friend, via email, who has retired to a sailboat in Mexico and fallen in love. Quiz him at length about her, the circumstances, and the emotional/philosophical conditions of falling in love with a stranger.

Make yet another attempt to concentrate on my overdue writing assignment about local charity programs during the holiday season.

Wander in the garden with the pruning shears, investigating the whereabouts of two praying mantises that live in the dahlias.

Query the family corporate attorney about the legal interpretation of certain provisions in my parents’ trust, comparing the instructions to the actual intentions of my parents.

Stand in the middle of my sunroom office and whirl my arms in big circles because it feels great.

Have AA meetings on the phone with sober friends. Explore big issues like spirituality in marriage, how to pursue a goal, and the best way to treat a sore throat.

Cope with a bedtime panic attack, afraid I’ll stop breathing in my sleep. Wake my husband to warn him of my impending death and remind him where I keep all our essential papers. Ask him to stay awake and keep me breathing. Forgive him when he chuckles and goes back to sleep.

Make a little autumn bouquet and ride into town with a friend to put it on my mother’s new headstone, taking a photo to send to out-of-town family.

Stay on top of respiratory treatments and medications. Check for improvement with my new lung-exercise toy.

Eat a gloriously crisp Braeburn apple. Then grab a few Cheetos for nutritional balance.

Tackle that overdue writing assignment again. Try to write a lead paragraph. When that fails, take the beagle for a walk. Ponder my upcoming 56th birthday. Laugh at the falling leaves. Thank God for my life.

Dangerous

This is my husband's deadliest weapon, reserved for taking down Big Game, like his wife. It is registered with the local sheriff's office. If you note the post time below, you'll see how this lemon tart caught me in its sights at the most vulnerable hour. Shame on him for maliciously assaulting his wife with this atrocity.

If you only knew the brutality I put up with every day. It's a miracle I've lived this long.

This might be my final post. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, please send a posse. You might need a skip loader too.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Random Image Series, II

Views of Roxy

The Good

There's a little bad and a little good in most things. For me that has seldom been so clear as it was yesterday. Both heartache and happiness paid their visits.
The Good: The storms continue after a long drought. We got a few beautiful inches by noon, with more forecasted today.


The Bad

The Bad: My mother forgot how to put on a pair of pants yesterday. The deterioration of her cognitive abilities is swifter almost by the minute. It was heart-breaking to watch her helplessly stare at a pair of pants on her lap.

As I watch her lose her mind, the caretaker's report was endlessly bad: She roams at night, yelling at people who are trying to sleep. She has lost her expensive hearing aid, and her false teeth are stained a brilliant orange for good, thanks to Tic Tacs. She struck the caretaker with her cane when the caretaker tried to help her dress.

When I talked to her about it, she said, "I know it's wrong! I'm sorry! I just want to go home!" For Mom "home" is heaven.

The Ugly

The only ugliness in my personal life is my mother's dementia. Everything else is beautiful. My hubby's enchiladas were made fresh for supper. The grandkids were here when I got home from Mom's, and they are gorgeously robust and lovely, full of laughter.


Father, please guide the search and rescue efforts in Haiti. Please hasten the aid and multiply the food and medical treatment. Bless all the people of Haiti, and bless those who reach out to help, like Dr. Jen who's working in the field.

Colossal Fossil Bugs

Colossal Fossil Bug Discovered

Scientists have found a claw
belonging to a scorpion eight feet long
if it were intact

The biggest bug ever! exclaims the newspaper
exhilarated by the find
as momentarily am I, a Scorpio

more so, maybe, than a Leo or an Aries
who could give a rat’s ass for scorpions
even if they are eight feet long

I am shocked too upon considering
that horror movie makers may be the visionaries
of the world—imagine, omigod

Why only a claw? Where is the rest
of the scorpion, and is it in another rock
longing for its warrior self

wrenched from it how? in battle or love
or a simple stupid accident when it was fishing
for a morsel it could have done without

But its hard-to-fathom age—
400 million years, say the paleontologists
with miraculous certainty

is what really gives me pause to wonder
how the hell do they know


******
Today’s news reports that marine biologists have recorded 17,650 species living in the ocean depths where the sunlight ceases. They are weird shaped and living on the snow-like decaying matter that drifts down from above.

They hope to announce by the end of the ongoing census that a million or more species remain unknown, in addition to the 235,000 living in the extreme ocean depths, which they thought was a desert until this plethora of living things showed up. On land, they’ve catalogued 1.5 million types of plants and animals.

It costs $50,000 a day to operate the equipment. What’s the daily cost of the war?

I don’t know why this fascinates me so much. It’s not going to change my life. But I like the idea of people searching for our fellow creatures, and the great myriad life forms make me thankful to live on planet Earth.

My gratitude list today:
Scientists who ask questions and seek answers.
Colossal fossil bugs.
Sobriety, which makes me marvel at life.
That God put me on planet Earth and not the moon.
That recovery has brought me to a Higher Power who knows all.
That we have brains, and God helps us use them.
That I can read.
That I can write.
That I don’t have to drink today to get all jazzed up about life.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Cheers,
Chris

The photos are from sciencecentric.com

Blooming in the Gloom

Equinox

One wakens to find an autumnal gloom
has lowered the boom on summer.
The bright yellow days segue to grays,
and the loins that ran rampant grow still
Yes, autumn is crisp with colors in the mist,
with apples and pumpkins galore, but still –
And not the least of all are the colors of fall
and the riotous joy in the trees. But please
let the haze drift away and the sun
warm this day, and don’t let the winter
come soon. For one’s bones are brittle
and they ache a little, and one’s brain
doesn’t bloom in the gloom.

I wrote the Equinox poem last year, when we actually had autumnal gloom in September. Now it's November and each day has dawned sunny, clear and cool. I'm thinking of all of you who have spoken of the fallen leaves and the gathering mist of autumn, and this poem is dedicated to you.

The photos are of the forest at Patrick's Point on the far northern reaches of California. Even in that foggy place, brilliance grew.

I've learned this autumn that one's brain can indeed bloom in the gloom, if one's heart has courage and one's eyes are open to possibilities.

When I was hospitalized, I thought I would never find my way out of the black tunnel of despair. Then I met people worse off than myself, people in deeper miseries than mine, and with them I took a look at my various troubles. I remembered something I heard in a meeting:

If we put our lives, woes and all, in a paper sack and placed it on a table beside everyone else's sacks of troubles, we would gladly claim our own sack again.


Chris Alba © 2009

Oh, No!

I slept like a log, thank God, and woke up late.

It's still drizzling, thank God. I'm off and running this morning to help a sponsee shop for a bridal shower, thank God for fellowship. When we hear that we don't have to do anything alone, we can depend on that.

A number of you have left comments on my posts that encourage me to have faith, keep trudging, count my blessings, and know that I am prayed for in my hour of need. You don't know how much I appreciate the words and prayers, the concern.

This photo is of a birdhouse I made from things found in a trash heap. I love its expression of dismay. I have felt like that from time to time, but sobriety has taught me how to change my attitude, if not my circumstances.

My sponsor drove me through a storm last night to win another prize in a small poetry competition. It was a mighty blustery, scary storm. But she drove precisely and with grace, and we talked about this gift of rain.

Instead of fear and anxiety, there was peace in that car. She's stayed sober for 26 years, and we share a lot of feelings, so we can laugh and relate on many different levels. A good sponsor is a gift as valuable as rain after a drought. I must run and get ready for the bridal shower shopping, but wanted to check in with some gratitude this morning for the blessings of living sober. Have a blessed day today unless you've made other plans.

Today Is a Gift

Today I rose before the sun, troubled by a nightmare. For the first time I had to put on my winter jacket, which made me sad. I can’t shake this feeling of grief. So much is worth thanksgiving, and I say the prayers, express the gratitude, work the program of sobriety, put out the effort to live with grace my blessed small life.
The writers conference yesterday was a region-wide celebration of language and both the work and art of writing. I took part with a whole heart. Yet fear lay like a rock in my gut, because I had entered my poem “Fire on the Mountain” (see Saturday’s post) in the pre-conference competition. Full of doubt and low self-confidence, I prayed my ass off to accept whatever came of it.
Fear brings adrenaline, both body chemistry and brain chemistry designed for fight or flight. For me, flight is the preferred response. Go hide. Be the deer, fleeing the hunter.
The competition session made me sick with fear. As the genres were announced, my body was the trembling deer. My prayers seemed fragile: Please make me okay with failure. Please grant me a small mention somewhere, an also-ran, a potential contender. And please give me grace to accept the loss, strength to face whatever came down the pike.
Three hundred people filled the auditorium. My entire region of the state was represented, people from as far away as Wisconsin and Washington state. I’m an alcoholic-addict in recovery who writes out of inner need to paint word pictures. I am a small human being, nobody really, and my faith is weak.
The genres were announced, the third-, second-, first-place winners of novel-writing, short-story writing, juvenile writing. It was poetry’s turn. I heard the names called, and they were not mine. Finally, the winning poem’s first line was read.
It was my first line. It was my poem. It was me they called to the podium to read “Fire on the Mountain.”

God had mercy on a flawed and struggling soul. I would have fallen on my knees with thanksgiving and awe if I had the guts. After reading the poem at the podium, I went to the ladies restroom, where I stood among the sound of flushing toilets and wept.

In fear we pray for acceptance and strength, often without a feeling of trust, only terror. But yesterday I learned God hears those cries of our fragile attempts at faith. He knows we’re flawed. I don’t understand His workings. He doesn’t always grant the prize. But I know that faith is not a feeling, and grace is our Creator’s greatest gift.

Finally, Monkey Man, here is my Sunday 160, originally titled "Menopause" but that took it over the space limit:

When her bleeding stopped

the fat roared in

not like a pear

but like an apple

with legs.

It was so grisly

she forgot to mourn

she was too busy eating

eggs to be sorry.

Chris Alba © 2009

Gratitude Is Work Well Worth the Effort

October here on the central coast of California brings brisk mornings and hot afternoons.

I'm obsessed by my sleeplessness and a little bit of woe, and it makes me overlook the things in life that are good and sweet.

So today I'm working on thankfulness:

My house is a mess, my garden is a mess, but I have a great cup of coffee in front of me and will work a ninth step with a beautiful sponsee.

My kittens make me laugh.

My Creator loves me and all the rest of God's kids.

My spouse is loving and funny.

I have dear friends.

The blogosphere has put me in touch with an interesting, supportive community.

Poetry brings me joy.

The list could go on and on.

I have a lovely grandson is enchanted with bubbles. I've posted a picture of him.

My dear friend Betsy, who suffers from Parkinson's, has laughter in her heart. Here's a poem about her.

Have a blessed day, all you good people.

Rainbow Sky

Quivering Betsy, with her quavering voice,
rides her wheelchair as if it were a dead horse
It’s hard to tell if she’s laughing or crying
because they sound alike, that hoo, hoo, hoo
While her lumpy body slumps in the chair
like a lump of clay waiting on the wheel
tremulous hands flutter around her face, like birds

Yet she can sing to her Jehovah
in the clear bell tones of an angel
and I heard her sing
The joy of the Lord is my strength
plus part of the Hallelujah Chorus
as I left her alone in her chair in her home
Rainbows spread across the sky
like the scattered petals of a rose
and I swear I saw her dancing

Chris Alba (c) 2009

Gratitude After a Relapse

The Drug Addict’s Lament

the dope the dope the dope
shrieking at you in the cupboard
open the door the sleight of hand
stealing on Easter for Christ’s sake
how can you
the dope the dope the dope
shrieking so loud you hear nothing
but its call from the cupboard
so you open the door on Easter
rolling the stone away from the tomb
and free the dope the dope the dope
shuddering with shame and gladness
leaping into the tomb

Today I'm grateful for the freedom I have through the power of my God.

The BB says, "The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."

It's part of my story that I was sober one Easter morning, and on a visit to my aunt I stole her painkillers--without a single thought about my sobriety! I'd had 15 years and drank again (see My Story), then got 14 months both clean and sober, then came that Easter morning and the attack of the "strange mental twist."

So today I keep a close walk with my Higher Power and I work extensively with other alcoholics. One of the meditations in my "Twenty-four Hours a Day" book has been a help to me:

"Keep as close as you can to the Higher Power. Try to think, act, and live as though you were always in God's presence. Keeping close to a power greater than yourself is the solution to most of the earth's problems. Try to practice the presence of God in the things you think and do. Abide in the Lord and rejoice in His love."

"Nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics!"

I am doubly grateful that my Higher Power has put newcomers in my life. They give me joy when all else fails. Today I'm off to the beach with Julia, to read the eighth step and go to an open-mike poetry reading. It doesn't get any better than that!