Daily Reprieve

WARNING – SPOILER ALERT!  If you have not watched the new Battlestar Galactica series yet (and I highly recommend that you do), then this post contains quotes from that series.

Last night I was watching the new Battlestar Galactica series.  The particular episode was entitled “Lay Down Your Burden.”  The chief was getting counseling from a priest, and I felt the words resonate, as though my Higher Power was sneaking in on me:

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Cavill: Chief Tyrol, I am Brother Cavill. I understand you’ve asked for religious counseling.

Tyrol: I never really believed in psych therapy. My father was a priest.

Cavill: I see. You thought you’d have an easier time with a priest than a real doctor.

Tyrol: Okay. I pray to gods every night. But I don’t think they listen to me.

Cavill: Do you know how useless prayer is? Chanting and singing and mucking about with old half-remembered lines of bad poetry. And you know what it gets you? Exactly nothing.

Tyrol: Are you sure you’re a priest?

Cavill: I’ve been preaching longer than you’ve been sucking down oxygen. And in that time, I’ve learned enough to know that the gods don’t answer prayers. We’re here on our own. That’s the way they set things up. We have to find our own answers, our own way out of the wilderness without a nice little sunny path all laid out in front of us in advance.

Tyrol: That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to find my way.

Cavill: Well, it’s not going to get better until you see what the problem is. And the problem is, you’re screwed up, heart and mind. You. Not the–not the gods or fate or the universe. You.

Tyrol: Thanks for the pep talk.

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I felt like I was in an AA meeting.

When my fear and anxiety rise, it is very difficult for me to tell the difference between the Voice of Gomu (God of my understanding) and the Voice of my Fear.  I decided to surrender this morning to the reality that God is using AA to bypass my fear blockage and help me to hear what he is continuously saying to me.  It was a speaker meeting, and I was overwhelmed by the spiritual resonance of the speaker’s words.

The speaker touched me deeply when he talked about how God had dealt with relationship difficulties between he and his son.  I felt that I needed to trust my sponsor’s words.  Back off, and let God take care of it.

Then the speaker talked about how he blamed everyone else in order to take the focus off of the reality that he was his own problem.  He railed against the church in meetings, but it was not the church that was his problem.  It was himself. 

The counseling session on BSG continues:

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Cavill: And you were having the same dream when Cally woke you up, weren’t you?

Tyrol: I don’t know. I don’t remember. Maybe. It doesn’t matter, does it? All I remember is Cally o­n the ground and the blood.

Cavill: She stopped you. By waking you up, she prevented you from carrying out your secret desire to kill yourself.

Tyrol: I don’t have a secret desire to kill myself.

Cavill: Well, actually, you’re right. It’s not a secret. You obviously want to kill yourself. Question is why…….

Cavill: How long are you going to do this? How long are you going to refuse to see what’s right in front of your face? Forget it. I’m done.

Tyrol: What, you’re– you’re leaving?

Cavill: That’s right. I’m done. I’m done dancing around the truth with you. You know what’s going o­n. But you can’t or you won’t face it, so… I’m not a therapist. I’m not going to hold your hand and help you along. I’m just trying to get you right with yourself and with your gods, but you’re not willing to do it.

Tyrol: I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Cavill: Oh for gods’ sake, chief! Come o­n! You think you’re a cylon.

Tyrol: I am not a cylon.

Cavill: Well, of course you’re not. But that’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That you might be a cylon and not even know it just–just like Boomer, right? Right? That’s the thought that’s torturing your dreams and crippling your soul. I’m a cylon, just like Sharon, and I deserve to die.

Tyrol: Sharon didn’t know what she was. She just kept thinking– feeling that she was going to do this terrible thing. But she knew that she had to stop herself before she did.

Cavill: And you think that’s what you’re going to do. Some terrible thing. Well, the truth is, you might. But not because you’re a cylon. Because you’re a human being, and human beings do terrible things all the time.

Tyrol: But how do you know I’m human?

Cavill: Oh, well, maybe because T’m a cylon, and I’ve never seen you at any of the meetings. There’s not much more I can do for you. You’re going to have to go back to work and try and leave all of this behind you.

Tyrol: No. I– I can’t. I can’t go back and face the deck people again. And Cally?

Cavill: Well, you’d better. That’s the o­nly family you’ve got. Just know that that’s your family and that they love you. Even Cally. Especially Cally. If you doubt your humanity and your essential nature as a human being, all you need to do is look to them for the salvation you’ve been seeking from the gods. The gods lift up those who lift each other, Chief.

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I like the modification of “God help those that help themselves.”

I am listening, to the God that gives a damn.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God’s help. . . . we find that bit by bit we can discard the old life — the one that did not work — for a new life that can and does work under any conditions whatever.   (As Bill Sees It, pages 10, 8)

I have been given a daily reprieve contingent upon my spiritual condition, provided I seek progress, not perfection. To become ready for change, I practice willingness, opening myself to possibilities of change. If I realize there are defects that hinder my usefulness in A.A. and toward others, I become ready by meditating and receiving direction. “Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely” ( Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 58). To let go and let God, I need only surrender my old ways to Him; I no longer fight nor do I try to control, but simply believe that, with God’s help, I am changed and affirming this belief makes me ready. I empty myself to be full of awareness, light, and love, and I am ready to face each day with hope.

END OF QUOTE

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Before my alcoholism spun out of control, I lived over 14 years without drinking.  As a Christian I sought to purify myself of all lust and anger.  It was a miserable spiritual life of great futility.  I prayed and made deals with God.  I sought to appease the Father by emulating anything I knew about the Messiah.  I wanted to be transformed.

I felt that God ignored my desperation.  My continuous but futile struggle for purity so that I could become  a powerful channel of “God’s unconditional love,”  acted as a corrosive agent on my faith.  The death of my son, Josiah, and my marital apocalypse of 2003 crushed that strained faith.

I do not want to go back to a life of futility, a life that does not work.  Drinking and/or seeking to appease God are ways of life that do not work for me.  I think that it is impossible to “empty myself.”  My life and nature are the cards I have been dealt by the Universe.

In AA, my morality is based on intelligence, function, and the building of an intuitive, spiritual interaction between a loving Gomu (God of my understanding) and myself.  I trust the God that did not ignore me.  I trust the God that gives a damn.  I trust the God that I met in the rooms of AA.  For that God, I will listen and change.  I embrace the saving heresies of the 12 step spirituality.  Spiritual progress comes from a loving and empowering God.  Spiritual perfection comes from a condemning God who presides over our  human holocaust.

I am glad to surrender to Gomu, and whatever changes that intimate Deity deems appropriate for my service here on Earth.