Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of May 28:

I have heard it said that the only valid comparisons are between myself as I am and myself as I used to be. When I think of Step Two and of being restored to sanity, such a comparison comes to mind.

I remember an incident some twenty years ago in which I was riding my motorcycle to a meditation class. I was late and in a big hurry to arrive on time. Right outside the meeting place I crashed my bike. My attempts to force solutions, to rush to an encounter with serenity, had failed. Did I feel contrite? Not exactly. Even then, I felt the irony of rushing to meditation, but mainly I felt angry that the town had failed to maintain the road on which I was riding. Rather than taking responsibly for my own haste and carelessness, I blamed others and saw myself as a victim. I did not feel thankful to have survived; I felt angry that I had been roughed up and thrown off schedule.

Today’s Reminder

Looking back, I see many examples of the grace of a Power greater than myself at work in my life. I see progress in being restored to sanity, and I am increasingly confident that my progress will continue.

“Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves.”

~ Maltbie D. Babcock

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Rev. Babcock was a Presbyterian minister and an American writer. He was known for his intelligence and oration. He battled depression, and was, at one point, hospitalized for this condition. He spent four weeks in a sanitarium in Danville, New York for “nervous prostration.” He visited the Holy Land a decade later and on his return trip, he and some of his associates contracted Mediterranean Fever, now known as brucellosis, which is known to cause depression. He ingested mercuric chloride and slit his wrists and died at 42. His wife published one of his poems after his death that has since became a Christian hymn, called, “My Father’s World.” He and his wife had two children, both of which died in infancy.

His wife lived on to be 86 years of age. If not for her, her husband’s writings would not have survived his suicide. If not for her, the Christian hymn would not have been preserved. Her name was Katherine Elliot Babcock (nee Tallman). I have found no significant biography on her life.

I have heard that it is a fallacy of logic to dismiss the message because of the failings of the messenger. I have also read that the Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed you have to consider the messenger in conjunction with the message. I’m not sure which camp I sit in. If you are preaching and teaching about a way to live that you yourself cannot live, should I trust the burden of these words in my life?

Maybe it is best just to share one’s experience and let the listener chose what is best for themselves.

I suppose Rev. Babcock left it to his wife to live out the Step Two ideals he invertedly wrote about. If you hear harshness in my words, it comes from my heart for the apparently devoted wife he decided to leave behind.

Here are a few more quotes from Rev. Babcock:

“to have failed is to have striven, to have striven is to have grown.”

“Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Everyone must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us.”

~ Maltbie D. Babcock

I suspect he missed a “chance of a lifetime” on the return trip from the Holy Land, there in Italy, with associates he could have reached out to.

From Courage to Change of May 27:

There have been days when many of us felt that good times would never come again. After so many disappointments, it seemed too painful to continue to hope. We shut our hearts and minds to our dreams and stopped expecting to find happiness. We weren’t happy, but at least we wouldn’t be let down anymore.

Caring, hoping, wanting — these are risky. But as we recover from the effects of alcoholism, we may find that the risks are worth taking. In time, it may not be enough to simply avoid disappointment; we want more; we want rich, full, exciting lives with joy as well as sorrow. Just finding the willingness to believe that joy can exist in our lives today can be very challenging, but until we make room in our hearts for good times, we may not recognize them when they arrive.

Nobody is happy all the time, but all of us are capable of feeling good. We deserve to allow ourselves to experience every bit of joy life has to offer.

Today’s Reminder

I will not let fear of disappointment prevent me from enjoying this day. I have a great capacity for happiness.

“I want to grow in my willingness to make room in my life for good times, having faith in their arrival and patience in my anticipation.”

~ Living with Sobriety

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I have no investment in notions of feeling good. Feelings are what fall off of me while I am moving, pushing forward in life. They are the breeze that comes through the open window of my vehicle. For me, emotions are the most deceptive of guides. They only become relevant if I can dominate them and use them to support the vital plans of my daily living.

Now, intuitive connection across the Veil of life and death is magical. That sense of life beyond the frivolous mundanity is where I am invested. Emotions tend to make their home in my autonomic nervous system, like my beating heart and regular breathing. That is the animal of my life. That is the impulse of biology.

But there is a space between stimulus and response in the human psyche. It can and should be expanded. It is the place where freedom is forged. In that place, I can slow down enough to listen to Infinity and translate that to a properly employed will. It is why I was created with a frontal cortex and a somatic nervous system.

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance. For after all, God gave us brains to use.”

~ Bill W. in Alcoholics Anonymous,

From Courage to Change of May 26:

“Anything worth doing,” goes a slightly cockeyed version of the old saying “is worth doing badly.” Perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis are three of the worst effects of alcoholism upon my life.

I have a tendency to spend my life waiting for the past to change. I want to spend the first hundred years of my life getting all the kinks ironed out and the next hundred years actually living. Such an inclination to avoid taking risks, to avoid doing anything badly, has prevented me from doing some of the things I enjoy the most, and it has kept me from the regular practice that produces progress.

If I’m unwilling to perform a task badly, I can’t expect to make progress toward learning to do it well. The only task that I can pretend to perform perfectly is the one that I have left entirely undone.

Today’s Reminder

Al-Anon encourages me to take risks and to think of life not as a command performance but as a continuing series of experiments from which I learn more about living.

“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

~ James Russell Lowell

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Living a life dancing around emotional tripwires has definitely led to the second-guessing of my intent of will. And yet, doesn’t the Twelve Step program show us the importance of evaluating our motives? How do I separate these two similar roads that lead to very different lives?

For me, I have to slow down and move away from living (or not living) life on impulse. It can be impulsive to withdraw or to immediately apologize for something my broken guilt-o-meter misidentifies as wrong. The plan is everything for me. There are specific times and places to look back over my day, a day that I took the courage to live. I find the correct ways to use my will as identified in the program, moving slow enough to make my mind more effective. Over time, I can make on the spot corrections based on habitual, planned, self-evaluations. But in the beginning, I need to be free to make on the spot errors to learn. I cannot grow into life with an atrophied soul.

From Courage to Change of May 25:

An Al-Anon meeting is where I am most likely to get an honest answer to the question, “How are you?” This is refreshing to me, because for a long time my only possible answer to this question was, “I’m fine, how are you?” — even when I wasn’t fine at all.

Denial is a symptom of the effects of alcoholism. Just as alcoholics often deny their drinking problems, many of us who have been affected by this disease deny our problems as well. Although we may have been living in chaos, worried about our families, full of self-doubt, and spiritually, emotionally, and physically depleted, many of us learned to pretend that everything was just fine.

Today it is important for me to be in an environment in which honesty is practiced. I don’t necessarily launch into a detailed description of my woes or my joys — but when asked how I’m doing, I try to ask myself what the real answer is. This frees me from the habit of denial and gives me choices.

Today’s Reminder

How do I feel today? How am I doing? If I can answer those questions truthfully, I am more likely to pursue the help I need and to share the happy times with others as well.

“We can say what we mean only if we have the courage to be honest with ourselves and with others.”

~ The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage

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Those of us who have experienced intimate betrayal, the witch hunt of religious organizations delving into private writings, and the prejudice of a judicial system aiding in the kidnapping of one’s children, know that a person’s honesty can be forged into a devastating weapon.

The anonymity of the Twelve Step program was essential in finding a safe place to evaluate my own motives and learn to trust again. The principle of being honest, truthful, and genuine is a hard-won prize in recovery and can only be fostered with others you know are truthfully invested in the well-being of its members. Not everyone can be trusted with our vulnerability. But I absolutely need to be honest with myself and with others who live in self-benefiting altruism. Those who claim to be offering aid self-sacrificially are a threat. If I am able to be honest with myself, I can choose to be honest with others. And I can choose who those others are.