Daily Reprieve

My slave recently sent me the original ending to the movie “I am Legend,” and I have watched it many times.  It is so powerful.  Why did they not use it?  Anyway, the ability to listen to intuitive guidance and recognize the humanity in those classified as “diseased” are prevalent in this version.  The final words “you are not alone.  keep listening.”  It is simply overwhelming.  This program, that movie, all speak to a greater truth of our existence.  Well done, Mine.

By the way, I couldn’t find the original link she sent me, but I think this one will work.

[http://www.movieweb.com/video/VIlvFoqpwWgxpl]

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A worn out, drugged up, addicted mass of humanity make poor champions of liberty and great fodder for tyrants.  My personal struggle for freedom from addiction is akin to mankind’s struggle to break free of the many shackles forged to contain the wild and powerful human spirit.  Here is a collection of some of my favorite quotes on freedom:

ARAGORN: What do you fear, lady?

EOWYN: A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recalls or desire.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.  ~Thomas Paine 

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,… of searching and experimenting,… of saying No to any authority – literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.  ~Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed, 1950

The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.  ~Thomas Campbell

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.  ~Abraham Lincoln

We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken

We have to call it “freedom”: who’d want to die for “a lesser tyranny”?  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Liberty has never come from the government.  Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.  The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  ~Woodrow Wilson

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.  ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.  ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, “Maxims: Liberty and Equality,” 1905

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.  (endigar input – hopelessness without the help of a Higher Power)

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

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The amends process has finally advanced.  63%.  It is taking me longer than I thought on just about every aspect of this program, of this life. 

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Self pity.  Morbid self reflection.  Bruised male ego.  Fear of becoming vulnerable to the interactive reality.  Here we go again.

I may not be a god, but I am expected to be one.  This is the stretching of this program.  Of this life.  Oh sure, connect with a Power greater than yourself.  But you still have to show up, still have to keep trying against the odds, still have to keep living one day at a time.  It is one of the paradoxes of this program, accept powerlessness to embrace power. 

Spiritual development as defined in recovery is about connection, but it is also about recognizing the value of yourself .  Get up soldier!  Get the fuck up and keep fighting. 

If you don’t believe you are of value, why should I?  This program is not for those who need it, but for those who want it.

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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ”

• This and variations on it have been attributed to various different sources, including Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, an old Chinese proverb, and Rita Mae Brown.

Luke 11:9-10 (Amplified Bible)

Let me clarify my feelings on religion.  Speaking from my grieving heart may not be understood by those listening with their analytical minds. 

If you practice religion, gain from its ritual, are devoted to your deity, and it unites you with the rest of humanity, and helps you to live out your own personal mythology, I am for you.  What I personally condemn is turning to these practices out of fearful pretense.  Even though it is effective to scare people into the boundaries of religious practice, I believe it hinders the development of personal mythology and thus the evolution of the collective conscience. 

My son Zack believed in a more universal and inclusive God.  I feared that if he did not say the right things, acknowledge god correctly, that he would be ultimatley rejected by this deity I wanted him to love.  I had to try to sell devotion to this being with the realization that most of humanity was going to be diverted into eternal torment.  And that I wanted him  to enjoy this great heaven while friends and loved ones screamed in torment.  So we would have to learn to turn a deaf ear to their sufferings throughout eternity.  I ask, who is really in hell? 

And these decisions must be made while those who are devoted to the god of hell argue amongst themselves about the correct format for appeasement and that sinister god remains silent and strangely distant. 

I have come to believe that there is something there, something that seems to have a love for us.  I have my reasons.  I also believe that I can interact with this being and still remain true to myself.  This being seems to withdraw only when I try to live falsely with him. 

I used to say that if I was going to look for demons in this modern world, I would camp out in a church.  Most religion is more motivated and inspired by darkness, fear, and evil then it is by a God of love.  And I am often no better.  I have felt this before, still do.  I am more afraid of what I could lose, than inspired by what I could gain. 

So this program of recovery invites me to step out of my comfort zone.  If I feel fear and continue on, I am not bowing to the worst aspects of my past religious indoctrination.

I dreamed of Zack last night.  If there is a heaven where someone as beautiful as my son is rejected, I want no part of it. 

I believe that this God is real in some fashion that we are not able to conceive.  The more I try to say I know, the more I reveal my fears that cause me to be intolerant.

What if God wanted to give us a test.  For me, a test given by an all-knowing being is not for the purpose of his education about an individual.  A test is given so that the individual can look in a well crafted mirror and know himself better.  The God of my understanding wants us to be true to what he created within us. 

This test is a simple question – can you accept a universe in which most of those people around you are going to be destroyed, because you know if it is true, you are safe?  Is that alright with you?  Can you sing songs praising the fuhrer of the heavens as a train of helpless humanity is paraded by you, screaming?  Do we just get up and shut the church windows so that we might not hear them?  Business as usual while the skies are lit with their hell fire?  Is this reality acceptable?  At least Adolf’s flames brought death and not eternal torment.  What sadistic mind would conceive of a fate for his beloved ones, and claim a Father’s heart?  Only one who is totally insane. 

I think that you pass the test if you can risk losing your personal spiritual safety because you will not help such a reality to perpetuate itself.   People are significant.  When we can label one person as insignificant, and discard them with the morning trash, we cannot lay claim to a special place in this world for ourselves.  Someone is holding a garbage bag with your name on it.  Tomorrow they may take over the moral sanitation department. 

Sometimes I can feel that callous aspect of religious pretense seep into the recovery rooms, and I hate it.  Sometimes, I can feel it in the temple of my own mind and heart, and I hate it even more. 

From the Bible paraphrase, the Message:  If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.  [1John 4:20]

From Buddha:  Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

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I had a dream with my now deceased Mother in it.  We were traveling north, it was mountainous terrain, like in Tennessee.  There were cell phones scattered below rocky escarpments along the road.  I assumed people had dropped them walking around atop, and would just discard them.  I seemed to feel very good about myself.

Back in the neighborhood Mom, Dad, and I were visiting there were a couple of individuals who had come to see me.  Pete Ross, dark haired and wearing a blue and white racing jacket, like the motorcycle racers wear.  And an artist that came to my Mother’s art studio when we lived in Centreville.  His name was Dusty Rhodes (looks nothing like the wrestler). 

I never got a chance to talk to either one of them.  I felt like I needed to prepare myself first.  Mom wouldn’t tell me why they had come.

Zack was the first non-faculty winner of the Life Raft debate at the University of Montevallo.

[http://www.liferaftdebate.com/]

I will never be religous again.  Never.  He didn’t deserve that.  People don’t deserve that.  Never again, my son, never again.

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King Theodin in Lord of the Ring said that no parent should have to bury their child.   My mother prayed that she would never have to face this tragedy.  I should have done the same.  My Zack, my stepson.  I hate the title stepson.  I was proud of him.  I loved him.  I counted him as my own.  But I gave him religion.  I gave him appropriateness. 

Zack, I wish I could talk with you now.  Without religion.  I wish I could tell you of the heresy of this program. 

Regardless, I am proud of you.  I love you.  one more time.  How I wish that I could talk to you.  Your brother  turns legal age this month.  Your sister got her driving permit.   And I remember your body.  Cold.   Still.  How can I walk this life without you.  If I had known the heresies of this program before you left, we would have had … I remember New Orleans.  I remember when you ran for class president with a mo-hawk and won, and caused a disruption for the facility of Thompson High.  God, Zack, I miss you.

Your bio-father was an asshole.  He did not realize what a treasure you were.  I screwed up too.  I kept trying to save you.  What an insult.  I was saved just by having you around. 

I miss you.  So stupid.  I should have held you more.  I love you Zack.  I am so sorry that religion got between you and I.  I am so sorry.  Please forgive me.

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Another day, another night.  Where do I go from here.  Tools that are habits, so I don’t have to think on it.  ingrain it so that I do what I need to breath another clean breath

Others.  This now becomes about helping others.  But if you think I or my kind are really wonderful people for reaching out to others, think again.  Sobriety vampires.  I need others in order to live.  selfish altruism is the reality we can trust.  Expand my spiritual environment or develop another intimate relationship with powerlessness. 

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