IN THE BEST OF SEASONS

IN THE BEST OF SEASONS

There is something renewing about having a New Year's celebration in the Fall, something much more rejuvenating than a New Year's celebration in the most insensate part of the year. But with the sky a deep azure with a bit of a nip with a promise of warmth by noon there is still hope in another day.

And yet the trees, green, hinting of the gilt on the leaves and the promise of a harvest, these are the joys of a new year in the autumn.

But for the Jew the new year is a call to hearken back to year gone by to recall if one's deeds are worthy of being called to be written in the Book of Life for another year. Has one been good to one's fellow men, kind to one's family, a worthy Jew, peaceful, supporting the needy and helping the poor and suffering.

These are the requirements of normal people with normal lives. This is a normal life that I should have been living. But today I am leading a meeting, a Twelve and Twelve and at times I feel ill equipped to lead such a meeting because after 32.09 months of sobriety one would have thought that I would have gotten this "sobriety thing" down. This idea of knowing how to deal with guilt, grandiosity, problems with either blaming others or blaming myself too much. Dealing with insecurity, depression, worry, anger, self pity and relationships. And finally coming out the other side and not blaming anyone at all for my life, even myself, but accepting it with the notion that in the end with patience, and time, all things will get better.

Have I yet learned that?

Step four is to take a "fearless moral inventory" of oneself of all one's shortcomings and come to terms with those failings, who they involved and how they involved those folks. And in the end they will require of us that we make amends to those people with whom our inventory is involved. It is only when we come to terms with the baseness of our very beings, our souls, that we will finally be able to face a new and useful and fruitful life moving forward.

Otherwise we will always be reminding ourselves to "abandon hope of a better past" for the future that will be no different.

But somehow I never feel that I have the suasive ability to make myself believe that I can impart that knowledge or wisdom to a group of people who are as eager to understand sobriety as I am.  Indeed, who am I to do that at all, I often ask?

And to indicate my confusion I lead the discussion by analogy. Most people, when they do a fourth step, find that they have great difficulty in getting honest with themselves, with others and with the program. And after great personal angst with some literal and figurative cramps, out pops some story of mournful suffering which ultimately ends in a sense of uplifting release.

My story was like a feeling of being in an operating room getting an angioplasty with the surgeon telling me to hold on just a bit longer; the pain was only going to last just a bit longer while I was listening to a whirring sound of the atherectomy blade eating away the plaque in my anterior descending artery. "Just a moment longer" he was urging on as the pain felt like my heart would just rip out of my chest.

And then - - - quiet - - -. No more pain. My heart beat returned to normal. No more whirring. No surgeon's urging insistence on only a few more moments of pain and it would all be over, because it was.

Like my sponsor saying that all I had to do was get through the hard part and it would all be over.

But was that it?

But after another year and a half I know that isn't it.  I know there is stuff that I missed.  How did that happen?  Well I know how that happened! There were some lesions left in there that the surgeon left in there! 

We knew that!

So we got to George who was concerned about his sister who is terminal and he rambled about not being available enough, about being too self centered, about not being ready to help.

It's all about us isn't it? Isn't it?

And then Crystal who is fifteen days back wondering if she just did not do her program well enough the first time or was she just fooling herself or just what was she thinking buying that single malt scotch for her cousin at the duty free shop on her only vacation in the past year? Not ready for prime time or what?

We sure do test our sobriety to the limit and don't we know it each and every time?

But there was Norton, who by his own admission has stretched his belief in a higher power to the limit.  He doesn't know what to believe and where to turn.  Last week was out of the ball park.

On Tuesday his father died.  And since he is the only sober one in his family, dealing with the family homestead has become a real strain. But four days ago his friend loaded up on some drugs and OD'ed. Then three days ago his boss went out for a run and ran down a ravine and never came up, cutting his throat at the bottom.

"How should I think about this?" queried Norton to us in the room.

Norton is not religious, but if nothing else, he has a strong tie to his wife and children and if anything is going to keep him going, it will be his connection to his family and his friends in the program.

Drinking or drugging, that is not an option.  Too much darkness down that defile.  Go to meetings, talk to people, speak his feelings even if he has a very tenuous belief in God. For now he has a higher power in the others in program. Had he not done a step four he would be at sea right now.

These troubled waters could irrigate fertile seed for a bad crop of jitters and woes. Or with the pruning techniques learned through the Steps this could just be another solid harvest for this New Year, a New Year with an indigo sky, tawny soil with a whiff of chanterelle on the air.

 

© res 9/16/2012