Corking the Bottle

I went to church last Sunday. A woman from a halfway house who designated me as her life coach wanted me to go with her and her father. I don't know if I will go again this week. Maybe if I am invited. Definitely not if I'm not asked. It's a Baptist church, very well attended last week. Sure, people were nice. But only three welcomed me and introduced themselves. Of course I didn't approach them. I was a stranger playing on their home field. A.A. people are more friendly. Maybe because it's not a clique. Maybe because we know we automatically have something in common. We all are there for the same reason. Correct me if I am wrong, but church people are church people for various reasons. Some are there to praise and thank God. Some are there for the music, some for the sermon. Others want to socialize. Some want to be seen. Some seek forgiveness, some give gratitude to the Lord. There are those who don't give God much thought until same time next week. ...

I was baptised and raised in a Presbyterian church, and continued to attend when I moved away to Idaho and Washington. I don't go anymore. I find the similarities between church and A.A. to be curious. Going to church and going to A.A. bring people with similar beliefs together with mostly the same goal in mind: To serve and to help others and to find God. There's a fellowship in both, even though attendees come from differing backgrounds. (When I was growing up, our congregation was professional and white, and that includes the college students who walked from nearby. My perception is that churches are more diverse, as A.A. is, these days.) The big difference I see is that A.A. doesn't tell you what you have to believe in. Churches insist the bible is the word of God, despite various interpretations of scripture. Believe as they do, or your next stop is hell. A.A. says believe in whatever works for you. I like that. I have formed solid beliefs about our spiritual se...

Church was a big part of my life growing up. God wasn't. I have learned that both can exist without the other. Now I don't go to church. But I do have God in my life. As I said yesterday, I am going through the testimonials in the back of the Big Book. A passage from "The Missing Link" describes the link that I used to be missing in my life as well: "Following this spiritual path made a major difference in my life. It seemed to fill that lonely hole that I used to fill with alcohol. My self-esteem improved dramatically, and I knew happiness and serenity as I had never known it before, I started to see the beauty and usefulness in my own existence, and tried to express my gratitude through helping others in whatever ways I could. A confidence and faith entered my life and unraveled a plan for me that was bigger and better than I could have ever imagined." I passed along this message at my A.A. meeting a little while ago. I felt God was telling me to s...

My childhood friend, David, posted this on Facebook. He beautifully says what we need to do to turn our lives around. Emphasis and parenthetical addition at the end are mine: At times, we must be driven to the point of distraction before we are ready to turn difficult sit uations over to God. Anxiously plotting, struggling, planning, worrying—none of these suffice. We can be sure that if we turn our problems over to God, through listening to others share their experience or in the quiet of meditation, the answers will come. How do we begin the process of letting God guide our lives? When we seek advice about situations that trouble us, we often find that God works through others. When we accept that we don’t have all the answers, we open ourselves to new and different options. A willingness to let go of our preconceived ideas and opinions opens the channel for spiritual guidance to light our way. There is no point in living a frantic existence. Charging through life like th...

To give up our addicted ways requires a close relationship with a higher power. If I could think of a stronger word than "close" I would use it. "Intimate" maybe? When that bond is formed it is life-changing. If you have experienced such a rebirth, you know what I mean. I sometimes quote The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.( https://www.seeken.org/the-road-less-traveled-summary/ ) Here is his view of rebirth, the kind we feel when we find God and stop drinking (pages 250-251): "We are always either less or more competent than we believe ourselves to be. The unconscious, however, knows who we really are. A major and essential task in the process of one's spiritual development is the continuous work of bringing one's conscious self-concept into progressively greater congruence with reality. When a large part of this lifelong task is accomplished with relative rapidity, as it may be through intensive psychotherapy, the individual will feel 're...

Todd has a concern. He is in the early phase of battling his addiction. His best friend of many years continues to use with no desire to stop. At A.A. today, Todd asked for guidance on whether he should drop his friend to keep himself clean or face temptation while keeping the friend. I spoke up about page 101 in the Big Book: "In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed.... "Be sure you are on solid spiritual ground.... Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it." Dottie added this analogy. "If you hang around a barbershop long enough you're going to get a haircut."

* Yinz is a second-person plural pronoun used mainly in Western Pennsylvania English, most prominently in Pittsburgh....  -- Wikipedia It's Sunday; another day of NFL football. Sadly again, our local CBS affiliate thinks more people in the Louisville area want to watch the Colts than the Steelers -- even a Steelers-Bengals game like today's. I see more license plates and stickers announcing Steelers fandom around Louisville than, perhaps, every other team put together. The point is, when I can't watch the Steelers at home, I go to Buffalo Wild Wings, a chain of restaurant/bars that shows all games on large-screen TVs. I wear Steelers garb and enjoy that more people there are cheering for the Steelers than for anyone -- including the Colts. For the second time this season, my daughter is going with me. She likes football and inherited my Steelers DNA (I was born and raised near Pittsburgh). I don't know if she goes to watch the games or to keep an eye on me at the...