Problem with the Lint God

Just as a dog stares toward an unidentified, unfamiliar sound,

and a cat immediately relocates away from the meaningless sound thereof,

the intuitive contour releasing one from the bondage of non-discernment

rarely meaningfully intersects

the illusory

human spirit of

procrastination. 

 

Problems with the Lint God

begin and with the maintenance of cleaning

the Lens on the Camera called

Service.

No One's More Humble Than Me

In the School of Prayer, invisible doors open and close on the hinges of humility (no demands, expectations, nor comprehension stand as a requisite to cooperation). 

Many years ago, I read a book titled, “The Good Old Timers”.  It was a historical insight into the personalities behind the Oxford Movement, out of which grew a well-known organization that flourishes today called Alcoholics Anonymous.  It was interesting reading about what motivated these individuals to create a movement to help the helpless, denigrated souls who were generally considered hopeless because they were “alcoholic”.

One of the more prominent figures of the time was a proctologist known as, Dr. Bob.  For decades, Dr. Bob had a plaque on his desk which in some circles came to be known as the Humility Prayer or Statement. The original source is attributed to Andrew Murray, a South African Minister. It moved me such that I would like to share in this article the contents thereof.

“Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble.  It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore;  to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Creator in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.” 

Any time a human being experiences a pure layer of humility, it can be argued that they were walking on water.

The only time I am upset is one God or someone else ‘ain’t’ doing things my way. In God’s economy, nothing is wasted.

Mock Crash ~ St. Francis High School

Today St. Francis high school staged a mock crash, which was supported by the St. Francis Community Drug Awareness Organization.  It took a lot of preparation to set up the Mock Crash. Sometimes a mock crash does not have a helicopter come in, and sometimes they do. I think it has to do with the availability of a helicopter, but this time they had one. After the helicopter left and the Hertz picked up the corpse, the mock crash itself was officially over, and then I was introduced to speak.

Youth volunteers walked around with my posterboard props to show the audience while I was speaking. These youth impressed me with their attention to civic responsibility and volunteerism.  I could easily see these youth grow to be leaders.

The audience was very attentive to my story, were quiet and appropriate during the entirety of my speech, and seemed to be very committed to the sober drivers.

They said they might invite me back to speak at the next Mock Crash in 2020. I got kick cancer's butt before that becomes a reality.

It was also great to have two personal friends make the drive to St. Francis to hear me speak.  Heartwarming!

Here's a video link:

https://www.facebook.com/danaanna024/videos/10156439203978112/?t=11

Tear Collector

I saved my tears for years in a Tear Collector and then bought oils appropriate to the task, secured a beautiful basin, and washed my loved-ones feet with my hair (I actually had long enough hair back then). That person left Earth School long ago (died of drinking). But this person experienced love from me.

Like a cat rubbing its face on everything near it, I go about my business annoying people. LOL! It's a tough job. Somebody's gotta do it.

 

Expect a Miracle

I have been so weak and tired, it's been very hard to gather the energy to Blog, but I'm managing today.  Here's a little something for you:

In early recovery I heard a great many things that help keep me on track, one of them being Expect a Miracle.

Well now...a friend of mine, Tina Feigal just sent me a book titled, 'Expect a Miracle' and I'm excited about digging in!

We should ALL write about the Miracles that have happened in our lives. Some of us should have been dead a long time ago, but I guess Creator had other plans! LOL!

Have you ever meet someone who defied EVERY ODD of survival (like most addicts, really), who have been WALKING ON WATER so long and didn't know it until one fine day they got Clean in Recovery and realized they were the recipient of a Miracle (or bunches of them)? Well, every person whose path we cross is a Miracle when we are looking for Messages.

Who or what is YOUR Messenger today?

First Things First & the Spiritual Abacus

To the surrendered heart, soul, mind and strength, the first and the last are identical. God determines the order, even if it looks backward to the human mind. First Things First has its place in the lower order of things, like, get your oxygen mask on when the plane is going down BEFORE you help others get theirs on. But in the Higher Meaning of Life, God's Love is the true oxygen. Whether we live or die is irrelevant. Maybe Lazarus was bummed after Jesus boogied, leaving him behind. But ultimately, all things are pure to the pure of heart, surrendered consciousness. In God's Economy, nothing is wasted. The last shall be the first and the first shall be the last.

Eulogy for Flibbertigibbetting

Gossiping about someone without giving them a chance to color the evidence is cowardly, harmful, and wrong. Gossip is born in mind, passes the lips like a subtle hiss, and brings down the greater good to the lowest common denominator. It commonly serves as a tool to make oneself feel superior to someone else. I've rarely heard accurate information transmitted regarding a person who was not present to hear it communicated. This same mistake broadly applies to religion, science, politics, management/HR, family, homelessness, race, gender, income levels, etc.

Bobby Fischer, the 11th World Chess Champion that many esteem as the best that's ever been (probably a higher percentile of Americans subscribe to this notion than abroad), taught a lesson on chess that I absorbed as a life truth. He said it is paramount to look at every square on the board that every piece can move before committing oneself to a move. Sounds like great advice for life in general, right? Silence and circumspection should attend every important decision that one makes before pulling the trigger.  This training readies us for real life when we might not have time to flesh out all the possibilities.

When we are in training or otherwise have time, here’s what has helped me through the years.  I call it T-3, and in certain circles, it is an axiom or Slogan. "Think, THINK, Think" has for me become a lifestyle, akin to Bobby Fischer's' prescription for winning chess. 1-T) Think. I briefly consider the matter at hand, then separate myself quickly from it to suspend my judgment, then return to it with objectivity. 2-T) On important issues, I consider every aspect of it as deeply as I am capable, analyzing the interplay of ideas, moves, and relational outcomes consummate to the task at hand. Then after holding on to the possibilities that seem most promising and dismissing the chaff, I select the strongest sequence of moves available, and then I WALK AWAY or daydream about anything other than the plan. Then, 3-T) Returning to the decision I made after the thorough consideration, I reconsider my options confidently but without conceit, looking for things I might have missed.

In tournament chess, the hard and fast rules are, "Touch Move, Touch Take." If you touch the piece, then you must move it or take it. Touching is a total commitment; just like speaking is not easily unspoken, one should weigh it out carefully before committing to it.

Then comes the clincher for clarity. I free my mind of everything I think I know, then reach for the piece to move, and deliberately 'almost' touch the piece several times. With the spirit of humility and gentleness rather than fear or agenda, I wait for my intuition to reveal what my logical mind missed. I can't begin to count the number of times the intuitive mind shows me what I missed in my 'Think, THINK, Think' processing.  Emily Dickenson said, “Dwell in possibility.”  How can we gossip about a thing that doesn’t feed our ego or anger?  Gossiping is a strange form of lazy supremacy.  Rise above it, and you’re bound to taste the sweetness & peace you’ve been desiring.

Negative Vision Board

It goes both ways, right? Practicing the wrong thing over and over expecting different results? Hard head, soft ass. Hard ass, soft head. Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, if we allow it. I needed every drunk that led up to the last one (knock on wood). But if there are GOOD miracles, there are probably BAD miracles, too, though most people view a miracle as something positive. We get what we focus on or pray for.

We can make a Vision Board for a beautiful future or we can make one for a rotten future.

Grief:  Magi of the Sacred Fire

“COGI QUI POTEST NESCIT MORI” (‘Who can be forced has not learned how to die’) ~ SENECA THE YOUNGER

A 13-year-old girl I know recently overdosed on prescription drugs.  Her Godmother grieved because she promised the girl’s mom who was on her deathbed with cancer that she would protect her daughter.  Hence, the motivation for the following article on grief.

"There can be no grief without love, for a person who does not love, cannot grieve. Grief is the Servant of Love, but this Servant's duty is of 'Firekeeper.'

What is the purpose of grief?  Grief fire burns off everything that is not essential to Love. This whole, lengthy undertaking, is excruciatingly painful to the carrier of Love but is key to Love's purification.

Ironically, Grief burns off illusions and attachments, but nothing more. The only thing real is Love, and when the attached illusions are but embers, Grief itself does its Sacred Last Dance around the Dying Life of the Fire.

Then, its duty consummated, Grief throws itself upon the embers of an old existence to die in a brilliant burst of flames. The beauty of the moment illuminates beautiful mystery, and unforgettable higher learning is left alone to leave its newborn to experience life on life’s terms.

Here’s another Seneca quote: "ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes homines". A loose translation, ‘as fire tempers gold, so strong people are tempered by suffering.' To become pure gold, the original gold-bearing ore must go through the tempering process or Trial by Fire; the analogy being that for a person strong in spirit, adversity and suffering are the tempering agents necessary to refine character and bring out real potential.

The entirety of humanity is at times perplexed by its inner demons, but burn off the demons, and all that remains is true Self. Our problem is that we have forgotten who we are. But there is Hope, for our Friend Grief is the Magi of the Sacred Fire.

If Grief fails to kill itself after performing its duty, then the process of renewing attachment begins, and the cycle of grief begins anew. Wave after wave of pain drowns the fire until the Spirit learns Love is more powerful and necessary than oxygen.

Here's a poem titled, "Phoenix" that I wrote about this process from my experience, and I share it to help my friends make some sense of their Grief." Religiously stated, maybe the process was like LOVE...the ghostly gift rising like the phoenix from the curse, like Christ leaving hell. This Too Shall Pass.

Follows is a poem I wrote about grief after losing a marriage, a loved-one who drank herself to death, and more.  No matter what happens to us, we grow stronger with time.

PHOENIX

spirit body

broken,
gathered up limbs
collected for a stretcher.

he’s cutting, again.

shadow sky dips into midnight;
snail clouds creep along

straight razor moonbeams.

 

not like a nightmare,

for nightmares shift quickly
and unconsciousness' dies in the waking.

There are few pains as sickly,

As lost love spoken thickly.

ease along,

press into and face your pain,

but lean not, oh outer mind, to your own understanding.
travel through every drawn & quartered layer

 of affection vanished.
it’s a sacred space where slowness heals just fast enough

to create new skin.

~new skin~

fresh
for the next cut.
moving, sliding, inching along, just keep moving, surviving.

how many more times will you watch this full moon rising? 
it all seems so limitless, so fruitless.  
this seems the strangest life one can ever know,
this surviving surviving.

only when I realize I am both snail and blade,
my aloneness plummets like honest angels to the earth,
the high blade bathes a blood red moon.
 

~the fall murders my pain~
finally, I am

poet.

 

Repetition is the Mother of All Learning

The best way to achieve a Black Belt, like any other learning, is to repeat OUT LOUD and silently, the lessons.  Pass It On.  When we give it to someone else, they give back to us the lessons we need to take our training to a better place to teach the next lesson.  To the self-limiting Black Belt Police (the ones who say you need to have a Black Belt to teach), step out of their way and let them throw themselves on the ground.  

 

It’s Not Illegal to Be Crazy; It’s Only Illegal to Act Crazy

Jean-Paul Sartre penned, “Hell is other people.”  I thought, “What’s he talkin’ about?  I love people and do not consider people “hell.”  I summarily dismissed his words.   While I believe it is essential to have the courage of one’s convictions, I think it is imperative to question one’s convictions.  There’s always more freedom in a question than in its answer.  So, I forced myself to suspend my belief system and examine his proposition open-mindedly and in so doing, reinvented my perception.  

Let’s examine the very words we might use to either trap or free us and take a snapshot of our legalese, namely, the adversarial system and its language.  When someone's branded a perpetrator, it’s easier to call them a monster, or Inhuman, to demonize them.  We do this in religion, politics, social strata and even regarding race.  On a more subtle level, this demonization comes in gentler phraseology, such as, “Them” or “These People,” as if there is not a potential or capacity to harm others is present in every one of us. 

Fortunately for everyone, very few of us act on thoughts we have when we’re angry or upset.  It’s not illegal to be crazy; it’s only illegal to act crazy.  But some of us have mugshots to prove we were behaving crazy.  I do, but I am more than my mugshot.  Though we might get booked and photographed by the police, we are more than our mugshots.  We should not define ourselves or “others” by our worst moments.  According to Attorney Emily Baxter, “We are all criminals,” or at least would have been had we been caught. All I can say is, “Thank God life isn't fair” because if it were fair, many of us would be in serious trouble right now.

Every country and culture packages and produces both violence and forgiveness. If we fail to recognize the underlying humanity of those who commit violence, how can we ever hope to change it? And how can we empower survivors to transcend tragedy if we are ripening a victim’s ability to feel ‘less than.” Why enable safe harbor to staying at the victim stage?  Forgiveness is an inside job.  We forgive not because the offender deserves forgiveness, but because we deserve peace.  Forgiveness exorcises the demon and relieves the perpetrator of its brand; the forgiver finds peace.  Fail to forgive, and the beast stays with the victim in a self-made prison of relationship. 

When a victim owns the responsibility of being a victim, they take their power back. Victimhood sheds its snakelike skin against the rocks of compassion, which is, ironically provided by those who have “dropped the rock.”  When an offender takes ownership of their offense, they release the culprit status of self-made guilt & self-pity, which paradoxically represents another form of victimhood.  We need to hang up the blamethrower. 

The world is addicted to judgment, and lack of mercy is a global contagion.  Stop defining yourself and others by one's worst moments.  We need to stop absorbing into our Collective Consciousness stories which don't empower us.   Run a spiritual virus scan on yourself and then purge the virus from your system.  For this writer, God is the oxygen in forgiveness. 

In a search for distillation of wisdom, I was touring a graveyard reading tombstones, hoping to find a lifetime of experience all rolled into a word or sentence.  On an obelisk, I read, “The sins of our brothers we write in sand, but their virtues we carve in granite.” 

“Hell is other people.”  I focused on the word, “other.”  Ah yes, it became apparent what Sartre might have meant.  Other races, other religions, other political parties, other orientations, other classes, and the myriad of “other” Us/Them scenarios.  Quit spending time thinking about things you don’t like or don’t want. ‘Look for the Good’ in any given person, place or thing, and you’ll find it.