January 30
The Was and the Is
The Silent Scream that existed as a placeholder for my G-d was incomprehensible to me. I entered AA and was informed that understanding my Higher Power was required not just some far distant goal. In true alcoholic form my first move was to shun G-d. This made room for my rage which was in much need of the space. After a few fine years of dissipation I lost interest in incendiary devices no matter how large their detonation capacity. Having cleared the room I brought in G-d as potted plant. I talked to it occasionally, watered and fed it, mostly ignored it. Growing in spite of lacking ministrations G-d was an unobtrusive force living in the corner changing gas into air and demanding nothing. As I quelled my apprehension and lived with the Presence I looked, listened, probed and questioned the subtle Force sharing the room. “Add it up,” chanted the children in my ear, “run the numbers, settle the accounts.” I calculated proofs and discarded the faulty and inaccurate. What was left, the whole, not the remainder was mine to keep, but it was not everything. I haven’t an everything G-d, because I am not a nothing person. I am something and G-d is something too. We are complimentary, like pairs of angles who come full circle.
Show the sun the souls of your feet
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TRUST
You can trust people to be who they are.
I am a different being in relationship to different people.
To some I am the center of their constellation,
The sun burning bright, I ‘m all they can see.
To others I am the moon,
Orbiting them, silent and dedicated.
With another group, I am a comet streaking through the sky,
Seldom seen but well remembered.
For many I am a distant star.
One among the multitude, blending in the night with the other signs.
Then there are the folks who see me in a more down to earth way,
I am the dirt beneath their feet.
The farmer sees me as a plant to be tended.
The cowboys view me as a horse to be broken.
To fisherman I’m a catch.
I am what people want to see.
So what can I trust them to be?
Wrapped in their own worlds
Yes, mostly I guess,
None of my business in the end.
I watch them and learn what I want to do, who I want to be.
In large part by avoiding what I see them do.
I do trust people to serve as bad examples, often
And good ones infrequently.
You are reading selections from More Sober on the Way to Sane and Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
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