Tag: God

Does Everything Actually Happen for a Reason?

“Everything happens for a reason” conflicts with AA principles: it misleads recovering alcoholics into thinking they are special—that they are somehow more worthy of salvation than the addict or alcoholic who perished.

“Because genocide.”

That was me, in my typically understated fashion, explaining to a newly recovering alcoholic why he shouldn’t heed the single silliest phrase permeating the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous: “Everything happens for a reason.”

In my seven-plus years attending AA meetings, I’ve come to know and loathe my share of cliché recoveryisms. For example, to me, “Let go and let God” overshoots otherwise sound advice against trying to control everything into a place of irresponsible complacence. “If you spot it, you got it” blames an observer simply for noticing wrong behavior or thinking, while “All of us only have today” weighs equally the experience, strength and hope of a wise old-timer and a wild-eyed newcomer. We don’t all just have today—we have all the days before it.

And it is baffling why the Our Father—a prayer praising a conventional paternalistic, heaven-dwelling religious deity—still closes many meetings, as it directly contradicts the organization’s stated non-alignment with any sect or denomination, per its Preamble.

So yes, AA phraseology has its share of eye-rolling headscratchers. But none are as cringe-worthy and counterproductive as the concept that every single thing that transpires in life does so as part of a grand, predestined scheme.

In an everyday setting, “Everything happens for a reason” can be brushed aside easily enough. Outside the realm of recovery, it becomes little more than a difference of opinion; your churchgoing aunt believes God is in heaven treating us like marionettes, while you prefer a puppeteer-free existence. To each his own.

However, AA’s penchant for preordainment is particularly problematic, due to the specific forum in which it is propagated. In a recovery setting, the notion that all occurrences— good, bad or indifferent—are part of some predetermined master plan is a double-edged sword that does a disservice to all involved, believer and nonbeliever alike.

Unreasonable Expectations

Let’s start with those in my column: recovering alcoholics who, though they may embrace a spiritual higher power—a rhythm of the Universe, let’s say, don’t ascribe to a god that directly intervenes in our lives. If you wonder why athletes thank the Lord after a big win, you’re in my boat. Call it the “God doesn’t score goals” perspective.

When people who don’t believe in an interventionist deity are told to see the hands of God in everything, there is no common ground. Many of us, myself included, were stone-cold atheists upon entering AA; some of us, myself not included, still are. A healthy agnosticism is the best many of us can muster while—and this point is crucial—retaining a recovery-capable level of self-honesty. Few stay sober by lying to themselves about something as mission-critical as spirituality.

Upon entering AA, we were assured by both literature and longstanding members that our spiritual skepticism was fine, as long as we were willing to put faith in some sort of higher power. Many of us took Step 2 with the group itself in that role and, in Step 3, turned our will over to… well… something as best we could without the whole endeavor feeling so forced that it forced us out the door.

And then… “Everything happens for a reason”? That’s a bridge too far—and one apt to collapse carrying newcomers who are left feeling betrayed by the agreed upon rules of repeated spiritual engagement. It also leads to inferiority complexes, when these newcomers compare themselves to AA members who seem to take God’s Great Chess Game of Life at face value.

Replacing that collapsed bridge is a wall. There’s no kind way to say this: Many people who don’t believe everything happens for a reason find those who do simultaneously pretentious and unsophisticated—an oxymoronic mélange of know-it-all-ism and naiveté. When I hear someone in AA insist upon God’s almighty plan, it makes me respect what they say next significantly less.

And no, comment thread, that isn’t my arrogance—it’s the phrase’s. “Everything happens for a reason” is a condescendingly cocksure nonstarter that cleaves members off from each other. Worse, it does so completely unnecessarily, since its veracity is entirely irrelevant to the greater principles and practices of AA’s primary purpose: recovery from alcoholism and addiction.

How many newcomers, I often wonder, have gone back out and died because they didn’t realize “Everything happens for a reason” is by no means AA dogma, but rather AA dog… something else. Even one is too many.

And if the true believers can’t stop saying it for nonbelievers, maybe they can stop saying it for themselves. Here’s why.

No Good Reason

In Alcoholics Anonymous, “Everything happens for a reason” conflicts directly with the program’s principles. It does so by misleading recovering alcoholics into thinking they are special—that they are somehow more worthy of salvation than the addict or alcoholic who perished. The result is a sort of unintentional hubris that flies in the face of sobriety-bolstering ego deflation.

By implication, declaring yourself selectively saved by an all-intervening God acknowledges that this same deity let others perish. He took Prince, Amy Winehouse and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but left… you? Forgive me if I find that conceited.

On a macro level, I also find it insulting. This Calvinistic approach to human existence means God assents to tsunamis, earthquakes, war crimes. If you sincerely believe that God greenlighted the Holocaust, I simply don’t have much to say to you. Again, this notion of intra-organizational separation is all caused by a concept completely unnecessary to that organization.

Unfortunately, a major obstacle in all this is utter obliviousness. From where I’m sitting, the vast majority of those who espouse, ad nauseam, that “Everything happens for a reason” do so from custom rather than castigation. By and large, religion—or, rather, a sophomoric interpretation of religion—has weaned them to believe they are somehow saved, chosen or otherwise privileged. There is an entrenchment to this flawed view of eminence that makes it as intractable as it is unpalatable.

In this manner, “Everything happens for a reason” is an unreasonable phrase often repeated for no good reason other than a “sure, why not” reluctance to challenge outdated thinking. It’s one of those grandfathered-in phrases that should be retired, along with the uber-sexist “To Wives” chapter in the AA Big Book.

In late 2011, as a 32-year-old just drying out off a DUI and with a wife halfway out the door, AA’s preordainment problem nearly made me explore other sobriety options. This would have been a mistake, considering how well-suited the literature, the 12 steps and the fellowship turned out to be for my recovery.

It is in line with this concern—attracting and retaining newcomers—that a concerted effort should be made to retire “Everything happens for a reason” from the rooms of AA. And I for one believe that doing so depends entirely on our efforts, not God’s plan.

View the original article at thefix.com

31 January 2019
You Can't Keep It Unless You Give It Away

The responsibility to give honestly is my job; the responsibility to take honestly is theirs and not for me to determine. I could go crazy trying to decide which homeless person is worthy and which is not.

It’s one of the odd truths about life in New York City that some days a homeless person might just be the only person who talks to you, especially if you work solo and live alone. During my months-long stay in New York this year, I walked alone, ate alone, sat alone at two plays, shopped alone, got lost alone, took the subway alone, all with no conversations and no interactions. Of course, I was partially to blame. In my zeal to be considered what I thought a real New Yorker was, I had an impassive face perfected and was proud of my aplomb. I wasn’t a tourist, after all. I was there taking a class, trying vainly to get the city out of my bloodstream so that I wouldn’t suddenly run away from my husband in Arizona and move there permanently.

One of the things I had to do to be like a native was ignore the homeless. I took my cue from those around me, rushing to wherever I needed to be, looking impassively straight ahead when the solicitations started on my subway car. It was hard. Hands beseeching, cups outstretched, people sleeping in piles of blankets on the sidewalks, the distinction between blankets and human being inside not always apparent.

This plan seemed to work. At least, until my depression recurred and I began to feel I was dying. One night, before burrowing into my hotel room, I went to get some fruit from a market on Park Avenue, passing a man on the way there whom I thought was loudly ranting into his phone about “some woman.” Certainly none of my business so I knew I needed to paste on my impassive face and walk on by. But on the way back, carrying a bag of bananas and oranges, I listened more closely and I realized the woman he was ranting about was me.

“Look at her with all that fruit. She can’t give me some. Don’t even care, walking on by with bananas and oranges, swinging that bag. She’s evil, don’t care about nothing and no one.”

At my home in Arizona I carry money in my car’s center console in case I happen to be pulled up alongside a person with a sign standing in the center median at an intersection. I’m a little cautious so I move my purse away from the window, roll it down, look in the person’s eyes and wish them the best.

But I was in New York and taking cues from real New Yorkers. Yes, the homeless problem was overwhelming here, so overwhelming that perhaps the only way to deal with it is not to encourage it. I understand I was dropped here out of the blue with no history and no understanding of the differences between the New York homeless problem and that of my home state.

Back in my hotel room, the fruit put away, I was shaken. What did I think I was doing? My 12-step program teaches me that I am no better than any other human being on earth, and certainly no better than any possible person who may have a substance use disorder. It teaches me that judgement is poison for any addict. And that the responsibility to give honestly is my job; the responsibility to take honestly is theirs and not for me to determine. I could go crazy trying to decide which homeless person is worthy and which is not. I know from the program that if I hold something too closely I’ll lose it and only by living fearlessly and letting go can I be free. And I read somewhere that the universe, God, Higher Power – whatever – doesn’t handle money, that what we have in excess is for us to give.

It turns out that it’s impossible to get New York out of my bloodstream. If anything, I fall more in love with it, with the grid lines of the streets and avenues, with the museums, with the crowds and food, and with the beauty of spring when it suddenly appears, and I find myself basking in the unbelievable sunshine at Bryant Park.

I know all the controversy out there about the homeless and giving. I know that some say New Yorkers should only give to the Coalition for the Poor. Others say that giving only increases the homeless population, encouraging them to stay in certain neighborhoods. Some people give food, others nothing. It’s a seemingly unsolvable issue, even with nearly two billion dollars in the state’s budget to fix it.

But the political became personal when I suddenly understood that I hadn’t become someone else when I came to New York; I had to stop pretending.

I checked my wallet. Among some larger bills, I had nine single dollars. I folded them all and put them in the back pockets of my jeans, so they’d be easy to reach. The next day when I heard someone ask for help I looked into my fellow human being’s eyes and remembered that I’m one of them. It changed how I felt about the streets, the dread of the nonstop pleas. Suddenly I sought the encounter. I was waiting with their money in my back pocket.

I never ran out of single dollars and each night I had more of them in my wallet to hand out the next day.

In recovery programs, they say that what we’re doing by sponsoring people and doing service and putting ourselves out there is not so much to help others as it is to help ourselves, so we can stay sober. What I learned was that I wasn’t giving money to save all the homeless people in New York. I’m not that important and one dollar isn’t going to do that much. I was giving the money to save my own life. I was doing it so I could stay human.

View the original article at thefix.com

1 November 2018
AA's "How It Works" for Everyone

Women have had to endure a generic “He” for God all these years. I am not rewriting the Big Book. I am simply asking for a moment to honor my God as a She; for a moment of freedom to express my God as I understand God.

After attending AA meetings for 12 years, I picked up a coin this month celebrating ten years of continuous sobriety. Throughout my sober years, when asked at meetings to read “How it Works” from the AA Big Book, I sometimes replace “He” with “She” for the word “God.” Recently, an old-timer in my AA home group became highly offended when he heard me read my “She” version of “How it Works.” My improvisation became such an issue that it was put on the agenda at our home group’s monthly business meeting. A motion was presented to place wording at the top of “How it Works” stating, “Please read as written, do not make changes.” After much discussion, members of my home group decided not to make this change to our meeting format. Whew! How interesting!

As with any issue in recovery, I learned from this experience. I learned that people get offended at meetings! Ha. We can’t please everyone. I mean, I get offended at meetings, but I just accept things and go on. If I do not like the way a meeting is held I move on to another one. “Attraction, not promotion.”

Thanks to my messing with pronouns, I find that I am no longer asked to read at AA meetings very often. Yes, the whole Big Book is written in He/Him-antiquated-patriarchal-Bible-form and I accept this. I mean, I got sober underlining everything in red that pertained to me as I worked my first step not caring about the gender terms! I simply did what my sponsor asked me to do. The pronouns were not important at that point. What mattered was that I did and do identify with the men who shared their message. Yet still, today, when asked to read at a meeting, I feel it causes no harm to insert She/Her instead of He/Him for my God. Women have had to endure a generic “He” for God all these years. I am not rewriting the Big Book. I am simply asking for a moment to honor my God as a She; for a moment of freedom to express my God as I understand God. That is all.

Lately I have begun using a gender-neutral term for “God.” Instead of saying “He” or “She,” I simply say “God as we understand God.” For truly, I have experienced God as a spiritual man, as a spiritual woman, and most recently as pure divine spirit, with no gender identity at all. How could GOD be reduced to a He or a She, to a mere sexual form? Hence, my favorite definition of God is “Group Of Drunks.” Namaste: “The Drunk in me greets the Drunk in you” (the sober drunk, of course). I see GOD in all of you at meetings! It is my favorite vision! I love you all so much!

I have to remember that “love and tolerance is our code.” If an old-timer is offended because I say that I have made a decision to turn “our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Her,” umm, hey, imagine what it took for me, a Hindu, and a lesbian, and a woman to read through the patriarchal (with Christian overtones) Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous! I am so, so grateful that my homies love and tolerate me enough to let me be me and accept me for who I am! As the Third Tradition of AA says, “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.” And Tradition One calls for UNITY. That means members are given the freedom to think, talk and act. No AA can compel another to do anything. Nobody can be punished or expelled. Our traditions repeatedly say, “we ought,” never “you must.”

I have to remember that we are evolving. I believe the AA founders, Bill and Bob, left room for change when they wrote on page 164 of the Big Book: “Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us.”

Today, there is a new updated version of “How it Works” created by Hillary J and the Sober Agnostics Group. That alternative to the Big Book text is used at their meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada. There are also two gender-neutral versions of the Big Book available on Amazon: The EZ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Same Message -Simple Language and A Simple Program: A Contemporary Translation of the Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither book was created by AA so neither is designated as “Conference Approved Literature” by the AA General Service Office (GSO). It is important to remember that the term “Conference Approved” has no relation to material not published by GSO. AA does not tell any individual member what they may or may not read. Each group is autonomous and is free to decide what material is read at the group level.

Offending someone at a meeting drove home the point that I’m a drunk, plain and simple. I just want to get and stay sober, that’s all. I learned that I am not the only one who replaces “He” with “She” when reading AA material. Many other people are doing this and changes are being made to the literature. Someday, we may see changes to the first 164 pages of our Big Book.

I have learned that God is beyond gender – and it is comfortable to refer to GOD as simply “God” instead of a He or a She. For me, God is pure divine spirit. Close the eyes. Feel GOD now. Pure Divine Love! God is Love! I love loving God, plain and simple. I love feeling Shiva embracing his beloved Devi in divine union. Sigh, bliss. This breath, here, now.

I also learned that AA has evolved enough to publish a new pamphlet already approved in British AA called, “The God Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA.” There is a quote in this pamphlet that Bill W. wrote in 1965 that says: “We have people of nearly every race, culture, and religion. In AA we are supposed to be bound together in the kinship of a common suffering. Consequently, the full individual liberty to practice any creed or principle or therapy whatever should be a first consideration for us all. Let us NOT, therefore, pressure anyone with our individual or even our collective views. Let us instead accord each other the RESPECT and LOVE that is due to every human being as he tries to make his way TOWARD THE LIGHT. Let us always try to be INCLUSIVE rather than EXCLUSIVE; let us remember that each alcoholic among us is a member of AA, so long as he or she declares.”

I love the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love that we keep evolving and changing. I love that we get to ask questions. Here’s one more (ha ha): Why do we close some meetings with the Lord’s Prayer? I’ll have more to say about that topic later. That’s enough for today. Peace and love to one and all.

View the original article at thefix.com

25 October 2018
God Hates Pikachu and He Also Killed My Daddy
My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

I didn’t want to unpack this story so soon. My aim was to share my experience with getting and staying sober in a dry and witty way, do that for a while with you, maybe unpack the heavy stuff after we got to know each other a little more, and then go for the gusto. I didn’t want to bring up a subject that might rub you the wrong way but I recently finished a writing exercise that really got me thinking about my dad. He’s dead.

My father died when I was two years old. He was a heroin user who shared needles. Nobody was talking about harm reduction in the late 80’s nor were they concerned about the consequences of IV drug use. After he got sober, he found out that he had contracted HIV. It wasn’t long after that diagnosis that he lost his battle to AIDS.

I believe growing up without a father had an effect on the man I am today; but this isn’t a story about my dad. This isn’t a story about harm reduction or AIDS awareness. This is a story about God.

Wait! Stay with me, please. Don’t go.

I promise you this isn’t that kind of story. I’ve done right by you with the last two articles. I plan on doing the same with this one. I know the God word bothers some people. It bothers me sometimes. It’s okay, just keep scrolling. We’ll do this one together. Besides, you have to at least get to the part about Pikachu. I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck he’s got to do with all this. Stick around, I’ll tell you.

I grew up in an extremely charismatic religious household; the crazy dogmatic type. Let me tell you how crazy: Did you know that if you listen to any music that isn’t religious, demons will literally fly out of your headphones like a vapor of smoke and possess you? It’s true. My aunt told me that when I was only eight years old. Also, if you watch any movie that isn’t rated G or about the crucifixion of Christ, you run the chance of committing your soul into the fiery pits of hell. Here’s a good one: My younger brother and I were not allowed to watch Pokemon because our grandmother told us that those cute little Japanese cartoons were actually demons and it was Satan’s master plan to trick unassuming kids into falling in love with his minions.

Here’s a few more examples:
1. Don’t drink beer. You’re ingesting the semen of the devil.
2. True love waits. So if you have sex before marriage, you’re going to burn in hell.
3. Never smoke cigarettes, you’ll accidentally inhale a demon.
4. Don’t use profanity unless you want God to give your tongue cancer.
5. Hey boys, do you like your hands? Well, don’t play with your penis, that’s how you lose them.
Here’s my absolute favorite. When I was kid, my mom brought my younger brother and me to this old-time-holy-ghost Pentecostal church in the hood. The younger children had to go to Sunday school with some 16-year-old babysitter while the adults went to “big church” in the main auditorium. While we were waiting for our mom to pick us up, our babysitter kindly told me that God killed my dad because he was a junkie.

Yup, that’s right. This ignorant girl basically told me that God “gave” my dad AIDS because he was in love with heroin. And it was God’s perfect judgment to execute my powerless addict of a father. Cool, right? I’m going to grow up to be a perfectly normal man, unscathed by any of this tomfoolery.

When you grow up in an overbearing legalistic household and finally start doing some of the things that they told you not to and nothing bad happens, you end up slamming your foot on the gas, speeding straight into the freedom to do everything you’re not supposed to. The things you didn’t do growing up because you believed they would kill you turn into myths created to control you.

This isn’t going to end well for an addict like me. Once I started thinking for myself and realized that my dick wouldn’t fall off if I watch porn, I started watching all the porn. When I realized that I wasn’t possessed after smoking a cigarette, I started smoking all the cigarettes. Add sex to the mix, sprinkle a little drugs on top, and my newfound freedom as a junkie sinner is complete.

Let’s fast-forward a few years because I don’t want to get into other stories that deserve their own headline. Let’s land where I’m walking down the steps of the courthouse with a piece of paper that mandates that I start attending 12-step meetings. Meetings that I must go to or I’m going back to jail and possibly prison.

Imagine my delight, sitting in my first meeting while they’re doing the readings. I hear the 3rd step read aloud for the first time and everything within my gut cringes. I die on the inside. I’m powerless over drugs and alcohol. I can’t stop. I need to stop. And now I’m being told that the only way to do this is with God. I’m in big trouble.

I have a confession to make. Remember when I told you that this story was about God? It isn’t. I mean it is and it can be for you, too, but it really isn’t. It’s about a higher power; something greater than you. It’s crucial that you hear what I’m about to say.

If you’re a 12-stepper who’s all gung-ho about the 3rd step, that’s cool. If you’re not a 12-stepper who’s grasped the God concept, that’s cool too.

What I want to be explicitly clear about is just one thing. It’s my experience, being an addict in recovery— whether it’s the 12-step route or not—that at some point I have to accept the fact that I need saving. And it’s not going to be me that’s going to do the saving. It’s got to be something greater than me. What I’m good at is getting high. Getting sober is easy. Staying sober isn’t. That’s where the saving comes in for me.

In the beginning. G-O-D meant a lot of things.
- Group of Druggies
- Group of Drunks
- Grow or Die
- Guaranteed Overnight Delivery (kidding)
- Good Orderly Direction
A wise man once told me, “I don’t know what God’s will is for my life… but I know what it isn’t.” I know that my higher power doesn’t want me stealing in sobriety. I know I shouldn’t be smoking crack. I know that now that I’m attempting to live a new way, maybe I should concern myself with my physical health since I neglected it for so long. My higher power doesn’t want me sticking a needle in my arm. For me today, it’s as simple as that.

For people who don’t subscribe to an acronym but actually believe in a God, it can be slippery if it’s not kept simple. It’s common for people to get sober and say, “Okay, what do I do know? What is my life’s purpose and what is God’s will for me?” If they do that, they end up stressing themselves out and thinking themselves out of the game, thinking that they have to understand the meaning of life at 12 months sober; or that they should have a roadmap for their life drawn out, down to every little specific detail.

It’s not that serious. Instead of concerning yourself with some huge existential question mark, keep it simple. Get off the bench, get back on the field and play. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself sober years later with a beautiful life filled with purpose and meaning. I can promise you that only because I’ve seen it happen for many of my junkie friends around me.

My higher power doesn’t hate Pikachu. That’s just silly. If you believe in God, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too. Just find something greater than you when the days get dark in your life. Hey! Maybe it’s this story. Who knows.

If nobody told you that they love you today: I do. I love you.

View the original article at thefix.com
27 September 2018
The Joys of Being Wrong

I am limited when I am in my own power, convinced of its sufficiency.

I had initially thought to write this story – the story of a person once self-presumed irreparably broken who recently completed chemotherapy turned Ivy League law student in a sensible, stable long-distance relationship – once I had received official acceptance letters from myriad top-ranked schools and the boundless adoration of a future wife, an expression forged in platinum, maybe with a tasteful emerald or cushion cut. Submitting it now, though, amid this very particular brand of uncertainty so laden with the weight of proving my worth, after many rejections and healthily parting ways with my girlfriend, seems a far more fitting representation of the point of recovery.

What is that point?

The wording will vary for everyone, of course, but to me:

The point is not what you get: the point is what you do with it.

Were I to await the above, the increased likelihood of this lesson being misconstrued as “quit drugs, win big!” would overshadow the actual essence of sobriety. Sure, the cash and prizes sometimes include overwhelming esteem, material gain and skyrocketing popularity; more often than not, though, the promises of recovery entail something less expected – something that we wouldn’t at onset necessarily identify as exceeding our wildest dreams, but that somehow does. That’s one of the most amazing things about all of this, really – that what we think is humdrum is actually fulfilling, and that what we think will be fulfilling actually sells us short.

There’s a reconciliation of paradoxes implicit to the recovery process. When I heard of the addict mentality described as “negative ego” I didn’t fully grasp its implications until I heard the same rephrased by a young woman who said that, in her active addiction, she felt like a “piece of shit in the center of [her] own universe.” Later I heard such peculiar self-evaluation termed as “arrogant doormat” and “I didn’t think much of myself, but I was all that I thought about.”

When I first got clean, the catalyst beyond threat of discontinued financial support was certainty that I would finally be recognized for the meteoric talent that I was – that all of the reasons for which I thought I used substances would be reinterpreted and rightly understood as unappreciated genius and, once so affirmed, I would no longer indulge that self-destructive tendency born of being “misunderstood” – no wait sorry – not just misunderstood like you are – distinctively misunderstood. Quitting drugs for me, however, has actually shown its primary benefit to be that I now get to participate in life just as other people do – like a person looking to what actually is instead of constant consumption with what is not, with how they’ve been wronged, with how they are somehow simultaneously better and worse than ____, all at the same time.

Even now, despite years of practiced right-sizing and spiritual dependence, there is a part of me that continues to sustain the myth that I am somehow so special as to be immune to the conditions that dog other people, despite a consistent undercurrent of fraudulence: that I can put in a little less effort, that I am somehow shrouded in a halo sufficient to enchant those so blessed to gaze upon my angel face.

We do not look at the world as if it were a mirror, reflecting only ourselves and whatever lies behind us: we look at the world as through a window; we see what is ahead but can’t help also catching our own reflection. Who we are, and what we think, informs what we see. That myth I maintain is delusional, so a part of who I am is delusional, and that part collects evidence to support that delusion’s accompanying grandeur. For as much as I develop my faculties of reason and reality, I think I might always retain a degree of magical thinking where I believe that maybe more is possible than may actually be possible. Sometimes I think that gives me the courage to take actions in faith and belief that might otherwise be precluded by too much logic, or not enough magic; while I can’t parse the precise extent to which that contributes to faith-based actions, it does seem to keep my chin parallel to ground and sky.

The other day someone asked me “How do you get from pain to faith?”

When I am in pain I am drawn closer to God. I do not balk at those who feel that pain instead causes division, or interpret pain as an absence of God: it is an absence, if you choose it to be. God is not the cause of pain; God is the solace that might be sought within it. It is almost as easy to blame God as it is to seek God; it is almost as easy to see differently as it is to see the same. When I am disappointed, it is not because God did not respond to my commands – God is not obligated to obey me; to the contrary it is I who is afforded the choice to obey God. All people have that agency – the ability to decide whether or not to honor and uphold that which is divinely informed, however “divinely informed” may be interpreted.

Whatever face you give to God, whatever name – that entity is with you. God is intended to comfort you in the impossible length of the dark night; God is intended to draw you closer.

What is closer? What does it feel like? Closer is the humoring of my will, the acknowledgment of its concerns and demands without automating action upon them. Closer is the awareness that maybe someone or some thing, either vaguely understandable or wholly intangible, may know better than I know. Closer is the nearly imperceptible sense of warmth you feel when you’re in great pain but know that this will not break you, that what you feel is not fully representative of your capability, because you are not just you – you are you plus that something greater; you are you and not alone.

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When I am charged with the full control and conduct of myself, as though my will and intention were affected within a vacuum, my ego enters stages left, right and center. When I surrender some bit of my will I am more closely actualized as who I am meant to be, rather than who I think I am meant to be, or who I project that I am. When I willingly enter into and actively sustain that relationship – severing ties to the notion that it has to be just me, that it means more if I do things on my own – then the way that I see the world, as it is and with my reflection, is limitless. I am limited when I am in my own power, convinced of its sufficiency. When I am in my own power, my options consist solely of those that I am capable of conceiving; when I am in God’s power, my options are as limitless as that to which I am intentioned.

I do not always agree with that to which I am intentioned. I recently received another “no” from an elite law school – another from one to which I was sure I’d be admitted – and have, in the past 10 minutes alone, assigned permanent and predictive weight to that decision. I have convinced myself that both my present and future fate are tethered to those rejections. I have projected that those rejections foreshadow a coordinated stonewalling effect that will prove ever prohibitive of every ambition that I have ever had, and as such I should just learn to teach spin, because that is probably how I will end up – alone, undereducated, and teaching spin – *not even at SoulCycle* (see what I did there?) – for the rest of my life.

When I fully inhabit my individualized agency I am downright apocalyptic. I allow no slit through which a ray of truth might shine; I do not suffer fools as I misunderstand soothsayers to be. At those times, I am in the most limited space I can occupy. And then, the break; then, the unexpected; then, that which I’d so quickly discounted, manifests.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 August 2018