came to believe

I am discussing the divine, how I understand god and how it fits with my 12-step recovery and spirituality program. In recent months, my theology has developed to a place where I do not believe in God as a person, a guy, an entity with human personal traits like wants, desires, an agenda, arms, etc. I see god as that divine that lives in the relationship of beings, the hope in a hopeless situation, the kindness in hell. That to me is god. So how does that work in my steps? I'm not sure.

Step two says "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

Now the funny part is that I had the words mixed a little in my memory, and when I checked my book for accuracy, I found that there is nothing here that requires me to have a god that is a person or that looks like one. When I got sober, I had a pretty firm belief in God. Now, almost three decades later, my beliefs are not so sure or so simple. But the bottom line question here is this: do I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity? And my answer to that is a qualified yes. Yes, I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I believe that nature seeks balance and balance to me represents the sanity I seek, the place where I feel personally, emotionally, spiritually secure, where I am able to approach my day from a place of abundance seeking to share instead of from a place of scarcity where I feel the need to get my share and a little extra just in case.

I need to be mindful here not to get ahead of myself. This is step two, not any other step. There is no call for submission or action, merely coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I can do that.

Now I am heading off for a weekend. One of those HAI things again. I am looking forward to it enormously. I will post again come Monday, hopefully about step 3 at that time. See you then.

Hope

We're down to even numbers now of deadly sins and virtues. I shall discuss a virtue today, and another tomorrow so that I can end on a sin (Lust). I have a special surprise topic for one of the days between here and December, to make up the additional day.

Here's what wiki says about hope:

Hope
Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. [1] To hope is to wish for something with the expectation of the wish being fulfilled, a key condition in unrequited love. [2] Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude.
When used in a religious context, hope carries a connotation of being aware of spiritual truth; see Hope (virtue). In Christian theology, hope is one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), which are spiritual gifts of God. In contrast to the above, it is not a physical emotion but a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism. The term false hope refers to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.

Have I mentioned that I absolutely love wikipedia?? No kidding. Based mostly in fact, but always with the risk that something there was pulled straight out of someone's ass. Sort of like my life. Based mostly in fact, but sometimes this stuff just comes straight out of my ass.

So, today we look at hope. We've heard a lot about hope lately. Lots and lots about hope. I find it interesting that while hope is a virtue, there does not appear to be a corresponding deadly sin. To me, the opposite of hope is fear, so I guess that doesn't really count as a sin. Or maybe doubt. Or lack of faith. I dunno. Worth pondering, I think.

So hope. Hope is what gets little children to say their prayers on Christmas Eve, both to thank god for baby Jesus, and to put in a final request of the guy in the red suit. Hope is what makes cancer patients keep on with the chemo and the radiation and everything else when the odds are longer than long.

Hope is what kept the Red Sox going for 86 years until that magical October in 2004.

I guess I like best the version of Hope that says that it is one of the three theological virtues and a gift from god. I like that idea a lot.

I'm not a big god-talker kind of person. I am nobody's authority on god or God or Jesus or Allah or Isis or the bible, the Koran or the book of kells. I am just a person going through life, seeking growth and serenity where I find them and where I am. I believe that the entity that so many organized religions call God is everywhere among and around us and that we need not travel to the ends of the earth to be with the divine. I believe that the divine lives within each of us and in the world around us.

So it makes perfect sense for hope to be a gift from the divine. Hope is present when I watch the sun come up in the morning. It streams through the kitchen window and warms my face and blinds my eyes and reminds me that there are more important things than typing on my computer. Like enjoying the new day. Like taking time to be glad for the opportunity it offers and for all that might happen wonderful before it is done.

Hope is wonderful stuff. It doesn't make any sense sometimes, but we still hang on to it. Some days it is all that I have that makes me get out of bed. I have hope that something good will happen. That something will break my way and things will turn around. Being broke all the time gets tiring. It seems like I can never do more than tread water. About the time I get a nice check from a job, my truck needs fixing or the furnace needs oil. There never seems to be any to sock away, only just enough to get by. But I have hope that we'll be OK, that we'll get through, that I'll get enough work to keep us sheltered and fed and warm for the winter. I have hope that I'll figure out this tile job thing tomorrow and that all of the little tiles will line up like they're supposed to and drain properly.

I have hope that my truck won't cost zillions of dollars to fix and I have hope that it will be ready tomorrow afternoon.

Saying it like this makes hope seem a lot like faith, but somehow they are different. I am not sure I have the words this evening to differentiate between the two, but they are different, at least in my mind's eye. I can have faith in something, and I can have hope. I guess faith is more like trust, and hope is more of a gamble, a longer shot, if you will.

I have faith in President elect Barack Obama's abilities, skills and talents. I hope he'll be able to accomplish what needs doing in America in the next few years. See the difference? One is more tangible than the other.

It is the best I can do for tonight. I am tired and tomorrow will be a long day. Good night all.

Faith

Faith, by its very definition, is hard to pin down. It is the belief that something is predictable, even if there is not conclusive proof of that likelihood.

Faith is not believing that the sun will rise tomorrow. That's pretty much a scientific gimme.

Psychologists refer to it as object permanence when the brain knows that a thing exists even after it is out of sight. Babies don't develop it for a while, which is why peek-a-boo is such a popular game. Like a goldfish circling in a bowl, every time through is a new experience. To know that the sun is shining even in the nighttime is not faith, it is object permanence.

Faith is more often used to explain a belief in the existence of a supernatural being, or a deity. People have faith in God, some have faith in more than one. I grew up Catholic, so we had faith in God, but spoke often to the saints so as not to bother the boss with our more mundane problems. Big stuff, like births and deaths and scary accidents and sicknesses, those merited a direct appeal to God. Lost car keys? St. Anthony can handle that.

I wonder how much of what we call our faith is really nothing more than an adult's Christmas list. Please God, let me get this job. Please God, save my marriage. Please God, let me win the lottery.

We bargain with God, too, which makes me think we don't have a lot of faith if we have to try to bribe him with our promised good behavior. Please let me get this one thing and I promise I'll go to church every Sunday. Please God, let me live through this and I will devote my life to charitable acts. Please God, let me make it home alive and I promise I'll never drink again.

What use has God for these paltry offerings? Faith is not rewarded based on the barter system. Faith is rewarded by life, and sometimes the strength to get through it.

Faith is its own reward, sometimes. I have faith in a power greater than myself, although I no longer adhere to the old white guy with a beard persona issued to me in my Sunday School lesson books. For a crowd that fought so hard against pagans and witches and such, they sure pictured their version of the deity as looking a lot like Merlin from the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table stories. Just sayin'.

My version of my higher power is pretty personal and yet universal. I believe there is a power for good in the universe, and that it might be the universe itself. I believe in the power of this beautiful planet to heal itself of our insults and damages. I believe in the magnetic pull of the poles, of the ebb and flow of the tides and the changing of the seasons. I believe that rain falls down and it is good. Rain falling up would be problematic.

I believe that the more in tune I am with the heartbeat of the planet, the more at ease I am as I go through my day. I live where I see the ocean every day, and I treasure that. I hope to never live far from salt water again. The salt of the ocean is the same as the salt in my tears and in my blood. There is a balance, and when I do not try to fight it, when I do not try to bend the world to my will, but work with the natural flow of things, I can get much more accomplished.

Some say that God created this world for us, but I am more inclined to think that we were created for this world. We were created to learn and study and love and explore this great living orb. We were created to enjoy it but to preserve and care for it, too. Only I think we got that screwed up. We have become that rare creature that soils its own nest. We have work to do, I think.

I have faith in human kindness, in our creativity and our capacity for love and compassion. Some might say that is not a real faith, because I have seen those things exhibited before me with my own eyes. But I think faith comes when I believe that all people are capable of those things. That is not an easy jump. That is universalism at its core - to believe that there is inherent worth and dignity in ALL human beings. Even Hitler. Even Jeffrey Dahmer. Even Karl Rove. Somewhere inside, perhaps buried so deep that it cannot be found, somewhere there is something of value. There is a heart that beats and a childhood memory of happiness and joy. As adults we often spend a great deal of time making ourselves un-loveable, un-reachable, and very much alone. But I do believe that there is some good, and some God, in all of us.

I guess it goes back to what I was talking about earlier - how in tune we are with God's plan, with nature's plan, with the order of the universe that determines how we feel and how we are perceived by those around us.

I am tired now and need to sleep. That is part of the cycle that is life. We have a natural wake/sleep cycle as we have a natural eat/work cycle. The tides go in and out, the sun comes up and goes down, the world spins happily on its axis, secure in its perfection. May I awake tomorrow rested and ready for another day. May I work in harmony with the world instead of trying to run things. May I do God's will with my day as opposed to my own. Blessed be.

faith

Having faith is touchy stuff.

Sometimes I can believe that the world is running according to some grand plan and that it all makes sense of a sort, and other times it seems like all is madness.

What is faith? Some would say that it is superstition, a belief in something that cannot be seen or touched or verified, whether the adherent has faith in a deity or a grand plan of sorts.

I guess I have faith in nature and its science. Stuff runs. The sun comes up and goes down, the stars dance their way across the heavens, and seeds somehow always know which way to send the roots and which way to send the leaves. And delightfully, this is all done without the consent or approval of humans. There is so much that happens in this world that we try to control. We dam rivers to control flooding, we try to straighten streams and we build sea walls to prevent erosion. Nature doesn't give a darn. The ocean will take what is hers, no matter how much work we put into keeping a particular patch of real estate dry. Rivers will wash away intrusions built too closely along their banks, although downtown Augusta seems to stand resolutely despite nature's efforts to cleanse herself. Up north this spring, the waters of the St. John Valley illustrated precisely what is meant by the term "flood plain." Will it teach people not to build there? Not likely.

I guess I have faith in stupidity as well as nature. The stupidity of humans. We build our shelters in utterly ridiculous places. Mountaintops, flood plains, fault lines, tornado zones. And then we get alarmed when mother nature comes in and puts the smack-down on our efforts. And the kicker here: We rebuild. Of course. Talk about nuts. Oh well. Stupidity, like gravity, seems to be universal.

I saw a marvelous thing last night. I was at a meeting where a guy celebrated 27 years without drinking. He's a great guy, and his wife and daughter were there to help him celebrate with lots of friends. Many of the people in the room had been in the recovery program for nearly as long as this guy, and I was struck by the simple faith of these folks. They do not necessarily believe that there is a white guy with a beard and a lightning bolt who will strike down bad people, but they all had faith of a sort.

They all trust in something they cannot see, they cannot touch, the cannot scientifically verify, to help them through their days. Some were Christian, but not all of them were. In fact, there were many in the room who would probably identify themselves as "unchurched." But they all had faith.

Sometimes, I wonder if my existence is so much fluff and noise. What great difference will my time on this earth make? What lasting impression will be made by my rental of this particular group of hydrocarbons? Is it all for naught? Is it all just an exercise in chemistry, a slow rearranging of atoms on the earth's surface?

I suppose I make an impact of sorts on the people and things around me. I have been told as much. But to what end? What purpose does this life, or any life, have in the grand scheme of things? A hundred years from now, will anyone remember me? Will they remember what I said or wrote or thought? Probably not. A thousand years from now? Certainly not.

So what makes us go on? Faith, maybe? Maybe. Against all reason, I have a feeling that what I do might be important to someone. Even if the only someone is me. I have to believe that there is a reason for all of this stuff we call life, for to stop believing in that would mean an end to any kind of purpose for living. I don't know what the reasons for me being here and now might be, but I can have faith that there is a reason and keep going.

Perhaps my reason for today is to weed a garden that belongs to an elderly woman who used to ride my bus. Maybe my work for her today is what is important. Ok. Maybe my purpose for today is to have lunch with a friend. That might be true as well. It is in my book, so it is in my plan for today. Tomorrow I will jack and level some cabins. It is the humble, necessary work that makes life work for others. That's what I seem to do. And I like it. I like knowing that I have eased people's path through the world, that I have made life more comfortable for them, even if they are unaware of my efforts.

Perhaps it is kindness that I have faith in. Maybe that is the whole reason for everything. I don't know.

Nature and science are a marvel to me. Grass is green, water flows downhill but is drunk up through roots and tendrils, and the most complex chemical processes take place in a leaf smaller than my littles fingernail. Whole ecosystems establish themselves and burn out of existence beneath the shelter of a mushroom cap. And I have nothing to say about it. Nature is amazing stuff. As humans, so are we a part of that nature. We're probably the only part of it that spends so much time thinking about our role in it, but never mind. We are a part of the grand complex thing that is the planet earth. There is much within our command, but far more beyond it. And that is good. It reminds us to be humble. A flood can change our world. Or an earthquake. Or a storm. And yet still we go on. Perhaps it is faith in ourselves, our own importance, that makes us do that. I wonder.

For today, I will weed a garden. I will luncheon with a friend. I will try to clean out the basement. And I will have faith that there is a purpose, that there is a divine order of some kind, and that I am neither in charge of it nor do I need to be.