Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

Originally Posted by cinderella

I'm not that far from Jersey if you need a hand to hold or an ear to listen - soon as the snows clear. I'm sure you've gotton your share too. *moan*

That would be great! Yes, we got covered in snow over and over and I hear there is more coming this week..........plus it is freezing cold here today through tomorrow! Stay safe!

[cinderella]

I do hope we meet someday, truly. I am such an unabashed fan...you will forgive me if I bring in tow...my autograph book.
I now know how it feels to be a 'groupie'!

Carmin

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

That would be great! Yes, we got covered in snow over and over and I hear there is more coming this week..........plus it is freezing cold here today through tomorrow! Stay safe!

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 26


A Living Love




What I love about the program is that it is a living thing, like me.
It is not perfect, it is growing and changing, adapting and correcting for each experience and need. AA is a life into life process and saves me because life begets life, no matter what I was told. The answer to life is living and I get to see that being done by everyone from newcomer to old-timer each at his or her personal ability. I am allowed to dangle my feet, wade, tread-water and swim, all under the watchful eye of loving support and critical pretender. Difficulty is not removed nor is the way made smooth, but I am no longer without a thread to hold. I love the web I help weave myself into and feel protected from the spider of my addiction because together we are living proof.


Bear Grace


*

DEEP IN THE SEA

Under the mirror
There is life
Under what I reflect to the world
I am a world apart.


I smile sweetly, political in my response
To confrontation and conflict
Deep, deep in the sea, is a current of sadness
I can't always shake.

Pain is the past
But it's there like a moray
Lurking to strike aimlessly, pointlessly
At the passersby.

The ripping teeth
And the cold stare
My terror
No way to escape it.

I focus on the topside
The reflective part of me.
I keep as clean
And free as can be.

I stick to my business
List my goals and make plans
The water runs cold
Then hot beneath.

I carry the steps to this underwater grave
Trying to inflate the rubber skin of god
But No
There is no life in the god of my understanding

Or maybe there is no life.
For the character the drowned balloon represents
The sea is bigger than me.
The life stronger and more abundant.

The sky it reflects as vast as liquid
I swim
There is a Power
And it doesn't need that comic book face.

Safety is not the requirement
That can be granted.
Lack of safety does not end my life
It does not end God

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 27


Simplicity Itself

My life runs at a Gilbert and Sullivan pace, with about as much sense and comic relief. You say 'keep it simple' and my disease says 'why ruin a good play?’ The truth is this is not play at all but a work that consumes my life from me and doesn't thank me for my time. Simplicity for me requires respect, a gift I selectively give myself; a gift that I often use only as a shield during battle. My past method of increased self-respect is life in a war zone. This is no solution. Release of grief, this is the onerous path I avoid taking. Purging the wrong thinking and action of others from my blood, my eyes, my skin, allows me to lift my chin and square my soul to plumb and level living, don self-respect as a birth right and set a calendar fit for plausible life, a simple life.



If you are not a hero in your own home you are not a hero


*

HIDE AND SEEK

I have sought You
High and Low
But like the rain
You have always found me.

I like a cold, wet cat on a winters day
Peer into warm lit windows
Hoping
You will be home.

I seek to keep moving
You find me for some unknown reason.
I have given up
Naming You.

I trust You know who you are In spite of the fact I do not.
You are places I don't know
Doing things I think better of.

Citing the list of errands I daily make for You,
Not to beleaguer You
But the unfinished list of history
Trails out of my pocket.

I worry I may possess
Your only copy
Of this Injustice List.

There have been days of peace
Days I don't think too much.
Days I turn away from
My history lessons and future projections.

My ultimate problem is with the equal sign
I run the numbers and it figures inequity.
I check my calculations and shake
The calculator of my mind.

Deeply, I fear
You're a one god
And do not comprehend
The implications of zero.

If you multiply with only things above naught
You may be unaware of nothingness.
The empty things I feel
When I can't seem to find you.

Self-possessed - insensitive of the cipher
Your dimensions stay positive.
Bring me into Your realm or join me in the void.

I seek You
But You have found me.

[LeftWriteFemme]

Originally Posted by cinderella

I do hope we meet someday, truly. I am such an unabashed fan...you will forgive me if I bring in tow...my autograph book.
I now know how it feels to be a 'groupie'!

Carmin

You are so sweet! I would love to have a chance to meet up! I'm thinking Spring! We are snowed in today........Are you?

[cinderella]

Yes, I am sort of...cleared some of the driveway yesterday - enough to get the Jeep thru. I tried to plow thru with the Jeep, but no good. Had to shovel just enough to clear, and that took almost 3 hours! The ol' gray mare, she ain't what she used to be! lol

Yes, definately, spring. Perhaps some long weekend when neither of us has any plans. I'll keep in touch. I visit your thread periodically when I need to read something beautiful and inspiring.

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

You are so sweet! I would love to have a chance to meet up! I'm thinking Spring! We are snowed in today........Are you?

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 28


Sponsorship




Right now, as I think of sponsorship, I think of all the things I have done wrong. Times when I was not understanding enough and times when I was too understanding and enabling. Sponsors I chose for ulterior motives and the ones I didn't challenge when they wandered away. I search my mind for the ingredients that were in the mix when things went well and the dominant component was willingness, mine and theirs. Whether I was sponsor or sponsee, willingness overrode ability, determination and love. We had to come to the table willing, this was never something we were able to cook up or construct. Nor is it something I can always hold onto, sometimes willingness evaporates or slips away like sand in a clenched fist. The permanence and impermanence of sponsorship awes and frightens me. Like a guidewire twisted from many strands none of which reaches from end to end I worry about the unraveling but depend on the strength.


Expectations are incubating resentments

*

THREE TOYS FLOATING

I bat the ducks across the surface of my bath.
Soaking is supposed to calm me,
I'm waiting.
I assure you, my impatience is no help to this process.

These yellow, tub-bound misfits, grinning at me
Don't fill me with the joy of living either.
I have blown bubbles until I'm blue
I smell like a French elevator from the bath oil.

My hair is stiff with conditioner
My face packed with mud.
"Do the right thing." Said my sponsor
She is such a pain.

Here I am, bubble bath to my arm pits
And not a hint of peace
Her question rings,
"What do you want?"

But isn't it obvious, if I knew that
What would I be doing
Wrinkling in this swilling vat?
I wouldn't.

I would be out doing my thing.
Whatever, that thing is.
How I'm going to figure myself out I don't know
And, She, is no help (you know who She is, She is the sponsor lady)

So what do I want?
World peace, a clue, maybe just a hint
But I know part of it
I know more than I admit.

I want Sobriety and Happiness,
Dignity and Respect
Enough time to do these things
And Love.

"Well" says she, those things are easy
Work the steps, then the traditions,
Practice them, do service
And take the advice you give your own sponsees"

I stick out my tongue in her general direction.

[LeftWriteFemme]

January 29


Inertia

in•er•tia
n.
1. Physics. The tendency of a body to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.
2. Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change
This force is real; the laws that govern it act on me for well and ill. When I’m on a roll it’s hard to guide me and like the girl with the curl; when I’m stuck, I’m very, very stuck and it’s awful.
I am bound by this reality and go or stay according to what is set in motion or stopped, but what about ‘the outside force’? Am I in charge of summoning ‘it’ or is ‘it’ summonable at all? Will ‘it’ obey like the dog, or obey like the cat? Or is ‘it’ more random than the rain? Can ‘it’ be lured or tempted or does ‘it lure and tempt me? And the biggest questions on my mind: Is ‘the outside force’ also subject to inertia? Are we in this together? What is ‘its’ outside force? Might it have something to do with me?



Wash one pain at a time


*

NURSE

What if the word God is like the word nurse?
What if the person is only the simple meaning?
The actor doing the service
The plain act, uncontrollable from my end.

What if my active part of God,
Is the same as my active part of nurse?
What I draw down, how I schedule myself
To be ready when the milk arrives.

How I pull and am satisfied
Digest and draw again.
Like the sea laps at the shore,
The moon tugging it all the while.

What if God is about my hunger,
Satisfaction dependent on finding a suitable teat?
Maybe this is why, when it comes to God
Much of what I do, is cry.

When faced with my need, I open my mouth
Finding only two possible responses,
Suck or Scream.
My aching consumes me and I don't know how to calm myself.

I look for the caretaker, the person, the deed.
I need sucker but never look for the breast.
I am the child of God.
I must learn to draw God in

[LeftWriteFemme]

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


*

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.