“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (from Bill Britton p 27)

Of the many life lessons we learn in the rooms of AA, one key principle is the adage “one day at a time.” Sobriety does not materialize in a week or a month or 10 years even. It is an ongoing daily process. I can’t count the number of passionate “newcomers” to the program who get their 30-day sobriety chip only to celebrate with a trip to the local bar.
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“What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.” Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet

At around 3-years-old my son would become lost for a couple of hours in the corner of our family room. Consumed by his pack of dinosaurs and his all-encompassing imagination, we would often find him in active conversation and manipulation of those irresistible toys.

Uninterrupted Solitude

Such a treat. If only… if only we might discover that same fondness for uninterrupted silence and solitude. Just to “ponder” or to “To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours,” as Rilke suggested.
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“People live by narrative… Human beings are creatures of the imagination.” Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of Great Britain

Where would we be today if not for imagination? It was TS Garp in the novel, The World According to Garp (John Irving), who claimed, “It is better to imagine something than to remember something.”
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“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” John Steinbeck

You would think that “self-discovery” is the domain of the young and curious, but for some of us it seems to be a life-long adventure. In the 60’s we were fond of framing the matter as an effort intended to “find one’s self.” Little did I know then that finding myself would require living in a seemingly never-ending state of exploration and reflective contemplation.
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“Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused?” Thomas Merton

Philosophers are known to dabble in “thought experiments,” or testing out ideas via the vast mechanisms of the mind. One usually begins a thought experiment with some sort of logic, which eventually evolves into a mysterious kind of intuition and creativity.
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“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” Oprah Winfrey

If a little of something is really good, then a lot must be much better.

Numbing

So, already you may be thinking that I plan to write about addictions. After all, is that not the most common of all of reasons offered by substance abusers/addicts? Those of us who wrestle with addition are in the habit of numbing; of doing whatever it takes it takes to mask the ordinary psychic pain of being human. More is always better than a little.
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“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Marcus Aurelius

A revised cliché has come to mind in the last couple of weeks: What if today was not “the first day of the rest of of your life,” but what if it was “the last day of the rest of your life?”
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“Goodness isn’t good until it is given away.” Ilia Delio

A little theology…

In the creation narrative of Genesis, God creates the Divine vision of earth in six days. And five times the author says essentially “God observed what he had created and God saw that it was good. God didn’t “say” it was good. No he “saw” that what had been created was good. And then on the sixth day, “God observed all that he had created and he saw that all was very good.” In this post we will explore the thought that God saw, in creation, a perfect reflection of the nature of the Godhead.

The Simple Goodness of “Good”

I think it is important to note that what God “saw” was simply good. God did not see “Greatness,” or “Awesomeness,” or something “Spectacular.” ” Superlatives were unnecessary when there is a very modest, yet precise, word to convey, “divine mystery transformed into matter.” And God saw that “It was good.” The wonder of this unpretentious word “good” seems to have been lost in translation.
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“We realize the importance of light when we see darkness.” Malala Yousafzai

“… out of darkness into light.” I Peter 2.9 NCV

Remember the old TV show “The A-Team?” George Peppard headed a team of ultra-talented, albeit misguided, group of “heroes” that went around saving everyday people from powerful and malevolent villains. Many of us still recall the words of the charming leader of the group who was fond of saying—always in the midst of utter chaos—“I love it when a plan comes together.”
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“Every time you find yourself irritated with someone, the one you need to look at is yourself. The question is not, ‘What’s wrong with this person?’ but ‘What does this irritation tell me about myself?’” Anthony de Mello

Talk about an irritating quote. Just the thought that the problem is me is irritating!

I find it alarming that way too frequently my frustration or irritation with another personal is actually more about me than it is the other person. Why do I get so upset? Well, perhaps because things didn’t turn out the way I wanted. And of course, who knows better than I do when it comes to the best decisions and actions regarding my life and the lives of others? After all, my world is the only one that really matters. Right?
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