Spirit

            For those of you not interested in recovery from addiction or in self help groups, let this serve as a disclaimer and warning. Turn back now. I imagine that you “earth people”, as you are known in AA and NA circles, think that we go to these meetings because we have to, else the overpowering urge will take us and whisk us into a bar somewhere. That may have been true in the beginning, but attendance is not required for recovery to continue, after a few months. Not for me anyway. Attendance has served as a reminder of the hell that addiction was, but it is also a forum for growth and development. I guess it’s like a church in a way. Or a lodge meeting. Or a yard sale. or Gardening.

            There is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting  at 5:30 , in a big church near the Winthrop University campus on Friday evenings in Rock Hill South Carolina . A good time for a meeting, as one can recharge and reflect about the week and get ready for the weekend. The members are also members of the university community for the most part, professors and administrators and a few students, judges and lawyers, and other counselors. They call it “Advanced AA”.  I finally found a meeting in which I really feel I belong, after eleven years of recovery and eight years working in the chemical dependency counseling field.

            The meeting on this Halloween evening was a discussion about spirituality.  One guy prefaced his remarks by saying that the only thing he is sure of is that he doesn't have any answers and is only grateful to be getting the questions right these days. He then defined spirituality as the quality of his connection with what is important. As the others were talking about their definitions of the meaning of life ,  the sound of a pipe organ began to waft down from above. Onward Christian Soldiers.....then,  Little Brown Church in the Dale.... and the discussion continued. The only thing about church that I really liked as a child was the music and singing . It seemed to me to be the only spiritual thing about it.  No one else at the meeting seemed to notice that we agnostics were discussing spirituality to the sound of hymns on Halloween.

            Then, as the adults at the meeting above us began to leave, and child took over the controls and the sound of chopsticks on a piano started up.  It turned into a driving boogy woogy beat after a while and the player ended with some lazy blues.

            I shared with a newcomer about the fear I had felt in addiction, fear of nearly everything, and about the longing to be released from it. I never asked to be released from the fear. I didn't pray for it. I only longed for release from it. I didn’t even expect to be released from it in recovery, only to learn to live with it. But what I got was a slow, gradual spiritual awakening, a change of attitude and outlook. The world turned from a scary hostile place into a garden of adventure and wonder.

            As James Taylor implores us, in “Look Up From Your Life”, I looked up from my life and discovered the “river running under (my) feet”. And in the lyrics, he gives us permission not to name it, or understand it. I only know that I am not afraid of anything anymore and I don’t fear ,or long for, death anymore. And all I had to do was go to a few meetings and, once in a while, listen to a few hymns on rainy Halloween nights.

             

Dave Seward

2005

“Up from your life”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80RtZUE1FRA

So much for your moment of prayer

God’s not at home

There is no there there

Lost in the stars

That’s what you are

Left here on your own

You can only hope to live

on this earth

This here is it, for all it’s worth

Nothing else awaits you

No second birth

No starry crown

For an unbeliever like you

There’s not much they can do

It would turn you away

Though I hate to see you surrender

You need to surrender

We must find you a way to...

Chorus:

Look up from your life

Up from your life

Look on up from your life

Look up from your life

There's a river running

under your feet

Under this house

Under this street

Straight from the heart

Ancient and sweet

On it’s way back home

Even in the middle of your sadness

The everyday madness

The ongoing game

Even when you can’t find a reason

Still there is a reason

You don’t need to name it

Look up from your life

Up from your life

Look on up from your life

Look up from your life

Only for a minute

To find yourself in it

To wait by the stream

To drop out of your dream

Look on up

Look up from your life.

by James Taylor

from the “Hourglass” CD (buy it, you’ll be glad)