Spiritual Sustenance

“Good morning my Lord”

This is the way that my morning pages have begun for many years.  Being gay and therefore never willing to consider myself deeply religious in the traditional sense of the word, the word Lord is charged for me.  So, why do I start my writing with it each day… well, after a little research into the roots and origins of the word I realize that my intuition knows the way.  The Greek translation of Lord is the bread keeper.  We often think of bread as the food that we need but a broader translation of bread as it is used in the Lord’s Prayer is Spiritual Sustenance.  Of course, it makes perfect sense that as I sit down each morning to turn my attention to God, I am turning toward the Source of Spirituality which is God, the keeper of my spiritual sustenance.  So, whatever it is that you call the Source of your spiritual sustenance, just call it.  Don’t let the ways that people have made efforts to control people through a claim on God, take you away from your right to connect deeply, powerfully, and directly to a God of your understanding.  He, She, It is personal to you :)

1-2-3 Simple Solution to Remove Fear

Radical Accountability is perhaps one of the most challenging tools to use and principles to practice.  I don’t know why the human psyche is so drawn to trying to fix everything outside ourselves including other people before we will turn to the one and only place that we can participate in and effect change.  I have never found a more effective tool than the fourth step to promote, practice and execute radical accountability.  It’s a trick… we are told to sit and write all of our resentments and fears on paper. What we are not told is that after hours of writing and the humbling and embarrassing process of sharing the intimate details of our lives with our sponsor, that the only thing that we take onto the next steps, are our character defects that were identified in the process.  I remember the first time I wrote a 4th step and met my sponsor in a beautiful park in Seattle where I laid the intimate details of my life before her for a total of 5 hours… she shyly handed me a piece of paper with some words on it.  Little did I know that these were my character defects and that I was supposed to take them and ask for God to remove them.  When I look back I’m not sure that I have ever really understood steps six and seven.  Fundamentally I had a problem with the idea of asking God to remove them.  I did it in practice through the 7th step prayer but, I did not ever say “hey God, I have a lot of fear, please remove my fear and direct my thinking to what you would have me be.”  Well, check this out, and this is what is so amazing about the program, after nearly 20 years of being in and out of the rooms, I finally tried it and it flipping worked.  I mean, sometimes my fear will creep in again, but it has yet to become an obsessive overwhelming experience that has lasted even an hour let alone the days at a time of crippling emotional pain that the strongest drugs could not cure.  I’ve thrown everything that I have at this thing from therapy to month-long stints in treatment and, it was there all along.  It’s the 1-2-3 in dealing with fear.  

1. Pause when agitated or doubtful(fear).
2. Ask God to remove your fear & direct your thinking.
3. Find someone, anyone to help.

Just for today, I am reminded to forget about trying to figure out the “why” of my fear and to
simply practice the 1-2-3 fear solution presented by the brilliant 12 step program.  May you be fearless
and lovingly fierce today! 

God Is Either Everything of Nothing At All

Return to me again and again.  Like anything that holds mastery, one must practice, practice, practice.  Knock the rust off and begin to flex those spiritual muscles, reestablishing and maintaining your connection with the Divine.  At first, if an individual has spent little to no time in direct communion with her, they may only get a small sense of their connection or may have a feeling that there is nothing at all.  But, if they come again and again, what seemed at once impossible to reach, will bear fruitful presence as the intimacy of one’s personal relationship with her deepens.  I italicize her because truly, it is crude to anthropomorphize God as a woman or a man.  I think that’s exactly why it so rubs me the wrong way… because my God is Infinite and all-encompassing, so when I hear people refer to God as him, it makes my energy shrivel like a raisin inside of me… I have to fight not to shut down to the words that follow that reference when a peer or mentor is speaking.  I want to shout and scream STOP right there… we are talking about the same all-powerful presence of Love, Intelligence, Compassion, Care, Joy, and Grace… surely you don’t mean “he” for these belong just as much to a woman as they do to a man and, a God that doesn’t hold the motherly qualities of nurture and unending patience would not be a complete God to me…. And, surely your not shrinking God into a man for that would defer the qualities of God present in the earth as Grounding, Flow and Awesome unfathomable power that is humbling beyond belief to those who play in her storms and waves and on her rivers.  Surely the God that flows as these is not he or her but It… the unexplainable force which rushes forth as every river, every wave, every snowflake falling onto every mountain which is also God.  Yes, we pray and the intimacy of the connection makes us want to to think that we are talking to a parent for a parent knows a love for their children that is hardly comparable but it is so so so so much more than a parent…. And, yes, I have come to believe that we can ask it to remove our blocks, our fears our angers, and to direct our thinking… so, that implies that there something that listens and has the power to act.  I don’t know how it all works, but I know that it is and it does and it becomes as personal to us as we are able to believe.  If I could get one thing across about this God stuff, it would be, don’t take anyone else's word for it, save as inspiration to begin your own journey, your own relationship with the unending love, wisdom, and grace of God.  You don’t need to follow a single rule to get there or to gain favor you just need to begin.  Maybe that moment is now.  As God to reveal herself to you in his own way and in a way that you cannot miss.  See what unfolds and feel free to report back.  Much love to you on your journey today.