Rarely am I interested in celebrities or their lives.  This is not much of an exception.  However, I was in the U.S. when Whitney Houston died and naturally, heard a tremendous amount of news coverage.  More than I would likely have heard in Canada.  So her death has been very much in the forefront of my mind which to me is an indicator that there is some meaning to be discovered in processing this through.

First off, her death is a tragedy.  A tragedy the same as any death.  No more, no less.  Certainly no more than the thousands of un-named, un-known people who died on the same day in the same, or more painful and unjust circumstances.  My heart goes out to all families of all people who died that or any other day.  Someone is hurt and crying over the losses.  My heart goes out to them the most.

I saw the news story recently about the cause of death still being pending.  Understandable.  It is a high-profile incident with huge legal and publicity implications.  Of course those involved are going to be careful to be able to back up everything they conclude or say.

A sad fact is that this is even necessary.  Or that it is necessary for a celebrity, but not for the others.  That legal and medical professionals need to be more vigilant for a celebrity death than a non-celebrity death.  I understand why, but it is still sad.

The common practice of Talent Worship comes to mind.  I contrast this with Character Worship.  Frankly neither should be worshipped but I am sure you understand my point.  We, the consuming public, send a message to our entertainment figures that we value your talent more than your character.  We show you by our spending habits that we pretty much only care about your talent.  Your characters mean very little.  We will overlook who you are, how you treat people, and what kind of example you are to society, including our youth, in order to hear you sing, watch you perform, act, play, or what have you.

We will let you destroy your life, and harm those around you, as long as you give us what we want.  Then, when you finally self-destruct, we will worship your legend, once again ignoring the fact that you exemplified danger and how to live a self-consumed life.

Tragically, Whitney Houston once sang the lyrics that make up the title of my post.  The more complete   lyrics are, “I believe that children are our future… teach them well, let them lead the way”.  I am not standing here judging and shouting ‘hypocrite’!  I am standing here noticing the sad irony of the lyrics, the lifestyle, and the end.  Who am I to judge?  An ex-alcoholic and addict?  If anything, I am grateful that my drugs and booze behaviour ended prior to death.  And sad that Whitney’s and other’s didn’t. 

Why, I wonder, don’t celebrities and the wealthy seem to “get it” as often as many of the rest of us?  Could it be because they don’t have to?  Does their wealth and fame let them continue by buffering them from consequences that others of us come to more quickly?  Could it be that we, the consuming public, don’t care if they get it or not, as long as they keep feeding us talent to worship? 

Obviously I am generalizing here.  I suppose it asks the question of why some who seemingly have ‘everything’ come to early and tragic ends when they seemingly have opportunities otherwise.

It is times like these that I look at the losses in my life with gratitude.  The losses were significant enough to get my attention.  So who is in a better position?  The ‘privileged’, or those of us with less?

To be blunt, and I truly hope this does not sound arrogant, insensitive, or judgemental, at approximately the same age as Whitney Houston, would those of us who are clean, sober, and still alive… would we not then actually be the recipients of the more ’privileged’ lives?

Is this not what we hope to teach our children to help build a better future?

My head is swimming in these issues.  And the last thing I want to sound like is judgemental.  I suppose I am shocked and rattled.  Maybe this is my mind telling me to just be grateful for each day and for all that has happened to bring me to a recovering life.

Your thoughts and reflections would be most welcome.

Ciao.

Chaz

Like anything we recover from, it takes time and practice to change our patterns.  In my experience, we develop many habits of thought and behaviour, particularly on the subconscious level.  Not unlike when our computers are running processes in the background, we don’t see them at work but they are having an effect and they draw energy from us.  These are the tricky ones to break free from.  But with time, help, and practice, I have found we have all the opportunity in the world to do so.

In my blog-buddy Debbie’s Two Minutes of Grace, http://bit.ly/A4rUPv we had some discussion around how we tend to do what comes naturally.  Well seemingly naturally anyway.  But what it often appears to be is what we have programmed in through time, exposure, and practice.  These are the habits of thought that the subconscious has mastered so we do them without thinking.  Including negative things like envy.

Conspicuous everyday-envy is easy to spot.  We see someone with something we would like, such as a home, job, physique, relationship, or what have you, and we experience conscious negative thoughts of longing for what they have, and a negative outlook toward them for them having it and us not.  We may even say something disparaging or dismissive about them for having it.  This is the easy stuff to deal with.  We know it is wrong and we can address the behavior, if not on our own, we can get help.

The tougher, yet still workable stuff, are the thoughts that we are less aware of that can be found bouncing around the ether of our minds.   They taint our attitude, draw from our limited amount of daily energy, keep us mildly depressed, rob us of sleep, and affect our demeanor and decision-making.  This form of envy is one of the roots of self-pity which to me, is the master mind of all self-defeating behaviour.

This subconscious, Silent Envy is what can keep us up at night and simply put an ambient sour feeling all over us.  We feel it, but we don’t often directly express it.  It tells us to make irrelevant comparisons of ourselves and others, and to rank people by criteria that is meaningless.  They are not us and we are not them.  We do not share similar neurologies, genetics, opportunities, talents, predispositions, upbringings, or life experiences.  So on what basis are these comparisons valid?  None that I have seen, yet our subconscious minds still often make them.

Sure we all know that we should not judge, gossip, or be petty.  Yet somehow we can develop these invisible patterns of thought that run in the back of our minds and keep us exactly where we do not want to be.

So what do we do about it?  I can’t speak for everyone, but the best way I have found is to continually retrain my thinking in new and positive ways.  Most importantly, I had to get a functioning understanding…. no, deeper than that… I had to immerse my thinking in gratitude.  I had to learn to see it, feel it, seek it, find it, embrace it, celebrate it, run to it, and embed it in my subconscious thinking as much or more than the threads of envy that once wove through. 

God as I understand him teaches that we can be “… transformed by the renewing of our minds”.  Sounds almost spooky yet is this not the process of any kind of personal growth?  Weeding out old, ineffective, toxic thought processes and planting and nurturing new ones?  How do we nurture them?  By practicing them.  By making a deliberate choice to take that awkward pathway of stopping an old thought then mechanically forcing ourselves (at first) to follow the new, chosen way.

It feels at first like wearing a new pair of shoes that are not worn in yet.  And our old thinking will resist it.  In fact, my old envious thinking started telling me, “it isn’t fair that I should have to learn new thinking, those other people didn’t have to”!   Really? First off, if they didn’t have to they probably will with some other thread of flawed thinking.  And secondly…. Who cares what they have to or don’t have to do!!??  They are not us!

The sheer insistence we apply to following a new pattern of thought or behaviour will be a key to creating a habit of it.  In my experience, a happy, functioning day and happy, functioning life is a result of living in happy functioning habits.

I continue to slowly give up this habit of envy at the subconscious level.  Life is so much better and my head is a far less noisy place.

Ciao.

Chaz

I took my elderly father to the Doctor this morning for a routine visit.  By way of background, Dad is in his late 80′s, a non-drinking alcoholic (on a dry drunk for a number of years due to lack of availability of alcohol due to his lack of mobility).  Dad needs assistance walking and uses a wheeled walker.  I am the youngest sibling and a very late child… my parents in their 40s when I was born.

Dad has been a very ominous figure in my life.  We did not have a conventional parent/child relationship due to him and my Mom being divorced and his working out of town.  In addition, his alcoholism and anger issues made him entirely difficult and complicated to be around.  He only passed through my life occastionally during my teen years.

My relationship with him, or lack thereof, has impacted and defined much of my life.  There were positive too.  I know that deep down he loved me and he did his best to express his love with gifts and whatever encouragement he was capable of.

Dad is also a WW2 combat veteran and former POW.  He seldom talks about these experiences and I can’t help but imagine how life-defining these were for him.  So I do my best not to judge or resent his behaviour, even though I have felt a lot of pain over it.

When we arrived at the Dr.’s office, Dad had to walk the length of my truck to get to his walker awaiting on the sidewalk at the tailgate of the truck.  Parking was tight and the walker would not fit between my vehicle and the one beside us, so Dad has to walk bracing himself on the two vehicles.

At one point, the vehicles on either side were not reachable so I held my hands out.  Dad grabbed my forearms and I grabbed his so he could walk with my assistance.   I walked backward as we held forearms for about 6 feet which took maybe 30 seconds.  This was the amazing moment.

Having felt a sense of absence of my father during my childhood, and always having had a longing for a father and guide throughout my adult life, I finally had a moment with my father where we had physical contact and walked essentially arm in arm. 

Now I know our roles are by now reversed, where I assist and care for him, versus him caring for and assisting me, but the connection still happened.  This brief moment represented to me what I always wanted… to walk arm in arm with my father.  To be there for one another.  To share strength in a time of weakness.

In that moment, I felt no pain, no regret, no longing or loss.  In that moment, I felt, “Wow, I have a Dad, and he needs me right now, and I can be here for him”.

It didn’t matter that he was seldom there for me growing up, or that I spent most of my young adult life looking for male role models to fill the father role in my life. I was just grateful and happy in that moment.

I have a son too.  He means the world to me.  I catch myself trying to be everything to him that I wish I had when I was his age.  I often parent him out of my own pain.  I know this is dangerous ground.  Yet I know he knows I am there for him as much as I can.

I am so grateful for that moment with my Dad today.  I know I can never forecast when God is going to drop an amazing moment on me or what he will show me in it.

Ciao.

Chaz

More than ever before, I am finding it an automatic response to place painful memories and regrets of the past where they belong…. in the past.

It is a typical characteristic of an alcoholic to ruminate self-destructively about regrets and resentments so I know I come by it honestly.  Throughout my life, I had trained myself to assault myself over and over with the past.  It was not until I began to understand recovery that this habit began to lose strength.

Today, when pain of the past comes to mind, I envision myself picking up the event, and placing it in a container labelled, “The Past”.  I close the lid and walk away.  Knowing full well and resting in the fact that there is nothing I can do to change the events of the past. 

Furthermore, God as I understand him assures me that he casts my wrongs into his “sea of forgetfulness”, which tells me that God actively practices forgetting that which he does not wish to remember.  If I am created in his image, should I not seek to do the same?  So I envision God as the keeper of The Past container… this is my process of surrender.

There is a widely held belief that we cannot forget our past.  But really though, is this completely true?  Can we not progress toward forgetting by removing the emotional charge from what were once painful events of the past?  I believe we can learn to.  I have found I have made progress in this area over the years and that those once painful memories begin to dim.

And as I fill my mind with new and positive things, the painful past dims even more.  To me, this is not denial, it is moving on.  And like a highway sign fades in the rearview mirror, so I believe our regrets and resentments can if we learn how to let them go.

Just this week, an event of the past came to mind that at one point had hit me like a torpedo.  It was something my ex-wife had said to me as she was walking away from our marriage.  When it was said, I felt like I had been punched in the chest and had the wind knocked out of me.  I felt this injury over and over again for years.

My recent realization of it was that I had actually for the most part forgotten it happened.  There is virtually no emotional sting to it anymore, and my life has been so full in the past several years of new and wonderful things for which I am deeply grateful for, that that once life-changing hurt that I centred my life around for a time actually faded completely.  And when it did reappear, it had almost no sting and I was able to envision picking it up and placing it in that place called The Past yet again.  And there it sits losing even more of its power, and I will probably forget it again as life moves on full of new wonders, challenges, and victories.

So are we sure we can’t forget?  I am convinced that we can, through practice and repetition, actively and progressively forget.  For me, it is largely by keeping the past where it belongs… in the past.

Ciao.

Chaz

The book discusses many observations of legalism.  Meaning the application of ever-tightening rules and laws intended to manage behaviour in a way that presumes to please God.

The discussion of legalism has been bouncing around inside my head for weeks now, and have come to see how much I have been allergizing over it in reflection of my church-going experiences.

Why is it I wonder that we humans tend toward legalism?  Is it easier for us to understand and impose on others?  Why is it I wonder that the organized representation of the most famous man in all of history, whose message was centred around grace, is known largely by its reputation for legalism?

Why the repeated drift toward legalism?  How many times throughout history have there been enlightenments of the legalism we find ourselves in, then a reformation of some sort, only to drift back into legalism.

And this is certainly not limited to churches and the progression of church cultures.  I see it in other faith systems too.  And in AA.

We seem bent on penning ourselves in with legalism over and over again.

My journey continues to prompt me to wonder, why?

Thoughts?

Ciao.

Chaz

The program was frankly a disaster.  The relapse rate was very high and drugs were used in the centre.  We were paraded into local churches and shown off by the “Executive Director” (note the impressive title) of the program.  He was praised for all the great work he was doing… followed of course by a plea for support from the congregation… which of course he got.

What a load of crap. 

Why do I bring all of this up?  The memory of my time there came up in a recent blog dialogue I was having with another blogger.  And it simply brought to mind a few key ingredients that I believe made for a successful recovery for me…. and what ingredients didn’t.

One that really DIDN’T was the opportunity to pump up my ego when it should have been squashed.  The program I was in published profiles of the “students” (guys living in the centre… so much for anonymity) and highlighted the higher points of our bad behaviours prior to being taken under the wing of the program.  We were then put in front of crowds of people to share our testimonies.  Egos ran wild as people came up to congratulate us for staying sober for what, a few weeks or months?  We were portrayed as recovery superstars.

Most of us with drug or alcohol problems have an underlying ego problem.  We are either over-confident or under-confident and drink our way around the unreality of our perspective.  How on earth can one gain a perspective when made into a small c celebrity… especially in the first few weeks or months of sobriety?  Our egos took over and many people, before they got any measure of recovery, went back out.  Why?  Probably because we thought we were all that.

In my experience, “Sobriety” and “Superstar” are oxymorons.  And people who try to be or make Recovery Superstars are just ordinary morons

Subsequent to this experience, I got my ego, my teeth, and my butt handed to me on a silver platter.  I crashed so hard that there was little ego left and no place left to fan the ember into a flame again.

Today, I am grateful for a program of recovery that limits opportunities to feed my ego.  And were it slips in, God seems to serve up people and circumstances to remind me that my ego is getting a little big for its britches and a dose of humility is in order.

Ciao.

Chaz

“It has taken me years to distill the gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it”.

This sentence sums up so much of where I am at with God as I understand him today.  I find the subculture in which many of those who profess most loudly to represent God are entrenched distasteful.  Not meaning to criticize it too harshly, but it is simply not for me and I find little meaning or value in it at this point.

His phrasing and choice of words, particularly, “distill”, is especially thought provoking to me as a recovering alcoholic.  Almost ironic really.

And leaves me wondering how many more people would have a taste for who Jesus was and what he taught if he wasn’t presented as often by a subculture that they find unpalatable?  Yet somehow we often presume we are helping God out by creating systems and cultures for him.  Is that what we are doing?

Ciao.

Chaz

The word “want”, in my experience, has referred mainly to thoughts or feelings that express a desire for something.  ‘Something’ may be an item, a relationship, a job, a lifestyle, state of health or fitness, etc. 

It occurred to me that wants expressed only as thoughts or feelings are largely pointless.  In fact, I have found it to be toxic and painful.  How many times have we wanted and wanted and wanted something but never obtained it because we never turned our thoughts and feelings into action?  Or our thought/emotional wants were simply unrealistic for us.  What good then is all of our wanting?

What if we redefined “want” to only those physical or behavioural expressions that effectively moved us closer to obtaining our desires?  In other words, what if we chose only to “want” with our actions?

And furthermore, we only committed actions to desires we could realistically achieve, and set all day-dream desires aside?

What if we all but did away with conventional thought/feeling-wanting?  What if we shut this unproductive form of want off? Would we not waste less emotional energy and time? Would we not then have far less disappointment, resentment, and envy in our lives? 

The longer I live, the more I experience and observe people (self included) thinking, feeling, and saying they want one thing, yet creating with their actions something completely different.  We think we want something, we feel we want something, we even say we want something, but we don’t receive it because we are not wanting it with our actions.

I’ve also known many people who appear to be stuck in, or even addicted to, the habit of mentally and/or emotionally wanting, only to face disappointment of never having.

For example, how many people do any of us know who say they want a particular type of love relationship, but are completely unrealistic in what it takes to obtain it?  Recently, I have had conversations with a few of men who “want” a fit, attractive, desirable woman in their lives, but they are not engaging the actions to make themselves eligible for such a relationship.  Instead, they eat poorly, dress poorly, smoke, don’t exercise, and don’t act like gentlemen.  You may be thinking, “duh”, but don’t we all know guys like this?  Their wants are just empty noise.  Their real wants, expressed by their behaviours, are to remain unattractive an ineligible for the relationships their thought/feeling-wants are expressing.

Or people who want jobs or lifestyles of some description yet engage the actions and behaviours to keep them in the jobs and lifestyles they are currently in.

Or those who want physical, emotional, or mental health but continue to feed themselves with unhealthy foods, thoughts, relationships, dialogues, entertainment, and environments?

What if we all but stopped the whole wishing and pipe dreaming forms of want, or at least kept them to very finite and strategic periods in our lives, and only engaged wants that we could express in productive actions and behaviours toward obtainable goals?  And were we couldn’t express a want with actions, we set it aside, at least for a time.

Anyone who has found recovery from alcohol, drugs, or other compulsive behaviours has learned, at least in the context of overcoming our vices that dreams and wishes won’t get us clean, sober, or free.  And that it was the actions and behaviours of recovery that saved our lives and turned us around.  What if we transferred this same understanding was applied to all areas of our lives?  Is this not what the 12th step refers to when it says, “…. practiced these principles in all of our affairs”?

The distinction between thought/emotion-want and action/behaviour-want has become vividly clear to me lately.  I have been practicing and developing the habits of reducing the former and increasing the latter.  The results have been greater freedom from preoccupation, disappointment and envy, and growth in meaningful areas of my life that can be changed and improved.

Ciao.

Chaz

I ask this question on the heels of some events this weekend.  I had a conflict with my wife over a renovation we are doing.  Not atypical for a couple I am sure.  But a comment she made inordinately got under my skin and I had a hard, hard time shaking my miffed state. I fell silent and moody for a time, yet had a full realization inside that I was being wrong for reacting so strongly.  I knew, somehow, I was making a tempest in a tea pot and was disappointed in my own weakness.  More on this in a moment.

The second situation of this type was when I drove my son to his soccer game the next day.  Just me and him.  It is one of my favourite events of the week.  As we pulled into the parking lot of the field, I said quietly to myself, “Please … don’t let me see ‘Ugly’ here”.  “Ugly”, or “The Gargoyle”, are two of my more polite names for my kids’ step-dad.  As you can see, I still have some maturing and recovering to do in this area.  Progress, not perfection.

Ugly is universally observed to be an ass-kisser who, appears to put more time and focus into my kids than his own.  Why? Seemingly to suck up to my ex.  Ugly and I have some deep unresolved issues from years ago that have never been rectified.  We have not spoken in nearly 10 years.  Everyone, including people who would side with my ex, such as her own family, agree that Ugly owes me an apology for his behaviour years ago and continued behaviour.  In spite of the traces of bitterness I expressed in the last couple paragraphs, this is indeed the new and improved version from where I was at years ago.

Glad to report, Ugly was not in attendance that day which left me free to enjoy the game without his annoying and distracting presence.  My ex was indeed there which, although we have little to talk about, we have made great improvements and can be completely congenial.  So there we sat at our respective but distant parts of the park adoring and cheering on our son as he played skillfully. 

I wonder if God looks down on the petty squabble I had with my wife over the renovation and the under-my-skin trace of resentment toward Ugly and laughs?  No different than when I hear my kids arguing over how many dishes each will put away when they are sharing the after-dinner-chore.  Or who got the bigger slice of pizza or strawberry-rhubarb pie?

How much impact on the world, humanity, or any of my kids as individuals does it really have if one puts away 8 dishes and the other puts away 7?  Or if one slice of pizza is 3″ while the other is 3 1/8″?

Even wrongs such as betrayal?  When God looks down on humanity throughout history and sees the atrocities of war and murder, does he lovingly laugh at grudges over renovation timelines and parents at opposite ends of the soccer field?  Not that he doesn’t care, but more perhaps that he knows that he has such better things for us.  The least of which is not Grace, that when applied properly, can resolve centuries of wrongs and pains.

Are we, in our comfortable western societies, particularly those of us who are employed, fed, clothed, and have medical care, not acting like a bunch of teens who hyperfocus on who put away 7 dishes versus 8 or got ‘ripped off’ of 1/8″ of pizza?

Glad to say that when the light went on for me yesterday about my attitude about the renovation, I quickly put it aside, hugged my wife, told her how I was feeling and that I was wrong for being petty, and we agreed to put the matter aside.

In addition, my ex and I  had a brief but polite exchange at the end of the game as we went our separate ways and my son and I had our traditional post-game lunch and game recap.

I hope to make continued improvements in my attitude toward my kids’ step-father.  The wrongs are real, like the extra dish is real, but really, in the scheme of things, how much energy is it worth?

Ciao.

Chaz

I am not saying we do, I just don’t know that we don’t.

This question comes to mind on the heels of years of involvement in what I will call western evangelical church culture, followed by years of involvement in AA/12-step culture.  A striking contrast to the two cultures in my experiences is that AA/12-step culture creates fewer opportunities for egos to get inflated.  AA/12-step seeks less often to promote individuals.  There are few titles, positions, authority and virtually no pay.  They have certainly not eradicated ego-feeding, but they do keep a very real perspective that it can bring a person and organization to ruin in a hurry.

My experience with church culture on the other hand, although inadvertently, appears to be quite centred on promoting individuals and placing them in settings that leave them in danger of runaway egos.

Would 43,000 people admiring you, calling you Pastor, and financing your very comfortable lifestyle have an impact on your ego?

Titles, ranks, offices, attention, fame, and money, just to name a few of the ego-feeding factors common in church culture are what I am referring to.  Have we created a culture of ego-feeding for our pastors and ministers? Do we put too much focus on a small number of individuals and inadvertently idolize them?  Would any of us be any less immune to runaway egos if we were given a title, attention, adoration, and were constantly the centre of attention?  And in many cases, paid well as well?  Who would we become if these were bestowed on us?  Could we handle it?  Have we not experienced many who couldn’t?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not for a moment saying AA/12-step culture is all right, and church cultures are all wrong.  Far from it.  I am just saying that churches could learn a lot from the cautions we seek to implement in AA/12-step.

In AA/12-step, we are constantly reminded that we remain sober a day at a time.  Yet I have seldom heard in church that we should seek to grow and live in our relationship with God a day at a time.  Instead, I have experienced far more emphasis placed on building and running programs and productions.

In AA/12-step we are constantly reminded of our primary purpose, “to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety”.  Few opportunities exist to take AA away from this.  In my church experiences, we wove in numerous directions that often overshadowed any primary purpose to seek, serve and share the message of Jesus Christ.

Why does AA/12-step take measures to avoid ego-feeding?  Probably so the primary purpose does not become overshadowed thus making AA/12-step ineffective and pointless.

Could our church cultures learn something from this?

Ciao.

Chaz