IT’S A SQUIRMY word–“spiritual.” It makes me uncomfortable. It reminds me of the time I spent as a child sitting in a church and trying to look holy. “Spiritual” is confused in my mind with a kind of hymn and has connotations of mediums, levitation, and ghosts.
Worse, “spiritual” implies pretensions of sainthood, a hypocritical posturing, and pretended preoccupation with wonderful thoughts–when I and everybody else know that ninety percent of my day is spent trying to keep the wolf from the door and the horse before the cart.
My spiritual inventory doesn’t help much, either. This very day, as I lay in bed staring piously at the ceiling, I took the Third and Eleventh Steps firmly, fondly, and resolutely. I thought warmly of all the great tasks I would accomplish today with the aid of my trusty Third and Eleventh. Then I got out of bed.
In midwinter, with the window open and the heat turned down, getting out of a warm bed apparently is, for me, an act of will of the highest spiritual order. This monumental achievement seems to exhaust my store of spiritual strength for the day.
By ten o’clock, I have a number of creative suggestions to offer my Higher Power on how my life and will might be gainfully employed. I have a serene acceptance of God’s will for me as long as it happens to conform to mine.
By 2:00 PM, I have decided to mix a little of my will for me with His, since knowledge of His will is a little slow in coming and there are problems in need of immediate attention–like meeting the payroll, hardly a matter of celestial concern.
This line of self-examination leads to certain humbling realizations that are unwanted but nevertheless gnawing little realities–potholes in the path of smooth spiritual development. For example:
- I won’t believe tomorrow what I am saying today. Many of my hard-won convictions are just expedient reactions to the situation at hand.
- I have never seen any profound wisdom in “Everything works out eventually.” Of course it does. If my car is stolen tomorrow, I can meditate on how smart I was to put off cleaning out the ashtray.
- There are far more things I try to find the courage to change than there are things I seek the serenity to accept. Going through the day in placid acceptance of everything that happens just ain’t my style.
- I sometimes get tired of all this self-improvement and would like to just sit back and relax and enjoy life.
- I really enjoy solitude occasionally, as opposed to constant contact with my fellowman. There are times when I prefer curling up with a good book with lots of sex and violence to putting the Big Book under my arm and sallying forth to carry the message.
Those are not proud admissions, just the truth. I lead an odd and noisy life; little happens slowly or quietly. When I read my Big Book and “Twelve and Twelve,” and I assess my spiritual growth, I am filled with enormous feelings of inadequacy. Honesty, compassion, acceptance, understanding, faith, love, caring–I don’t even think about those most of the time. My progress toward spiritual strength is a zigzag trail filled with hip-shooting reactions.
Sometimes, I have thought of creating a Slob’s Guide to Spiritual Growth, for those of us who can’t walk around with our hands folded and a slight, mysterious smile on our faces. It might go something like this:
- It is better to watch the game in your undershirt with a can of cola in your hand than a can of beer.
- When you holler at somebody, you always feel lousy afterward–like a hangover.
- Life is a steady drizzle of small things–carry an umbrella.
- Tomorrow is another day.
- Never give up.
- Concentrate on what you’re doing–it beats thinking.
- If you let the other fellow alone and don’t get so upset about how he’s living his life, you can watch more TV.
- It is more fun to be happy than angry.
- Don’t take anything too seriously, including all of the above.
- This, too, shall pass.
That’s a start. All that wisdom leads me to suspect that the path of spiritual progress is perhaps not so steep and dark as I had imagined. At least, I can try to understand it without getting all smug and lofty.
For starters, I know that I am a walking miracle. Literally overnight, I went from years of twenty-four-hour crash drinking to total sobriety, after everything had failed except total surrender to the AA program. That is a fact I can stand on.
From that foundation, I am able to see certain glimmers of progress. For example, I can realize that I have not done anything dishonorable in at least a week. Maybe more.
Also, I have learned that using utter candor in approaching whatever progress I have made lets me feel a lot more comfortable with that progress, however slim and unspectacular it may be–it’s all mine and I’m proud of getting even that far.
I have known all along, after all, that my underlying problem was not drinking but living, and only through a change of attitudes, through unquestioning acceptance of the AA program–a program of spiritual growth–could I hope to live life as forcefully, aggressively, and enthusiastically as I have. Something must have happened.
And as I peel away the layers of day-to-day expediency, I realize that my zigzag, erratic, and inconsistent course was in the general direction of progress all the time. That’s good.
What right do I have to expect perfection and efficiency in my spiritual growth when the rest of my life is so full of ups and downs, ins and outs, and backs and forths? Throughout this whole adventure, the only consistency I have maintained is an absolute and total faith in AA, come what may.
Happiness happens when results exceed expectations. Maybe this is working after all. Deep down, there is also a warm, small ball of faith, always there, never dimmed, unexplainable, asking nothing, but giving much. To define it or try to bounce it would distort or destroy it. It just is, that’s all.
As St. Augustine said, “God is closer to me than I am to Him.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sure is true.