Before and after the short stories that follow, I have been involved in many spiritual explorations. Among them are Buddhism practices and retreats and medication groups, Holotropic breathwork with a psychiatrist, and rebirthing 20 times or more. I have cut the willow branches from the creeks and built lodges and sweat with Native Americans and others, men’s groups, dozens of retreats, Wildman weekends, silent retreats at a Catholic monastery, drumming river trips, and others. I’ve participated in sweat lodge ceremonies and thrown coins into a wishing well. I still make wishes when I blow out candles on a birthday cake. I’ve made astrology charts. I’ve done Holotropic breathwork and had many rebirthing experiences. I’ve held embers in my hands while staring into a fire on acid or mushrooms. I have also read dozens of new age books and attended some of their teachings. The following are a few examples of many experiences I’ve documented in my unfinished memoir of approximately 55,000 words to date.
The following events may seem presented in a choppy manner, but I tried to create some semblance of a cadence. Forgive me, for I know not what I’m doing. 😊
Scene One: (Background: I’ve survived in the streets for months when not in jail.)
On Sundays, I did my best to clean up and attend church. The Pastor was a decent person and became aware of my plight. He gave me small jobs around the churchyard, weeding and sweeping. He brought me sandwiches as I typed the weekly church bulletin. He became a significant person during this period of my life. I wasn’t a religious person, but he was kind, and I didn’t sense he was looking down on me. He was one of my Eskimos. Like the saying “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” the Eskimo is the sudden appearance of a St. Bernard or a Sherpa when you are lost or can’t see your way.
One Sunday, his sermon seemed to be talking to me. I looked down at my feet and wept. Powerful emotions stirred inside me, and I sunk between the pews so as not to be seen. Tears started to pour, and I sobbed. Through my closed eyelids, I sensed the entire chamber filled with brilliant light and warmth. My hands hid the shame on my face as I experienced floating just above the floor. Suddenly, flooded with a sensation of relief, my tears dried up. Gratitude and hopefulness filled the dark space in my soul that was home to depression and anxiety. I took a deep breath for the first time in a very long while. What happened? Was this a spiritual experience, or had I snapped?
I didn’t want to talk about it. I need help to get back in my seat. I felt awkward, but the Pastor noticed my tears and approached me after the service. He encouraged me to get baptized. I was grateful and altered beyond explanation at the time. I was so relieved to feel something other than desperation and demoralization that I agreed. He scheduled a baptismal service for the next week.
I want to say I had a miraculous change of consciousness that lasted forever; my troubles were over, and I floated out of the church and did good deeds. But I still deliberated the self-defeating solutions of an addict. This time my illness told me to take a hallucinogenic when baptized to maximize the experience. In the past, while tripping on LSD or mushrooms, I believed there were moments I considered spiritual. So, that’s what I did. I took a small amount to avoid appearing intoxicated or feeling out of control. Stoned, I was baptized on July 29, 1984. I don’t remember the experience but have a certificate as evidence it happened. When I came down, the result was the opposite of my expectations. My actions were disrespectful, and I knew it. Once again, I was full of guilt and shame and anxious apartness. I am grateful that I don’t have to earn the grace of God.
Still altered by the event of the previous week, I’m not sure if I had less tolerance for alcohol or less tolerance for myself, but the chemicals were not helping me escape anymore. I became more determined to change spiritually while my body became weaker. I had to get out of the street life. I spent more time hiding in my tent and reading the Bible. I carried it in my knapsack with my alcohol and drugs. I continued to drink.. I had to drink.
***
Scene Two: (Background: A few weeks later.)
Delinquent with court fines and restitution, the anxiety and desperation rapidly intensified. I had to get some money or go to jail. I was not listening for divine guidance in my decision-making when panicking. I decided I was going to take a big gamble.
I had kept the phone number from the dealer from jail. I debated with myself whether to call or not. I didn’t know this person. Was this another setup, or was I going deeper into the drug dealing life I was trying to escape? I’m telling myself, “Score one and done.” I didn’t have the wherewithal to go back to jail. Fear and doubt kept me awake at night. Still unaware of the abundance of God’s Grace, I begged God to help me.
I pedaled a rusty bike to the church. I stashed the bike and my knapsack in the bushes outside the door. Alone in the sanctuary, I prayed. It was sincere and straightforward. “Dear God, please don’t let me get busted this last time, and I quit.” I felt nothing. I heard nothing. Was this passive approval? When I walked out of the sanctuary, the bike and the knapsack were gone…stolen.
In the knapsack were drug paraphernalia, a bottle opener, an old racing form, a baseball glove, a hairbrush, my Bible, and my little phone book with the number. I was first angry, then relieved, then confused, and then angry again. I halfheartedly looked for the thief for maybe five minutes. I was not aware of the answer I had received. Bewildered and defeated, I returned to the sweltering tent and lay awake, feeling the absence of clinging to the security of my Bible in the tent that night. What now?
***
Scene Three: (Background: I’ve devoted myself to Alcoholics Anonymous and the Church. The only two places I felt welcome and hope.)
God Shot. Before sobriety, I don’t remember hearing the phrase. The recovery culture has a language. A God Shot is an unexplainable event or coincidence. It’s not quite up to the level of a miracle, but notable and not to be discounted. Sometimes it comes in the form of an Eskimo. Similar to the saying “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” the Eskimo is comparable to the sudden appearance of a St. Bernard or a Sherpa when you are lost or can’t see your way. I prefer the word “grace.”
Unaware that my critical condition had been a spiritual emergency, I was surprised that my crisis evolved into a quest in the early months. As others shared their God Shots and Eskimo encounters, I became less doubtful and more open to the spiritual conclusion. At the Lodge dining room table, I spread out my recovery books, dictionary, Bible, and journal. I studied like I could learn my way out of my illness. I read every recovery book I could find or borrow. I was desperately willing and curious after alcohol slammed me to my knees. I now understand that on my knees was the end and the beginning. I surrendered to the recovery process and immersed myself in the journey.
I did not struggle to accept the concept of higher power like many others. For decades I had been seeking something. My search for spirituality in my pre-recovery life involved hallucinogens, so I was not opposed to magical thinking. Many trips with LSD, mushrooms, and peyote primed the pump. And my very early experiences with grandma had me open to the mystical. So, accepting that there might be “something” was easy. Defining that “something” was another story.
As I reflected on my last year using, I noticed how many times traditional Christian symbolism appeared in my journey. I was not “religious,” but I couldn’t discount the “God Shots.” The Bible first appeared in my jail cell. The Pastor at the church reached out to me when I was in the streets, and he gave me a Bible that gave me hope and comfort while sick in my tent. And the spontaneous bright light experience that led to me getting baptized. The stolen bicycle experience happened while praying in the sanctuary, and my Eskimo Pastor Dan answered many of my questions with his repeated direction to read the book of Matthew. It is what it is. I can’t discount it.
I suspect my positive experience in Catholic School as a pre-adolescent was helpful in me not rejecting grace because it had a Holy attached to it. Except for when Jude and I put bleach in the Holy Water of a local Catholic Church as teen hoodlums, I overcame my fear of a God damnation and holy vengefulness. In time, I learned I could still trust a god I was angry with. And I had a lot of anger.
Baptized as an infant but not raised in a religious home, God was not forced upon me, nor was I threatened with being smoted. My parents did drop me off at Sunday School for a short time as a youngster, but I enjoyed it except for putting on the Lil’ monkey suit. I’m not sure they ever went to church after escorting me to the building. I suspect, no hope, my mother slipped into a church in the latter part of her life in the throes of her alcoholism before she died.
Grandmother and I would read the Ouija board when I spent the summers with her. I was six to ten years old. She had me shake Chinese fortune sticks and toss I Ching coins, and she would interpret them. She would make me a super soft bed with homemade quilts on the couch and let me watch tv until the Star Spangled Banner played, and then the Chief buzzed on the screen. Long after she went to bed, I was still awake. The light came through the space more than once under her closed door. She would then converse with spirits. Often it was her husband or a child that had tragically passed to the afterlife. There were others I didn’t know. She swore when mad at her grown children and second husband and smoked two packs of cigarettes daily. She might have chewed tobacco occasionally, but she didn’t drink. And she was good to me and gave me comfort, shelter, and safety. She was my model for spiritual curiosity, not pious, but a ragamuffin.
She married a Cherokee on the Oklahoma Reservation and was once baptized a Mormon but had one or two other religious affiliations. I guess her God was everywhere. She was an ancient seeker that outlived seven of her nine children
Like Grandma, I attended different churches as a seeker and found comfort in the rituals and beauty in the sanctuaries on almost all visits. I’m curious and look for common threads of goodness in them all. I care for and respect the people whose lives exemplify those qualities. Two semesters in Catholic school were a better learning experience than most years I floundered in a public school. In my opinion, the lack of exposure to spiritual concepts may be one major reason public schools will remain hallways filled with lost corruptible souls. I didn’t resent the structure and rigor of Catholic School. It was a good education and treated well.
Unfortunately, like eight of her children that died alcohol-related deaths, I shook God out of a bottle of booze for a long time in my life. The liquor stores have signs reading “Wine and Spirits.” Right?
Until I met Pastor Dan, I was not a regular attendee at any church. Records show I had been baptized as an infant. On July 29, 1984, at age 32, I chose to be baptized again. Encouraged by a burning bush experience and desperate from the urgency of the spiritual crisis in my life, I had not sought comfort or direction in the Bible or Jesus except when crouched in the pews of the foxhole. Every foxhole seems equipped with a Bible of some sort if you look around.
I understand that many groups and individuals perpetrate horrendous acts on others in the name of their God or some religion. Usually at the indoctrination of geopolitical tyrants. I see that, also. That’s not part of my story. I try not to live in a black and white world except for a few exceptions, such as being buried alive or having to eat fishy-smelling fish.
By the time I stumbled into the church and pleaded my way into the recovery home, I had lost faith in everything and needed something to hang to grasp. So, for me, new suggestions on coming to some understanding of a higher power of my creation were not objectionable. I needed something to work with, and holding the face of Jesus was fine while I was shopping around. I was dying from spiritual starvation and wasn’t going to argue with the Eskimos driving the taco truck.
Over time my willingness became more dominant. I craved having a deeper understanding, and I asked to meet my friend again for coffee. I expressed that I think I had become more willing but uncertain about how to describe what I believe. After all, I have had different exposure to spiritual ideas.
His next suggestion was, “Sometimes people put pen on paper and list all the things they would desire in earthly parents. Many of us did not have good parents, and some have been awful parents. On your list, you write down every quality you would want in your perfect parent if you were to create one.”
Right then, I made my list. He asked me to read it.
He asked, “You know who this sounds like?”
I was quiet.
“These are the qualities of your new higher power.”
I nodded, “cool.”
He suggested that I focus on noticing the kind acts of those around me. The people I encountered daily at that time were my group of recovering comrades. I learned to see goodness in people. I experienced much comfort in my new outlook.
Scene Four: A year later in recovery. Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
At the end of the meetings, group members hold hands and chant the prayer together in unison. You can feel if you tune in and focus on the touch of palms touching palms. Early on, a woman beside me said, “Look at all these spiritual beings connected, linked in a circle.
“What?” I smiled. Thinking she was playing with me.
“The surge of the spirit.”
I’m game. I tuned into it like the addict I am. I closed my eyes and began to roll back and forth gradually. It became stronger in time, and sometimes I nearly lost my balance on occasion. I didn’t question whether I was experiencing the recharge of my inner spirit or an inner-ear issue. I locked onto it because it felt good.
What used to be an obligatory exercise was transformed. Before, I experienced prayer time like hearing the recess bell and staying in the chair until the teacher gave the o.k. It all changed. Now, I looked forward to the ritual. I would glance around the chain of people each meeting and try for eye contact with as many as possible before the prayer started. I would then close my eyes, and after a couple of verses, I believed I felt the voltage.
I remember the aptly named meeting Midnight Madness in Hollywood. A packed room of colorful spiritual souls. Some may have been vampires. The room was an empty art gallery with walls that protruded into the room. The seats were arranged so everyone could see the speaker at the front but not across the room.
The meeting was memorable. A 13-year-old boy celebrated a first anniversary. After we all sang Happy Birthday, he shared a moment of his recovery. His first sentence stuck with me. “Hi, I’m so and so, and I’m an alcoholic. I know I didn’t drink and use like a normal 12-year-old.” Nobody raised an eyebrow.
Well, this colorful collection of characters all stood for the prayer at the close. The line snaked around the room and ended with one woman up against the corner, unable to grasp one hand of another member. I locked eyes with her with a concerned squint and slight scowl on my face. I scanned the faces as the group linked hands as usual.
A large gathering of disparate beings that would not typically pray together could be powerful if she could link up. I tilted my head at her motioning her to move. I telepathically urged her to find someone. Come on…get connected.
She looked back at me as the prayer began. She smiled and nodded her head, “yes.” Her arm went up above her head to grasp the hand of a heavenly spirit, and I felt the surge. Blown away, I could breathe again.
Note: Nearly four decades later, in recovery that has been a life with its share of sorrow, physical challenges, and aging, I find myself adapting my therapy skills to be a Christian counselor. I have found a home in a church of diverse spirits. It is not a weekly service of proper pomp and circumstance but one of acceptance and grace.
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