Working the Steps

They call it work.
Not play, not diversion,
not an extra if there's time.
They call it work.
Not vacation,
not a sideline,
not a hobby.
We work the steps
in a regular, methodical,
whether-we-want-to-or-not
but especially when it's "not."

We don't pause a month
or five between one
and the next.
We honor the words
now, immediately,
at once, unreservedly,
ruthlessly, fully, utmost,
essential requirements,
had to be, must, all, must
absolute necessity,

imperative, could not survive,

next, vigorous course of action,
at once, strenuous effort,
great necessity, an hour...then,

that afternoon, three or four hours,
it works - It really does.

Urgent

When everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. ~ Dennis Ferry

A legal secretary told a tale
of a lawyer who would work
through the weekend,
stacking files and drafts
on her desk, each at one point
having been marked,
"Do this first."
A large sheet on top
directing, "Heck,
just do them all first!"
It's all important.
I had lots of things to do today
and some of them got done,
one got terribly scrambled
and took hours to sort it through.
There are things I didn't do
but reading program literature
and making a meeting,
making a motion that to me
means constant contact with God,
these things I did. And that way
I'll have the wherewithal
to do the rest of the urgent things
tomorrow.

Your Way

Well, I did it.
It's been three months
and I called you each day,
reported my food,
read what you told me to,
sat in a stupid chair
for fifteen minutes
every day and tried
to pray and meditate.
I did it your way
and I should be able
to show you how wrong
it is, how wrong you are.
But I guess I'll keep on
for a while...
or a lifetime...
but at least today
doing it your way.

(This poem was written as a sequel to I'll Show You.)

How to Get Approval

Failure to meet others’ expectations will send me back again and again to seek approval that will never come. ~ For Today (Kindle Locations 2023-2024).

You think I should have told you sooner,
but it won't change what you do.
You would not have prepared for my trip,
gotten your plans together, set menus, shopped,
become independent. I'll leave the food,
do what I can before I go, get everything ready
for my 50-some hours gone. I can't please you.
Five books to work on, all worthy, all need me.
I'll do them as I can, have told you the order I'l take,
you know when you signed on...but I know
you want me to get to yours. And I will. When I said.
Other things fall by the wayside, don't meet my expectations
much less yours. I really will get to them. And don't mind
if you remind me, but though I want you to be pleased,
to think I'm the bomb, I can't be everything for all people.
I'm a people-pleaser by nature and feel like nothing
when you don't think I'm something. But I'll never please you all
and, when it comes down to it, what you think of me
is none of my business. And if you and I believe that
for some crazy reason I'll get twenty times as many things done
as I would have...trying to please you.

Uncomfortable

Fear. Trepidation. Anxiety.
Oh, wouldn't it be easier
to play stupid computer games
or even to clean the house
and make hubby happy!
But I'm sitting here waiting
for the computer to reboot
so I can walk a tightrope
suspended way over
my comfort zone. And it says
"Cannot load iCloud preference pane."
How the heck am I to know
more than the machine?
Nerves. Irritation. Pique.
I'm sixty-eight. Retired.
So why are there thirteen programs
open on my computer?
Fear. Trepidation. Anxiety.
I've got miles to go before I sleep...
not just tonight. Things to accomplish.
Service to give. And a power
greater by far than I
ready to take me by the hand
and show me his will for me
today.

Shame Guides

God employs our shame to guide His children toward His throne. ~ Jo Helen Cox, God Makes Us Holy

Shame. A painful feeling of humiliation
or distress caused by the consciousness 
of wrong or foolish behavior. Would that I
could lose shame, banish it, be rid of it.
But that's not the plan. It has a place.
Like bumble bees or rattlesnakes or mold.
Like Daddy said, "Don't be sorry, don't do it!"
God uses our contrition, embarrassment,
humiliation, regret to show us what path
we don't choose to repeat. Shame.
A way for God to guide us towards the place
we wanted to find and on our own
could not.

The Seventh Tradition

7. Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

Every group,
self-supporting
to avoid issues
outside the scope.
So, pass the basket
with a recommended
three dollars
contribution.
But what of those
who have plenty
and put in none
week after week
or those who show off
with a big bill,
the opposite
of the widow's mite.
Are those outside issues?
Yes. Outside me.
And the rule for that
has nothing to do
with the three buck
suggestion.
That has to do
with staying on my side
of that wide street
and letting others
do as they choose to do.

We Know the Rules

We are compulsive eaters.
We have been for a while
and so we've learned the diets,
the tricks, the quick fixes,
the mind games, 
the wardrobe gimmicks.
We've joined programs,
paid great sums, clipped plans
from magazines, tried them,
succeeded before we failed.
We've had injections, pills,
ear studs, hypnosis, 
analysis, therapy.
We know the rules.

We are writers, and have been
for a while, learning what to do,
what to avoid, how to show, not tell.
how to break dialogue, 
keep a consistent point of view.
We avoid cliches like the plague,
apply similes like fertilizer,
spreading the smelly stuff,
our metaphor for variety.
We are writers who know the rules
and watch best-sellers break them all,
ignoring them, and getting read still.

We are compulsive eaters
who know the rules but we also know
the issues, the reasons, the way out
and that rules have a place but the rules
will never bring recovery
without that magic touch,
that knowing application
of the twelve simple steps
that are not rules but a way of life
that allows us not to be tied to rules
but to live free.

Now, Forever

Why anguish over days past
or worry over those to come?
When we pigeonhole bits of time

with such words and concepts
we bedeck them with feelings
of despair or of anxiety, quailing
at presumed or anticipated failure
but when we see the continuum,
the inclusiveness, the foreverness
of the flow of nows we accept
that part in which we can partake
at this moment, leaving the emotions
of the waves of minutes we've seen
pass by and the surge of those to come
to their own encounter and dwell
in that part of forever...we breathe
right now.

Mercy and Grace

Grace is the elegance of love’s generosity.

Mercy is the action of grace. ~ God Makes Us Holy by Jo Helen Cox (coming July 31st)

Grace is the elegance of love's generosity.
I probably have an opinion, if I know you,
about you, how well you "have it together,"
how you function. I try not to, I know
to keep it on my side of the street,
that what you do is none of my business,
that what you think of me is...
none of my business. Sigh.
I know the truth. That's the way to live
but I still have the opinions. Maybe someday
love will take those away, will stop my judging,
will allow me to just love. But right now
even before that happens, I can love.
And when I can, I'm showing grace,
the elegance of love's generosity.

Mercy is the action of grace.
Mercy is loving you in my actions,
in my words and deeds, in my heart.
Living love's generosity.

And having grace and mercy,
acting on that, they end up working
in my life...and yours.

God Makes Us Holy by Jo Helen Cox to be released July 31st

Like a Radio

Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. ~ Jim Morrison

Carry pain like a radio.
Well, not many folks do...
carry radios, that is.
I trooped through the grocery today,
earbuds in place, a story in my ears.
Do I carry pain like my cellphone
with audiobooks? Well, I'll count.
I listen to what I choose,
ignore the world around me.
I could follow the news
but it scares me these days...
I could hear recovery stories
day after day, hour after hour —
but frivolous trash fiction
comforts me more, allows me
to hide, to avoid, to not face myself,
my fears, my shortcomings,
my longing for wholeness...
I choose to escape. First choice
is to numb my mind with food,
with sweets, with soothing goo.
Second is stupid computer games,
trashy audiobooks, diversion.
But the pain remains until I face it,
until I examine myself, my fears,
my failures, my resentments, my disgust
and having seen the fear, having lived to tell,
to go boldly into the world
aware I can deal with the fears that arise.

Jim Morrison

Eating Vegetables

I ate like a Hoover
but seldom were vegetables
anything more than 
a ruse, a pretense
that healthy food
passed my lips.
I ate veggies in public
and binged on pastries,
ice cream, raw dough...
anything that wasn't green
or healthy or nutritious
in private. The result?
I didn't eat them...I became one.
I ate to a near-comatose state
then ate some more,
hiding the evidence
except that stretching meexpanding the girth
until I found a way
to stop being a vegetable
and actually enjoy
eating them.

How Do You Explain Recovery?

You start by what it's not.
If willpower were a requirement
the twelve steps would be relics.
If you've tried all the other options,
what we in OA call the diet and calorie clubs
and surgery and hypnosis and challenges,
rewards, everything any addict can list
ad infinitum...If you've given up,
decided to just stay an addict
and learned that didn't work either...
then you might wander into the rooms.

 

What Recovery is is the juxtaposition,
the melding, of three different truths.
The psychologist Carl Jung
worked with a rich young drunk
six months, released him,
and the man, Roland Hazard,
when he quickly came back,
having drunk again, heard Jung say
he was hopeless, beyond medicine's reach.
But! When Hazard asked if there was no hope,
Jung answered sometimes a
"vital spiritual experience"
solved the problem cases.

 

The second truth was a doctor,
ruined in the depression,
working in a center for alcoholics
identified two addictions,
the physical and the mental,
the mental being harder to control.

 

The third was spiritual values
inherent in The Oxford Group
striving for absolute honesty,
absolute unselfishness,
absolute love, and absolute purity.

 

When two men came together,
understand the blend of the three,
Recovery happened.
It's still easier to say what recovery's not
then what it is, staying true to the roots
will get you there.

Traffic In My Head

When I'm in my car, the GPS system will alert me if there is upcoming traffic. The other day, Jack was in the car with me and such an alert came up. Jack's response,"Mommy, why did it say there's traffic in your head?" ~ Dezi Rollins

Traffic in my head. Some people
call it a committee, but not me.
It's a traffic jam. Impatient folks honk,
I get in the wrong lane, can't turn,
circle the block but then one way
and crooked streets...besides,
I stay lost almost all the time.
My GPS has my personality
and gets lost with me, spends hours
chanting, "recalculating, recalculating..."
What I would do, I do not,
what I would not do, that I finish
with finesse. I can't do it on my own,
can't get where I want to go.
I need an authority to stand in the street,
nod at me when I can't decide,
motion which choice I can make,
stop the turmoil around me,
bring me some peace.
There's an angry mob in my head,
not a committee. There's chaos all around
until a Power brings the serenity
I cannot imagine from inside the fray.

Why is there traffic in your head?

Mountaintop

I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've been to meetings, not just local
but bigger groups, including delegates
from the whole wide world.
I've seen wonder, magic, awe
in the faces of people who walk into the first
and know for an absolute truth they're home.
I've seen people who've come back
time and time again for decades
and feel adrift if they go a week
without a group. I've read the promises,
not just pages 83 and 84 but all of them,
scattered throughout the Big Book
and books of all kinds, promises big and small,
but promises. I've seen recovery in faces,
serenity in the bearing of a woman
walking through a personal hell,
hope in the body language of one
whose disabilities used to crush
but now are encountered and conquered
with grace and love and kindness.
I've been to the mountaintop
and I've seen what it means to reach
beyond our wildest dreams. I hope
to reach that point, but as long as I'm walking
on the right path, taking the right Steps,
I've seen the promised life.

Gone Awry

I had often heard that my character defects were good instincts gone awry, but it never quite registered. If they started out as assets, then why wouldn’t God want to convert them back? ~ Voices of Recovery (Kindle Locations 1998-1999).

Character defects. Assets gone awry. Really?
So what assets were they? The defects
can't really be numbered, but many exist...in me.
Anger, anxiety, arrogance (oh, yeah!),
a closed mind, co-dependency, pessimism,
dishonesty a.k.a. lying, the king of my defects,
fear, gluttony (well, it served a purpose!)
impatience (that one hits hard!), jealousy,
envy, procrastination, self pity...poor poor me!
Those are the major ones. I'd gossip if I remembered names,
if I knew who people were talking about when I heard,
but little chance of that! And that's enough
though it's far from all I have. And the good
skewed in all of those? Hum...

Anger. What do I need, an antonym?
Placate, pacify, give pleasure? Are those good?
Those are opposites of the word, not the defect.
Try acceptance, tolerance, understanding.
I'd be fine with my anger changing to those.
Anxiety. Not a biggie for me. Humph.
There's that bully dishonesty in there! Lying to me!
Is anxiety serenity skewed? Arrogance.
Black sheep in the family of modesty?
I'd take the cousin, trade it for my need
to toot my horn, to tell you I'm special
just so you won't see how little I think of me.
So what's the lying? People pleasing.
Saying what you want to hear, what I want to believe,
what I think you expect. I please you best
by living the life of recovery. Yes, the pendulum swings.
There is a yin for the yang, an asset for the defect.
My Creator, I am now willing that You should have all of me,
good and bad. I pray that You now remove from me
every single defect of character which stands in the way
of my usefulness to You and my fellows.
Grant me strength, as I go out from here,
to do Your bidding. Amen.

Deserved

These are the products of my self-centered fear: negativity, anxiety, living in a future not yet formed with an ungrateful heart. I see only what my disease has taken from me — everything that I “deserved.” ~ Voices of Recovery (Kindle Locations 2219-2221).

What do I deserve? I'd have told you...
well, in my negativity would still tell you...
that I don't deserve much, have no worth.
But there's another part of me that believes
that I deserve to stop for sweets,
to go from drive-through to drive-through,
to eat all the sweet treats I can stuff down
because life's not fine, whatever I can sneak,
the sugar high that makes it all go away...
or once did, long years ago, before it failed.
But with maturity sometimes comes wisdom.
Knowledge that what I deserve is neither disdain
not food not good for my body. No, what I deserve
is the recovery that comes from eating food
for nutrition, for fuel, for sanity and recovery,
and that what I deserve is all the wonderful promises
that can bring.

The Passage of Time

Enormous problems,
seismic change,
life and death matters,
literally and seemingly...
Ancient resentments,
exposed trauma, long blocked
but harrowing, devastating,
though not understood,
confusing, depressing...
overcome. Understanding
flowing forward,
relentless waves
bringing change
sometimes rapid,
sometimes inching
glacially, moving forward,
growing better, life
becoming ever more welcome,
always fuller, fulfilling
and surrounded by meaning,
usefulness, joy
both giddy and seeping out.

"Thank You."

Compliments befuddle me,
honors don't humble me...
they humiliate me!
Singled out I want to say,
"My hair's a mess,
I should have worn a dress,
don't look at me,
don't give me this,
I don't deserve it."
Like Paul, I'm not who
I want to be, but like him
I can be made to be
who I want to be.
I can be honored.
Humbled.
Grateful.
Thankful.
And I am.

The Winter of My Discontent

Only when I surrender,
after desperation encompasses
and devastates, destroying hope
can I find the courage to step out,
to try what seems madness, to accept
that I can, someone else may know
even if they are normal...not even normal
but exactly what I am now, they have been
and I can see this in their lives,
in their words, in their telling my story
and claiming it theirs...Only in despair
can I venture toward the rebirth,
the spring when obviously barren land
yields beauty, peace, purpose, life...
When I can see it taking over,
becoming abundant in others
and maybe a small shoot in my own life
only then can I believe in summer
and in the possibility of a season
of harvest, of coming to fruition,

of accomplishing more than seemed possible,
reaching beyond any dreams
I could have dreamed.

Cliparts.co

On the Tip of My Head

I've realized when I cough while working on someone, I need to go back to the crown chakra and open it more. Debbie Moot, The Health House

Decades ago I made puppets. Marionettes.
Taught sixth graders to do it, too.
Lots of lessons learned, more than merely
untangling strings. Strings attached at knees,
wrists, derrière, shoulders, both sides of the head.
An inanimate object, a thing made of wood,
cloth, stuffing, a felt-covered styrofoam ball
on a ring-screwed dowel. An inanimate object
for me to bring to life. A thing being a person,
making real people believe...but just a bouncing thing
if the head doesn't make it live. It's the head
that makes life. Puppets or people, it's the head.
The face, the emotions, the life, the love,
the interaction. When we let the light shine
through the power from above, it shows.
I've always said, "God is not a puppeteer!"
But the exception is when we open the connection,
when we turn it over to Him and say, "Not my will.
Let your's be done."

Gustav the Lesser
(named for Albrecht
Roser's Gustav,
not an insult to
be less than greatness)

Our Real Purpose

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous (Kindle Location 1188).

What a deal for a people pleaser! I can do that,
help all the people around me, be God's sergeant,
passing on orders, filling in for God when he's busy,
keeping his army running. Would that it said that!
But it doesn't. I'm not to mold those around me
to be fit for maximum service for God. No,
I'm to make myself of maximum service,
and that could mean doing what others tell me,
taking orders from God second hand,
like from my sponsor or from a trusted friend.
This doesn't say anything about cleaning the street
where others walk. I keep my side clean,
my ears attuned, and do what I'm told to
no matter who gets to be the sergeant.

Fat

How could I love my body?
How could I have accepted
an addiction to sugar,
a compulsion to overeat,
a disease that could have,
would have killed me?
I can do all this because
without meeting the criteria,
without the desperation,
without realizing helplessness
and an unmanageable life
I'd never have found
recovery.

Sinning by Eating

God employs our shame to guide His children toward His throne. We learn that words and actions hurt people. Knowledge holds us accountable for those wrongs, which then become sin if we deliberately continue in them. Sin convicts us, since we act against the command to love. ~ Jo Helen Cox, page 17 of soon-to-be-released God Makes Us Holy

A victimless crime. Eating.
It hurts nobody, is not really crime,
is necessary for life, for survival,
for usefulness. But to excess
there's that pesky old sin gluttony,
and victimless? Tell me that
when I weighed 300 pounds.
Tell that to insurance companies,
to people furnishing wheelchairs,
walkers, motorized carts
for those who have eaten so much
they no longer can walk.
Victimless? I was a victim.
Many people victimize themselves.
People like me. I know how to eat,
have a program, a plan of eating,
a definition of abstinence,
tools, literature, people who help...
and a God who cares and who,
when I release it, when I do,
not just say, I want His will, not mine,
will take away the obsession.
It's the least I can do if I love
not only my family and society
who would have to care for me
if I could not, but if I love
me.

Discerning God's Voice

One of the ways I know God's voice when he talks to me is it pisses me off. ~ heard at sponsorship workshop

The god I've worshipped...well,
paid vocal homage to...
most of my life was logical,
rational, sensical...
a god of my own heart.
Because that's where he started,
where he stayed. It's that outside voice,
even when you hear it within,
that communicates to you as
the real Will of God. Even if
you name that god something else...
HP, Howard (as in Howard be thy name),
GUS (as in Guy Upstairs) or demiurge
that's the one who's real, who interacts,
who speaks to you if you'll take time to hear.
That's the god I asked – way back,
August, 1969 – to pick a choice
between the two before me.
And it was God.
I know because I'd have chosen the other.
And looking back I know it was right
even if it looks on a map of my life
like a rabbit trail. It was
an educational rabbit trail at that.

Burning Bushes All Around

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. ~ Macrina Wiederkehr, O.S.B

Ordinary holiness,
a blessed existence,
a consciousness
of the presence of God,
of the potential for miracles,
of the significance of the moment.
Trees full of angels,
glory in the rocks underfoot,
in the struggling leaves
of a repotted plant,
in the potential of a seed.
The glory of living among folks
of uncommon promise,
of unknown potential,
of being one of them
unafraid to find out
just how neat I can be.

Diligence

Freedom is not free.
Diligence is needed
not only to preserve rights,
liberties, a lifestyle
but to hold to a dream
of becoming who you wish
of having what you need,
of being who you choose
to be.

Compulsive Coughing

Like breathing out and breathing in...My coughs, my tightened throat,
its ups, its downs are second nature to me now...
I am a compulsive eater, a compulsive game player,
a compulsive knitter, crossword puzzle addict,
procrastinator, Facebook checker, analytic,
critic, compulsive doer, genealogy freak,
cross-stitcher, you name it...
And compulsion grabs me any time, anywhere.
A few weeks of a deep cough, mostly gone now,
still a nuisance, but I find when I think about it —
the cough that wants to come – when I consider
my fears, my insecurities, my need to chew,
my custom of associating something in my mouth
with comfort...I find by relaxing,
by repeating program prayers,
by conscious actions replacing reflexive ones,
the coughing can be controlled not with a drop of menthol,
a taste of cherry, the feel of a candy-like substance
but with turning over the fear, the fatigue, the weakness
and moving through the moment.

For the Long Run

Full of determination, we are great in the short run; but when the ‘everydayness’ begins to set in, we lose interest. ~ Voices of Recovery (Kindle Locations 2074-2075).

The diet mentality has lots to do with it.
For years we resolved to lose weight,
worked hard at it, maybe lost it,
maybe not, but it ended. Relatively...
often tragically...soon. We became sprinters...
well, not really. The legs, the loss of breath,
the fat we lugged with us step after step
kept us from sprinting, but the expectation was there.
We didn't have to run a marathon, just a sprint,
and our bodies would be fine, our lives aligned,
our world bright.

Then we signed on,
not for a marathon but for an Ironman,
or closer to a double or triple Ironman,
a bike race across America, the Tor des Geants...more than the mind can conceive or great athletes do.
It's the race of a lifetime because, well, it lasts a lifetime,
day after day, year after year, one day at a time
through the chasms of boredom, the pitfalls of pride,
the disillusionment of exhaustion, the dungeons of doubt.
But we run it, keep on keeping on, and the race is the prize,
the repetitiveness the goal, for we're not here for a sprint.
We're racing for our lives.

I Will Not

I will not allow something to continue to eat at me until I turn around and eat at it. ~ Saxton Bamfrs Christina

I know that if food will fix the problem,
won't exacerbate it, will give childhood's familiar peace,
then it's okay to eat. But nothing tastes
as good as abstinence feels, as fine as the glow
of eating right, of loving yourself through the food...
the good-for-you food, the right food, the healthy choices.
I know I tend to make it through a crisis,
to choose healthy, to turn down the crutch foods...
but I know too how the food pulls
as soon as the emergency passes, the tension eases,
then I ease the guard, let down the defenses,
get alone and reward myself for making it through
as though I was responsible and not some Power.
I know how easy it is to fall into old patterns,
lazy thinking, once...many times...discarded habits
and hate myself for it then eat more because of the hate.
But nothing tastes as good as abstinence feels
and for today, I'll adamantly stand on the truth.
I will not allow something to continue to eat at me 
until I turn around and eat at it.