Blog entry for:

the steps are my path to a relationship with a God of my understanding. this Higher Power gives me strength when the road gets rough. this morning i feel grateful for a whole bunch of things, the most important one, at least right here and right now is the connection i have developed with the divine. it is kind of cool to be wired into that source, and it is not that i hear the divine talking to me, telling me what to do, but i certainly can feel my way to doing the next right thing.
it is almost appropriate to discuss the nature of the divine as i see it, however, that is something i choose to keep close to my vest. not that i am worried about what others will think, well that is a lie -- i am always worried about what others think --, my biggest concern is that i will write something about how i see it right now, and then it will change. it seems that these days, i cannot nail down any definition of what a HIGHER POWER looks and feels like, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. i know i have written about that definition before, and as i think back across the progress of my recovery, i find that definition has always been shifting, it was me that tried to keep that from occurring. so the easier softer path, for this addict anyways, is to allow that to happen and not worry about not being able to recognize the divine tomorrow. after all, as long as i have been doing this recovery gig, i have had very little trouble in recognizing the shape of the divine. it is an act of FAITH that this will continue, as long as do what i need to do to live the program, as it has been given to me.
so a long and rambling justification about not speaking to my definition of a HIGHER POWER. i seem to be learning how to focus on my connection, and that connection is the gift that i believe the reading was speaking to this morning, at least to me. so the second part of what is on my mind is do i take this gift for granted? i would love to say of course not and launch into an inventory about how i maintain that connection on a daily basis. well an inventory is hardly necessary this morning, one of the leftovers form my active addiction is that i love ritual. perhaps that comes from growing up as a Catholic, but it does not matter, i am addicted to ritual, and as a result, i have developed a daily ritual of working on my part of that connection. i do not know if this is a good or bad thing, what i do know that from the very start of developing my daily ritual, i have managed to stay clean. in other words, i attribute my ongoing recovery in part to the daily ritual i commenced way back when, even when i did not necessarily believe that there was anything more than the mundane world of my five senses. back then, it was doing something because my sponsor suggested it, and i was just desperate enough to take that suggestion. the gift of desperation led to the many gifts ongoing recovery has manifest in my life and today i am grateful for that gift. i know today, without a doubt, that desperation was only the first gift that i obtained from a HIGHER POWER that i could recognize. and i am grateful for everything that i have reciieved from that day forward, it after all, another good day to recover.

∞ DT ∞