O Unspeakable Beauty

O UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY that surrounds, penetrates and transcends into eternity, O Beauty that shines forever brightly, ever here and ever there, ever always present in places sacred to Thy holy remembrance, in places found within the soul of every creature in need of Thee.

Arise in me and cure me of my deformity, my perversity, my ugliness, my constant rebellion.

Though I weep with guilt and shame at every thought of Thee, though I should recede back into the darkness where I truly belong, Thou has seen into my soul and my soul has caught a glimpse of Thee!

O what can a mere creature do at the hint of Thee, O unspeakable Beauty?

By Thy own Truth, Thou hast enraptured my heart and now I am madly in love with Thee.

I reject all that is not Thee!

Ever in spite of me, I constantly long for Thee, I thirst and I hunger for Thee.

O Beauty, Thou art Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful, who can resist Thee?

Bless me, convince me, lead me on and fulfill what Thou sees as Thy reflection in me. Become the fullness of Thy own image and likeness that Thou has imparted in me, and lose me forever into the depths of Thy Being.

Make use of me and recreate me into an instrument of Thy holy creation and a servant to all Thy beautiful works of divine artistry.

O wonderful God, O wonderful God! O what majesty! O what glory! O what Beauty! Thou art truly Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful. Arise in the hearts of all Thy servants, arise in our poor world, that we may learn to see what is beautiful for being beheld by Thee.

Abide in us, O dearest LORD and Love of my love, spread upon our souls Thine infinite horizons and become for each one of us as the breaking of the new dawn from on high.

AMEN.

I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine.

20100920

The Addict Bubble

"What is truth?" Pilate once asked Jesus (John 18: 38).

Oblivious to the fact that he was staring right at It, the Roman governor of that time exemplifies for us our sheer impotence before God.

Because unless God chooses to reveal it, we can not know the truth. And the most fundamental of all truth is we are each called to know, love, and serve the LORD, our God.

In particular Christian revelation, this truth is Christ Himself through which the Christian soul is made privy to the great mystery of God in all its splendor.

So what is the truth?

Thou shall love the LORD, thy God, with everything and in everything - that is the truth.

And in the Gospels, this truth was staring Pilate in the face.

He was actually sitting in judgment upon himself.

Now, the whole of our human reality is set in motion before us because of this one question; a motion that pivots around that one answer that Pilate sought in Christ.

This reality is like a bubble in the mind of God.

But to the addict mind, as it were, caught up in the wiles of active addiction, this reality is like a bubble that pivots around the self.

This bubble is the addict bubble.

For the suffering addict who is not yet cognizant of the message of recovery neither would nor could recognize this most fundamental of truths -

That thou shall love the LORD, thy God, with everything and in everything.

And that to this Higher Power alone must the suffering addict utterly and willingly ultimately surrender total control of his or her addiction to gain back control of his or her life.

He lives in an addict bubble; a sorry illusion built upon false hopes in false things - like a lie within a lie.

Simply put, within this unhappy reality built around a false sense of self, the addict worships not the God from Whose unifying and eternal Truth proceeds all other realities.

Isolated and alone, he sits in judgment only upon himself and unless God in His Truth so chooses to burst this false sense of reality, the addict will continue to suffer in vain.

Left entirely to himself, this suffering shall become his last end.

But recovery is possible because to God all things are.

So God, in His great wisdom and boundless mercy, bursts this addict bubble on his own good behalf and the addict finds himself bottoming out.

The suffering addict then seeks and providentially finds the fellowship of NA.

This is why it so important to live the message of recovery from an interior sense and not just from an exterior sense of exterior needs because the message itself is fundamentally spiritual in nature.

For we are the message itself - the entire fellowship of recovering addicts - lives lived in hope, replete with gifts, graces, and all.

That I am able to write this to you, my friend, is a gift of my own recovery...

Amen to the LORD if it helps to burst your bubble.

=^.^=

Christ-centeredness is other-centeredness.

20100914

Perspective

There were three addicts in recovery -

The first one was asked, "what are you doing?"

"Can't you see I'm trying to recover!", the first addict replied rather annoyed at the question.

The second one was asked, "what are you doing?"

"Well, I'm trying to recover because my family expects me to...", the second addict said rather unconvincingly.

The third one was asked, "what are you doing?"

"I'm working on my recovery. I'm really trying to figure it out. I'm sick and tired of being so sick and tired and have had enough. I no longer want all that hurt and the pain. I want my family and friends to be happy - and they are. Above all, my recovery is my investment on my own better self. I am so thankful to God for all He has done now that I am in recovery. My will of recovery itself is His will for me. Because now I have something in my life and I really do appreciate it, it doesn't have to be anything big, you know - just something. With drugs there is nothing."

Recovery is all about perspective. One can see the difference in the three answers given above to the same question.

This is one of my own life lessons learned in rehab. It is something that I still carry around with me. And now I am sharing it with you.

I hope it helps!

=^.^=

Life is a journey without destinations.

20100905

Reservations

Some recovering addicts I know say and think "reservation" like it were a hotel reservation.

"What's up with that?", I'd say to myself: Reservation is a thing tucked neatly right at the very corner of the mind that says I shall relapse if this and that happens to me.

It has nothing to do with space and has everything to do with time. It is not a where but a when.

At one NA meeting, I tried to save a seat for a buddy of mine once and was told I had reservations. What's up with that?

It is a very good thing to clear the mind of reservations.

But to do this, one must exert a certain amount of concentration to determine for one's self what a reservation really is and then invest some time in meditation to find out if one has any.

A good relapse prevention plan should always involve this as an exercise in prudence.

That's my own take on the matter.

RECOVERY MEANS: I never have to use again.