I attended a Sat morn Alanon mtg. The reading was about adversity. It spoke to many of us. One member shared that she had a dilemma. Another member quoted the Big Book hmm I don't know what page. She said to stop and pause and adjust your attitude. She also said that she was told that to get in the way of someone else's spirituality is a sin. This spoke to me. My AHsober and I have been separated for three years, his choice. I keep asking why? I realize by doing this and not focusing on my own recovery program that I am getting in the way of my AHsober's HP. I have my own HP. I had a spiritual moment when this happened - awesome.
The best way I ever looked at adversity was to look at it as an opportunity to grow. Theres a lot of room left for me to change for the better. Hard times work our programs. What looks like getting in the way of my spirituality can actually be improving it so I don't know how you can get in the way of God and his work on a day to day basis.
I don't know what she means by the word sin and I guess I may not know what she means by spirituality but if I can get in the way of it I doubt if we have the same ideas. I've read stories of people buried in dungeons and whipped and tortured almost to death to give up their beliefs. Throughout history faith in the face of adversity has made people and faith in general stronger. Story after story, I read of forgiveness of the jailers and torturers and not condemnation.
One point I'll follow is the misleading of the innocent and early childlike faiths of many. At the early points in spiritual growth many people almost volunteer to be mislead. We need more answers, our spiritual thirst is as if we just crawled out of the desert. I guess their is a lot of misleading in the world and I guess it starts when someone else tries to define words like sin and spirituality for someone else. I've even seen the, "God as WE understand him" twisted around.
It goes something like this. Well, the majority of us believe something similar to this: therefore the majority is the WE and you must believe like the majority to work the step any further.
I was at a meeting last week where we read a portion of "WE Agnostics". The guy introed the part with a strong prelude that this is about step two. The section we read used the word God in place of higher power in just about every single paragrapgh.
Well one of the crazier ones started talking about God as he understood him instead of God as they understood him. They shut him down but not before he quoted step two. :) Not bad for a crazy person. Had a small chat and the faith that was keeping him sober for that day seemed intact enough to keep him sober another day. His spirituality was interfered with yet I don't think I saw any Sin. There are many people with unconventional spiritualities that feel threatened. We ought not threaten them, they ought not condemn either. We are a fellowship that must be able to cross all religious barriers to remain effective against this indiscriminate disease. It's indiscrimination demands our our own but somehow I can't see us walking on eggshells around others either.
