Sunday, Sunday...

A fitting end to the month of August...a little hot today, and a rather quiet energy lurking around the edges. I am in process [late] of cooking potatoes and eggs so I can make a potato salad and some devilled eggs for a bbq tomorrow. I marginally cleaned up the kitchen, put some things away and uncluttered the counters. It looks better already.

I find a lot of satisfaction in "blessing" my house this way. It brings to mind the Carrie Newcomer song Holy as a Day is Spent. It's my all time favorite set of lyrics, ever since I heard it sung at the Unitarian Church one Sunday. Goes like this:

holy is the dish and drain
the soap and sink, and the cup and plate
and the warm wool socks and the cold white tile
showerheads and good dry towels
and frying eggs sound like psalms
with bits of salt measured in my palm
it's all a part of sacrament
as holy as a day is spent.

holy is the busy street
and cars that boom with passion's beat
and the checkout girl, counting change
and the hands that shook my hands today
and hymns of geese fly overhead
and spread their wings like their parents did
blessed be the dog that runs in her sleep
to chase some wild and elusive thing.

holy is the familiar room
and quiet moments in the afternoon
and folding sheets like folding hands
to pray as only laundry can
i'm letting go of all my fear
like autumn leaves made of earth and air
for the summer came and the summer went
as holy as a day is spent.

holy is the place I stand
to give whatever small good I can
and the empty page and the open book
redemption everywhere I look
unknowingly we slow our pace
in the shade of unexpected grace
and with grateful smiles and sad lament
as holy as a day is spent

and morning light sings providence
as holy as a day is spent....

(~music and lyrics by Carrie Newcomer)

A Particularly Sober Saturday...

Feeling especially blessed today, after a long long day of meetings and speakers and food and fellowship. We started off the day with a breakfast potluck and 2 speakers and then to a birthday celebration with cake and then to a nighttime potluck and speaker meeting. The last one is not a meeting I have ever attended, but was asked to come tell my story and so, there I was!
The best part of sharing one's experience, strength and hope is that you get another chance to look at your life. At what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. And when I take that opportunity, I can get a glimpse of how much I and my life have changed. Like a camera snapping the moments of drama and comedy, I get to dip and dive and dodge the truths about myself. The more tragic events become grist for the comic's mill, and the dark comedy of the way I lived is apparent. Sometimes I feel like an old slapstick movie...keystone- copping my way through the years. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the incredible loss, the sense of disconnectedness that was always my companion. Othertimes, I can focus on the miraculous facts of my life. How I didn't put a bullet in my head, or kill myself or someone else driving drunk. How I somehow managed to escape the Aids epidemic unscathed, after all those one night stands and blackout encounters. How I can still have a relationship with my son, after all is said and done.
In the end, I am overcome with a sense of being blessed in a manner completely unbefitting someone like me. By the fact that grace is indeed undeserved favor, and that the hand of God is apparent in every aspect of my life. And I will never understand the whys and the wherefores. And that it's okay--I don't need to understand. I just need to integrate gratitude for each and every thing that occurs. And trust that this elegant grace will always bless my life.

A life of grace

Not sure why I'm starting another blog. I just felt the need to make a little place where I can explore the blessings of a life lived in sobriety and kindness (mostly). I will start by telling you, gentle readers, that I am sober lo these 18 years through very little of my own volition. lol I always get a little crinky (just this side of cranky) when I hear people talk about their faith and their beliefs and their Jesus stuff...not sure why I really care. It's not that I don't believe in a power greater than myself (I do) and it's not really that I begrudge them their religions. It's just...I guess it's just that I don't share the party line dogma and have been rebuked for that more than once. Or maybe it's just that I am jealous. I don't know, honestly.

I'm gonna try to start off slow here and see what happens. I am blogging on another site, at wordpress, and it's the first time I've taken on such an endeavor. I am a very undisciplined person, so maybe that's what I think I'll procure from all this jibber-jabbering. I've been posting there for about 37 days or something. With the exception of not taking a drink for over 6000 days, I haven't done much else this consistently.

Okay then. Now to look and see what my dumb, un-savvy, computer ass has done to the theme of this blog!

Up and away !!!!!!!!!!!