June 29
Posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 7:00 amTodays Reminder (from Courage to Change pg.181)
Today I will acknowledge that I have many positive qualities, and I will share one or two of these with a friend.
“All progress must grow from a seed of self-appreciation…”
The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage
Since we are both reading Courage to Change, I thought I would blog a little about one of the daily readings…I decided to blog about today’s…whatever it said.
The first thing that came to mind when I read the quote …a seed of self-appreciation…” was what you wrote about your idea of forgiveness and self-inflicted vengence: …I’ll give you the freeze-dried abbreviation of my idea of forgiveness – it’s the same as vengeance, but you do it to yourself. Self-inflicted vengeance, in other words. No one I’ve talked to likes the idea. But none of them have gone to jail.
If I’m understanding you correctly…in other words…you are saying…a person should think to themselves: everything starts with me. This makes it a very 12-step (yet, possibly unpopular) concept: vengeance is about pain and forgiveness about being free of it. Although, you can have one without the other…I understand the dichotomy of the concept…I see how they can work in tandem.
So a positive quality to share….mmm, I’ve made a cup of tea, have started a piece of toast…and find myself back here staring at the screen. I can think of positive qualities about myself…but I can’t seem to think of them alone…without going to their flipside…the negative…but I’ll give it a try.
Positive Quality #1: I am nuturing
Positive Quality #2: I am flexible
Will you share two of your positive qualities with me?
Hope you have a good day, David. Off to start mine.
Jen
H.A.L.T. – Hungry. Angry. Lonely. Tired. Strike 4 that’s me!
Just finished feeding the birds and I have perked up a little bit. Enough to tell you that I’ve been thinking of your post the whole time.
You shared a lot…and it has filled me up…and, too, I know we don’t have to respond to every post/comment…some are good to just sit with. If I did respond to your comments right now…immediately after reading them, you would get one of three Jen’s … Angry Jen…”How dare you tell me about your losses!” Vindictive Jen … “Losses…you think you’ve had losses…let me tell you about mine!” Or, crybaby Jen “…I’m so sorry for your losses…what can I do…blah, blah, blah.”
So instead, I am going to call my sponsor and explore my reactions with her a bit.
Oh, happy day! Hope yours is.
Jen
Hi David:Have I told you about the day I was driving to work…about a month ago…when I asked myself “what am I feeling?” I wasn’t sad…happy…hopeful or depressed…but I couldn’t put my finger on it so I asked myself again “…come on what are you feeling, Jen?” “Empty?” No, that wasn’t the feeling…but it was close. “Emptying.” That was the feeling! I felt like I was emptying, and it felt good to name it. Reading your comment this morning has made me feel like I am filling up again.
Feeling: Well, I’m not feeling too good this morning, tired and heavy, with much to do. So, so long for now, Jen
Two positive qualities.
One, though I tend to be solitary, I am quite friendly.
Two, though I tend to be uptight, I am quite open.
Forgiveness. The sermon I heard on forgiveness was pretty standard for the most part. But the pastor, who’d spent an hour with me personally that week, woke me up with the phrase “accept forgiveness.” At that time I was recently out of the county jail but still coming to terms with my loss of liberty – my loss of liberty to return home, my loss of liberty to contact you, my loss of liberty to contact Ellen. There were other losses to accept also – loss of homeschool, loss of home comfort, loss of companionship. I was no longer at liberty to enjoy any of these. And there were, as there are still, even more losses on the horizon. I had to accept it all. Or, what?
There was, and still is, an alternative to acceptance. The very reason for Florida’s decision to stiffen the penalties for battery in a domestic dispute is because one alternative is more violence, more intense violence. The emotional state of a man who’s been thrown in jail and stripped of everything that was his compells his thoughts toward every sort of precipitous and rebellious direction, including murder and suicide, the most complete refusal to accept. I was no exception: I was ready to cash in and go to Guyana.
But, though I’d lost much, I was not dead. And because I was not dead, I could accept the loss, accept what I call “the great forgiveness”. Now, this “great forgiveness”, you’d be right to say, is identical to “punishment”, because these losses were all forced upon me as punishments, they were all punitive. And you might ask, “Isn’t forgiveness freedom from punishment?”
Freedom from punishment, I would argure, is mercy, not forgiveness. Forgiveness is distinct from mercy; it is, instead, the replacement of vengence, not its opposite. In a post-historic age, where population density required management of vengence, one self-management concept that arose throughout the world was the “golden rule”.
I’ve got to run.
I’ll close by saying that forgiveness is not a freedom from punishment; it is not a freedom from responsibility; it is not a freedom from consequences. It is more simply the freedom to live on. Consider the forgiveness Jesus offers. It did not wipe the slate clean. It did not remove the cumulative consequences of the history of sin in the world. It did not, in sum, restore the state of grace enjoyed by one pair in the Garden of Eden. God came. And did not destroy us all. But, instead, forgave us, and let us live in the mess we’d made.
Oh, happy day!