"We never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator. We can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead we let Him demonstrate, through us, what He can do." p. 68

*****
As I have told you all before, spirituality was not the problem for me.  I worked real hard on the spirituality part for many years.  The part I had trouble with; that made it not work was that I continued to drink and drug at the same time.  This built a brick wall between me and God.  But, if I wanted to know He was there, all I had to do was ask.

One time, about four years before I got sober, I asked my "teacher" "How do I even know if there really is a God?"

He said, "If you want to know if God exists, Ask Him!"

"What! How could anything be that simple!" I said.  He just looked at me and said "Well, if you don't believe me, when you go into your meditations tonight, ask Him.  Just say, God, if you exist, prove it!"

I said "How will I know?"

He said "Ask for a sign! A green and orange dragon, I don't care!"

So that is exactly what I did.  I went through my normal meditation routine and then just before I was done, I said, "Okay, God, if you really do exist, show me a green and orange dragon, in the next 24 hours!"

No problem, went top bed that night and promptly forgot all about it.  Got up the next morning, went through my normal routine and went to work.   I was managing a hair salon at the time.  A woman worked for me who was straight out of the beatnik era except she was about 30 years too late.  She was late for work.  I was all ready to jump all over her when she finally got there.

Renee came rushing in with a shopping bag from the local toy store.  "Noel, you've just got to see what I bought, on the way to work!"

So she started pulling out all these little plastic wind-up toys and having them walk all over the counter.  How could I be angry at her?

"Wait, Noel, you've got to see the best one.  I saved it for last!  Don't Look!"

She pulls out of her bag one more toy, winds it up and sets it down on the counter.  "Okay, you can look now!"

My heart almost stopped, my eyes teared up.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Right in front of my eyes stood...

One 2" tall, fire-breathing, GREEN AND ORANGE Dragon, toddling across the counter.

From that moment on Renee had a job for as long as she wanted it.  From that moment on I believed.

Be very careful what you ask for~you just might get it.  And when you do it may very well change your life forever.

One more little thing.  I found a quote the other day.  I don't remember where or who said it.  But it may hit you the way it hit me.

  "Doubt isn't where faith ends, it is what faith heals."

Well, here it is, a dollar short and a day late (typical alkie). The topic for this week is "misunderstanding." In every relationship, from friendship through marriage, even those long term marriages, there is a degree of misunderstanding, some serious, some not so serious. In either case the misunderstanding can cause the destruction of the relationship, even if the
misunderstanding would appear to be nonsense. My question to the group is how do we, first, avoid misunderstanding and, second, how do we correct the misunderstanding before it destroys something valuable (like a relationship).

I have been desperately trying to figure out how to answer this one, that would be different from all the rest of the answers.  I do agree that most misunderstandings come simply from not really listening.  But this is one that happened to me that is a little different, because it was caused by not even communicating in the first place.

It happened during the years I was still drinking.  But I did not find out about it until after I got sober.

For most of my adult years my mother and I have lived in different states, many of those years we lived in greatly removed states.  I lived in New York state while she lived in California.  I lived in California while she moved to Montana.  Now she lives in Montana and I live in Arizona.  But today we are closer than we have ever been before.

But during the years of my drinking, I did the typical alki-holic things.  I never was a very good letter writer.  I always had the greatest of intentions, and often started writing letters, which would turn out to be great missive, but never got mailed.  My mother is from a letter writing generation.  She would write a newsy letter to me.  I would read it and when finished I would pick up the telephone, call her and answer everything in the letter.  So I figured there was no point in writing an answer to the letter, since I had already answered it.  But to the letter writing generation, this did not count.  So since my mother figured that I "owed" her a letter she would wait to write back, until she got an answer from me, which, of course, never came.  So we would go for many months not communicating with each other.

This bothered my mother a great deal.  She felt that we were estranged from each other.  I of course, in my drunken ignorance, didn't see anything wrong with it.  We finally did work out an understanding that she was from a letter writing generation, while I was from a telephone generation.  So we agreed that she would write and I would answer with a telephone call.  This sounded great to me, but to my mother, without ever telling me, she somehow felt we were still estranged from each other.

Of course, there were also the late night phone calls to her when I was in my cups and just couldn't wait till morning to talk to Mom.

You can probably tell that this misunderstanding would continue to grow, as my drinking got worse.

Throughout this whole time, the better part of 14 years, I had no idea my mother felt as though she was estranged from her oldest child and only daughter.  I just didn't know and besides, I was busy living life, through the practice of "higher chemistry".

After I got sober,  I started a diligent effort to become a better daughter. We spoke on the phone often, wrote letters, sent cards  and visited with each other as often as possible, and now, today we are in almost daily contact through the technology of the internet and the ability to send email.

Today, my mother and I are two adult women, who are best of friends and just happen to also be mother and daughter.  But that is another story, as it is the result of years of work on both our parts to overcome the 14 years of estrangement and hurt feelings between us, which was all a misunderstanding.

The moral of this story is:  Don't forget to say the things today, which you will never forgive yourself for, if there is no tomorrow.