Long Beach, California, Day 11

Thank you God for this day. Thank you God for restorative sleep. Thank you God for Madigan. Thank you God for the sunshine and warmth. Thank you God for this mobile Adcnturer Camper, F350 Truck and Vespa GT.  Thank you God for the Golden Shores RV Park.  Thank you God for the marine walk.  Thank you God for Laura braving Vancouver rainy winter. Thank you God for my family in the east. Thank you God for Peter and Larry who are here in this park and told me about it years ago.  Thank you God for the Marine walk and Light house Walk. Thank you God for Long Beach and the stores like Vons , Star buck, Ace Hardware, 5 sports, Supersuds laundry.  Thank you for the tranquility here.  

Thank you for this day.

I am thankful too for work, I am glad to still be of service,  Yesterday was my first full day after travelling south. I had an early morning walk and with Peter, Luka and Bella, the Hacannese girl, we did the Lighthouse Marina walk.  Later at night I swam in the pool and had a hot tub. I read rather than watching tv last night. The Brutal War, British naval historical fiction of the Hawke ship.in day of Nelson and Napoleon.  I did watch a little 1944, a subtitled movie of the Estonias in the war when half the men were conscripted to the Red Army and the other half to thee German Army due to invasions , Neighbours fighting neighbours, I’m thankful that Canada has in my lifetime avoid war on our soil,

After the swim last night I had a shower and enjoyed the new shampoos Sharine recommended after she cut my hair.

Pretty mundane stuff.  With the stresses reduced I actually stop and breathe, smelling the ocean shore scents.  I was taken back to the bad year, the third divorce,m and the ex’s addiction and ny abstinence and  return to church and the road to recovery.  I’m thankful for all the healers and mentors I met along the way. Walking into the Atlantic Alamo Club I saw so many in early recovery while there were a glowing few in longer term success based on thier serenity.  The early recovery folk with anxious and starting back from the detour that clearly didn’t pan out. It was a Crystal Meth Aonymous Meeting. I felt the tension and palpable anxiety and anger of early recovery and thought this is the world of ‘yes’s.  We say I haven’t done that ‘yet’.  I didn’t do CM and even crack wasn’t available when I stopped drinking wine and priding myself on being a connosier. Ironically I stopped smoking marijuana because it thought its  against the law and I should not be breaking the law when I abhorred hypocrisy.  Yet I couldn’t stop smoking, tobacco.,  I’d tried marijuana instead of tobacco but only smoked both. I’d stop for several months and only start up again when I was having a drink and the compulsion to have ‘just one’ smoke would come over me  It was only when I was months clean and sober that I began to appreciate how tobacco, marijuana and alcohol had become so much apart of my life,

10 per cent of Canadian consume 80% of alocohol.  Like most who think they ware social drinkers I was more than that. I only ate at restaurants that served wine. I smoked daily. I liked to smoke cannolis at sea because it really did help with sea sickness.  The trouble is that the rule of ‘more’ progressed.  I went from drinking a glass or two of wine on a Friday night with my partner to drinking a bottle or two of wine.  All my friends, mostly yuppies and established people were like me drinking wine and having an occasional toke,  

Now I don’t have friends who drink or smoke.  

I used to be cynical and not I’m optimistic. I used to go to bed late. Now I’m up early and this morning was up to watch the beauty of dawn.

I’m really blessed.  I really wante to know God back then but I was turning further away. In recovery I’ve had a true adventure in the art of getting high.  Alcohol is a depressant.  Life is its own high. I enjoy the adventures I know to day and the company I keep.  I am really so thankful.  I’m blessed to be parts of recovery groups and church and family and work.  I’m very thankful

I’m glad Trudeau has resigned.  He was so arrogant, acted like a sociopath and seemed to be impaired with drugs or alcohol or hung over. He didn’t look or sound well but I guess that was me in my last year of work, Looking back now I can see the problem but not then.  Now I’m truly blessed to know the freedom I know today.

Thank you Jesus. Thank you God.  Thank you Higher Power,  Thank you God of Gods. Thank you light.  Thank you Yahweh.  Thank you 

Yuma - love

I ward off fear every day.  I like that religion is for those who have never been to hell and spirituality for those who have been and don’t want to go back.  My very life and being and mind were threatened by a satanic man .  I knew fear. I’d seen the torture provided in the name of justice. I’d witnessed the grossest abuse of power.  I was afraid. I was experiencing ‘incomprehenible demoralization’ and cried out to Jesus.  I had felt beyond Grace. I felt every path I took was blocked. I thought ‘how could all these bad things be happening to a good guy like me’.  I felt the depth of betrayal and knew terror and despair.  I cried out to Jesus.  I cried out to God.  

“My God  My God why hast thou forsaken me?” “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’  I was in the long dark night of the soul.  

I survived. Later I’d be in a hurricane in winter at sea, days inside of the washing machine like sail boat unable to find comfort, totally at the mercy.  I  felt then the  same physically as I’d felt imprisoned by enemies.  This time I did not feel I was alone or that I had done wrong. I felt close with God.  I’d not turned my back on Jesus but knew he was with me. I had faith and trust in the Lord.  I’d clung to him in the darkest of times and been rewarded.  I’d confessed my sins. I was no longer alone and alienated. I’d been the Prodigal Son returning to my family. I’d sought the guidance and leadership of  Christian missionary doctors and Christian professors, and spiritual friends.  I’d begun the path back to the god of my understanding. I once again sought to know daily God and God’s will for me. I prayed daily and eventually ceaselessly as St. Paul had taught. I meditated as I had long ago learned.  I lived.  I humbly turned my will and my life over to God. I accepted I was powerless over alcohol and drugs and that my life had become unmanageable. I found the lost strength and hope within me. I attended church and meetings and studies.  I pilgrimaged to the Holy Lands and prayed in the places of worship of the holy.  I literally let go and let God.  

I contrast the time I have today with that turning point decades ago. I’d put my faith in romance back then and looked to sex and drugs and rock and roll for answers. Today I talk directly with God and ask for his forgiveness and guidance.  Each day I begin the day in gratitude and ask for the presence of Jesus Christ in my life.  I pray to God and the saints of all religions . I am a seeker and yet trust in the Hound of Heaven. I know the footprints in the sand and see the hand prints of God in my life. Theres’ a fourth dimension I often stumble into. . That flow or consciousness that is beyond all human understanding, the transscendence.   I fear at times I am a spiritual consumer seeking the nectar of God. It is a journey and destination. I accept I am in this life and enjoy food,  .exercise, sleep and fellowship that  is itself Godly.  I live in this world but I ‘ m not of this world.  I am a child of God but I am vigilant, less naive, older. 

I dreamed of being given marijuana by a taxi driver last night. I took the package and woke.  I still have dreams like that, not using, but as C.S. Lewis say thinking that God could be found in the wall of his creation. I want direct contact with God . The old tantric path was thoroughly explored. The journey is forward not back.  It served its time back when.  Now it has no future.  I don’t know why it came to me out of my memories, as a tease or temptation.   I imagine it was because I ‘ve been watching 007 and revisiting the 60’s.  I’m remembering youth and love and dancing in the streets of San Francisco with flowers in our hair.  I’m reading a book on the history of Northern Africa and remembering being in the Kazbah, me and Bobby McGee. I’m grieving my youth.   

Today I’m old and life has been a grand adventure with my Doystoeyski encounter with the sophisticated devil who offered me a choice. I look the road I did and the one he din’t not know. Now I’m feeling sometimes that I’m in Heaven’s waiting room but I know that’s decades a head.  It’s the weariness that assails me now sometimes.  I remember the single footprints in the sand then. I say All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I remember Hal’s teachings on an Attitude of Gratitude. I try to get over myself.  I try to keep my head in the same room as my ass.  I know God is in the present. 

It’s best then I go for a walk.  My dog is always happy to walk with me. He’s a great teacher.  

Thank you God for rescuing me from myself. Thank you God for loving me as father and mother and giving me a father and mother who loved and taught me love. . Thank you God for this life of mystery and adventure. Thank you for the journey, companions and memories.  Help me do my best today, Grant me serenity, courage and wisdom.