Here ’tis. This is part of a larger piece that I’m working on about being in partnership with God. I’d be grateful for any and all feedback. Really, really, really. . .

Knowing that voice within

An atheist father teaches his daughter to do the right thing, and from there she finds God

By Martha Woodroof

July 27, 2008

Pop didn’t hack or howl; he simply left. At 19, he stuck out his thumb and began hitching east, ending up a student at Columbia University in New York City. It was there, I suppose, that he transformed himself into my father: handsome, urbane, erudite, the husband of my mother. By the time I got to know him, the only discernible mark left on Pop by his childhood was a visceral antipathy toward religion.

Pop was pure Marxist in this respect. Religion, to him, had been the opium of his people. He had grown up among those who praised the Lord for not sending them enough to eat. Faith, God, religion—they were all the same, and all nonsense, to Pop.

Pop was, however, ethical to the bone. His insistent, loud-mouthed conscience cost him both money and social prestige. When I look back, it seems strange to me that Pop, who was curious about everything else, seemed to have no curiosity at all about the nature or origin of a person’s conscience. His conscience was there, he obeyed its directions to a fault, and that was the end of it. He had no interest in exploring the presence of this mystery inside himself. Either that, or its presence made him nervous.

My parents moved to North Carolina shortly after they married, so I was raised godless in the Bible Belt, becoming such a worrisome heathen by the 2nd grade that my public-school class would pray over me.

Every Monday morning, my teacher would ask anyone who had not been to Sunday school to stand so that the class might intercede with the Almighty on his or her behalf. Every Monday morning, I stood up alone. I asked my father once if I could lie by staying seated, and he said certainly not, that I was always to stand up for what I believed. And he emphasized that “always” part.

Standing up for my beliefs—both literally and figuratively—was hardship duty when I was a 2nd grader, but it was the only way my father knew to operate. For better or worse, we are our fathers’ students.

The experience toughened me in what I think are good ways, and it also contributed mightily to my growing curiosity about the nature and origin of the human conscience—that touchstone against which, according to my family’s tenets, all actions are to be tested.

As I got older, I increasingly felt a need to give this touchstone a name that signified not just what it did, but what it was. So, sorry Pop, but in my early 40s, I decided that this voice embedded in us that didn’t seem to be of us, this voice that drives us to relate to our fellow humans in ways unrelated to surviving as the fittest, this voice that you, Pop, called your conscience, I would now call God.

I don’t mean to imply that I believe God is some mysterious entity somewhere else that speaks through my conscience; I believe God is my conscience. God is whatever it is in me—and was certainly in you, Pop—that constitutes the commonness of my humanity, that tells me clearly what the next right thing to do or think is, urges me to do it or think it (even when it runs counter to my own self-interest), and gives me the capacity to do it with what feels suspiciously like joy. I don’t get to understand why this still, small voice is there, or how it gets there; I just get to accept that it is there.

I am not now, nor—God willing—ever will be, conventionally religious. In this I remain my father’s younger daughter.

I have no desire to participate in any of society’s attempts to corral the Almighty. It has always seemed to me that Yahweh, the great I Am, is the one truly unfathomable mystery of the universe, and as such can best be related to by me through wordless faith, rather than through religion’s limiting show. God is not something I can explain, but something I accept and live with and listen to. Unlike my father, I enjoy the presence of mystery in me.

As for Pop, he has been dead a decade. I sometimes wonder what he would think now that his daughter has come out of our family’s closet as a person of faith. I’m sure he would applaud me for standing up for my beliefs, but I suspect he would go right on thumbing his nose at God.

I don’t for one moment believe that Yahweh—in whatever way Yahweh considers these things—would think any less of Pop because he never called God by name. We are how we do by each other, after all, and my father did just fine.

Martha Woodroof reports for public radio and is the author of “How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Real Life and a Pretty Good Time.”

The Warm Springs Gallery in Warm Springs, Virginia (population around 900) had an opening for a rare exhibition of his paintings. Bryan is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He was one of the first persons of color to present images of children of color in picture books that were not stereotypical. He was, as Poet Nikki Giovanni put it at the opening, a real pioneer.

I was working, of course. On assignment. Yet I can’t remember when I’ve had a better time hanging out with anyone. I think I was not alone in this. The enormous crowd (the gallery was packed to the squishing point) was mostly extremely well-heeled , sedate-looking folks, who appeared to be having a genuinely good time–as opposed to the usual effort-filled good time usually observed at such events.

I think Ashley Bryan’s paintings had something to do with this. He lives on a tiny island off the coast of Maine and this series of canvases were all of the gardens around his home. They were as bright and hopeful as new love, and they passed their brightness and hopefulness on to the audience. Bryan moved among us, charming us without appearing to make the slightest effort to be charming. The man was just so alive it’s catching.

Talking with him before the crowd arrived, I asked him what he’d like to think he brought to the world with his books, his art, his life. In response, he talked about his upcoming birthday. But, he said, every day’s a birth day, for it’s the birth of a new day. If I can convey something of the freshness, the newness, of each day, then I will feel that I’ve put something of myself down on the page.

Not a bad message is it for those of us in recovery, is it, to regard each day as a birth day; as the birth of a new day.

I’d like to suggest it’s the antithesis of sobriety–at least of the all-important part of sobriety that’s manifested by a calm mind.

I re-decided this (for the 89th time!)  a couple of days ago while  talking on the phone while e-mailing someone else while simultaneously doing a web-search while trying to block out a too-loud hall conversation among my colleagues. My mind felt as though it were being–as a wonderful editor friend of mine likes to put it–as though it were being pecked to death by ducks.

I’ve often resolved to just do one thing at a time, but I can never seem to make my professional life work that way. What has disturbed me recently is that I’ve been letting the internal frenzy bleed over into my home life. I create artificial deadlines for writing projects, put too many tasks on my to-do list, and then low-and-behold, I’ve replicated my work-place frenzy. And this is just dumb.

It is, I think, a form of dry drunk. I was a frenzy addict during my drinking years. It’s actually a form of self-importance, I think–this thinking that whatever we are engaged in is so necessary to the welfare of the world that we have to drive ourselves relentlessly to do it.

The 10th Step is endless isn’t it? As an exercise in humility I went back and looked at the chapter I’d written on it in my book and I found this paragraph.

“I’ve discovered that Alice’s (GOD’s)  calming presence is usually felt or lost in the small events of my day. Now please don’t think I spend every waking hour monitoring myself. On the contrary, I probably spend less time thinking about myself nowadays than I have ever done before. I have my morning conversation with Alice, and then I let go of the controls and start enjoying the day. As long as I have established that conscious contact with the God of my understanding, I’ve turned on a gut-level monitoring system that warns me whenever I start heading toward screwy thinking. An alarm goes off just in time for me to veer away from the inevitable consequence of that screwy thinking, which is screwy behavior. I’m able to recognize that I have a clear choice before it is too late.”

Just what I needed–a good talking to myself.

I’ve certainly done my share of damage by shying away from my own discomfort. Back in the early nineties when I was first climbing out of addiction, I ran a railroad crew hotel for about a year. It was the last remaining business in a once-thriving town. At the time, I was filled with the desire to save people as I, myself, had been saved—filled with it to the point of omnipotence. I was certain that I, because of my own experience, could do for other drunks what they could not do for themselves.

Bud was in his seventies, a legendary binge drinker who lived in a derelict store down the tracks from the hotel—or, at least, he lived there whenever he wasn’t on a bender and among the disappeared. I’m naturally friendly, as is my husband. Bud took to hanging around the hotel’s restaurant whenever he was sober. Either Charlie, my husband, or I would give him a bowl of beans and we’d talk. One day Bud took us down to the derelict store, showed us around and told us stories of railroading in its glory days. Another time he took us back in the woods and showed us a ratty old armchair in which he liked to sit. It made my heart hurt to think of this sweet old man surviving in such squalor. I felt a burning need to help him and a luxurious certainty that I knew what kind of help would bring him back into the comfortable folds of mainstream life.

Alas, poor Bud, he became my project, for in those green days of faith, I was still not comfortable shouldering my own discomfort with reality. I still believed that “doing good” relied heavily on doing, and I usually did whatever made me feel the most comfortable.

Bud took to coming in regularly late at night and sweeping out the restaurant. I fussed and made much over his efforts, which pleased him. When this had gone on for a while, I decided here was my chance to make Bud’s life better, and so I offered to turn the old man’s voluntary sweeping into a paying job. All Bud had to do was to commit to keep doing what he was already doing, and I would pay him minimum wage and all the beans—or whatever else we served—that he could eat.

Bud went on a bender that lasted a week, stopped all sweeping, and I think was never again quite as comfortable around me or in the restaurant. Now, I’m not arrogant enough to think I caused that particular bender—Bud is as responsible for dealing with his addiction as I am for dealing with mine. But I did put him under intolerable pressure in trying to avoid my own discomfort with his situation.

Since then, I think I’ve grown into a faith that at least lets me identify my own discomfort for what it is. I can now see that I should have just kept on thanking Bud for his sweeping, and kept on chatting with him over those bowls of beans. If Bud thought he should be paid for his work, I should have allowed him the dignity of saying so. My explanation (not, by any means, my excuse) for my well-meant job-offer is that I was newly sober, newly faithful, and not yet accepting of the discomfort inevitably caused by working in partnership with God.

So I feel a burning desire to make one thing clear about my personal code of conduct (that’s the title of my last post). It’s very much about the way I act, not about the way I necessarily feel.

In other words, sobriety hasn’t turned me into a saint who always feels kindly toward everyone else on the planet. I’m still annoyed with people about 50 percent of the time. What sobriety has done is given me pretty formidable self-control. I’ve learned not to let my feelings lead my behavior around by the nose. It’s made me want not to damage other people ever again–verbally, physically, spiritually, socially, whatever-ly. And it’s made me want it enough so that I just don’t do it–no matter how irritated I am with someone.

I did enough of that when I was drinking and using.

These days I try to be kind, thoughtful, completely honest with myself (an ever-evolving process) and as honest with others as kindness allows.

I try to approach people who are different than I, or who don’t seem to be behaving as I think they should, with curiosity and compassion, and without judgment — which is still a huge struggle for me, particularly when it comes to even thinking about well-off, strident proselytizers of fundamentalist Christianity or any other such judgmental religions. Why, why, why do such people have to disapprove of others in order to feel that they are holy themselves? But by even voicing this query, obviously mea culpa as well.

I try very, very hard not to attempt control of other people, places, or things.

I try to exercise self-control — not in a rigid, teeth-gritting sense, but in the sense that it’s stupid to do things that I know are stupid.

About money — that old, seductive root of all evil. I want to be able to pay for my own comfortable food, clothing and shelter. I’d like my life to remain reasonably free of draining financial stress, and I’d like to be able to have a reasonable amount of fun that costs money. But I only want these things if I can achieve them without doing something I know is wrong or limits someone else’s chances of having the same things. The Steps have taught me to be ultra-scared of any sense of personal entitlement that tries to con me into ever justifying doing anything for any reason other than that it is the next right thing I can figure out to do. This is not because I’m afraid someone else will find out what I’ve done, and I’ll get into some kind of worldly trouble, but because it’s this kind of screwy rationalization that will rob me of my hard-won peace-of-mind. I also have a healthy fear of the allure of things — particularly if the thing is new and advertised a lot on TV.

I also remain inherently uncomfortable talking about God. I try to do most of my talking about the specifics of what faith I have through how I live my life. And for me, any emotion such as triumph — one of the many feelings I term addictive emotional substances — are feelings I’ve learned to shy away from. Personally, I find them as dangerous to my peace of mind as my drug of choice. Whenever any of these seductive feelings threatens to take control of me — thank-you, Mr. Wordsworth, you did put it so well — I’ve once again allowed the world to be too much with me, I’ve gotten way too concerned with getting and spending, and I’ve once again chosen to remain part of the general problem instead of part of the general solution.

I used to think that to be successful, this kind of interview had to be done in person. But then, as I began to do more and more national work, I was forced into doing more and more of these conversations on digital phone lines. And you know what? It’s now my preferred way to have a good let-down-your-hair conversation with someone I don’t know. Why?  Because it removes all distractions and allows both me and the person I’m talking about to just think about what we’re saying–and then say it.

It occurred to me over the weekend that blogs allow a similar kind of quiet, focussed, in-depth conversation. Since this is a website about sobriety, those of us who participate just focus on what we want to say about that and then say it to each other.

All this is leading up to a question. I’m curious about what you see as the place of blogs in your sobriety?

lastwords

June 2008

Crossing the Jordan River
So What About God?

by Martha Woodroof

I began school in the Southern Bible Belt before the Supreme Court removed prayer from the classroom in 1962 with Engel v. Vitale. I was the daughter of an agnostic and an atheist. Jesus was every child’s friend but mine.

On some Monday mornings, my teacher—Southern sweet and impenetrably groomed— would purse her lips and ask any student who hadn’t been in Sunday school to stand up. When I stood up, she led the class in prayer for me.

The first time this happened, I went home and asked my father if it would be all right to lie by staying seated. My father was tough when it came to personal ethics. He told me to stand up for what I believe. And so I did—first on one leg and then on the other—as the rest of the class prayed for either my soul’s redemption or that my heathen family would take me to church. After a while, it wasn’t so awful. It wasn’t as bad as stepping barefoot on a slug, for example, or going to formal teas at my great aunt’s. Looking back, it’s probably one reason I’m comfortable around strange people. By the second grade I had met a weirdo, and it was I.

My parents lived and died without being Born Again. The Bible Belt— thank the Lord!—failed to encircle us. I did have company along some other less-traveled roads— demonstrating for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War.

I had lots of company when I dropped out of college to rejoice in the 60s and flouted as many social conventions, sexual conventions, and career conventions as I possibly could. I grew up fairly tough, independent, and willing, like my parents, to question everything— including my parents’ skepticism about the existence of God.

…

So what about God? By the late 1980s — divorced twice, restless, but still a firm believer in peace and love—I’d figured out how to support myself with freelance radio journalism. I specialized in what I thought of as Americana pieces and so spent a lot of time driving southern back roads in my pickup looking for material. Emmylou Harris was my traveling companion. She sang melody, I sang harmony; together, we were born to run. At night I slept in under my truck’s camper top, snug as a Hobbit.

The Jordan River runs through Rappahannock County, Va. I crossed it often while picking up tape for stories. Mid-bridge — perhaps because of the lingering effects from the Bible Belt — I would sometimes think about Moses and the Promised Land, wondering whether this Jordan River bounded any such place as that, and, if so, which side of the river I was on. I’d try to imagine how my life would work if I believed the way Moses had, what change for the better a faith in God might work in me. I had no desire to have it do for me what it had done for my second grade teacher, but I was never so dumb or so numb that I didn’t feel a tug inside to believe I wasn’t all there was.

…

Once while driving that road through a blinding, mid- December snowstorm, I almost hit a hitchhiker. This, as every child of the ‘60s knows, made him my responsibility. Besides, he wore nothing but a thin sport coat. The man could freeze.

I pulled over. The guy ran toward me in an off-balance gallop, his arms flapping like a wild turkey’s awkward wings. I held the passenger door open while he climbed in. “Howdy, ma’am,” he said and smiled. His teeth were bad. He stank like a camp latrine.

We took off together into the snow. The man began talking politics, wandering freely among parties and philosophies, smacking a knee rhythmically with a fist. He got increasingly agitated as though someone were arguing with him, although I hadn’t said a word

“Did you run your car off the road?” I finally asked.

“No, ma’am. I’m not out here ’cause I’m in trouble. I’m just out here.”

“Oh.” The snow, if anything, was falling harder. How had the Hollies put it, from the safety of their recording studio? He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother? Fat lot the Hollies knew, I thought.

My passenger went back to politics, I went back to silence. For the first and only time in my years on the road, I was scared. We passed a road sign: Jordan River, three miles. There’s a store there, I remembered. One of those country stores that never closes because it’s the only place its customers have to go

“I can take you as far as the river store,” I said.

“The river store’s fine,” he said.

His hand crept across the seat until his fingers touched my right thigh. My fear must have showed. “You think I’m going to hurt you, don’t you, pretty lady?” he said.

We were the only two creatures in our small, white world. If he makes a move, I thought, I can backhand him across the throat with one hand and keep the truck on the road with the other.

The man shifted slightly in his seat. I imagined a kind of gathering going on in him and tried to match it with a gathering of my own. Then— whoosh—_____the tension dissipated. He took his hand away from my thigh, and just like that, he was OK, I was OK, the world was OK.

“There was a time I might have hurt you,” he said happily, “but now, you don’t need to worry about a thing. When you ride with me, you ride with Jesus.”

I let him out at the country store by the Jordan River. “Thanks for the ride, pretty lady,” he said. “God will bless you for it.”

I’m not sure why, but I believe what he said about God. Years later, having swum through addiction with all its self-imposed disasters, and having landed on the other side, I now believe that there is a greater power that helps out any of us humans if we let it. This God is not the prissy, judgmental monitor that stalked my second-grade classroom. This God is whatever made my parents instill good values in their children, whatever partners with me in my recovery, whatever rode with that hitchhiker on the day he didn’t hurt me. This God is whatever it is that rides with any of us when we’re able to do better than we could on our own.

]]> http://www.thesecondroad.org/bouncing_off_the_bottom/2008/06/04/another-print-essay/feed/ http://www.thesecondroad.org/bouncing_off_the_bottom/2008/06/02/making-indirect-amends/ http://www.thesecondroad.org/bouncing_off_the_bottom/2008/06/02/making-indirect-amends/#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:30:47 +0000 Martha http://www.thesecondroad.org/bouncing_off_the_bottom/?p=83 Our Head Cat, Mr. Lewis, is old, has feline HIV and has been on his dignified way out enough times to qualify as the definitive proof that cats have nine lives.

Lewis’ latest flirtation was death involved a bad reaction to a new medicine for joint pain. He stopped eating–and I mean stopped. We began syringe feeding (we’d been through that before), but as Head Cat’s baseline weight hovers at about 7.5 pounds, there wasn’t much wiggle room. Charlie and I were soon calling for help.

Our wonderful house-calling vet galloped to the rescue, bringing medicine to heal Lewis’ stomach. I was also put through emergency vet tech school and learned to administer cat I.V.’s. So, now I spend mornings before work and evenings after dinner medicating and feeding a cat. Who, by the way, is back! Lewis is once again enjoying his ancient life to the max!

Why I gladly spend all this time on cat maintenance iss directly related to working the Steps–specifically to making amends. During my sad, bad years I let down my family cocker spaniel at the end of her life. I was too un-together to make a home for that old and beloved dog, and so  I farmed her off on some people who didn’t take very good care of her. She was found dead in a field behind their house. I will never not feel pain about my shoddy, self-centered behavior

I can’t make amends directly to Lewis, but I can acknowledge my need to make amends to her by taking the best care I can of any animal that Charlie and I take in. Lewis was a rescue cat (we found him at a dumpster. Some person that I’m sure I wouldn’t like very much had thrown a litter of kittens away–literally–and Mr. Lewis was the last survivor.) We plan to continue his rescue, no matter how inconvenient it may be, as long as he’s still enjoying himself. For me, it’s all part of my sober life.

Age before beauty is true view

By Martha Woodroof

May 25, 2008

For me, 60 need not be the new 30. I’ve already been 30, and I prefer adventure to repetition.

I do still dance uncontrollably in grocery store aisles, but I’ve moved way beyond the person I was at 30. And I have no desire for anyone to take me as anything other than what I am: A woman who’s officially old.

Yet, I’m barraged with the message that looking like the person I really am is so not the way to go.

My bemusement peaked recently at the college fitness center where I work out. From my perch on the elliptical, I could check in on three TV networks: CNN, NBC and CBS, which was airing “The View.”

Except for Whoopi Goldberg (God bless her!), the hosts of “The View” came off as aging, animated dolls.

What has Barbara Walters done to herself, and why? She’s Barbara Walters, for pity’s sake. Does she think we expect her or even want her to look less seasoned than we know she is?

The other two women looked like shop-worn Barbies; same perky expression, dyed hair, bright make-up. Nothing at all about how they looked told me anything about who they were as individuals, or what, if anything, was going on in their minds.

I rate people’s appearance by whether they look like someone I would want to have lunch with. Let’s just say I would love to lunch with Goldberg. She obviously has something going on inside her head.

On NBC, two women hosts were talking with their guests about a children’s book. One host’s eyebrows had been lifted into permanent surprise; her lips stretched into an everlasting half-smile. She wore bright make-up, had very red hair, was dressed in standard talk-show clothes—tailored, with cleavage. Every bit of experience had been stretched from her face. She might have spent her 50 plus years in a glass case. Her sidekick was younger but equally standard-issue.

And then there was the depressing children’s picture book they were discussing. It was about how parents might talk to their children about mommy’s face lift.

Mommy looks, “Not just different, my dear—prettier!”

Then next door, on CNN, Dr. Michael DeBakey was getting yet another presidential medal in honor of his lifetime of contributions to medicine. DeBakey is an un-enhanced centenarian. His lined, sagging face suggests he would be a rewarding person to lunch with. What keeps Barbara Walters from joining DeBakey in seeing herself in terms of what she has done and thought, and letting time write its proud notes upon her face?

Look, I do sometimes miss those days when I could turn heads, miss that frisson of awareness that often sparked when I entered a room. But that was a passing accident of birth, and I knew it all along. So what, exactly, is wrong with looking 60 if you are 60?

I came of age fighting for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. I’ve always thought of my generation as folks who are unafraid to change, who saw life as being about more than conformity.

So what happened to us? What has frightened us into denying who we are—the generation who isn’t afraid to change?

Martha Woodroof is a radio reporter and the author of “How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Real Life and a Pretty Good Time.”

mwoodroof@gmail.com

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