George Caywood

String Of Pearls 165: Life

George — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:32:03 +0000

-Life is a very powerful force in our world. Scientist tells us that microbes survive in the highly radioactive water that cools a nuclear power plant.

-Another sense of the word “life” is the spiritual life that drives me forward to a full life. Just as life in the world is very powerful, the life force within me powerfully drives me forward to a full life.

-While I was working on Los Angeles skidrow, I was also in therapy for severe depression. During one of my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me what I did for fun. I responded, “You know me Georgie, I like to lay down my life for the poor.” She responded, “Just exactly, what life is it you think you have?” Then she paused for a long three or four seconds and said, “Here’s a thought, why don’t you try getting a life and then decide what you want to do with it?” I have been working for seventeen years trying improve my sense of life.

-In order to find my life, the first thing I had to do was gradually stop basing all my decisions on what other people would think.

-I began to understand that I had to start making my first priority, healing. I needed to find healing for my own emotional wounds, fears, and remorse. Buried in me, they kept me from having a life that was happy, joyful, and free.

- I began praying to my Higher Power to give me more life. However, I ran into a major problem. The problem was that God had given me Herself. What more did I need beyond God to have a full life? The answer to that question is nothing. I just needed to ask God to destroy the emotional barriers I had erected that kept me from actualizing the life She had already given me.

-In program I learned that I should pray only for understanding God’s will for this day, and Her grace to carry out Her will.

Therefore, the formula is:

God’s will + nothing = Serenity.

- My disease will use whatever I put in the place of the “nothing” in this formula to torment me.

For example, suppose I say, “I want God’s will and a loving woman.” If I say words like that, my disease drives me toward suffering, because then I say things like, “There must be something about me that women do not find attractive,” or “I will never have a woman in my life. I am destined to live alone.”

-When I entered my program I had very little “life”. Over all these program years I have found a much greater and much fuller way of LIFE. What has changed? Certainly not my circumstances; my life is more difficult than it was when I came to my program, because I have grown seventeen years older.

-What has happened is God has cleared up so many things about my character and personality that were blocking the flow of “life” within me, so I could have a much better life. That means that gaining the sense of more “life” has been a long and often painful process.

-For one thing being more alive meant I felt the normal pains of life more deeply. However I also felt the joys of being human in many lovely, enjoyable ways. I found that being alive was much better than feeling that empty l space on the inside of me that made me feel like their was no one living inside my skin.

-What I needed to find my “life” was honesty. Don’t tell lies, nor take money that wasn’t mine were important things in my recovery. However, that kind of honesty was not the kind of honesty I needed to live a quality life.The honesty I needed was a brutal honesty. It was an honesty that allowed me to look at the world and look at the problems in my own personality as they were and not as I wished them to be.

- In other words, I had to accept myself and also accept the events of my life as they actually were; I needed to accept “life” on life’s terms.

GMC

String Of Pearls 165: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

George — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 01:45:04 +0000

Row, row, row, your boat…

The only boat we can row is our own boat.

-Suppose my loved one and I are going down a river each in our own boat. If I try to row my loved one’s boat I would likely tip his boat over trying to get in.

-If I manage to get in without swamping him, I will make his boat heavier and harder to control.

-My loved one has only one set of oars.

-While I am interfering with his job of rowing his own boat, what happens to my boat?

Gently down the stream…

-God’s way is always gentle. My God has consistently asked me to cut myself some slack, to let myself off the hook, and to be as gentle with myself as I wish I had been with my own daughters.

-It is a shame that I have tried to deal with the harsh treatment I received as a boy by treating myself more harshly than I have been treated by anyone else I have ever known.

-If I criticized you with the anger and contempt I treat myself, you would get me out of your life. I wouldn’t blame you if you dumped me.

-I am my only parent now. God help me be a kind, supporting, affectionate parent to myself.

Merrily, merrily, merrily…

-The trouble with my self-destructive behavior is it ruins God’s plan for me to have a serene and joyful life despite the bitter tribulations that plague our mortal lives.

-My friend used to drive a van that would pick up a few children from their school and take them to the YMCA. There the kids would have wonderful supervision and lots of really fun activities until their parents could pick them up after work.

My friend knew exactly how to get to the Y. The kids were too young to know how to get there. They also had to obey a few rules like, “Fasten your seat belt”, and “Do not fight.” If they were not fastened in or if they were fighting, my friend had to delay getting them to the afternoon of fun. The rules were not there to dominate the kids. The rules were there to allow my friend to get them to the Y quickly and safely.

In the same way, God’s will for us is intended to help us live abundantly. We can have serenity in the face of whatever pain we have to face, including a loved one’s use of drugs and alcohol.

Life is but a dream.

-If I had the trust in God that God has in me, I would not have so much neurotic fear.

-God shows His respect for me by allowing me to make my own mistakes no matter how foolish my decisions are. He waits for me; all the while doing whatever loving thing He can do without taking responsibility for my life.

- That is the best example I can imagine of, “Detaching with love”.

-17 years ago when I joined Al-Anon, I had no idea how good my life could become. That is not to say I have lived out my dream, but I believe in my dream life. I am moving ever so slowly toward seeing my dream come to pass.

George Caywood with the idea proposed by my friend John

String of Pearls 164: A Vicious Circle

George — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:15:06 +0000

There is a rampant piece of misinformation among those who want to live a life closer to actualizing the Righteousness of God given to us at Calvary. That misinformation is goes like this:” I just sinned and I do not want to sin again; therefore, I will punish myself with guilt, shame, and remorse. I do that so the next time I am tempted to sin I will remember how badly I felt. Then because of that terrible memory, I will turn down the temptation to sin again.”

The trouble with that methodology is that it not only fails, but it virtually guarantees that I will repeat the same destructive behavior again. Maybe that is what the New Testament refers to as the besetting sin cycle.

After we sin, there is a time of deep painful remorse. In time, that remorse fades and our besetting sin temptation reemerges and we sin again. Then we repeat the process of emotional self-flagellation and the process begins again, this time with an even deeper load of shame, fear and remorse.

Where does the love of God fit in this picture? It is nowhere to be found. Surely we should understand that God’s solution to all our problems is His Abba Father, Papa love. Sometimes my daughters call me Papa. I love that. It speaks of the deep love, tender, accepting love that flows between us. It is God’s Papa love that provides the power to overcome sin. Let me illustrate.

Suppose I am 90 feet beneath the surface ocean of my guilt, shame, and remorse. I am tempted to commit my besetting sin. I yield to the sin. I use the self-punishment method of sin avoidance. I heap emotional abuse on myself. All that happens is that I drown myself deeper. I end up 100 feet below the surface instead of 90 feet. Self-punishment weakens my sense of God’s love for me. Therefore, I am not less apt to sin, but more likely to sin.

Suppose I feel the righteousness of God that I was given at Calvary and resist the temptation. Because I resisted, I rise up a few feet in the water. Progress is made.

Then I am tempted again and fall. Initially, I sink a little deeper in the water. But this time, I accept God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of the people I love. As I feel the forgiveness, I begin to rise in the water. If I confess my sin to God, myself and another human being, I rise up further than I was before I sinned.As a consequence I end up only submerged under 80 feet of suffocating water.

The Bible and the 12 Step programs advocate confession to God, myself and another human being. Look at I John 1:8-10,

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Nowhere in this great passage on forgiveness does it say that the confession under discussion is made exclusively to God. In fact, a few verses above the ones quoted we are instructed to walk in the light. If I am in the light, then my sins can be seen by the people closest to me. The passage is talking about transparency of life in a community of accepting, forgiving, and loving people.

Now look at James 5:16NIV

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

If we consistently practice this open and transparent style of life in a safe, loving community, we will gradually rise through the water of remorse and shame that is drowning us. We will gradually break out from the suffocating water into the cool ocean breezes of God’s infinite love.

String of Pearls 163: Women in the Creation Story and in Proverbs 31

George — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:27:31 +0000

CREATION STORY

-Woman was seen as coming from man’s side implying equality and intimacy. Woman is never to walk a step behind a man, but they are always to walk side by side in tender equal fellowship.

-Woman took the bait of temptation first. To the 21st century woman, this idea implies that a woman was responsible for the fall of man and therefore is blamed for the sin in the world.

However, against the creation stories own culture, a very different picture emerges. Woman is shown to be a separate moral entity from man. She stands in front of God responsible herself for her own behavior

If man had succumbed to temptation first, then a woman’s morality would have been seen as a secondary. In other words, it would seem man fell so it naturally follows that the woman would follow suit. A woman’s morality would become a by-product of her man’s morality. She would not be an independent moral agent.

-Mankind was created in the image of God male and female. Therefore God is equally female and male. None of our pronouns work. He, she or it does not stand for God. A new pronoun is needed that expresses God as as the source of all gender.

-Every human is like God in that each human is both male and female. Like all the rest of humanity, I am both male and female. As it happens I am dominantly male, but with a strong female side.

-It is reality that some of us have male physiology, but primarily female personalities and visa versa.

PROVERBS 31

- Proverbs 31 has a significant but easily misunderstood voice. Applied against 21st century culture, Proverbs seems to place women in a subservient role. Placed against its own culture, a very different picture emerges. Examples from Proverbs 31 are as follows:

-10, “A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.”

^-11, “Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.”

^-12, “She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.”

There is nothing that a man can use to measure her worth. Her desirability and stature exceeds any possible comparison. In every way she is the equal of any man.

-¹³ “She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.”

In a home manufacturing economy she is a full participant in the manufacturing sector.

-¹⁴ “She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.”

She participates in the international trade process.

- She is entrepreneurial. ” She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family, and portions for her female servants. She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.”

In her agrarian culture she purchases and owns land upon which she builds up a vineyard and then repeats the process.

- ”She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.” She cares for the poor. She is the household’s moral voice.

- ”She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple.”

She is a beautifully dressed and a wonderfully creative person.

- ”She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.” She is known for her wisdom. When she talks we listen.

-She is a full and equal partner in every aspect of her culture.

String of Pearls 162: Secrets

George — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:59:55 +0000

The following ideas have helped me.

-It was my secrets that use to make my life so unhappy.

-The price of all my secrets is all my loneliness.

-Over the years I have come to understand the damage done by my many secrets was that my secrets kept me from being myself, enjoying my life and kept me from offering fellowship to the people in my world that would have so enriched my life .

-I am persuaded that the alcoholic that is my most basic qualifier lived before I was born. That person triggered the co-dependent habits that made my parents so poorly equipped to raise me.

- The way mom taught me to keep secrets was by filling the home with vicious gossip rather than real conversation. I became afraid to share intimately so I could protect myself from being the subject of cruel family gossip. I was horrified as a teenager when I realized I was the subject of the gossip when I was not around.

-In the 16 years I have in program I have shared my family secrets many times. I still feel a certain reluctance to talk about certain things but I have learned to mostly ignore those feelings because when I do speak out, healing comes to me. Also, invariably, there is some one who shares with me after the meeting that they have had a similar experience in their youth. When that happens, it takes away my fear of being alone in the world.

-As I gain confidence in the support of my family, my fellowship and my Higher Power I gain freedom to look at more and more of my secrets.

-Many times I feel that that my latest unburying of my shame has brought me to the end of my secrets, only to subsequently find that I need to deal with another secret shame and then another and so on. That tells me that no matter how serene and joyful I feel now if I have the courage to be ever more open I can keep growing and feel even better about myself than I do now..

-To help myself, I want to be open with you about my fears. The fear that I will not be worth loving is disappearing. Still I am afraid of things that might tear apart the security of my living arrangement. I am afraid of losing my grip as I get older. I have many other fears but I have found that everyone else has the same

-I am afraid of bringing my demons out where they can be seen but I have done it for years and have no intention of ever going into hiding again.

A Program Joke

George — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:47:09 +0000

A man goes up to a bar and tells the bartender to bring him a full bottle of whiskey. The bartender fills the customer’s order and pours him a drink. The man gulps it down then pours himself another drink and gulps it down. The man at the bar keeps drinking them down drink after drink.

Finally the bartender gets so curious that he has to ask. He says, “Sir, I have never seen anyone drink whiskey like that.

Replied the drinker, ” I just got out of prison for murdering my wife. All thirty years I promised myself that drinking a full bottle of whiskey would be the very first thing I did when I got out.”

A woman then walks down from the other end of the bar and says, “I hear you are single”.

A Friend

George — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:51:12 +0000

My friend is a beautiful women. Her beauty is glorious and appealing.

Her Inner beauty gives a vibrant glow to her lovely outer curves and features.

So often I have dreamed of being across a restaurant table with her eating good food.

That way I could look at her for a few hours without feeling I was staring.

Letting the fascination of my heart be visible to her eyes

and absorbable by her heart if it would be pleasing to her.

But i am locked inside my shyness and self consciousness.

I have the embarrassed awkwardness of a fifteen year old boy

with a staggering crush on the prettiest girl in the school.

I would like to begin knowing her better and deeper over time

in a manner generated and sustained and maintained by the hand of God.

George

String of Pearls 165: My Woman’s Breasts

George — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:08:43 +0000

-I was in a discussion when asked, if and when I finally become connected with the woman of my dreams, what size breasts would I want her to have?

-That was an unanswerable question, because it was the wrong question. The size of a woman’s breast is not of interest to me. What does matter to me is a question of whom the breasts belong.

-I want the breasts that I desire, to be the breasts of the woman with whom I have fallen in love. It is her breasts I want.

-I also want her to enjoy my touch and love it when I play with her breasts.

-I do not believe that the act of sexual breast play and all the rest of physical sexuality is intimacy in and of itself. Of course breast play is an intimate act, but it is not intimacy. To me, physical sexual activity is the physical expression of emotional, intellectual and spiritual intimacy.

-In the churches, which I grew up, baptism and communion were seen as an outward expression of an inner reality. For example, suppose I made a commitment in my heart to surrender my will to the will of God. Then my inner commitment to the will of God could be expressed by an outward expression through baptism. In the same way, when I recognized the union I had with my Higher Power, I could give that union physical expression through communion.

-Sex is meant to be an outward expression of the intimacy my woman and I have achieved in our conversations and in the living out our life together. That means that I have been fascinated with what I regularly learn about what she wants, how she thinks, how I have pleased her and how I have wounded her. She has been heard and she has heard me. Then we are able to fully enjoy the celebration of our inner intimacy physically through sex.

-When Genesis says women and men are meant to be one flesh, it is talking about the whole package. We have been made emotionally and spiritually one. This is expressed through the unity of joining our bodies in the act of intercourse.

-There is a sense that if I have learned to know my woman better and more intimately during the day, I can feel like I am going to bed with a new woman every night. That is how I want to keep my sex life fresh, “So long as the two of us shall live”.

-When I say that God is faithful, I mean that God treats me tenderly; Her focus is continuously on me. Also God always has my welfare on her mind. She will never lose focus on me and forsake me for some more interesting person. If I am treating a woman with God’s way of being faithful, then I am doing my part in creating intimacy between the two of us.

-Pornography is not an adult form of sexually. Pornography is an unhealthy form of childish sex, because it is based on unfamiliarity. Adult sex is based on familiarity. That is why so many people fall out of love. When the newness of the other persons body wears off it is assumed that the love is gone.

ne.

String Of Pearls 164: On Being Restored to Sanity [Step 2]

George — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:16:54 +0000

The following ideas have helped me.

-I do not doubt that my pre-program thinking was and is insane as is suggested in Step 2 of the 12 Steps.

-However, I do not remember a time in my past where my thinking has been sane. If that were true, why would I want to be RESTORED to the kind of stinking thinking I see as I look back over my 73 years?

-All I can think of is the program helps restore me to the pure thinking with which I was born.

-That helps me explain a phenomenon, which I have noticed. When I have one of those God shot, “ah hah” moments of clarity, the “ah hah’ thought seldom seems completely new. It is more like the healthy new thought puts into words an idea that has been building in me for some time.

-I think God has spoken into my presupposition, in my deepest heart these ideas, “I love and respect you George”. God has spoken those words or similar ones billions of times, all day, every day, since I was conceived.

-I use to think my deep boyhood wounds were the deepest part of my psyche. Now I realize that the deepest part of my mind is dominated by the love whispers of the divine Mommy and Daddy love that God has relentlessly, untiringly, and tenderly spoken to my inner child.

- My thought life is like an Oreo cookie. The bottom delicious chocolate cookie is God’s love whispers. Those whispers are my deepest person. The sorrows and traumas of my boyhood is the white, greasy, sugar crème in the middle of the cookie. Another wonderful chocolate cookie represents my conscious thought life that provides the top of the cookie.

- Even the really ordinary, if not repulsive, taste of the white crème becomes a palatable part of a delicious taste experience when it is surrounded by the love whispers of God underneath and the view of my God that my program has given me on top.

-In this picture and in my personal experience, the “Aha” moments, come when the divine lightning of God’s clear thinking magically connects my “Top Cookie,” which is my conscious thinking, with the deep profound and persistent whispers of God’s love for me found in the “Bottom Cookie”.

-At the rescue mission where I worked, I knew that most of the street folks in the chapel knew fairly well that “God so loved the world”. However, that idea never changed their life. What provided their basis for change was when the idea that God loved them became personally theirs. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” Isaiah 53:1b

A Program Joke

George — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:49:01 +0000

A man goes into a bar, walks to the very last barstool and sits down. He orders a bottle of whiskey. When he gets his whiskey he pours a shot and downs it. Then he pours another shot and downs it and continues doing that

shot after shot.

Finally. the bartender said “Pardon me sir, but in all my years of bartending,I have never seen any one drink like that”.

The man responded “I just got out of prison after serving 30 years for murdering my wife. For all of those 30 years, I have promised myself that the day I got out I was going to be to drink a whole bottle of whiskey”.

A woman got up from her stool at the other end of the bar, and walked up to the man and said “I hear you are single”.