-I could not possibly count high enough to count the fears that the passage of time has proven to be totally baseless.

-When I first started my recovery, I often listed the things I was afraid of in the morning. That evening, I reexamined my list and noted how many of my morning fears had proven groundless. Then I would pray, “God, I give myself permission to be afraid again in the morning and not feel guilty.  Please help me to turn things over to you enough to rest well tonight. I repeated that process for months or weeks at a time. This process was very helpful to me.

-A good many of my evening fears came from a prayer I said every night when I was a boy that included the line, “…If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul you to take.” It was not appropriate for me as a young boy to go to sleep each night wondering if I was going to die.

-Worse, what would happen to me if the Lord chose “…My soul not to take”. I needed to feel totally received by my parents to help me deal with the reality that I felt absolutely dependent on them for my survival. Because I was so young, I was not conscious of these fears . Nevertheless, this prayer only served to deepen my distress.

-That prayer also gave me a fear of life after death that I could not even begin to get into words because of my youth. Without the parental bonding I so desperately needed, that vague but stalking fear of eternal abandonment could only grow stronger as I grew older.

-The only comfort I have found for that stalking abandonment fear is the daily, intimate fellowship with God that the 12 Step people call conscious contact.

-The word “conscious” in the phrase conscious contact has two meanings for me. The first meeting has to do with the fact that I consciously set time apart each day  to learn to enjoy God. The second is that moment by moment sense that  I never have to pray God in from Chicago. She is always there.

-Fear can be successfully suppressed if the purpose is to help me deal with a situation that needs total focus.

-However, if that suppressed fear is not brought out in the open after the immediate threat is passed, the fear can stay inside me to do damage.

-If I use my Higher Power and my friends to help me process my tension, then I can accept and enjoy the reality that I successfully handled a tough situation.

-Using my recovery tools in that way, trains into me a growing confidence in and respect for myself.

-Practice makes perfect is a deadly idea for me. Practice makes progress works.

-”Do your best’ is a threatening idea. I guess I feel that way because growing up, I did my best to do my best and it was never good enough. “Now My aim is to the best I can today given my situation and the resources available.

-My folks did their best  and it was a shitty job.

-Doing my best is also boring because it implies that I will never be better. if I have already done my best my best will never be better than what I did today. I prefer the idea of getting better and better for the rest of my life.

-In the past, people were very critical of me. The result was I did not trust process. If I could not do it well immediately, I would just quit.

-Sometimes, especially when I am doing something new, I feel like the way I am doing it wrong is better than the way some people are not doing it right.

-Anything worth doing is worth doing my way. That certainly includes recovery. In fact, I am going to do it my way until The fellowship demonstrates there is a better way to do it that will help me achieve my own goals for my own sake. I think the term to used here is enlightened self interest.

-Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

-Young man’s disease is the idea that your basic choice in life is between slow progress and fast progress. The fact is my choice is between slow process and no progress. If I reject slow progress and fall to the false allure of fast progress, I end up with no progress or even regression.

-The good thing about slow progress is that it is a progress I am likely to keep. Fast progress comes to me quickly and tends to leave me quickly.

-Life gets more difficult for me as I age. I lose physically, my mind slows down,  and friends and family die. If I just stay at my current level of maturity, the difficulties of life will ultimately outstrip my strength as I get older. That is true no matter how strong I am emotionally today.

-At 71, what I see is that the gains in wisdom and serenity I experience through growth amply compensate for the losses I experience because I am aging. For example, a year ago I told my daughter that I loved her two beautiful daughters  more than I loved her at the same age. Jill and her sisters have never breathed a breath  when I did not love them with all my heart, but when they were children, my heart was  shrunken by fear, shame, inferiority and anger. today,my emotional evolution through program has given me a vastly larger ability to love.

There once were two girls named Mayer,

Who were smart, wise and wondrously fair.

They gave me my “Bad Jokey” name,

That shows the source of my fame.

It’s my hope that I can soon see their lair.

—GMC

-

When I was a very young girl

I had a cat white as a pearl.

After his nap

He would sit in my lap

and there in a ball he would curl.

—Parker, Greta. GMC

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There once was an old dude named Burt,

Who found a tall flower  that would squirt.

He bent down to smell

It is too sad to tell,

That his face ended up in the Dirt.

Parker, Greta, GMC

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There was an old dude name Bad Jokey,

Who had a pet cat named Smokey

He came in to sit,

And got thrown in a fit,

‘Cause he found that his cat was all pokey.

Parker, Greta, GMC

-

There was a young dude named Eric,

Who did not have a cousin named Derek.

When he came in the room,

He filled us with gloom,

‘Cause his farts gave us  need for some air wick.

Parker, Greta, GMC

-

I know a cool woman named Nicole,

To be her friend is my goal.

She often wears her blue shower shoes,

Sadly one of her shoes she does lose.

I think it was devoured by Joel.

GMC

I have a daughter named Jill,
For her smoothies I would kill.
I don’t care what she puts in it,
MMM, she may even gin it.
Without one I feel pickled in dill.

To NKS
Nancy’s sense of humor is in bad trouble
Maybe because mine is worse at least double.
Still  she is a woman of character and strength.
In her praise I would go any length.
To see that you don’t need the Hubble.

A few years ago I took an incredible trip with my sister Evelyn. We attended the C. S. Lewis Lecture’s at Oxford University and did some magnificent sightseeing under the guidance of my good nephew Tim. In London, we visited St Paul’s Cathedral and then walked across the bridge over the Thames River to the Globe Theater.

I was, of course stunned and overwhelmed by the grandeur and beauty of St Paul’s. However the longer I was inside St Paul”s, the more uncomfortable I became. The building is full of the tombs of England’s greatest historical citizens with no memorial at all to the laborers who died building the huge, stone building without any assistance of power tools. The stone is hand hewn and the foundations were hand dug by underpaid laborers. The building was paid for by Imperial wealth gained largely at the expense of the colonized peoples. Where is the memorial to the people of India and the other colonial people who in actuality paid for it all.

I felt like I was in a pagan temple dedicated the  success of the British military and the British colonial wealth I suspected that the sermon’s preached from the great pulpit were designed to glorify and justify the success of the empire not the glory of God.

I could not keep my mind from wandering to a powerful scene in the movie “Mary Poppins” It was the scene filmed on the steps of St Paul’s in which an elderly woman staved off starvation by selling food for the pigeons so the wealthier folks could entertain themselves and their children. All during the scene, the theater’s sound system was stirring me with the emotional music of “Feed The Birds, Tuppence a bag, Tuppence a Bag”

That movie scene expressed my sense of the injustice represented by St Paul’s Cathedral. The contrast between the impoverished elderly woman and the fantastically extravagant cathedral was professionally subtle but so powerful to me.

To me the whole movie sounded that theme. The good guys were a chimney sweep, a nanny, small children, the women demanding the right to vote, and an aged banker who finally got to be a true child at the very end of his life through a fit of wild, childlike laughter. The bad guys were the wealthy, controlling, bankers that were part of the system who thought women could not be trusted with the vote.

After our visit to the Cathedral, Tim walked us over the famous bridge over the Thames River so we could see The Globe Theater rebuilt to duplicate the original Old Globe. The walk to the Globe cleared my head so I could better appreciate the Globe Theater.

The Globe was built to entertain the entire community. There were the poor people holding the cheapest tickets standing directly in front of the stage. There were no seats for them but they probably had the best viewing spot in the theater. The rest of the people sat in seats that gradually increased in price as the patrons toward the most preferred seats.

My nephew Tim went on the internet compared the modern prices to the prices in Shakespeare’s day. Of course, the modern prices were far higher. Interestingly, the ratio between the cheapest tickets and the most expensive was about the same when the tickets sold in Shakespeare’s day and the tickets sold when I was in London were compared.

In my mind, the Cathedral sermons were proud trumpeting of the glories of oppression and Manifest Destiny. At the Old Globe, the audience was treated to the inspired, universal truths of Shakespeare’s plays. The Cathedral is a lasting expression of the hubris of religiosity and the Old Globe was and is a lasting   expression of the edifying spirituality given to us by inspired writers like Shakespeare.

I could have added Bill W to my list of inspired writers. Then there is Cervantes, Alexander Lohan. I would add Jesus except He was a face to face communicator. Others recorded his words for us. Who else would you add? I would love for you to let me know by leaving a comment below.

GMC

I have always seen my self doubt as the enemy of my writing; something to be defeated. Thanks to a conversation with my daughter Jill, I now see My sense of self doubt as inevitable. When I write, self doubt is there and it always will be there.  However, it not just there as something to be overcome , but also necessary and even desirable and helpful in terms of me writing in the way that is truest to my own desire and nature .

Self doubt keeps me from seeing what I write as some kind expression of an infinite reality. I used to do lots of preaching. Preaching made me feel as if I had to have answers for people. I knew that wasn’t true, but I was often tempted to feel like I was God’s voice. I desperately want to avoid that duplicity as I write.

I just want to share things as they seem to me at this moment. If what I write helps someone, that’s wonderful, but my purpose is to express my own heart and hopefully have some exchange with those who read me. I want to say to you what I have said to so many people in my program when I have been asked a question.

“Here is how things seem to me, but if it doesn’t work for you, no problem. Remember, one of the nicest things about being an American is that you are never more than 15 ft from a trash can.”

Self doubt also provokes deeper soul searching that contributes to the openness, genuineness and humanness of my writing. Self doubt contributes to the connectivity of my writing with with my readers.

I like to listen to opera. I am mostly unfamiliar with the world of opera but I enjoy it. In fact I am listening to Turandot at this moment. However, some opera is so out of the world in which I live that it is essentially unavailable to me; at least for now. Self doubt helps me write in a way that is more available to more people.

So welcome friend self doubt. Thanks for your help.

The following ideas have helped me.

-From where she is at this moment up in heaven, my Mom is an unimaginably good Mother. That is one reason I should live in this moment and not the past. Also, my future in terms of my mother’s love and respect for me is unimaginably good.

-I believe in the essential unity of all God’s creation. For that reason, any separation I feel from any person can only apply to the remaining days of my life. Compared to eternity, my remaining time on earth is a mere speck.

-It is always a mistake for me to live today on yesterday’s program.

-If I decide not to work my program for a few day, I should be honest enough to admit that I am asking for personal unhappiness and also may well end up wounding the people I love.

-One key to my recovery is the willingness to say no to the demands of my inner child.

-Another key to my recovery is the willingness to sit with my discomfort.

-A big problem with living in the future is that nobody is there yet.

-Denial: Don’t-Even- Notice- I- A m-Lying

-When I asked my very experienced sponsor who had been the rooms for many decades how you turned your will and life over to the care of God, she gave me a simple and profound answer. She said “Honey that’s easy. Work the steps with me, keep calling me, and go to lots of meetings”. She always called me Honey. I loved it.

-The women of my meeting have been so loving to me that have redefined my whole picture of  the true nature of the feminine.

Jill’s Mom, Jerelyn, who is my ex-wife, was a few months pregnant with Jill when we were deciding to move from the East Coast back to California. At the time, we already had one daughter, our adorable two year old Gina The decision to move was a tough one for me to make. I was very afraid that a cross country trip would threaten our unborn baby and be a risk to our  family.

One day, when I was working as Payroll Manager for The Marriott Corporation in the DC area, I went for a drive during my lunch hour. I began to meditate on this Bible verse. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” [Matt 6:33KJV]

A powerful sense of well being came over me. I felt if I made my decision on the basis of my best understanding of what was right, every thing would work out just fine. At that very moment. I decided that provided Jerelyn agreed, we would move back to California. As it happened, she also thought the move was the right thing to do.

A month or so later, we rented a U-haul trailer for the cross country move. The trailer, packed to the limit with every thing we owned, weighed more than our car, a Plymouth Barracuda. That made the car want to swerve when I had to brake suddenly. Anytime  I was pulling the trailer, I was anxious about losing control of the car.

In a few days we arrived safely in Dallas to be with Jerelyn’s brother Jim and his wife Leta for a few days. I wanted Jerelyn and Gina to fly on to California and to allow me to drive on alone. Jerelyn wanted no part of that Idea. I asked her brother to try to persuade Jerelyn to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles. He refused. He said, “She has the right to make that decision for herself. I will not try to influence her.”

I became more and more distressed each day that we remained in Dallas. Then a phrase from Isaiah began to run through my mind over and over again. The phrase was the last few words of Isa 40:11. “He… shall gently lead those that are with young.” I grabbed onto that  verse as if it were a life raft that would keep me safe from voracious sharks. I finally could accept the comfort that helped me feel that my family was going to be OK. We traveled together and we made it back to California.

After a short visit to San Diego, We drove to Monrovia and  moved into our new home. My main worry then was good medical care for Jerelyn. However,a local Doctor generously offered us free pre-natal and birth care. We settled down to wait for our new baby.

Gina was in a perpetual state of elation at the prospect of a brother or sister. Jerelyn felt good but had one deeply felt concern. When Gina had been born, Jerelyn had gone through a strenuous labor from morning to the late evening on an empty stomach. She had been ravenously hungry and had demanded a sandwich be sent to recovery  while she was still in the delivery room. With this baby, she was determined not to go into labor on an empty stomach for a second time.

We had a peach tree in the back yard drooping with fruit. Every night we made hot peach cobbler buried in vanilla ice cream. Jill came two weeks later than we expected, so we downed, with relish, a huge  dessert just before we went to bed every night for two weeks. It is a wonder that Jill was not born a diabetic.

Labor began very early one morning. We left Gina with Grandma, and rushed to the hospital which was just a few miles across town. I had scouted the hospital a few days earlier so I would be sure to know where the entrance to the hospital was located.  However, because it was so early in the morning we couldn’t go in the main entrance. The sign said to go to the emergency entrance to gain access to the hospital. We had to walk about two hundred yards around the building to get to the emergency entrance.

I was overwhelmed with remorse. Jerelyn thoroughly enjoyed rubbing it in. “Nice job George. Here I am about ready to give birth  and you are making me walk clear around the outside of the hospital. I am going to tell everyone we know about this.”

I don’t think she was angry, but there was definitely some teasing payback in her voice for her long walk. She lived up to her promise. Everyone we knew was given the opportunity to unmercifully razz me.

When Jerelyn got to the labor room, the nurse took one look and said, “Honey, don’t push, don’t push.” The  nurse ran out of room to call the Doctor. All the staff were worried that the baby would come before the doctor got there.

When the Doctor came he was angry. He said “It seems like experienced nurses like you could manage to get me here on time”. I did not mention our circumnavigation of the hospital grounds.

I had tried to work it out with the hospital so I could be in the delivery room. However, we had not gotten settled in California soon enough for me to complete the child birth training.The doctor turned on the speakers in the Father’s waiting room so I could hear what was going on. In just a few minutes, I heard the announcement, “You have a beautiful daughter.” I then I heard Jill’s delicate little cry; I was so moved.

After Jill was born I went to Jerelyn’s room. I kissed her and said, “I have no words to express my gratitude to you for giving me my baby girl.” That was all I wanted to, or for that matter could, say.

In thirty minutes or so I left Jerelyn’s room to allow her to sleep. As I was leaving the room, the nurses gave me directions to the nursery viewing window so I could  see my little baby girl. Her crib had been moved right next to the window. The birth had been quick enough and easy enough that Jill was completely unmarked by the process of being born. She was achingly beautiful and still is to this day.

I stood at the window looking at my new daughter for a long time. It must have been at least 90 minutes. I was looking at my baby with delight but also in awed silence. I wanted to be there with her all by myself. I hoped that no one would come by and disturb us. Very few events in the ensuing years could compare at all with the thrill of becoming Jill’s father.

Jill was a delightful little girl. She was bright, giving, enjoyable, hard working and very capable. In school, she kept herself years ahead of her grade level. She did that on her own motivation. I don’t remember ever saying or thinking that she needed to to stop playing in order to get her  homework done.

Ultimately she skipped the sixth grade. That put her at the same grade level as Gina. Being in the same grade worked out well  for them and was the foundation for the remarkable friendship between the two that is still a powerful friendship today. That friendship of course, includes little sister JoAnna

Also, Jill loved to take on big projects. One time when she was about ten,  she wanted to clean the garage. It was a throughly cluttered mess full of things like a non-functioning fuel pump that I had removed from the car years before.

There was no path through the mess in the garage. All the junk was piled up in  layers.  I would not let her clean it up. My reasoning was that I should do the job. In other words, my refusal had nothing to do with Jill’s admirable capabilities and aspirations. I simply wanted to avoid  the guilt feelings that  I would have because I let my ten year old daughter do a job I should have done myself.

She was very disappointed. but it worked out well. Years later, the sisters organized a garage sale selling the junk in the garage. I tried to stop them from putting out the really worthless stuff. Jill said, “Dad, that is the stuff people will want to buy”. That event was a precursor to what would turn out to be Jill’s remarkably good business sense. They sold the worn out fuel pump for a quarter.  They realized a very nice profit that day.

Jill was energetic and enthusiastic in her play, especially when all four girls were trying to wrestle me to the ground from my hands and knees during our every evening play on the living room carpet.  She was and is a lovely sister and daughter.

She also loved justice.  Their grade school was largely a mix of Hispanic kids and kids of Northern European descent. One year she and her sisters were outraged that their schoolmates wanted them to decide between being a Chollo or being an Anglo . The girls absolutely refused to be pressured into deciding between the two groups. They wanted to be friends with everyone.

At some point in High School, Jill began saving all the money she earned babysitting and house cleaning. She wanted to spend a year in Paris with her cousins who lived there. She had to pay for the whole trip herself. She was showing her willingness to make a plan, then work like crazy to pull it off.

This trip was a sort of rite of passage for Jill. Jill loved being at home with her family. Some years she didn’t even want to go to summer camp. For that reason, going off to Paris by herself when she spoke very little French was incredibly brave. I know she was often lonely, but she made the trip work. She even took a dance class at a nearby French University. She stayed as long as she needed in order to give herself the satisfaction of meeting her goal.

She was the first of my kids to leave home for any length of time. She took her sewing machine on the airplane with her on the flight to France. I’ll never forget how my heart ached seeing my lovely daughter, with her sewing machine hanging off her right shoulder, walk onto the ramp leading to the airplane.

When she got home from Paris, she had grown up. Her maturity showed  very soon after she got home; she wanted to volunteer at Union Rescue Mission where I worked. Jill her sisters and some friends did a really good job volunteering at the missions Kids Klub program for several years.

I had the privilege of performing Jill and Eric’s wedding. In one way, it was a sad time because Cousin Steve was struck with a ultimately fatal aneurysm in his brain stem the very day of their wedding.

I was stunned over Steve, especially since I was with him when the aneurysm struck.I deeply wanted Jill and Eric to have good memories of their wedding day despite our family’s tragedy.

The incredible love that everyone in attendance at their marriage so powerfully felt, carried the day. Everyone fully supported the idea of the two of them getting married.I felt waves of love rolling up from the attendees. Jill, Eric and I all agree that their wedding was moving and warm. The wedding is a good memory for all us .

I love having Eric as a son in law. He is a very loving and enjoyable member of our family. In time there was the wonder that is my granddaughters. I love them so very much. Jill is still beautiful in every way a woman can be beautiful.

When she was a child she delighted me. That hasn’t changed.

Here are seven reasons I used to not respond to what seems to me to be female flirting.  I am getting very hard on my hesitations and have actually made good progress. The reasons listed are in no particular order.

1. I need to be pretty sure I am reading the signals right. It hurts to be rejected.

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2. Sometimes women flirt just to reassure themselves that they still have what it takes.

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3. To me, it seems like I’m in a pickle. The odds seem high that if I respond, in the long term, either me or the woman is going to hurt. I dislike both options equally.

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4. I am so damn self conscious.-

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5. Some women think of me as a fatherly type. I often can’t tell if their approaches to me are an attempt to ease their daddy wounds or if they would like to  investigate the possibility of a romance with me.

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6. If the woman is really attractive, I sometimes I tie up verbally.

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7. I am scared of intimacy dating back to my boyhood. If there is the possibility of intimacy of the sort that may lead to sex, I  sometimes lose the ability to be my true self. I feel a kind of macho defensiveness rise up.

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GmCay