Choice – a guest meditation from Brian

raft of medusa

 

 

This ain't no place for the weary kind
This ain't no place to lose your mind
This ain't no place to get left behind
Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try

Ryan Bingham – The Weary Kind

 

Choice matters. I chose to come to the meeting tonight. My addict chooses to use. Choice matters.

Choice either moves us forward, backward, and sometimes by not choosing…we tacitly choose to remain where we are. Make no mistake choice matters.

The irrevocable truth  is that we are always keenly remember when we make that first and usually life altering choice….that first al anon meeting….that first Martini; that first cigarette, that first kiss, that first love.

Choice matters to everyone. The only thing we don't choose is the addicts in our life.  But we choose how to deal with them by first dealing with ourselves. Al anon is inherently good on how it deals with the bad.

The haunting Melody and Lyric of this work of art..this song called Crazy Heart has become my anthem is the well worn armour shielding   me from  the  baptism of fire we inappropriately name recovery.A state that has a beginning but no end.  Choice …a terrible beauty… matters.

In the art of Crazy Heart …the steel guitars cry endlessly into the black cold night. The twang of the icy steel  strings  reluctantly yet uncontrollably  drowns  us once again    deeper and deeper  into  the ocean abyss finally arriving at the bottom …. Home again….the bottom; the bone yard .piled high   with all the broken promises and unfulfilled dreams of wasted memory.

Some of us have already given up ….some in the process of given up….some of us want to give up. Yet we continue to come. We come week after week, month after month, and year after year. We come and we come and we come.

We come bent, broken on bended knee  …pleading, begging for some or something to drags out back into the light.

The broken spirit,hammered  again and again over  the anvils  of time , is as pure in form and nature   as the cold steel of the fearless samurai's blade. Behold the true disciple; with infinite heart and courage for all.

No matter what creed, no matter the different tale of love and loss….. yet always mystically the same clear unwavering yet always compassionate voice.

No advice  is given but instead  offered

Leave  the remnants of the moral carcass  of the pain and disillusionment in histories absente wake.

Words, rhyme,courage,and reason are all generously  enmeshed in the vibrant jungles of our mind .

The choice is ours. Choice in the beginning, choice in the end but choice in the present gets its due and proper.

The hardest and most difficult thing to see…. the only thing that comes to account is the here and now..

The lonely poets tears fill the cracks of our broken hearts. The random pieces of our soul begin the long painful crawl towards the completion of this puzzle branded choice.

This ain't no place for the weary kind
This ain't no place to lose your mind
This ain't no place to get left behind
Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try

Gratitude.

A meditation for February 1, 2014.


Brian had this description of the painting:

I am am sending you  a pic of the” Raft of Medusa”. It is a piece of art
work hanging in the Louvre. I used it as a metaphor of the lifecycle
of addiction and recovery. It is based on a true story of a shipwreck
in which 150 hopped on to a life raft ..2 weeks later they were rescued
…15 hopped off the rest perished…….isn't that the rule of thumb…1 out of
10 make it out addiction ….maybe not who knows ….But on a personal note
i believe this both for the addict and there loved ones. I Took the guy standing
up looking straight ahead into the horizon as Al Anon….He is actually seeing
the rescue frigate in the distance called the Argo that eventually saves
the survivors that are left. Moral of the story…..all things being equal its better
to have AL Anon on your side. It gives you an edge.
So if you go to the Louvre you will see this huge pic on the wall.
The raft is the exact size that was used as well as the size of the
men are actual heights….it took Gericault….the artist 18 months
to paint this pic 1818-1819.

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