Safe

February 9, 2005

Almost 30 years ago, in France, I had a class on Baudelaire with a Professor who explained his poetry in no less extraordinary a manner than if she had turned on a light bulb in a dark room. What started as an elegant and beautiful poem on the surface was deconstructed as a journey into the recesses of the mind and spirit, an illumination of words as having the qualities of mineral and color. I cannot possibly do justice to her "explication" but it was a transforming experience.

Last night I tried going to a new meeting and through a comedy of errors, was an hour early. So I decided to go to my usual Tuesday night meeting (a half an hour earlier) instead, and found myself listening to an Irishwoman named Lila, sober for 35 years.

She was absolutely mesmerizing, deconstructing the Program, and how it worked, and how to stay sober like my Professeur of yesteryear explained poetry. She also had a certain no-nonsense style, and in the question and answer period people either didn’t know what to ask or couldn’t think of anything she hadn’t answered.

I put up my hand. I told her I couldn’t understand how people seemed to do their steps separately, as in "I’m working on a fourth step." That I found an opportunity to practice almost each step, every day. I wanted to know if I was kidding myself, avoiding doing them the "right" way by telling myself I could do them "my" way.

She responded that I was a very lucky man. That it usually took years for sober people to do this, to wear the steps like "a loose garment." That indeed one could practice the steps integrally, on a daily basis. And then she explained them in a way they had never been explained.

One step was about faith, the other hope, the other courage, and then honesty and integrity, down on to gratitude. I daren’t diminish her wondrous deconstruction by trying to replicate it, but it held us all in absolute thrall. I pray that anyone still "out there" who finds him or herself intellectually alienated by the "steps" or "the God thing" is gifted with hearing Lila in one of his early meetings. By the time I finished hearing her, for the first time ever, the idea of staying sober the rest of my life did not feel like some sort of failure or deprivation, but as a path to a deeper joy than I can even now conceive of. Thank you, Lila.

So I want to find out what she does for a living. If she is not an inspirational speaker, or a Professor of English Literature, than I’ll be damned.

Except I don’t feel damned. I would say I feel "saved," but I recoil from the evangelical connotations. If anything I feel "safe."

Lila mentioned her dead sister as a guardian angel of sorts. Today is the 14th anniversary of the death of my brother Luke. I certainly identify.

MCO 2005