Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol* -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Koan:
A bug on a branch
Swept away down the river
Still singing her song
ISSA (1763-1826) Translated by Cliff Edwards
in a collection entitled Lovers Have So Little Time.
We don’t know anything about this bug, only that she’s on a branch, but how on the branch? Is it easy to hold onto, like a secure place in the fork of a branch? Or is she holding on for dear life because after all, she was being swept away down the river. I doesn’t sound like a serenely-flowing tranquil river.
I have heard it in all of our stories before we hit our ultimate bottom – we’re bugs holding on for deal life, rapids thrashing us about, maybe even dangling by one arm as we’re being swept down the river of alcoholism… singing our song, too…a song all about me and the troubles I’ve brought to myself and others…a song called My Selfish Alcoholic Blues…Let’s sing along:
Ohhh my blues
NUTTEN but bad news
WHY I can’t refuse
DRINKING all this booze
My PAINS so bad
Even the DOGS’ are deserting
My PAINS so bad
ALL MY HURTS are hurting
But wait, I see a fork in the river up ahead! Some of us, by circumstance, intervention, luck, or unexplained phenomena, find that our branch has somehow come aground in a protected pool by the shore, and even fewer of us make the choice to scurry ashore where there’s food and cover and other friendly bugs.
They tell me I must leave the river life; that the river will only take me to worse times, even death; that the river has too much power over me, that my life is unmanageable under these conditions.
On land with my new bug friends, they say I need to learn a new song - - a song of recovery, unity and service. I think I’ll give this song a chance. Would you care to join in and sing with me? (Sung to the tune of John Denver's Almost Heaven)
Almost heaven
In these meetings
Hear the speaker
Cookies and strong coffee
Life is good here
Reaping all the perks
Reading in my Big Book
Seeing how it works
Take me home
Bill and Bob
To the place
Where my job
Is to-trust-God
Helping others
Take me home
In sobriety
Hey, sounds pretty good. Let’s sing our song again, tomorrow.
Bill K.
