A Bug Takes Step One

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.