Creative Nonfiction Blog by Brenda Gaines Hunter

Just For Today

(This is in three parts and will be posted in three parts.)

"Just for today, I will have a program.
I may not follow it exactly,
but I will have it. I will save myself from two pests:
hurry and indecision.

Just for today, I will have a quiet half hour
all by myself, and relax.
During this half hour, sometime,
I will try to get a better perspective of my life.

Just for today,
I will be unafraid. Especially I
will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful,
and to believe that as I give to the world, so
the world will give to me."
~ Reinhold Neibuhr

Quote of the Week

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. ~ Keely Chace

When all else fails, follow directions.

The slogan above reminds us that arrogance can undermine recovery, that there is little sense in trying to reinvent the wheel. If we just listen and watch, we'll find that most of the answers to our questions have been provided for us, that our problems really aren't that unique that others haven't found ways to solve them. Some people already have what we want, hanging with the Winners and listening to them can help provide direction.

AA (The Big Book).

By the way, no I'm not an alcoholic. I just think the Big Book is pure genius.

Niece

My sister Pat's daughter Wendy.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

That was the line when I was a kid in the 1960s, and I bought it hook, line and sinker. See, in the 1960s, the saying was: We had a few making it hard on all of us. We knew, and were told, that we had to be smarter, jump higher, run faster, because the odds were against us. Over the years, the message that we have to be better than has been lost. Now, we seem to think that everyone has the time to get to know us and judge us as individuals. Think about that. Because that makes no sense. It will never happen. That's Lalaland thinking. And just as others are often guilty of viewing us as one cohesive group, we do the same: It is also all of them.

Why Higher Power Matters?

The concept of higher power is germane to most 12 Step programs. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous—a stockbroker, Bill W. and a medical doctor, Dr. Bob were not particularly religious. However, they realized that to put their lives on the paths they desired, they needed to believe in a power greater than themselves. They realized that their own will powers were shaky at best. When left to their own devices, they made utter messes of their lives. They needed a power that was much less fallible and, therefore, more trustworthy than their own.

Although the concept, and belief, in a higher power is often seen as a religious one, it can also be seen as an aspect of simple spirituality. It is a spiritual concept, wherein you establish a one to one relationship with a Higher Power (HP) of your choosing. As Bill W pointed out, “rarely have they seen a person fail who turns themselves over to this simple program,” as long as they’ve had the capacity to “practice rigorous honesty.” "Those with grave mental problems do and have recovered."

Quang Duc, Mississippi: Excerpt from Memoir (1st Draft)

My eating problems continued for years afterwards and so did Mama’s alcohol problems. Mama, my brother, me and a couple of Mama’s cousins packed into a steamy car and rode through the cornfields of Illinois on through to the cotton fields of Arkansas and Mississippi. Before leaving Chicago, Mama reminded us to always answer people with a “yes, ma'am” or “no, sir” once we left Illinois. She also told us not to look anyone in the eyes. My brother got to sit between the guys in the front while Mama’s cousin sat between Mama and me in the back. Her cousin said, “I have to sit where I can watch the lines.” She sat with a pint of something between her legs and watched the lines on the road the whole time. She didn’t even fall asleep and when I awoke the next morning her eyes were bloodshot and glazed. I didn’t understand why she wanted to watch the lines. By the time we skidded across any of them, it would have been too late to jump out. I would have awoken to her screams as she watched us all die. Better to sleep I figured.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I have never been able to answer that question. Perhaps had I actually grown up I'd know by now. When I was a child, I told my parents that I wanted to be a lawyer, like Perry Mason, and I later reiterated that I wanted to go to college. They just stared at me. I've always loved architecture and astronomy, as well.

As a child, I spent hours and days and weeks building houses and entire cities out of anything and everything imaginable. But life went awry. I ended up in foster care and could not wait to get out on my own, and once I did, I wanted nothing more than to do an about face. I realized that I hadn't grown up; I had simply been biding my time.

Rigor

I was asked today, What does elegance and beauty have to do with rigor? During my Beautiful Theories post, I included rigor when discussing the beauty and elegance of a theory. I didn't know why I threw that in either at first. I've stated that "simplicity is elegance". I believe that is true. When a statement or argument is simple, almost 'commonsense', it is difficult to defeat. It has already been reduced to it lowest constituents. It's balanced. It gives that feeling of "Eureka!" That same feeling that many of us get when we experience a defining moment, like when we see someone who is so beautiful we start to melt. Things that are elegant are simple; they leave no doubt about their beauty. That's rigor.

Beautiful Theories...

Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true." ~ http://edge.org/

Simplicity is elegance a math teacher once told me. That premise is holding up. Each year, John Brockman, the manager of Edge.org puts forward an open-ended question to the world's greatest scholars and intellectuals and to those of us who are just nosy, who are used to responding to background noise. (I'm used to exercising while talk radio blares in the background.) This year, he asked, "What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?" The number one answer was Darwin's Theory of Evolution as much for its simplicity as for anything else. Eureka! Never before had so much been explained by so little. That's rigor, elegance, beauty!

God's Omnipotence & Free Will

Now what am I going to do with this? Well, I'm going to stay the course on this issue. Keep my beliefs. I do believe that God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, but I don't believe he is omniscient and omnipresent. I think some things just slip by him, and sometimes when he finally does intervene all he can do is hold our hands to help us to feel better. And that is also why we are free to choose how to behave. God is not always here to hold our hands.

That's what I wrote the other night. However, that does not make sense. This is why the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, et. al., struggled with the concept of an omni-God: Considering God omni-everything makes it difficult to account for the evil in the world. However, limiting God like I do anthropomorphizes God. How can God be omnipotent, but not omniscient? If God is all powerful then God has the power to allow Himself to know everything. The real question may not be whether God is all anything, but why God does not always elect to intervene? Why does He not elect to know? Why are we here?