Day 80: on sobriety and Too Blonde Jesus
This morning I woke up into Day 80 of my “active” sobriety.
I’m getting closer, now, than I’ve ever gone — on my own — without alcohol. The longest “stretch” I ever accomplished on my own was six months.
What’s that? 180 days?
100 more days, and I’ll have been sober
longer than I was ever able to on my own.
See, in the past, when I tried to stop drinking “on my own,” I was basically just a cranky person who was scared of everything and who was trying, without admitting to my own alcoholism, to stay dry.
Never really worked.
Not the way I wanted it to, anyway.
Last night I was struggling to sleep.
I watched “Antiques Roadshow” — and that usually “gets the job done” —
but not last night. I eventually had to settle in with a talk from
Thich Nhat Hanh that was subtitled
in Russian.
So I fell asleep listening to Master Hanh.
There are infinitely worse ways to fall asleep
than that of listening to a gentle Buddhist talk
about the body and the spirit.
Reader, I suspect I might be Buddhist.
I’ve suspected this for years, just as I suspected —
for many years — that I had a “problem” with the “drink.”
Difference is I am happily giving myself over, now, to Buddhist teachings/ideas.
As for the program of recovery I undertook/am undertaking
for my alcoholism, I am less willing at times to “give myself.”
See, you might recognize me from a major meltdown I had last week
all over social media, in front of my Flagstaff friends, and nightly
for Sarah after my ignorance caused me to “lose” a sponsor.
(Don’t try to tell me it “wasn’t my fault.”
I am practicing rigorous honesty,
and if I’m being “rigorously honest,” most things
— the good, bad, & ugly —
are not the fault
of one person
alone.)
Yesterday, Sarah and I watched The Last Temptation of Christ, and but for a few cringey 1980s “CGI” (i.e. plastic snakes and actual flames and shit),
the film held up. One thing that struck me during this viewing
was the way the characters all called him “Rabbi.”
My wife knows a lot more about The Bible than I do.
I mean, I just don’t remember a lot from my time in Catholic school.
“Did they call him Rabbi?” I asked, using Sarah as my “fact checker.”
She said they did, and told me “Rabbi” means “teacher.”
“That’s really cool,” I replied, leaning back into the couch.
“Rabbi. Teacher.”
I enjoyed the film. A lot of it made me think, deeply.
Any art that makes me think deeply while making me a little bit
uncomfortable
is a good work of art in my book.
I had not seen Last Temptation since I was in undergrad.
A long time ago.
Watching it now, I really appreciate the way Dafoe (who plays Jesus) leans into this idea that Jesus would have had to have been a bit charismatic/crazy to get people to pay attention to him.
And in his enthusiasm, his “message” sometimes sounds extra crazy — so in this respect, I think Scorcese, Dafoe, and the Greek writer
(I’m not going to try to spell that last name — I already spend enough of my life, married into a Greek family, trying to spell long Greek names),
did a fantastic job of showing both how Jesus might have had to be
in the world and why so many people would have thought he was
one crazy fucker who’d be better off dead.
I remember when Last Temptation was released, in the 1980s,
because I was ensnared in Catholic school (Chicago Diocese, y’all)
and the entire Catholic Church lost its shit over the movie.
“Blasphemy,” they said. Never really elaborated because I think they were skeeved out by the sex stuff. Ugh. Seriously? All the problems in this world
and people were still getting bent about sex?
Upon its release, I had little interest Last Temptation.
For 1) I was eleven in 1988 and for 2) every Catholic in my life (which is to say about 95% of the adults I knew then and 95% of my friends back then) were losing their shit about it being the actual work of satan.
A few of my cousins, my brother, and I all got really into metal
in the 80s, and we had an “inside” joke about how the Actual Adults
(women mostly) in our family would give us shit about our metal band
t-shirts or cover albums to our cassette tapes.
Meaning, they would pull us aside in the kitchen, or confront us
in our bedrooms and ask questions like, “Why is this guy holding
a bloody knife? ‘Ride the Lightning’ — what does this mean? Why is
that man singing to a skeleton? What does this mean?” I think
because this was the 80s, Actual Adults were sometimes overly concerned
about Satanic shit. The whole Satanic Panic thing . . .
Anyway, I wasn’t a Satanist in junior high, I just liked the music
of Megadeth. And I had no intention of seeing Last Temptation of Christ.
I watched it later, in undergrad, I think because one of our Cool Profs said it was a cool movie and also because I wanted badly to see this movie that the Catholic Church utterly lost their minds over in the 1980s. (I still haven’t seen Flashdance because that film, too, was relegated to the “naughty pile.” I laugh
now because here’s the truth: kids are subjected to all sorts of horrors on the daily because of the bad behavior of Actual Adults and yet we think keeping them from a movie is going to help them go on to lead healthier, happier lives? Stop fucking up the kids, Actual Adults, and then you don’t have to worry about movies or Megadeth. Best way to raise good kids?
Be good to the kids in your life, ya dummies.)
Anyway, I saw the film for the first time at 19 or 20 or some such.
I cringed at the special effects.
Outside of some sex, I didn’t really understand why
this was such a “bad” movie according to the Catholics.
Jesus was human, right? Wasn’t that a big part of “the point”?
And if he was human, how in the world would he have never had
doubts or fears or, at the very least, serious concerns about what
God was asking him to do? I mean, crucifixion is one of the worst
ways to die, I would imagine. You suffocate on the cross. Death
by suffocation is kind of a nightmare of mine which is why I do
everything in my limited human power to keep cancer from spreading
further into my body. It’s already on some bones, and that’s bad enough.
What I know now is that I respect the teachings of Jesus.
I like a lot of what this man had to say.
A lot. And I cried watching Dafoe, as too-blonde-Jesus,
climb back on the cross and accept his horribly difficult
fate. As a perma-cancer patient, I know a little something
about difficult fates. I do hope that when my time comes,
as all of our times come,
it is not on an actual fucking cross mounted atop
a pile of skulls on a scorching hot desert day, but
my life is full of surprises, isn’t it?
My Truth? I am 100% upset by what “Christians”
have done to this world in the name of their “God.”
Horrible events, unspeakable sins have been justified
by literate men using The Bible as a weapon of control.
You can say this about virtually every
Religious Text written by men. Which is to say,
just about every fucking religious text. Women,
we need to get more serious about writing
some religious texts. Humans clearly need religion,
and humans are clearly getting it from the wrong
sources.
No religion run by humans will be perfect.
I know this.
Buddhism is not perfect.
Buddhism like all major world religions
suffers from misogyny and isms, but perhaps
not as much as the others.
What I’m saying is that the Zen Buddhists make sense to me.
Priests, pastors, and what they’re selling make no sense to me.
Most of what Christianity has to offer me, in my experience,
is that men will always be the default because “God says” and
God is a man who is jealous and violent. Sorry, I know plenty
of violent and jealous men — not by choice — in this life, so
I guess I just don’t need God to be a jealous, violent man, too.
If God exists, God has no gender — at least that’s what I believe.
God doesn’t care about gender.
God doesn’t care who you sleep with.
God just wants to keep you safe and at peace as much as God can.
We do have free will.
Also, I do not speak for (or speak to) God,
but this is what I’ve concluded
in the past couple of desperate years.
God has kept me alive up until now.
I don’t know why.
Most days, I try not to ask “why.”
The why is not for me to understand.
Anyway. Today is day 80 in “the program.”
I have not wanted to drink but for during a brief, petulant
moment after it became apparent I had outgrown my
time with my sponsor; I had a bit of a “fit” and strongly
considered having an evening drink to “take the edge off”
and to “prove” some point that would have been an incredibly stupid
“point.” I mean, had I picked up and used, I would have just proved to myself,
once again, that I am an alcoholic. Good point, Dr. Obvious!
I don’t need alcohol to know I have a problem with alcohol.
Frankly, I don’t need anything or anyone to tell me what I know
is True about myself. When I was up in Flagstaff, I had a moment
where a man (not a friend) attempted to explain what I would enjoy
better to me. Um, yeah, dude. I’m almost 45. I think I have a solid handle
on what I enjoy and what I don’t enjoy. Thanks anyway.
Have a good Sunday, readers!
