stevenchristopher

I’m so grateful to be under my parent’s roof–a sit-down family dinner a couple weeks from now.

Gratitude–or, more honestly, my lack of gratitude generally speaking has forced me to start practicing gratitude throughout the day.  In small moments, when the sun shines through the window just so, and the tree it’s shining on seems alive with light…Such gratitude.

I recently relapsed, good and hard, proving once again to myself that addiction is, in fact, a progressive disease.  In the matter of two months, I lost my wallet and credit cards, destroyed my credit, lost my job and apartment, an ipod touch, the trust of loved ones, and my self-respect.

I left Burlington for the streets of Boston, which is where I lived and used and sold myself as a teen and young adult.

I returned to behaviors I long belived were beyond me.  I turned my back on Light and quite fully and willingle embracked Darkness, furthering its cause for some two months.

Now, I’m clean again, having completed a detox with the intention of moving on to long term treatment.

My life in Burlington was the best I’d ever had, and some part of me denied it, refused to accept it as mine.  And so I set about dismantling it poiece by piece, all while deriving some dark sense of satisfaction in doing what I do best: destroying all that is good in my life.

I sit here now, again, penniless, staying (and not particularly welcome) at my parent’s house.  Surrender, surrender, surrender.  Moment to moment I endeavor to stay in a place of willingness to surrender to the Universe, to the Flow, the Tao.  Steven, this monstrous self-concept, this diabolical ego of mine has thrown so many obstacles and temptations in my path.  “This, too, will pass,” I tell myself.

Another prayer I say throughout the day, known as the Third Step Prayer, goes something like this:

“I offer myself to thee, Lord, to build with me and do with me as thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self so that I may better serve thy will.  Help me overcome my difficulties so that I may bear witness to those I would help of thy strength, they power, and thy grace.  May I do they will always.”

My heart’s one true desire is to be of service to the Light.  I just don’t understand why I continue to deny its call.

He said I must focus on grounding myself to the earth, that my energy system is focused in the top three of my chakras leaving the bottoe ones unattended,  He urge me to get naked and roll in the dirt or sand, to garden, to invision myself in a field with a little child acreening toward me.  Brace my body in such a way to catch the child hurling itself it your arms.  Take the wait, don’t tip over.  That’s grounding.

Powerful imagery.  The whole idea of grounding has been brought to my by various intuitives and psychics for many years, so I plan on doing some of these grounding exercises.

I’ll let you know if there’s and change.

Be well.

namaste

Are you familiar with this expression: “What you resist, persists”?  It’s not quite the maxim I’m looking for, but it’s the closest I can come to capturing pithily the phenomenon I want to talk about.  Basically, my life has been an exercise in experiencing precisely that which I’ve feared or otherwise tried so hard to avoid.

The earliest example that comes to mind is the divorce of my parents when I was 8 or 9 years old.  I had spent the previous several years scared half to death that they would divorce, a fear that would arise intensely whenever I overheard a hushed argument or the door slammed late at night marking my father’s dramatic leave-taking.

Such a slam would almost inevitably be followed by my mother quietly entering my bedroom, her steps weaving a bit, her voice soft around the edges from booze.  She would comfort me or seek comfort, stifling her own tears to stem the flow of mine.  We would assure each other of our love , and I would marvel in confusion at how my father could ever be so angry at this woman who was the center of my world.  Turns out she had an argumentative and vicious streak when drunk, but my young age yet protected me from the cutting edges of her tongue.

As I said, she was the pivot around which my whole childhood universe revolved.  The fear of losing her, of her death, for some reason plagued me throughout my childhood.  I would often end up sobbing disconsolately at the mere thought of life without her.  She got diagnosed with cancer when I was 14 and died less than a year later.

See the theme so far?  These two defining fears of my childhood were apparently presentiments.  Whether some part of me knew the events were coming or the intensity of my fears somehow attracted the events themselves seems like a valid question.  Or, and this is the most likely explanation, the only connection between the fear and the events was one of timing and coincidence.  If it is just a coincidence, it’s a hell of one; having my two greatest childhood fears come to pass was challenging and transformative.

The same happened with confinement, with incarceration.  As a juvenile, after my mother’s death and before I ran away to the streets of Boston, I lived with my Dad.  I was abusing drugs, doing (and getting caught doing) a lot of huffing of various household cleaning products, self-mutilating and spending loads of time writing melodramatic suicide notes and composing wills as to the disposition of my CD and poster collections.  So, in all due fairness to my father, He was probably justified in repeatedly having me involuntarily committed for substance abuse treatment and as a threat to my own safety.  That said, I lived in sheer terror of being confined against my will in those cushy hospitals.  And when I was committed–never for more than 30 days–I spent the entire time freaking out about my confinement.

It’s as if a part of me knew I’d end up doing 9 years in prison, over 2 of which would be spent in “the hole”.

The same dynamic is at work in my present job.  I’ve managed to avoid most every form of manual labor for my whole life with a persistence bordering on zeal.  I’ve always dreaded hard work.  So of course I find myself working a job that consists solely of it!

While I said it’s most likely explained away as a coincidence of timing, my worldview doesn’t really allow for coincidences of any kind, let alone one of such apparent meaning and of such a grand scale.  Maybe there’s a leak between my Higher Self and conscious little me, and on some level I fear and resist most strongly that which will come to pass in my life.  Or, maybe the energy of fear somehow attracts its object.

Who knows?  Certainly not me!

What I do know is that being forced to face these things I for so long viscerally dreaded has taught me so damned much about myself, others, and life itself.  And for this, at least, I am grateful.

As much as I use this blog as a personal exercise sort of like journaling, the fact is that I’m doing so in a public forum.  I would so appreciate any feedback from those who take the time to read my posts.  Also, let’s talk about this stuff.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas, your responses to what I write.

The comments on my posts are what encourage me to keep writing.  I have a vague desire to “be a writer” someday, and this blog is partially writing practice for me…

So, I’m grateful to those of you who take the time to comment on what your read here.  I also welcome suggestions on how I could improve my blog, both in content and in my writing.

Thanks!

I remember being a very, very young child arguing with my father because he wouldn’t give me money to put in the bent and dirty coffee cup held out by the equally bent and dirty panhandler.  ”He’ll just buy booze with it,” my father said with finality.  My heart just about broke.  I felt such compassion for the old beggar, and there was a painful, almost shameful awareness of the beautiful home and room full of toys I’d be returning to.  There was something very wrong about the whole situation, but my child’s mind couldn’t understand it; instead, my child’s heart cracked a bit.

I’ve always been inclined to give money to panhandlers–or “stemmers”, as they call themselves.  They don’t beg; they “stem”.  Even when I myself was homeless, which is how I learned the lingo,  I would give what I could.  If that day found me particularly flush, I’d buy some food for the person.  Because my father was right: most stemmers stem for alcohol or drugs  It’s always a better bet to bring him or her to McDonald’s or something.  At least then you know your charity is being used properly.

A couple of thoughts arise in response to this whole topic.  The job I got here in Burlington finds me out sweeping up butts and trash, emptying trash and recycling bins, and otherwise keeping “as clean as Disney World” the four-block area of Church Street, which serves as the veritable heart of Burlington.  As with any city’s downtown area, Church Street is where all of Burlington’s homeless, addicted, and otherwise marginalized people congregate.  It’s got a vibrant semi-bohemian vibe that appeals to that facet of my personality that manifested itself with dyed blue hair and multiple facial piercings during my early adolescence.

A lot of folks stem on Church Street, but there’s one in particular that really sticks out to me.  She’s a young woman, probably in her mid-20s, partial to flowing hippie skirts and poet tops.  She’s out there every day, for hours each day, always with a different sign.  She’s a smart girl, apparently, because instead of the standard, “Spare change for the homeless”, she chooses whimsical phrases like, “Kindness is never lost.”

I look at this healthy woman, this woman who spends as much time each day begging for money as she would at any actual job, and I wonder why she chooses to live like she does.  To anyone visiting Burlington, she’s an appealing outlet for charitable urges: clean-looking, pretty, young.  Not bleary-eyed, unshaven and reeking of booze like most of the other stemmers.  She must make a killing, honestly.  I heard her the other day telling some unsuspecting tourist a fiction about a broken-down car and plans for college in California.  Today she told a guy about an abusive ex-boyfriend and involuntary homelessness.  Which is true?  Either?

Tonight I saw her all dressed up, arm-in-arm with a couple of equally well-dressed kids, uproariously laughing in a familiar camaraderie that belied friendships of long-standing.  Apparently, she’s a professional stemmer.  A con-woman.  I was wondering why she didn’t just get a job with all the time she devotes to encouraging strangers to give her money only to realize that stemming is her job.

Perhaps the spirit in which charity is given is far more important than the spirit in which it’s received.  Maybe it doesn’t matter whether the spare change goes to booze, crack-cocaine, or baby formula.

Maybe no kindness is ever lost.

In 2001 I was indicted for a bank robbery I committed two and a half years earlier.  According to the then-binding Federal Sentencing Guidelines, I was looking at a minimum of twelve and a half years in prison–at least that’s what my court-appointed attorney told me.  I subsequently discovered through my own research that my lawyer was (thankfully) wrong, and I was actually  looking at somewhere around eight years.  At that point in my life, though, eight or twelve or even twenty years seemed equally impossible to survive.  I had just completed a two-year sentence for a store robbery I committed the day before the bank.  For two years I had fought my demons, made peace with my past and put it  behind me.   It shattered me to find out that not only was I not done with prison, but that I would have to do four times more time than I already had.  I was devastated.

As in all times of abject desperation, I turned toward Spirit.  Faith had gotten me through the previous two years; it would have to get me through the next several, too, because I didn’t even have the will to live at that point.

That’s when I really turned myself over to the care of God.  Though I’d always believed in God, the extent of my spiritual life was informal prayer and a fascination with the New Age movement and all things paranormal.  It took the A-bomb of an unexpected federal indictment to bring me to my knees and to open my heart to God.

So, it was at this time in my life that I started exploring meditation, yoga, and other formalized practices as means of actively inviting Light into my daily life.  I had no idea that these spiritual practices were inextricably linked with Eastern thought and religion.  My studies led me to Buddhist, Hindu, and mystic Christian texts.  The deeper I went into these practices and studies, the more fundamental commonalities I discovered.  Whether in the nontheistic context of Buddhism, the polytheistic world of Hinduism, or the trinity-as-one doctrine of Christianity, emphasis is placed time and time again on Love.  Unconditional Love as the highest form of emotion, as the closest  we can hope to come to come to godhead.

In most of our “love” relationships as humans, however, the love is anything but unconditional.  There are aspects of possessiveness, jealousy, and familiarity in most love relationships.  Rarely can the human heart love truly without conditions.

In realizing that what I know of as love is intrinsically limited by my human nature, I nonetheless seek to cultivate unconditional Love.  I have grown tired of my wary, untrusting heart hidden within itself like a turtle in its shell.  I choose to live with my heart wide open today, for it is in giving that we receive.

I have a job interview at 9:00 this morning.  This is something of a minor miracle, because my efforts so far to find a job haven’t been what one would call fruitful.  In a job market still suffering from the economic crisis and with unemployment rates still very high, law-abiding candidates with consistent work histories are struggling to find jobs.  A candidate like me is another matter altogether.  I’ve had one job in the past dozen years, which I held for just under six months.  And I have a criminal record.  Now, a lot of employers will overlook a youthful indiscretion or two, say a DUI or a simple assault.  I have a serious record, though.  A long one.  With charges like bank robbery, armed robbery, possession of crack cocaine, assault and battery on a police officer, and common nightwalking.  And those are just the highlights.

I’ve filled out a slew of applications since moving to Burlington, and I’m developing a pretty deep-rooted resentment of “the question“.  It’s generally a variation of this: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?  If yes, please explain in the space provided.

The space provided isn’t even enough for me to list all the felonies I’ve been convicted of, let alone explain them.  That’s beside the point, though.  The ex-offender employment specialist I’ve seen a couple of times at the Department of Labor here in town tells me that 10-15 candidates apply for every opening.  Employers use “the question”, she says, as a means of eliminating one or two applicants right off the bat.  I haven’t gotten a callback on a single application I’ve filled out.  When I call to see if anyone has had the chance to review my application, the position has been filled, or someone will call me back.

Resumes are a similar minefield.  My work history is truly historic–like precambrian or maybe mesozoic.  I try to be creative with my resume.  Past jobs are listed chronologically, sure, but I leave out the dates of employment.  The Department of Labor lady supports that bit of smoke and mirrors.  It’s either let the prospective employers know that I haven’t really worked since the 1990s, never in one position for more than a year–almost as sure to eliminate me from consideration as “the question”–or leave out the dates in hopes that I’ll get called in for an interview.

An interview is my only chance to present myself as a candidate and explain my past.  Fortunately, I interview well.  I don’t come off like someone who’s done nine years in prison.  In fact, people often don’t believe me when they find out about the time I’ve done, just as my fellow prisoners used to bust my balls about still seeming fresh off the streets years into my bid.

The obstacles that men and women face in transitioning from prison back into society are daunting.  This reality is starkly proven by the sad fact that 67% of people released from prison are back in on new charges within two years of their release.  One of the most important elements of making a successful transition is securing employment and a steady source of income.  Pretty much everything from shelter to clothing to food follows from that one basic requirement: a paycheck.

Given the uphill climb from ex-con to productive member of society, I think something should be done to even the playing field in terms of getting a job after release from prison.

It’s pretty simple, really.  Employers most certainly have the right to know whether a prospective employee has a criminal record, but what if the employer were to have to decide to offer the position to a candidate before asking “the question”?  This would eliminate many of the problems discussed above, and it would still enable employers to make informed decisions about who to hire.  Instead of asking about convictions at the beginning of the screening process, which often denies felonious candidates an interview and the ability to explain his or her record, employers should be required to wait until a job offer is forthcoming to ask “the question”.

Massachusetts passed a law like this, with a little added protection.  Once an employer decides to offer a job to a person and finds out the candidate has a record, the employer then has to prove that there is a direct conflict between the duties and responsibilities of the position and the candidate’s charges.  For example, if someone is hired as a security guard at a retail store, shoplifting or larceny charges would constitute justifiable bars to employment; drug charges would not.

These kinds of practices give ex-prisoners a chance.  I mean, let’s face it, most employers simply aren’t interested in hiring ex-prisoners regardless of the nature of the charges.  With all the unavoidable hurdles newly-released men and women face, it seems fair to make the process of finding a job a bit more equitable.

I got this interview this morning because my godmother’s friend is married to the guy doing the hiring.  He knows that I’m in recovery and did a lot of time in prison, and he’s interviewing me because his wife put the screws to him on behalf of my godmother.  I had one other interview since my release in May, and that was because interviews were held just as the application was completed.

God willing, I’ll get this job this morning.  I have faith that the Universe will provide the right opportunity for me at the right time, but I’m starting to get pretty anxious about money.  My rent comes due again August 1, and I have credit card bills coming in.  There’s $17 in my wallet, with no prospect of money coming in unless I get a job.  It’s challenging to have faith in times like this.

Sort of like it’s tough to be spiritual when you’re having a tooth pulled.

I spent quite a few Fourths of July in prison.  One in particular was spent at the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn, a federal detention facility right on the waterfront in Brooklyn.  By standing on a couple plastic crates stacked one upon the other, one could see up over the recreation-deck wall out to the water, with the Statue of Liberty beckoning in the distance.  The irony of this wasn’t lost on me, and I often thought of what a provocative image it would make for a short story or something.  Anyway, I got see the Fourth of July fireworks one year from that rec-deck–quite a panorama, the NYC waterfront, breathtaking fireworks display, ol’ Lady Liberty.

There were a few times where the position of my cell or the prison it was in gave me glimpses of fireworks displays, and it always seemed like a gift from the Universe, being able to see those explosions of color from the confines of a prison cell.

So this past weekend, it was a glory to stand in the drizzling rain and watch a tremendous display over Lake Champlain.  So meaningful and steeped in symbolism for me.  To actually be free on Independence Day!  Free not only in body, but in Spirit.

Alcoholism and addiction, when active, are pretty much the absence of freedom.  A person like me has no choice once he or she puts a drink or drug in my body; all thoughts and actions pretty much feed into the “getting and using and finding ways and means to get more” drugs.

That’s was I was mindful of out in the rain this July 4th–how precious freedom is.  How there are so many different levels of it.  How I’ll never voluntarily sacrifice mine again.

As a kid I was in accelerated classes in school.  They actually called the program I was in from 2nd to 8th grade “Gifted and Talented”.  Clearly, intelligence hasn’t been much of an asset for me!  Nine years in prison, more than that squandered in the cesspit of drug addiction.  Basically I’m just qualifying a bit.  I’m sort of smart, so the fact that I’ve been an unforgivably slow learner in certain areas of my life can’t be excused as a result of dim-wittedness.  If only!

The lesson I’ve been beaten about the head with for a couple years now is that it’s impossible for me to “live dirty and stay clean”.  Basically, for most recovering addicts and alcoholics, there’s a need to live clean to stay off drugs.  In 12-Step fellowships, addiction is viewed at its core as a “spiritual malady”, the most obvious symptom of which is powerlessness over drugs, alcohol, sex, food, gambling, ad infinitum.  They even have 12-Step groups for internet addiction!  Whatever we’re addicted to isn’t the problem; it’s the dynamic of addiction itself, which is far deeper  than any substance.

Basically, because my addiction is a spiritual malady, I have to live in accordance with my spiritual values if I’m to have any chance of staying clean.  Once I start compromising my Spirit and letting my ego run the show, my first line of defense against addiction is commensurately compromised.

I know this, obviously.  I sure the hell can TALK like I know it, anyway.  The consequences I’ve suffered from repeatedly testing these murky waters range from the loss of loved ones to complete spiritual bankruptcy, from incarceration to financial ruin.

So, why the fuck did I spend the past three days consciously choosing to compromise what I know is True?