The Sacred and the Profane....

In September of 1984, I find myself in the (first of it's kind) class and 12 Step meeting for Adult Children of Alcoholics. My sister had called me, a month previous, to tell me that there was now a name and concept for our heretofore unnamed cognitive, emotional, spiritual (and whatever else you can think of) delayed or stunted developmental growth.  We were both now adults but who could have imagined that growing up with an alcoholic would 'inform' our perceptions of ourselves and our world?

It certainly helped explain a lot of things: just how I found myself, at 7 years old, a 'little adult'---no kidding, I could cook, at 9 years of age, cornish hens (stuffed), with Italian beans, and butternut squash after school, in time for dinner and before the homework that never got overseen.  I could be counted on to drive a car at 15, if the alcoholic needed a ride to or from the Midwestern tavern, or write my own absentee notes to miss school after a night of all manner of mayhem.  I was later to learn that mayhem had a different definition when you were the child of an alcoholic.

It wasn't long before I learned some of the Precepts of 12 Step Meetings and the lingo: Higher Power, One day at a time, Codependency, Restoring sanity and Powerlessness.  I was to learn that this was primarily a Spiritual program...and that without a Higher Power, I had a slim chance in hell to "Recover" and discover the Sacred availed to me by 'following the Steps.'

I attend a Meeting where the topic is Higher Powers.  The dozen or so attendees are to go around the room and share (which is always 'optional) anything they want about their notion of their Higher Power. One woman shares that 'trees' are her Higher Power. Another calls her Higher Power: Jackie.  She explains that "when in doubt" she acts like Jackie Onassis to give her a sense of dignity and strength.  It is my turn to share... "Hi, my name is Tanina and my Higher Power's name is: Fuckface."  There can be no 'cross-talk' at these meetings so instead of words exchanged, I hear gasps!  No matter.  I am pssssed off at the "god of my understanding."  This is also a 'Program' of what they call: rigorous honesty. If my honesty bends them out of shape, that's their problem.  I have my own business to take up with this notion of  surrendering to a 'power greater than myself', that I've surmised long ago was either ignorant, careless or not the adult child of an alcoholic.  Trees and Jackie are not going to quite cut it for me.  I need to rage and bark at the moon, if I'm going to honestly express my dismay over what I've been raised to believe is a loving god.


Flashback: I am a nine-year-old secretly sneaking off to a Catholic church, each day after school, to beseech the mysterious trinity to intervene on what looks to be an imminent divorce for my parents.  This clandestine date with the father-son and holy ghost, goes on for weeks.  Of course, I am promising the moon and the stars of 'good behavior' if I might be spared the terror, travesty and embarrassment  of being the first of my peers to come from a broken home...and it is surely broken.  The day the divorce decree is final, I 'march' into the church.  I don't kneel this time but take a defiant stance and lambast the 'betrayer.' Hmm...promises of extremely good behavior is not enough for this heartless and maybe
pick-and-choose kind of god.  Jesus, Joseph and Mary are now on my shit-list.  "Okay, Big Guy, let's see what you do with a reformed believer, a Joan of Arc style avenger."

Actually, this self-induced excommunication, was going to be the precursor to finding my own way spiritually.  I had my own suspicions very early on in my childhood experiences of 'religion.'  The beach, nature, drawing and coloring seemed to bring me closer to the "creator" than any communion wafer swallowed or catechism class that I had been forced to attend, lest I burn in  hell with all the other sincerely loving individuals who, unsuspectingly, were going to find themselves really surprised when entering Dante's inferno.  It just didn't make sense: the non-catholic milkman seemed kind enough to help hoist me through the milk-shute that cold January day when I had been once again locked out of the house;  my social studies teacher, jewish by birth, who took me privately aside to assure me that he would not fail me if I was having trouble at home...I had the capital-T kind of trouble at home.  Oh, well, I could just hold the teacher's and milkman's hand when we were thrown down into the abyss of 'eternal punishment.'  I figured they were a better bet than the neighbor (a professed church-goer) who constantly invited me to sit on his lap when the rest of his family was out of the room.

I never did complete The Steps but did soften up on 'the old guy' and decided that the 'goddess of my understanding', my Higher Power, was named: Grace and Mercy. Today, being more of the 'buddhistic persuasion', I now embrace what is called My Basic Goodness and the Sacredness of the World.  I have dropped the good versus bad, the heaven-bound or hell-bound, the perfect versus imperfect.  I don't look to a belief system for confirmation or condemnation. The one thing I do aspire to is: To not be so heavenly minded that I am no earthly good.

Gracie Garp
(Tanina)