Note from Chris Y.

Don, I just wanted to say thank you for yesterday. I really enjoyed seeing you and meeting so many of your friends. Many of them looked familiar in some way (imagine that!) yet I had not actually met them before. The food and drink was great and the setting was really nice. It was like inviting your friends inside your world. So different from a "traditional" retirement party.


It was good to see Hershel too. I'm glad that he got to grow up with some recovery around him these last years. He's seen bad times and a whole lot better times. Thats a good thing for a child I think. He knows what it took for positive changes to take place. He knows that you have to work for the things you want in life. He knows that some things that people want have nothing to do with Nike, General Motors, or Eminem. He knows that time does heal. He knows that out of adversity can come great reward. You are a teacher, imagine that.
I listened to his Mother say to you: thank you for inviting me, i'm really glad I came, congratulations, I'm really proud of you. And regardless of anything in the past, and anything going on now, that helped me a lot to be there and to hear her, and to watch your reaction, and to know that God is in his Heaven, inside each one of us, and we are trying as hard as we can, and we fail, and we succeed, and he still loves us. The closer we draw near to Him, the more is revealed.


There is a body of spiritual work, called "A Course in Miracles." It's weird and from the first word caused me to immediately stretch, to see things differently. Anyway, I could ramble on forever, but for some reason I am very in touch this morning with what the "Course," refers to, in it's Manual for Teachers, as "the tiny mad idea." The use of the word mad, in this context, means CRAZY. And it indicates that the tiny mad idea that each of us has is that we are seperate from God. From that tiny mad idea, it indicates, stems all our difficulty in life.
And when I ask myself this morning, "How willing are you today Chris, to draw nearer to God, to work on eliminating whatever seperateness exists?" My honesty allows me to acknowledge that I am only slightly willing. After 19 years in recovery mind you. Maybe a 4 on a 10-point scale. Meaning I am THAT attached to the other things I am doing in and with my life. I saw the group last night as just a bunch of fellow travelers. When I am in the process of talking to you and listening to you and caring about you and loving you, I don't think or feel I am seperate from God. So thanks for inviting me, it helped me a lot. I care about you very much and love you. You are to me, borrowing the words of someone else, "convicing by your own transparency to all men of good will." Chris