On Drunk Church in the Diner

In true compulsive-brain fashion, I've been over-thinking my first entry. I've gone through several essays in my mind, only to ditch them because they were just too contrived, and I have a tendency to get too contrived when I'm thinking too much. Which I do too often.

Today is a good day for me. I never used to like Sundays, because they were a day of obligations, and they provoked within me the agitation of inner dishonesty. One hears so often of people finally making it into the rooms, and their stories of "never feeling comfortable in their own skin," resulting in the compulsions of escape. I am no different.

My skin would crawl when I was a child, when I would think of God, and know I didn't know Him. And I had nowhere to turn, with my fears, because it was heresy, and I knew I couldn't try harder, or just pray about it, or have more faith.

The silence was deafening, and stayed that way until I landed in the rooms. And when I landed, I felt I'd found home. It was a place I understood, where people were more honest about God than I had ever experienced. The people in the rooms are flawed, and dishonest, and harbor skeletons. But they hold much less pretense about it. It's mostly just dirty laundry, hung out with everyone else's.

I never felt comfortable in my religious matrix growing up, first because it was not of my choosing but rather coerced upon me. Second, because I wanted to be good, and to be good within this matrix necessitated that I claimed I knew things I didn't and felt things I didn't. So it put me, even as a very young child, in a moral quandry - the specialty of religion.

Now, on Sundays, I can't wait to get up and get going. Whodathot. I drive about 15 min, to a diner quietly nestled at the base of a hill. As a matter of fact, it's built into the hill, on the back. It's not open to the public, but instead the owner is a long-term AA who owns the diner and adjacent building, where his business is housed.

He uses the diner solely to host 12 step meetings of various flavors. Outgoing and affable, Charlie has found his service niche, perfectly. He opens up his diner, sits back, greets with an infectious smile, and enjoys his life while others scurry about doing the nitty gritty. His generosity enables more than a hundred lives to be touched every week, and we are truly grateful.

The diner is casual 50s, authentic, not re-created. Tongue-in-groove knotty wide pine planks in clear amber lacquer line the walls, framing gigantic single-pane picture windows out the front side. The windows are half-covered in cafe curtains of bright red-and-white gingham, buffalo check to be exact. The floor is aging, cracking, square-foot tiles of linoleum, also in red.

Round white formica tables dot the interior, surrounded by tubular chrome diner chairs upholstered in plain red vinyl. All along the backside, a serving bar counter in 50s taupe-grey-cream random chip design formica is lined front and back with chrome bar stools, also upholstered in red vinyl.

Behind the serving bar counter is an orifice to the much-too-small kitchen, where a motley crew of scruffy, steamy, T-shirt clad men harangue each other as they cook and jostle for position. It's a male bonding zone, and these guys take their service with a kind of territoriality that's unspoken. It's ok to to visit them, but don't try to get a job there. LOL.

Breakfast buffet starts at ten, and the meeting at eleven. Every week, the topic is Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out.

There are no booths, and no juke box, although there is a pinball machine to one end. It's never in use, though, as it holds the clean empty plates, flatware rack, and breakfast donations basket atop it, at least on Sunday mornings.

To the right side of the pinball machine are a couple no-frills banquet tables. One of these tables is topped with crockpots of scrambled eggs, or fried potatoes. The other table holds several sterno-fueled chafing dishes filled with pre-cooked meats: thickly sliced ham, crispy scrapple, bacon, link and patty sausages. And a large basket of bananas.

To the left side of the pinball machine is a doorway into an adjacent small room where a table with 12 step literature is set up, and a counter with pitchers of juice, coffee machines, and associated accoutrements are offered.

There is something magical about this place, where every meeting I have attended there has been extraordinary. There was the week a recovering alcoholic chaired, and spoke of self-esteem, and how his physician had announced he needed a liver transplant. This guy's voice quivered as he spoke of wanting to refuse one, just wanting to die in shame, that he felt unworthy of a second chance if his getting a liver - that could go to a non-alcoholic instead - would put someone "more worthy" at higher risk of dying. And you could tell he meant it.

He went on to tell how another person had finally told him his drinking had been damn bad, but not bad enough for him to self-impose a death sentence, that his death was for his Higher Power to decide, not him. That if God wanted to offer him a liver, he should take it, and quit trying to take over God's job.

The tears welled in his eyes as the next sharer suggested God valued even him, enough to merit that liver. That being a drunk did not negate his value, to God.

There was the morning we discussed God, and one woman spoke of her quirky notion of there being only one God, a sort of "cosmic cow," where each religion had a teat at the udder, but all took from the same source, ultimately.

Today, a man spoke of his struggles with his ego, how he had to come to terms with the fact that he doesn't understand God, and doesn't know who or what God may be. But that his conclusion is that Step 11 is about the process of seeking - that is his job, to keep on the spiritual journey.

It never ceases to amaze me, the things that come out in this meeting. I come home, inspired, every single time.

I don't have any profound lesson, today. Only that I really like this meeting, and wanted to share the ambience with you. I feel so grateful, on Sundays, now. Every week, I see reflections of God, in the diner.

-The Traveler