The weather here in Smalltown has been freezing-cold and treacherous, lately! I had trouble just getting my Dodge 4×4 up the road to our Truth Sneakers Anon. meeting, but I had something I wanted to say this week. (A few of us meet routinely to air our own faults and foibles; confessing our sins and guilty acts openly just seems to be therapeutic.) But as I slid into the church lot where we meet, my own message slipped my mind. Dammit, I lit a smoke and sat shivering but it wouldn’t come. I had thought up a beautiful vindication for all of the bad things I’d ever done, starting with peeing on my mother’s hostas, once. Simple and elegant I would come out appearing almost saintly in only a few sentences. Well poop, at least somewhere in my mind there is a grand unified excuse for my performance in life.

So, inside, after some give and take it was my turn at the lectern and I had to improvise:
“People, it just seems to me we’ve been awful rough on ourselves, lately, as if all of our good deeds are erased by a few out-of-control moments of greed, lust, or whatever. So. As small comfort, let us review. Whether we humans were modeled by God from clay or seeded by passing comets, we have been on and of the Earth for a very long time. All of us, plants and animals too, are composed entirely of the elements around us and fashioned by the weather in our respective geographies. That is why our minds can be as placid as a moonlit lake, or as tempestuous as lightning in a hurricane at sea!”
I waved to the snow squalling outside the window for a chuckle.
“If we can simply and acknowledge this in ourselves and others then we can also understand that, when trying to domesticate ourselves further, we face natural handicaps. If we the spiritually motivated, wannabe enlightened ones, or even the personal and professional development folks want to proceed in our self-perfection, let us recognize our limitations as real but not insurmountable.
Let us remember – we’re OK.”

Everyone laughed. They always laugh at me but that’s OK, too. We had some coffee and pizza and wrapped up for the night. I turned out the lights and thought “that elements and weather thing doesn’t explain away all the things I’ve done”.
Oh well, it will come to me.