Rebellion Dogs

I was assisting a colleague in setting up her blog post for another sight and as I read her post I asked if I could use it. Enjoy!

There’s a line in the AA Big Book that I love, that speaks of the difficulty of staying on a spiritual path: Rebellion dogs our every step.

I recently spent time as a rebellion dog.

Don’t ask me why—I could give you reasons galore; but the fact of the matter is one day last week I stopped meditating, stopped praying, stopped eating my vegetables. These are the outward signs, if you like, of inward resistance.

And then one day I stopped stopping and got back at it, started doing all the things that actually make me happy and cause me to feel like part of the human race.

Yesterday I ran into a woman who was dithering about going to a meditation workshop. She told me, I am undisciplined and can’t maintain a practice.

My answer to that was, So what? That’s what it is to be a human. We stop, we start; we rebel, we return. I believe that my deepest work is to RESIST judging myself about this. Engaging in judgment, feeling like a pile of poo about myself, is the best way I know to prevent my return to practice. To close out the love of God.

So if you, like me, are feeding the rebellion dogs these days, why not come on back to yourself with gentleness, tenderness, and forgiveness? After all, that’s the Christian message, isn’t it?

Therese