Is It A Calling or Addiction?
Calling or Addiction image by Author James Boylan and ChatGPT.
I have heard for years that some people “had a calling.”
It seems like this was used mostly referring to people in the religious community. In my 84 years of human existence, I have had several careers. 2 years in the US Army. Law Enforcement with Detroit, Grand Rapids. And suburban Detroit as a Chief.
Environmental and product investigator for a large law firm in Detroit.
Entrepreneur performing environmental and product investigations for auto manufacturers, a bartender, and a bouncer. I was blessed to have been employed by an organization that had a unit in place that assisted officers who had issues with substance abuse. My last drink was on September 20, 1976.
Much of this was going through my mind when I began having strong ‘urges.’
Thoughts that I wanted to do something more with my life. Retirement has never been a thought in my head. I knew so many who dreamed and talked about retirement as an end and so, soon after retirement, they died.
I was never going to retire.
I merely change my lifestyle occasionally. Bouncer in hillbilly bars, inner-city Detroit copper, an investigator for a large law firm in Detroit. I had seen people at their worst for decades.
Then I moved to the Flint, MI area in 2000.
I had moved from Detroit, a large impoverished crime-plagued city, to Flint, a mid-sized, impoverished, crime-plagued city. The number of homeless was through the roof, even before the term homeless was almost a household word.
Taxpaying citizens were fleeing the city leaving abandoned homes behind.
Also, during my earlier time in the area, Flint was also going through a lead water crisis and none of the public knew it. The abandoned homes were taken over by the homeless and for various reasons, even these homes were starting to be burned by arsonists.
Image by Author James Boylan and ChatGPT
Entire neighborhoods were burned out.
Drugs came in in large amounts, driving the high crime rate even higher. I met Father Jay Gantz, of the Flint St Andrews Church. He has operated soup kitchens in large inner cities including New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and the West Coast, and had one at St Andrews.
He asked me if I wanted to work in the kitchen.
I jumped at the opportunity and, on my very first day, saw that as I handed food trays to the patrons, there but for the grace of God go I. After that first day, I wanted to mingle with the people so that I could use what I was learning in the study of Spirituality to help. In any way that I could.
In 2020, the pandemic kept so many in their homes.
In-person AA meetings slowly but surely disappeared. I had had 44 years of continuous, ever-increasing happy, joyful, and free sobriety. I wanted to do something to help recovering alcoholics, and others, during this stressful time.
On March 31, 2020, I hosted our first 3:00 PM Zoom AA Meeting.
We met every Monday through Friday since then, including holidays. I turned the meeting over to others in 2023. The foundation of the AA Program is spirituality. The meeting is called Spirituality and Recovery.
This meeting filled in some of the spaces in some people’s minds about themselves.
The topic for every meeting was Spirituality and (…), with the dots being filled in every day with something different, depending on what happened at the latest meetings or if an attendee had a request.
Then we started a Facebook page, https://facebook.com/Spiritualityandrecovery On this page, we post daily my essay which was usually used at the Zoom meeting. A new message was posted daily, 7 days a week.
We then began publishing on Medium.com and are getting constructive feedback from other writers/experts in the fields of interest that we have.
Fields of Interest Image by Author James Boylan and ChatGPT
The fields of interest were many!
Fields such as spirituality, recovery, poverty, alcoholism, addiction, writing, and others. This all should make our efforts at recovery even better. Then we began a podcast, Spirituality and Recovery.
The first season was just essays on recovery.
Then we began interviewing people who could relate to our topic. We have interviewed Father Jay. Reverend Stephanie Sorensen, my Spiritual Advisor. Mannie, a former gangster, enforcer, and dope man who lives on the East Side.
Pete “Fat Cat” Flanders, a retired radio personality who was a promoter for early rock, R&B, and Soul, and he also toured with James Brown for a year. He is originally from the East Side, across the street from St Andrews. Dupree, a formerly homeless man on the East Side who now is a promoter for local musical acts.
I continually work on methods to get my message out.
My message says that no matter how far someone has fallen, there is hope for a better way of life. There is the wonder, though, if I am driven to this because of a calling or my addiction. In this case, the difference is not important.
Like with so many operations nationwide, funding is drying up.
The St. Andrews Soup Kitchen has now been closed since August when the funding was cut. I have not lost my drive to help people in need. My calling or addiction needs feeding so, as has happened in the past, a way to calm this “need for a fix” will be met.
My writing to demonstrate that hope is not unobtainable will continue.
I only recently discovered Substack at just the right time. I can now add it to my places where I can spread the word to the hopeless that there is hope and it is reachable.
I finally have an answer to the question of whether it is a calling or an addiction.
It definitely is a calling. It is a good thing that I am not too old to follow through with sorting out what method I will use. Surely, one will be writing. Suggestions from my readers are also welcome.
Thank you, God!