A Date… And Alcohol, Again

THURS., MAY 12, 1994, 10:13 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yesterday was the second important date in our now 15 year active relationship, and, somehow, you let other less important matters and tasks fill the day. It was the date, 15 years ago, when you sat down, somewhere, and listened… and wrote Here Beginneth. It was your writing, for I was not yet ready to take over what this pen writes. Still… I was there, appreciating your faithfulness to the bargain, even as you had no idea what this would mean to you, eventually.

The manuscript was found, of course, and was completed (with a few more “problems”), and the small book has been available for all of these years… until its demise last Fall. It was a helpful book, even as you lost the fight to give the spiritual dimension to life and death its rightful place in the “picture.” That was a disappointment, rightfully, but long passed. Just know that I will expect you on the 20th, that third date in our triune relationship. Oh, you shall be here before then, but a week from tomorrow, for sure. Read that Teaching over several times during the interim, for I’ll want to comment on it.

I haven’t offered you words of wisdom about alcohol, in its many beverage forms, and about human use and misuse of it for some time. You just have completed the reading of this 5 part series in your morning newspaper on underage drinking, and you have begun to have some considered opinions about what you have perused. Now you shall hear Me on this theme, from My unique perspective.

As you are well aware, ethyl alcohol is a natural substance, produced naturally from carbohydrates, yeast, and water, all readily available, important substances. Certainly I could negate the whole process, and there would be great wonder as to why alcohol no longer was produced. I don’t choose to do this. I see value in it, when it is part of good, positive living. I do not yet see that its harm, however vividly this is described, overshadows its good, which is rarely publicized.

You are right in your assertion that alcohol allows behaviors rather than causing such. Thus what a person does, under alcohol’s influence, is what she wants to do, for any number of reasons, some of which would normally be inhibited, by other influences. So when a person knows that drinking 2 pitchers of beer in a few hours will produce drunkenness and still consumes this amount, the desire to get drunk… or drink as much as, or more than, others… is stronger than the desire to stay sober. So… why would a human want to get drunk?

Almost everyone, at some times, wants to feel differently than they do, at that time. As you well know, motivations and feelings are varied and complex, so that describing this process in any precise way is difficult, even as I understand it well. There are many ways to feel differently, some very simple and safe… on up to those that clearly are exciting and dangerous. For many people consuming alcoholic beverages produces changes in feeling, and for most drinkers these changes are, initially at least, positive and desirable.