I admire Reverend Mike McMorrow because he is wise, upfront, honest, and transparent. As a talented storyteller with a great sense of humor and a keen sense of timing, he is dearly loved by those who know him.
His Philosophy
Reverend Mike McMorrow is the Spiritual Director for the Granada Hills Center for Spiritual Living. The Centers for Spiritual Living teach the philosophy of Dr. Ernest Holmes. However, he approaches and teaches the practice of spirituality in a way that is realistic and doable. He coins his philosophy as “Blue Collar Spirituality.”
Finally, after nearly a decade of hounding from family and friends, he has put his wisdom in a long-overdue book titled, appropriately, Blue Collar Spirituality, Finding a God that Works.
Meet Reverend Mike
In 2012, while I hosted my radio show, Reverend Mike was a guest on St. Patrick’s Day. Fitting, because he is mostly Irish. Also fitting because St. Patrick’s day is traditionally a drinking holiday, and Reverend Mike is a recovered alcoholic. He is also, in his words, recovered redneck. Before becoming a Spiritual Director, he was a private contractor building luxury homes in California.
I am sharing an edited version of the radio transcript, as I can not possibly capture his history and humor in any other way. This personality is prevalent in his book, too. Which, by the way, is fantastic.
Without further ado, meet Reverend Mike:
The Radio Transcript of my interview with Reverend Mike McMorrow (edited.)
Linnaea: Hi, hi, hi, Happy Saint Patty’s day.
Mike: Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. I have had my fill of corned beef already and not too much cabbage.
Linnaea: I love it. Yeah, cabbage can backfire.
Mike: Yes, especially in my oval office here, we don’t want that.
Linnaea: I have to ask what is the significance of Saint Patrick’s Day?
Mike: Well, I think the significance for Saint Patrick’s Day is for Americans to have yet one more day of the year that they can get blind drunk and have an excuse for it. My father called it an amateur day. So it is to honor Saint Patrick, it is a much bigger deal in the US. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, of course. As he is or was the fellow who brought Christianity to the island or at least he is the one who gets the credit or the blame depending on what side you fall on in that discussion, but I think he really should be given credit for it, it is has done more good than harm that is for sure.
Linnaea: I take it your father never drank or didn’t have a drinking problem?
Mike: You know what he didn’t, and in fact, I can’t tell you outside of looking up the family tree where I got my fondness for drink, but my father no. In fact, I don’t think I ever really saw him take a drink until I was in high school. My mom and my aunt would come up from Los Angeles and sometimes my uncle, and they would go to the city and they would come home all happy and giggly and ready for a big feed. But I had no idea that that was just the social lubricant of alcohol. You know there is nothing wrong with alcohol. I am abstinent from alcohol because I choose to be today. I am one of those who can’t drink it.
Linnaea: Do you still go to 12 step meetings?
Mike: Oh sure, not like I used too. I came to see that for myself, I went to several AA meetings, and I really feel it is essential for people in their first five years to get into the habit. I feel that it is an easier, softer way even though sometimes you can get overzealous sponsors who kind of get up in your grill a little bit. I went to my first AA meeting and within a month, I had 30 new people who knew who was trying to kick it just like me. I am grateful I had a place to go. Before Bill Wilson and Bob Smith guys went to sanitariums. They were subjected to all kinds of treatment.
Linnaea: Yes, I know. It is just amazing, the 12 step program. Just amazing.
Mike: Yeah, so.
Linnaea: Well, let’s get the fun stuff. You’ve got down here that you were an Air force brat. What is that about?
Mike: Well, you know I am not actually 100% Irish. I am probably 98.9, but I was actually born in Britain. My mother was born in London with two Irish parents. Now mind you, I play it up, and I lay it on really thick. I am proud of my republican roots and my republican credentials. My dad was in the American Air force, and we moved around a little bit, but we immigrated back to the US when I was about 6 or 7 months old, and I have lived here in the states ever since. So yeah, I grew up mostly out of Edwards Air force base. And I think, well not I think, but I know that it helped form me in many ways. Many of them good, many very good, and some not so helpful in civilian life. That was my own experience. Many of my friends did not have the same stuff that I did. I am just grateful that I found, particularly out of Edwards, and in the 70s, Boy Scouts. Scouting was a huge part of my life. With the Air force or the military at that time, I was able to support scouting with trucks and fuel and buses. So my leaders had us up in the Sierra at least once a month, if not twice a month during the summer. So I have been backpacking all through the eastern Sierra, and that is where I really started having my first experiences of some deeper aspect of God, of the Holy Spirit, and so very profound things that have stayed with me even today.
Linnaea: Yeah, nature was it Emerson that wrote that chapter on nature, that profoundness of it, and it gets us back in touch with who and what we are.
Mike: Yeah, and how it is a reflection of the creative intelligence that that spirit is, that God is and the wonderful complexity interconnectedness and the impersonal and also mechanical way in which it works and all of its beauty and also often simplicity.
Linnaea: Now, certainly, our listeners will be wondering – you are a Reverend of what religion and then tell us a little bit about what that is.
Mike: So I am a Science of Mind Minister or a Religious Science Minister. Religious Science takes the opinions of religion, the insights or the views of philosophy, the insights of religion, and science principles. It combines them to help people to recognize God as they understand God. That is my little caveat like God working in their lives and how we can use it and that we are co-creators with this creative intelligence, and we can use it to affect change for good in our lives, in every way.
Linnaea: I was raised in Religious Science; as you know, my mom discovered it when I was just 3. While I had a rough going a good part of my life, I am confident I would not have survived it without that knowledge that there was a power for good, and I could access it; that there was the possibility of changing my thinking and changing my life.
Mike: Yeah, so I had these insights, and I can not tell you why I became an alcoholic. I know that there was like a little switch in my head from the very first drink. Yeah. Little sidebar there. But you know I don’t really understand why it was not really part of my family environment. My parents were very devout we went to mass every week, I went to Catholic high school for several years and grade school up to 6th grade. I remember I was a sophomore in high school and I had a great day on the track as a track and field guy then. I had gotten 4 first places for the junior varsity. I was no longer on the freshman team so I was almost like a real stud. The fellas came by and got me and they breathed on me and I am like “holy smokes.” They had a bottle of slow gin. They say one of the signs of an alcoholic is that your remember your first drink like it was a first kiss. I can tell you it was like someone put a little missing gear, the missing cog in my brain and all of a sudden I was good enough, I was tall enough, I was funny enough, and I ended up on my toe on top of a fire hydrant peeing like a little cherub on a fountain as we were all having a good tee hee. It was fun.
Linnaea: Well, we are going in for a commercial break. I would like to hear a little more about your journey to spirituality from alcoholism.
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Linnaea: Hi there, just before the break, we were chatting with Reverend Mike McMorrow about his fondness for drink, and I suspect there is much more to that story. So Mike, do you have some tall tales to tell us about that?
Mike: Well I don’t know if there are any I could share on the radio, I am presenting this as a PG13. I was, as many people are at 15-16, I was shy and I had this horrible thing about comparing – which is not unusual for young people. I found that I could deal with that not so much in high school but certainly in college. I had to get one more year of football out of my system up there at Sierra. So going to the parties and drinking beer and discovering “wow I can chat up the prettiest girl in the room and when she rejects me I don’t even care” you had a very powerful combo. It really was a solution for many, well I wouldn’t say many years, but certainly 5, 6, 7 years until it became the problem. I realized now, looking back on it , I had fallen into a lifestyle of the party. In the beginning it was just about Friday night and then it was Friday and Saturday and then it was hump day, Wednesday and by this time of course now I have a son. As you may guess from the general tone of things, he was not planned. Whoops, there it is, and I am so grateful for that today. I am so thankful for that divine quote-unquote “accident” because he is just a wonderful young man, and I would like him even if he wasn’t my son; he is kind of like one of those guys, you know?
Linnaea: Yeah, you have talked very fondly about him.
Mike: Yeah, he is a good guy, but at any rate, I came to see after being sober for a while that alcohol had made all the choices in my life. It shows what restaurants I went too because I only went to restaurants with full bars. It chose the women I dated because I didn’t want anybody harassing me about partying.
Linnaea: Mike, I so relate to everything you are saying it is like a jog down memory lane.
Mike: Yeah, sorry.
Linnaea: It is ok. I think I will go have a drink after this show. Just kidding. Please go ahead.
Mike: I was living a life of default rather than by design, and it didn’t start out that way. I read positive thinking books. I have always had an interest in comparative religion, and in fact, I remember taking those long walks out in the desert – you know Edwards is out in the middle of nowhere you are surrounded by 10,000 square miles of kitty litter there is nothing out there. So you get out there, and you do start asking yourself the deep questions. I started out actually as a pothead, and you know so I would get high and then meditate. I thought I I was being all spiritual and I was just really getting high.
Linnaea: Yeah, me too.
Mike: Yeah, so I took an interesting root, my first wife Morene, lovely woman and a party girl so we were like a match made in heaven. That happened in the mid to late 80s. The price of cocaine got really cheap, and you know sometimes you buy stuff because it is such a good deal you just can’t pass it up?
Linnaea: Yeah.
Mike: It was kind of one of those deals.
Linnaea: Bring it home, and it is useless.
Mike: So what it did is it brought my bottom racing up to meet me, and of course, as you can imagine by now, I have a marriage that needs counseling, which I thought, of course, was complete hogwash, and my wife is reading books like Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much?
Linnaea: Yes.
Mike: Yeah, I just thought that book was full of garbage.
Linnaea: Now, there is something that I want to touch on because you have mentioned it at church is that there was a lot of anger at that time. Now, do you think that anger resulted in coming up as a result of being in alcohol or the alcohol was a way to mask the anger or what?
Mike: You know this is the only thing that I have ever come up with is being kind of undersized, and you know so the mascot of for Note dame the fighting Irish?
Linnaea: Yeah.
Mike: The little leprechaun with its fist up, that was kind of my attitude, and I think it was because I was undersized and I kept feeling, I was just an undersized guy. I didn’t grow until my sophomore year, but I wasn’t like this smallest kid so you couldn’t have the distinction of being the smallest kid in the class – you were like the 3rd smallest. But I always wanted to play with big kids, so there was this constant measuring up thing. So I think it had something to do with that. I would kind of work my way into leadership positions, and in hindsight, not that I am not a strong leader.
Linnaea: Oh, but you are.
Mike: But it has its basis in wanting to control everything so at any rate.
Linnaea: Well, one of the major characteristics of addiction is the need to control.
Mike: Yeah, and so what happened was we were going to a marriage counselor, and I said, well look I don’t know what is going on. I only drink a six-pack a day, I have wine with dinner, I have a couple of shots of whiskey after that, and I have a couple of hits of weed so that I can go to sleep; that is it, and that was kind of my daily thing except of course for Wednesdays because that was hump day and Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday was bloody Mary Sunday because there was no church in those days right?
Linnaea: Yeah.
Mike: And so what happened then was I got tired of listening to myself and came to see that I needed to stop drinking. What we really had was money problems and the only place that I really saw any extra money was in our drinking – and so I was just going to quit drinking. That turned out to be a lot harder then I thought and that got me to 12 steps. I had family member who are already in there who of course you never talk to when you are in that situation, that is the last people you avoid them at family functions and one of them my uncle Terry and his wife really Sue had been going to al anon for Terry first and so she kind of got us both sober and so I just a lot of gratitude all the way around and I will tell you what happened was that first meeting I went in expecting to see like aqua lung, remember that album aqua lung from the 70s and the guy on the cover and snot running down his nose and the whole thing and of course I got sober this place called the wholeness guys and so aqua lung was definitely there but at the podium was a girl it was her 21st birthday taking a cake for a year and a guy got up and took a chip for 30 days and I look at him and I say 30 days no weed no nothing because by this time I had been trying, I couldn’t get passed Wednesday and so it wasn’t until and then I heard a guy say he was sick and tired of being sick and tired so I don’t know if I was really prepared to quit drinking. If you had told me 23 years ago “Mike you know I am having this vision you are going to be the minister, you are going to be sober for 23 years and are going to be a Minister of a vibrant community in Granada Hills,” I would have run right out of there. I heard in the big book -Eby talking to Bill – “why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” I remember saying out loud – oh I am getting choked up thinking about it, it is like it was yesterday – “You mean you can do that,?” I didn’t have a problem with Jesus. After all, we are in the same union, I grew up in the desert he grew up in the desert, he was a carpenter, I was a carpenter, he had long hair and beard, I had long hair and a beard, he had 12 employees I had 12 employees.
Linnaea: I love it.
Mike: So I didn’t have any problems with him, but I did have problems with religion.
Linnaea: There is a big difference between religion and spirituality.
Mike: Yeah, and that is what 12 steps allowed me to explore the difference. To explore the difference and go deeper and not only that challenged me to go deeper and not so much go after my sins but also to recognize that my behaviors were due to character defects and to inventory them and then release them. Get square with everybody, get square with everybody, remove them and release surrender to this higher power and say, ok man.
Linnaea: Well, when we come back, I want to hear about where you are today, what you are doing now, and what you see yourself doing in the future.
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Linnaea: I have a question for Mike.
Mike: Yes.
Linnaea: So you say that you have now created a life you love to live?
Mike: Oh, absolutely.
Linnaea: Now you may not know this, but one of my missions is to get you to write your book, a Blue Collar Spirituality, but until that book is written, can you tell us a little bit more about what that is all about?
Mike: Well, sure it is the ideal number 1 that blue-collar is a distinction that is no longer is true anymore. Those blue-collar workers are everyone; there used to be in the social contract, of course, that if you went to college, got your degree, you got a good job, you are free from layoffs, so blue-collar jobs typically meant that you got dirty, you worked with your hands, you were subject to layoffs, you were the exploited working class, and now everyone feels that pinch and so in my many years. Hence, it sounds like from my previous story that I was just lying around drunk all day, but I was actually pretty functional.
Linnaea: So you were a functional drunk?
Mike: Yeah, because I quit drinking when I was 32, so there was plenty of time to screw things up in sobriety also. I worked many years, and I was a pretty fine carpenter I had to say. I was one of the best ones I worked with although I had worked with better. I came to recognize that there was an aspect to work that is very spiritual and that when we are dealing with what we are called to do that the word work is not really part of the definition anymore. In fact, I heard, I don’t know if it is true or not, maybe our Polynesian friends can tell us, but I heard that there is no word in the Polynesian language for work. So I am lucky in that I found two things that I was called to do. I love working with wood. I had always felt even before I had any kind of spiritual awakening the joy of planning a piece of wood and having that curl, that woodchip curl paper-thin with the perfectly sharpened tool and feeling one with the wood.
Linnaea: My brother works with wood, and he shows me some of the stuff, he loves it, he loves taking that wood and creating it into something beautiful.
Mike: I worked on the power plant up there at Pyramid Lake to building bits of furniture but mostly in residential. Coming to see now that I have remodeled my own life through the use of spiritual principles and saying that there is this idea of remodeling your house or building a building as a wonderful metaphor for the work that we need to do when we really want to affect a major change in our life. There has got to be some demolition. In building terms they have a thing called when you do your foundation you have to get into natural undisturbed natural soil and so when you are going to rebuild your life there is some work that needs to be done and you need to get down to that undisturbed truth that is within all of us and slog out all that old thinking that no longer serves us to establish a good foundation and that foundation needs to be reinforced and that as we build things we don’t build an entire house in a day with waving a magic wand and wishing it to be so but nail by nail stud by stud. So it will be that kind of an idea, and I have an outline for it, and I will be using construction terms some of the old Irish sayings that I have heard over the years, for instance, have a thing in there about employees and the chapter title is Nothing Sweeps Like a New Broom. So when you have that new employee, you can’t judge them how they will work out on the first day. Anyway, so yeah, it is developing that idea. Through them, my goal through the book is to help people achieve some sense of finding that place within themselves that can embrace their work as a calling rather than a paycheck. I think that will be helpful for people, so at least that is the idea. So we will see how good of a book I can write.
Linnaea: Well one of the Craig Duswalt, the gentleman that I have been studying with for the past year he always says do something well and then tell others how you did it and that is what you did, that is what worked for you, that is how you pulled your life together, surly for other will benefit from it, and I am going to keep on you to write that book, Mike.
Mike: Well, you know it is practical, so for me, my spiritual practice has to be practical for me to access it and to use it.
Linnaea: Explain what you mean by practical.
Mike: Well, in other words, it needs to be accessible for me, it can’t be something out there that I came to see that you know, in 12 step they have this thing that God hid himself from the man in the last place they would think to look for him within his own heart and so the idea then of developing spiritual practice through meditation and when we are shifting things, when we are working we can use affirmations and positive thinking and mental practice on our carts on the round wheels those are the easy ones but is the square wheels, that one square wheel that is the one where we really have to bring our practice to bear on and getting bogged down in sin and beating ourselves around that is just to me it is just nonsense for really we are called to be perfect, be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect and we recognize that that is our potential that Jesus is the example and not the exception and we raised the bar for ourselves to take responsibility for our own lives that there is a co-creative aspect to it and it is completely doable, it is completely doable to the extent of our own willingness to embrace it. So that I know in my own life it has worked in many ways, I have this wonderful opportunity now to serve people in this wonderful way in a great community.
So I guess what I am saying this idea of practical spirituality is having our practice be accessible, have it be meaningful to us, have it be something that we practiced just like we would practice scales on the piano or the guitar, and then we don’t have to worry about things you know then these ideas of the classic sins of acting out with lust or drinking or maiming or stealing these things just simply fall away because our practice is an invitation for sprit to come in and fill those empty spaces within us and so we are naturally called to the greatness that is already within us, and we are listening to it. The call was always there for me, but it was drowned out. Fist, it was drowned out by liquor or alcohol. It was drowned out by this idea that I had to constantly focus on my character defects in order to stay sober, and that is the only difference today is that I focus on the recognizing that there are things that I do not show up in my best at. If I focus on the opposite of that, then I can transcend that, transcend to where I can shift it, shift my awareness of it and focus on the good, and then its, I know it sounds corny to unbelievers. Still, you really do attract to you the things that you need to bring forth the life of our greatest desires, our greatest dreams.
Reverend Mike McMorrow today
Today, fall of 2020, Reverend Mike is happily married. He continues his live-stream services on Sunday. And, of course, he has finally authored his fabulous book, Blue Collar Spirituality – Finding a God that works.
