Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church Through the Red Door

Prayer and Meditation

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:39:15 GMT

Our diocesan addiction and recovery commission hosted a wonderful half-day 11th Step Lenten retreat last Saturday. We connected with friends, made new ones, and welcomed back several people we hadn’t seen in a while.

We began the morning with refreshments and fellowship—good coffee, fruit, cookies, nuts, and a delicious homemade Cake Salé (a French savory loaf cake, similar to a quick bread, made with flour, eggs, milk, and oil, and filled with things like cheese, ham, olives, or vegetables). I had two pieces… twice!

We then moved into a beautiful space that also serves as a nave, where we hold our quarterly 12-step Eucharist gatherings. The tables were arranged in a horseshoe, with positive sayings hanging from them so people across the room could read them. Three that stood out to me were: “God does not love us if we change; God loves us so that we can change” (Richard Rohr), “The difference between you and God is that God doesn’t ever think He’s you” (Anne Lamott), and “Let Go & Let God” (every meeting ever).

Our first exercise was to go around the room and share how we got there—our connection to recovery and to the event—and also a peaceful sound. My connection to Episcopal Recovery, both nationally and locally, goes back to 1986, when I was working at an Episcopal church during a relapse and entered treatment again a few months later. I was so grateful my job was still there when I returned. Not long after, I started seeing mail come across my desk from the local recovery commission and from NECAD (now RMEC). I was thrilled to discover not one but two organizations that connected my Episcopal faith with 12-step recovery. My peaceful sound was a cat purring. It was great hearing everyone’s stories—the fellowships they attend, how long they’ve been in recovery (from one month to 40+ years), and their peaceful sounds. We had folks from AA, NA, SLAA, and Al-Anon.

After a short break, we came back to talk about prayer—specifically listening in prayer—by hearing Anne Lamott read from Help, Thanks, Wow, from the “Prayer 101” section. People shared different practices: some set aside time in the morning and evening, some journal to God, and some use a labyrinth.

One session on meditation introduced two-way prayer (https://www.twowayprayer.org/). I’ll admit, it sounded a little unbelievable at first—but I’m planning to give it a try soon. It’s about praying and then listening for God’s response. Here’s a brief outline of the practice:

Try doing it daily for 30 days. Set aside 10–15 minutes each morning before the day gets busy. Choose a quiet space and use a journal just for this. Start by reading something meaningful or sacred that resonates with you.
Sit quietly for a few moments, focusing on your breath or a favorite prayer. Sit comfortably but upright, aware of the presence you’re entering into.
Focus on your connection with your Higher Power. Notice if anything feels in the way or if you need help in a particular area. Then shift into listening.
Using your imagination, let God speak to you. Begin with a term of endearment and let the words flow. You’ll know when you’re finished—that’s when to stop.
Read over what you’ve written. If the guidance feels honest, unselfish, loving, and pure, try to act on it. If you’re unsure, check it out with someone experienced in the practice.

One of our leaders also brought items that have helped him pray and meditate over the years—books, a couple of labyrinths, bells, and more. We even learned how to draw a labyrinth! I’ve since tried it myself and found it to be a really meaningful and rewarding way to pray and meditate. (Google How to Draw a Labyrinth)

To wrap up, we each shared what we learned and what we planned to take home and practice. It was a wonderful way to begin Holy Week, and I hope this becomes an annual event in our diocese.

Continuing Education

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:59:59 GMT

One of the wonderful parts of staying in recovery is that we begin to discover who we were (before addiction) and who we are (after recovery). After we have immersed ourselves in learning about addiction and personal growth we often find that there are new things we want to learn—or old things we once loved that we can now return to.

It’s very common to see people in recovery go back to school. Some finish high school; get a Bachelors degree and even go on to graduate or professional school. Some folks try something new just to keep busy and they discover real joys.

Some discover that they like music or dance and soon they are taking piano lessons or studying tango. I’ve watched friends become excellent photographers, serious ballroom dancers and award winning painters, sculptors and jewelers. We move past saving our lives to having lives worth saving.

But how do we learn new things? Even with long recovery, sober people have “leftovers”—those character defects or characteristics that interfere. Just as we “practice these principles in all our affairs” we can bring our recovery lessons to our studies, classes and hobbies.

I’ve watched myself over the past few years and I’ve learned that I can apply recovery principles to my new interests.

A few years ago I noticed that many people in their 80’s who had vibrant minds were regular Bridge players. I decided to learn to play Bridge. I talked to friends and they offered to show me the basics but I quickly became frustrated. The old messages in my head intruded: “I’m dumb.” and “I can’t do this.” But years of recovery taught me that I could do a lot of hard things so I had to borrow a few recovery slogans and practices and apply them.

So, I got a “sponsor”—a Bridge teacher -- and I joined a “community”—a beginners Bridge class. I discovered that I could learn. It was slow and bumpy but we laughed a lot and made flashcards to practice and played for fun each week. And I learned to play Bridge.

Five years ago I decided to play golf. Being around golfers in AA—I knew I had to start by applying “principles before personalities”—especially my own personality. I made some decisions: I wanted to have fun; I’d be comfortable with gradual progress; and I’d be the judge of my own golf game.

Now it’s my fifth season and I enjoy golf. When I start to swear I remind myself that I am competing only against myself. To my great surprise I discovered that I love to play alone. Early mornings on a pretty golf course becomes part of my prayer and meditation time.

Here are recovery principles that I’ve learned to apply when I want to learn new things:

One day at a time. This means one class, one hand, or one hole at a time.

Have a beginner’s mind. Be willing to be a student. I don’t have to pretend to know more than I do, or more than the teacher.

And always return to humility: It’s OK and even great to take a class, get a tutor or teacher, and ask for help. I don’t have to be the expert. I can be a humble beginner. That too is living happy, joyous and free.

And always, always be grateful. I have this new life—and new things because I am sober.

Diane C. Albany, NY

Balance

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:54:45 GMT

I live in a town where there are lots of older people. I am now one myself. One of the topics that we talk about is Balance – having it, strengthening it, and losing it. I have noticed all these things in myself.

For most of my life I have had not fabulous balance but regular balance. I wasn’t great riding a bike. I couldn’t do a balance beam in gym. But for the most part, I never thought about being or having balance. Even while drinking I could mostly keep from weaving while walking drunk.

But did I have balance in my emotions, my relationships, my reactions? NO! When I was drinking all these things were in my life and out of whack. I blamed, I took things personally, I lied – to others and to myself etc. etc. etc. I ran from my problems, didn’t even recognize what a balanced life would be.

Finally, I surrendered and got sober.

Now that I am in my 70s and sober half my life, I do lose my physical balance sometimes. I trip and land on my knee, or I ‘lose’ my balance when getting up while gardening. I walk on a trail most days and there are lots of bumps and places I could trip. Halfway through my walk I come to a place where I can walk a loop and so I started walking it backwards. Walking backwards is a way to strengthen one’s balance. Try it! It’s not as easy as you might think. At first, I walked very slowly, often looking over my shoulder or carefully watching my feet. Over time I have been able to walk more comfortably and while I don’t run, I can walk at a regular pace.

Yesterday I realized that before I got sober, I walked backwards all the time – bumping into myself, people, life, and blaming it all on THEM or IT, but not ME!

Now I can strengthen myself with AA and comfortably walk forward and backwards with the help of AA and my higher power.

I asked a Chatbot to tell me what ‘balance’ meant in AA – this is what I got:

In the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, "balance" refers primarily to achieving emotional stability and sanity, reversing the chaotic, self-centered, and extreme behaviors of active alcoholism. The literature emphasizes moving from a state of being "far off balance" to a balanced life through spiritual principles and the 12 Steps.

I am so grateful for all the ways AA keeps me from being “off balance’ in my life so that I only have to practice my balance exercise to keep my body safe.

Learning the Language of the Heart

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:25:39 GMT

“From the beginning, communication in A.A. has been no ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. Because our kinship in suffering, and because our common means of deliverance are effective for ourselves only when constantly carried to others, our channels of contact have always been charged with language of the heart.”

In my early days in the fellowship, I attended a particular meeting where, on a regular basis, an individual from the local jail was invited to tell his story. After the third or fourth time I heard his story, I mentioned it (complained) to the chairman that “all he talks about is his damn feelings.” To which he replied, “Seamus, you wouldn’t know a feeling if it sat on your lap.”

How could he say that to me? I was a counselor at the local hospital treating young addicts how to identify and own their emotions. I could name those emotions, fear, anger, jealousy, love, etc. etc. etc. The problem I later discovered was that I had never owned an emotion other than anger for a long time.

“The language of the heart was simple, tell someone “I love you.” There it is. I said it. I had no idea as to what it meant I said it to my daughter in the morning, at noon and night. She knew I loved her, but I had no real idea that I didn’t love myself. God forbid I should go to a male counselor and tell him I don’t know what my feelings are. He would laugh me out of the room and tell everyone. That was my projection. I got a book.

I not only got a book, I got a number of books dealing with emotions, feelings and I got a notepad and began to write, “I am caring” “I am loving” I am gentle” I am sensitive” (overly sensitive), I am angry, I am jealous, I am kind, I am… I am… I am… Every feeling mentioned in the books I wrote down as though it were mine. This was not me. I’m indifferent, I couldn’t care less. I am useless. I am worthless. I hope nobody discovers just how stupid I am. These were feelings with which I was comfortable. If someone else mentioned these emotions, I could acknowledge it in my head and yet there was no way I was going to say it out loud. No wonder these folks were alcoholics. They had very low self-esteem. I was in denial.

About this time in my journey into recovery, someone left me a book on Adult Children of Alcoholics. I read it. I went to a therapist working with this seemingly newly formed group. She had me write “God is…” No problem there. I had four years of theology and twelve years of Catholic school. “God is angry, vengeful.” There was another god who was “good, kind, patient, gentle, generous, etc. etc.” But I did not believe he knew I existed otherwise why have I got such bad luck?”

Then she refined her task. At the top of the page, I had to write to words; “God Is…” Then underneath that I had to write the emotions: kind, merciful, patient, generous, loving, sensitive, huggable, loveable, sexy, sensual, beautiful, creative. And the list went on into the second page. “Now, she said, “What I want you to do is to erase “God is” and replace it with “I am.” No way.

Then I had to say it aloud. “I am loving” “I am kind” “I am…” till we went through every emotion not once, but three times. I knew “The kingdom of god is within you” at least in theory.” But now, it was becoming a reality, God was becoming a Real Presence, or rather, over time, it became a Real Presence I could and can acknowledge. The dark side is that, being human, I behave the opposite of the person God created me to be and become. Now I was learning that “becoming’ was real. I was becoming the person I was meant to be.

Why was I not taught this in elementary school? Upon reflection, I realized that, throughout my childhood and adolescence, my father had told me stories as we worked in the gardens, flowers, fruit, vegetables, and when he was creating something out of wood. Dad was a spiritual person, mom was religious and an alcoholic who never drank.

I was now tapping into the spiritual legacy of my dad who, in song, story, and poetry, laid the foundation for my spiritual journey into wholeness in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. For him, and for A.A., I give thanks for the language of the heart.

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a retired episcopal priest in the diocese of Louisiana.

*AS BILL SEES IT p 195.

The Care of...

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:24:58 GMT

Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to THE CARE of God as we understood that.”

I grew up in a fearful home. Anger, Alcohol, Abuse. I was afraid most of the time. When I came to step three – I said, “Hell no! I ‘m not turning my life over to the scary God of the religion I grew up in. Then it was pointed out to me that I was asked only to turn my will and my life over to the CARE of God. Could I trust God when my experience of grown-ups and God was scary and hurtful. I couldn’t trust anything, so I had to trust myself. Part of me knew that I had no idea how to live life and not be afraid all the time. Alcohol was an answer, not a problem. I had to take care of everything, not because I wanted to but because no one was there for me. I got tough so others wouldn’t know how afraid I was. And I got pretty good at it.

Then it all fell apart and I went to AA. I was confronted with my fear of trusting anyone, especially God. I had to find a god of my own understanding. The image I used was of a babysitter we had when I was small, Miss Connie. She was British and old. I thought of her like the queen. When she held me on her lap I could snuggle into breasts and I feel safe. Here was an image of a higher power that I could turn my will and my life to the care of.

“Once we placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find we can always open it some more. Though fear and self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does [for me!], it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.” I have kept using that key of willingness many, many times since I got sober. Trust is still hard some days – That’s why my license plate is TRUSTHP – to remind me. When I look at the faces in my homegroup, I feel a trust I can borrow when I need it.

I few days ago, I went out for my morning walk on a trail I walk most days. As I got on the trail I looked down and saw – a puzzle piece! I was so surprised. How did it get on this trail? Then I thought of the key of willingness and remembered all the times I had finally found the last piece of a puzzle I was doing and when I placed it in the puzzle, I was so happy. I now keep that puzzle piece to remind me of the joy that comes with having the final piece of the puzzle – willingness.

I didn’t make myself sober, AA and God made me so. The piece I needed was the key of willingness.

Carrying the Message

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:41:54 GMT

Is this 12^th Step mandate part of your “working of the Program”? What did Bill and Dr. Bob mean? Is there any ambiguity in that phrase?”

At pages 101-116 of the Circus volume (published on the 75^th anniversary of the Big Book) Bill and Dr. Bob tell us how we are to “Work with Others.” They tell us how to reach the alcoholic. It’s not a complicated discussion prepared by a task force at a university; it was prepared by Bill and Dr Bob as they walked their own paths through their own alcoholism.

Look at it this way: something was said which they remembered, it reached out to them. It’s the simplicity of it all, their experiences, good and bad. It’s based on what worked for them, what struck them and stuck with them.

Occasionally I’ve encountered inquiries, sometimes friends who are merely curious, others are serious inquiries. There are opportunities with friends such as in some corner at a social event. They say quietly, “Oh, I’m fine, but I worry about the habits of my brother Charlie…” Another approach is an invitation for lunch at a quiet place—quietly, maybe ashamed, there’s a mention of a drinking difficulty.

There are a few opportunities for public speaking. Talk to your local AA office and school systems for both may supply speakers for outside groups.

Bring it up as a topic at a discussion AA meeting:

“I have a friend who asked me about the Program, the drinking of someone in the family, and I’m asking you, What should I say?”

I’ve had two experiences worth noting: My County Jail has a program for the 100 or so confined prisoners guilty of public drunkenness. The County permits AA folks to speak to the prisoners, to tell their stories of recovery, a lead if you please. In exchange, the prisoners who have satisfied the Jailor’s requirements have a certain amount of time reduced from their sentence. I had the chance to speak once a week for several months, fortunately not because I too was a prisoner. I’d spend 45 minutes or so passing along my own experiences. But “yes,” the prisoners like to game opportunities like this, and one shouldn’t expect standing ovations. But one never knows.

And seven years after I had spoken one evening at the Jail, I was attending my usual meeting. As the meeting ended, a gentleman approached me. I didn’t recognize him, but it was clear he remembered me and immediately said to me,

“I should have listened to you seven years ago when I heard you speak at that County Jail program. I was serving time for one of my many jailings for drunkenness. I should have listed to you and your story. Now I work the Program.”

He quickly slipped away before I could say anything.

You never know when an opportunity opens the door. Here’s one: One Saturday I was in my front yard fiddling with my cantankerous lawn mower. My good friend and next-door neighbor was, as usual, cutting through my yard and stopped to chat. After some give and take about the Reds’ loss the night before, he paused, then said,

“Jim, I know you don’t drink any more. What’s that all about? Why so?”

I paused. Then I said, “How bad does it have to be before acting? I didn’t like what I had become” and I continued with just a bit about the !2 Steps.

The raw fact is that you have a few seconds to say something meaningful that might stick and perhaps move the discussion deeper.

Bill and Dr. Bob ask for more than your good attendance at your home group…they ask us to reach out and “carry this message.” Some would say that you can’t keep it unless you try to give it away.

Jim A, St X Noon

Step Three is Affirmative Action

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 02:13:30 GMT

For a really long time I had this idea of Step Three being an inner action, something interior, a moment when we surrender internally--maybe from a holy instance or maybe from hitting a wall of some kind--sort of a loud "Uncle!" moment.

I have had those moments and those surrenders. But this week, reading the Twelve & Twelve book, I see that it says, "It is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God into our lives."

Now I have read this book many times. I still have my first copy and it is underlined, dog-eared and scribbled in--and I bet there are tears soaked into those pages. But I had never grasped this part about Step Three being action.

I’d always questioned: "How?" How do I take the Third Step?

But on page 34 it says, "Like all the remaining steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action." It just goes to show how language and the meaning of terms can change over the years.

So what is the action? The next nine steps have us writing, calling, meeting, making lists, setting up chairs, going to meetings, confessing, sharing, praying, meditating, and lending a hand in many big and small ways. So what is the action of step three? We can't just think, or even feel our way through it; we have to act, and affirmatively.

What some of the actions might be, I think, are changes to daily behaviors. Things like not fighting everything and everyone; allowing others to be right; accepting situations and decisions that we don’t like; acting like a person with long recovery even when we don’t feel like one.

Yes, in Step Three we surrender. We take a leap of faith. Something that has helped me grasp what that leap of faith means is a scene from a movie that I love. I like to watch the Harrison Ford movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Near the end of that movie Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, has to leap across a too-wide void in search of the grail. As he stands on the edge of the great crevasse he looks down and he says, “Oh sh*t” before he steps into what he believes is pure emptiness. And then--then--the bridge appears.

Step Three is always inspiring and uplifting after the bridge appears. But it is also an “oh, Dang!” moment when we decide to take the first action.

Diane C, Albany, NY

An Invitation to the observance of a Holy Lent from The Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:49:21 GMT

Lent is a season that speaks the language of recovery. It is a time when the Church tells the truth about being human: that we are beautiful and broken, hopeful and hurting, capable of love and also in need of healing. Lent invites us to slow down, to look honestly at our lives, and to turn again toward the grace that is always waiting for us.

In recovery, we know this path. We know what it means to take stock, to let go of what no longer gives life, and to trust a Higher Power with the next right step. We know that healing happens in community, not isolation. We know that new life often begins in the places we thought were lost.

The Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church invites you to walk this Lenten season with companions who understand the courage it takes to begin again. Whether you are new to recovery, have been on the path for years, love someone who struggles, or simply long for deeper honesty and hope in your spiritual life, you are welcome.

Together we will remember that recovery is not about becoming perfect, but about becoming free to live in grace, truth, and joy. As Bill Wilson reminded us, we are not a glum lot. Even in Lent, even in recovery, hope and laughter still have a place. The promise of this season is that resurrection follows even the hardest journeys.

Come as you are.

Bring your whole story.

You are not alone.

Visit www.episcopalrecovery.org and join us in a community of healing and faith.
Join us each Wednesday @ 8:00 Eastern for the All 12-Step Meeting on Zoom.

Email info@episcopalrecovery.org

The Promises

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:21:25 GMT

“….We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it….. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.”

I read the promises and smiled. I really could not bring myself to believe them. What I was missing was the opening phrase “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are half-way through. We are going to know….”

I was too busy trying to impress those in the meeting, and, more importantly, my boss and my counselor, with just how good I was doing. I let them know how many meetings I was attending, doing 12step calls, chairing meeting, and, at meetings, I was quoting the Big Book as much as possible, that is, until one day I was told to “shut your mouth and take the cotton out of your ears. You have two ears to listen twice as much as you talk.”

I was like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. I was running from myself in a dry drunk as fast as I was running from myself under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. I didn’t like myself when I was drinking and I still did not like myself. I desperately wanted to please people and make myself look good. That’s hard to do with people who can see through you and care enough to tell you to listen more than talk.

“We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” I regretted the past and I wanted to close not just any door but a steel door on it. I wanted to look back just enough to write a fourth step and then close that door for good.

When I finally got serious about sobriety, I discovered the importance of keeping the door to my past open. As I looked back at my life while under the influence of mood-altering chemicals, I realized just how far down the scale I had fallen. I was holding on to what I had not lost as ‘proof’ that I was not really an alcoholic. However, as soon as I opened the door and took a good look at my past, I realized that the emptiness I felt was due to the fact I was not living up to the values I proclaimed to hold.

When I got the courage to share my past, I realized that I am human, that I was not rejected for what I had done. And then I did not want to forget it because that remembrance was my ticket to sobriety. I did not want to be in a situation where I would not remember the next morning.

“No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.” I never thought of my story as being of any benefit to others until the night I received a telephone call and learned just how my story had encouraged someone to go into treatment. It is fascinating how different we all are and yet just how alike we are.

Step by step my head began to clear. Slowly I began to deal with my emotions as I confronted my past and the thought of my past helping another strengthened my commitment to sobriety. “That feeling of uselessness and self-pity...” began to disintegrate.

“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are half-way through. We are going to know….” Amazed for sure. As I became more serious about working the steps and living the program on a daily basis, knowing that I am powerless over people, places and things, was a tremendous sense of freedom and I was still working my way through the steps.

“Painstaking” is the correct work for this phase of our development. It is painful to look in the mirror and be honest with oneself. It is painful to reflect on how my words and actions hurt others. It is painful to think that, because of alcohol and drugs, I do not remember so much of the life I have lived.

“We are going to know a new happiness…” the promises came true for me, and I have been able to face my past, confront my past, let go of my past and live in the present with peace and serenity. For this fellowship, for forty-seven years of serenity and sobriety, I am truly grateful, and for all those who walked this path with me.

Séamus D
Séamus D is a retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Louisiana.

Half a Lifetime

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:14:01 GMT

When I was just 36 years old (birthday on January 6), the new year was not a happy one. I had made a fool out of myself at Christmas dinner with my family. My marriage was falling apart. The months before my birthday had me having my first black out and throwing up at a friend’s house – something I never thought would happen to me. I passed out and my husband had to take our toddler home as I slept in the guest room. My life was completely unmanageable!

Two women in my life were sober. One sister and one dear high school friend. They listened and my sister invited me to visit her outside of Boston, so I went. I watched “Hello my name is Bill” while she was at work and I went to my first AA meeting. I cried through it.

One of my character defects is envy. I wanted years of sobriety from the start. When I asked my sponsor about how she got 7 years, of course I heard her say” One day at a time.” I celebrated each month for the first two years. When I had 24 years, I marveled that my months had turned into years. I prayed to reach the number of years that would be half my life. I only had to go to meetings, help others, do the step work, make amends, and not die before I got there.

On January 6^th this year I turned 72 years old. On February 1, 2026, I celebrated 36 years of continuous of sobriety. Now I have been sober half my life! My life now exists of two halves. Before sobriety and in sobriety.

The other day I realized a few things. On February 1 in Seattle, where I got sober, many people celebrate because the sun sets AFTER 5PM – a sign that the days are getting longer and winter is going to end. February 2^nd is Ground Hog Day when we wait to see if the ground hog will give us hope or go back undergrown. I remembered the movie Ground Hog Day when Bill Murray lived the day over and over again until he could change his life for the better. I lived ground hog day for many years while I drank. Over and over again I wanted to change but didn’t, wanted to stop drinking, but didn’t. The fellowship of AA, especially the women, held me and taught me how to live a sober life so I could make it to the second half of my sober life. It is a life worth everything. Thank you.

Libbie S.

Assisted Living and AA

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:03:57 GMT

I have lived in an assisted living home since July 2022 and, since prior thereto I have worked the AA Program and continue to do so. I have come to believe that in some ways the two share several similar, sometimes identical, characteristics. I speak from personal knowledge of both; it’s not an academic exercise but my personal reflections of some the principles of each organization. I have grown to love both for each sustains my life and provides strength to go forth. Here is what I mean.

Perhaps most important is the union of why people avail themselves of either AA or an assisted living facility. People who come to assisted living because they are hurt, have difficulty handling the basic elements of life, and are at an older age-usually at least 80, some near or over 100 years of age. They may suffer from an illness, perhaps one which is incurable, progressive and fatal. Many are crippled; some must be fed every meal. Daily care for these folks calls for high levels of medical and nursing assistance, and complexity beyond the capability of family members.

AA provides a way for people who have faced the disease of alcoholism and are working to beat their addiction and change their lives. As with assisted living, AA involves a broad commitment to its Program, for both, there is daily commitment to work the Steps of the Program or as with the assisted living facility, its commitment to the daily medical support, activities, and regular organized physical education exercise.

Perhaps surprisingly, both deal with management of the pain of those seeking help. For the alcoholic, that pain is the harm carried by the families, the work persons, friends and others harmed by the alcoholics’ drunken behavior. Assisted living emphasizes the importance of accepting the dire health condition of folks living in the facility. But the question of both is “what’s next,” how do I live with my alcoholism for that disease never gives up and always seeks a return to alcohol. For the assisted living person, life is better, more positive, made possible by accepting the situation and moving forward utilizing the best possible supportive medical assistance staff, and recreational and physical assistance. We know in the Program that the past can’t be changed, but an amend can be made and much time is spent on how and when to do it or not.

Both provide a spiritual aspect. AA provides an express spiritual life, a life requiring daily handling and reacting thereto. It’s all set forth clearly, specifically, in the Steps and we are called to maintain a spiritual life. Assisted living offers me three or four weekly Bible Study gatherings lead by clergy volunteering for the task, some of whom lead regular church services. Yes, my experience living through deaths of folks here who have become close friends is that people here reach out and provide support and guidance and remind us that Jesus is here for that person, reaching for him or her.

Similarity? I see and feel it walking around the halls of my home. I encounter folks I’ve come to love and assist when needed. I felt the same warmth when I entered a regular noon meeting of my home group, “St X Noon”.

Both are critical parts of my life. I accept the teachings of both, while I am living in my assisted living facility and working the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jim A, St X noon, Cincinnati

An Old Timer Envying the Newcomer

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:41:34 GMT

After many years of recovery I can still feel shame when this happens. I get caught by my envy of a newcomer.

And it happened again just this week: A man in my home group celebrated 6 months and he was glowing. Everything was new and he was excited. His life was transformed, he had found a deep and complete faith in his Higher Power, his surrender was total; he had completed his step work and was quoting the Big Book. His “share” was more lecture than personal story, but still I bit.

I was jealous.

I know better. I knew better. But I could feel myself become envious and annoyed. I knew that I should be happy for his newcomer’s pink cloud and his new life but my own smallness revealed my envy. After all these years and all this work—I’m still trying to surrender, have absolute faith, and be a perfectly perfect person.

I know, I know.

This is also why I write about recovery and attend four meetings a week. I want to face the awkward things, the difficult things and even the embarrassing things that can happen to us in long-term recovery. And envying a newcomer is just one of them.

It is times like this that I wish for meeting for people who have 15 or 20 or 30 years. Not to leave other people behind but to be able to say, “Does anyone else feel like this?” and to laugh at something like my envy of the newcomer.

I know better. You know better. We all know better. But still.

I know that I did exactly what he did when I was new to recovery. In fact, I was the young woman bringing recovery pamphlets to my family at Thanksgiving dinner and passing them around like hors d’oeuvres.

So you’d think I’d have more compassion.

But what I know now—and what I write about is this: life happens to all of us, and that we need those pink clouds and happy days to give us the ground under the harder parts of our recovery. And as we stay in recovery a long time those harder parts will come on their own. Life just happens, and we age. With aging comes many changes.

My red-faced humility is this: When I hear those newcomers speak of their rapidly transformed lives and the perfect, lasting peace that recovery has given them, I still want what they have.

That’s why I keep coming back.

Diane C, Albany New York

No More Stinking Thinking

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:50:08 GMT

St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes: “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” When I entered the House of theology to begin my final three years to ordination as a Roman Catholic Priest, I had my New Jerusalem Bible. Of course, I hadn’t read it as Catholics were not encouraged to read it, except for stories from the four gospels. But that did not stop me from thinking “I know my bible.”

Then we began biblical exegesis and my mind got turned so far around I could not think straight. This was supposed to be the “Word of God” Every word, comma, chapter and verse, were dictated by God to holy men who wrote it down. Oh, did I have a lot to learn?

After a week or so of listening to professors talk about why this was put here and that was put there and…and…and. I took my JB and threw it almost the full length of the library and walked out. “There is no God. Any idiot could write these stories” I said to myself and audible enough for a couple of classmates to hear.

Six weeks went by before I got the courage to go to one of the professors and tell him what was going on. He was patient, funny, and knew how to draw me out. Slowly I began to open my mind to the possibilities he mentioned and they were making sense.

Then came my mentors, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, and John Jemison and they loosened my mind more than I wanted to think. Now I was able to be myself. I had ideas and they needed to be heard. I was reading everything and anything I could get my hands on. I had become a sponge that could not get enough information.

Time passed. Life with my mentors was becoming “fun.” What I was unaware of was that my thinking was becoming stinking. Yes, stinking thinking. Judgmental, resentful, indifferent, angry, and it was everyone else’s fault if I was told I had made a mistake. I was becoming a failure. I am a failure.

“I always do….” “It will never happen to me” “You know, you should….” “You couldn’t have been more stupid than …” Assuming. Making an Ass-u-me. Mostly myself. I couldn’t be nice to or about myself and few others. Sometimes I was clear-headed enough to know that there was something wrong with my thinking, the way I was behaving, but I never attributed it to my mentors. They were my friends. Or so I thought.

“Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” I went through treatment and learned little. I was a priest and counselor. I knew myself better than they did. I told them what they wanted to hear. What I didn’t know was they saw through me and they loved me.

Four and a half years on a dry drunk did nothing for me except that I did not drink, I read everything about alcoholics anonymous, its history, its spirituality, its need for anonymity.

One day it became clear to me “I am an alcoholic.” I began to work the steps and live the program. I was and am powerless over people, places and things. My moral values had vanished like ice in a cup of hot water. Now that I was living the program I found my values. I found myself and I was not the person I had judged myself to be. I was transformed. No more stinking thinking.

The Bible, the Big Book, sacred texts from different faith communities, philosophy, good novels were transforming my mind in a healthy manner. I was being renewed and I was overjoyed as I liked and loved this new me. Thank God for recovery and the fellowship.

Séamus D

Séamus D is a retired Episcopal Priest living in New Orleans

Lousy Birthday Club /Best Birthday Club

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 02:37:49 GMT

I was born into the Lousy Birthday Club. If you are a member, you know about it. The club is for those born between roughly December 20 - January 1. It’s a club of folks who get/got lost in the Holiday festivities. There were joint birthday/Christmas gifts, birthday gifts wrapped in Christmas paper as a kid. In grade school I had no parties at school and often no kid parties at home as my friends’ families were too busy with things and often went on vacations.

Legally my birthday is December 30. It should have been January 6^th. My parents were young and I was the third child in less than 4 years. My father talked with my mother’s doctor to see if I could be born BEFORE the end of the year so he could deduct me from their income tax. My mother went along with it, and it happened. It was told as a joke in my family, but it was true and I never liked it.

After I got sober, I decided that I could change when I celebrated. I changed it to January 6^th, the day I was due. I also liked that day because instead of being a tax deduction I would be celebrating the Epiphany, the day of celebration and gifts for the birth of the baby Jesus.

Over the years since, I know friends and family found it confusing to know which day I was celebrating my birthday. I got comfortable telling them that just remembering was most important to me. It meant more to me to not celebrate the 30^th than it needed to be for them.

At a meeting just last week, the topic was about Change, New Year’s blessings, and the gift of sobriety. In a flash, I experienced what I call a God Shot. My natal birthday and my chosen birthday mattered BUT the birthday that really mattered was my Sobriety birthday. My life was changed forever that day and if I stay close to AA and God that birthday will last for the rest of my life. AA is the best birthday club I can belong to.

Libbie S.

Remembering Christmas: From Oblivion to Awakening

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:35:38 GMT

Christmas began on or around the first of December and ‘ended” around the sixth of January. The homes I visited at that time had a table along one wall replete with all kinds of alcohol. After all, it was Christmas time, everybody celebrated with a little alcohol, plum cake soaked in rum, cake that could be sucked through a straw. That was Christmas in my twenties. I don’t remember much about the details.

For the years of my life as a priest I celebrated three or four masses on Christmas eve and one on Christmas day. Don’t ask me about them. I don’t remember. I left the active ministry and after that began celebrating Christmas with friends. I don’t remember that either.

Then came that first Christmas when I did not drink. I attended a Christmas dance in a nearby AA hall. The table along the back wall was loaded with drinks and there was not an alcoholic drink among them. All of them wonderful, strange tasting, non-alcoholic drinks. The floor was packed with people dancing and around the wall people were singing, talking, laughing. They were having “a hell of a great party.” I remember it.

I remember who took me to the dance, who dropped me off at home, and the next day – Christmas – I went to a friend’s house for a wonderful Christmas meal, and I remember the fun we had without alcohol.

I had no idea that people could have so much fun without alcohol. I didn’t know that so much fun could be had without alcohol. “If you want what we have then you are ready to take certain steps.” I wanted what they had, and I wanted it badly but not enough to do the hard work of honestly searching within myself for the root cause of the problems over which I drank.

Two, three, four years passed. I enjoyed every Christmas. But something was missing. I was busy working the steps but not living the program. I didn’t understand the need for complete surrender.

“Look at me, a servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.” God’s will not mine. That’s what I was missing. I was still doing things my way, thinking about what I wanted, where I wanted to go, Me, Myself, and I.

It takes a lot of humility to admit that you are powerless, that your life has become unmanageable. Some of it I saw on my own, most of it was told to me and embarrassed the heck out of me. Humility was not one of my virtues.

“And Mary meditated on all these things in her heart.” For years I had been ruminating. I went over and over the same territory and got nowhere. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different answer.

Meditation. Stop. Breathe. Relax. I thought I knew a good bit about meditation, and I did, but I was just being silent, not talking, not listening, not present to God, myself or others. Meditation and mindfulness made the difference. Being mindful of God’s presence within me and all around me

I meditated on topics such as pride, envy, jealousy, anger, and doors opened to the dark shadow of who I am, and I did not like it. Meditation brought peace and balance to my life. Meditation grounded me in the here and now. Meditation provided the path to mindfulness and focusing on being present to God, self and others.

“ to all who received Him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born…of God.” Meditation and mindfulness brought me full circle to reflect on all the theology I had been taught. I began to see it all from a new perspective. God gave me power. I was “born again” into a new way of thinking, of being and I wanted more of “what we have.”

Recovery was no longer about not drinking. Recovery was about becoming alive in mind and heart and spirit. Recovery opened my mind to understanding myself in my family of origin as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic – in my case, a dry drunk, addicted to work and religion.

As I remember what I can of my past I am grateful to god for those who re-membered me, who took those broken memories and members and assisted in the process of making me whole again. Christmas is once again “A wonder full time of the year.”

Séamus D
Séamus D is a retired Episcopal priest in the La Diocese

Looking for Signs

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 02:01:41 GMT

I laugh at how many times I have prayed for a sign to let me know that I was on the right path or to help me make a choice. There are so many of these times in recovery. Those difficult moments when I have begged for skywriting or an envelope from God with my name on it. Maybe I watched too many episodes of Mission Impossible growing up, but part of me always wanted instructions from a higher power that would clearly spell out what I should do with my life.

I know God doesn’t work that way, but I also know I’m not alone in wanting him to. Some people flip coins or watch birds or follow the crude metals index. Others go to Tarot readers, throw the I Ching, or keep psychics in business.

Years ago when people close to me were dying and I tearfully demanded to know God’s will, a friend in my home group, more experienced in grief, chastised and reassured me by saying, “God's will is what is.” That simplicity silenced me for a while.

But I come back again to wanting to know and it’s often at this time of year. There’s a good reason. As the winter begins and we are faced with dark and cold there is a pull from deep in our bones that makes us seek light and answers.

The need for light at this time of year is so great that we have adapted culturally to give it to ourselves. We have Hanukkah, and Solstice, and Christmas: all stories about finding light.

The part of the Christmas story that means the most to me is that of the three wise men making their journey, traveling on a hunch, a belief, and their deep wanting. They had studied the sky for years and then they saw their sign. We are told that the star in the east led them to the baby Jesus.

In his poem, Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot wrote: “At the end we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches, with the voices singing in our ears, that this was all folly.”

Of course that is the problem with star following. You just don’t know. We see this most painfully when looking at the news: stories of young men and women as heroes and others, the same age, who commit terrible crimes. Perhaps all following their stars. But how do you know until you show up whether there’s going to be a baby or a bullet?

We have to remember that the wise men did more than follow stars. They also packed up their gifts: the gold, frankincense and myrrh, and they gave them.

So the wise men’s lesson is about faith: We study, we consult with others, we try to be wise men and women, but then we have to get on our camels, bring the gifts and hope we are doing good.

In this week these are our darkest days. There are many scary things in front of us: global warming, scary politics, shootings, and the daily crimes committed against our hearts.

We cope in the most ancient of ways. We go toward the light--to neon and to the mall just as our ancient relatives were drawn to the stars and the fire.

Through all of this we will read horoscopes and tarot and animal cards and psalms. We’ll hope our loved ones will be spared the only thing that no one can be, which is death. We’ll look at the night sky and try to believe. No wonder a baby born in a barn is a great story. No wonder we look for signs.

Diane Cameron, Albany New York

What’s Christmas to you? ……. [ Fill in Blank] ….... ?”

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:32:43 GMT

Christmas can be a wonderful Day, a Day the family will remember. You’ll recall those Mornings around the family’s usually very highly decorated Tree, presents being opened, piles of wrappings, happiness with that sweater but maybe a wrong size, the usual check from Grandparents, that special computer gizmo for the oldest kid, watching the kids and their joy and perhaps disappointment when Santa delivered the wrong book. The kids will remember that Day from their perspective of their carefully prepared “Want list.” I believe Christmas Day is one of those experiences that through the years is always relived with various recollections and maybe tears.

But for the person still living an alcoholic life, there may be a different recollection of Christmas. Sometimes it’s as dark as can be, maybe forgetting the family had planned to visit a few neighbors, or you had promised to stop and get batteries for the kids’ gifts, or promised to pick up the gifts for the Pastor and her family. These and more such incidents are recalled and sting us with shame which stayed with us.

But my surrender and constant work with the Twelve Steps now enables me to remember to visit those folks, to get the “kids’ batteries,” to assemble that bicycle before 1 AM Christmas Eve.

My sobriety brought a finality and comfort to Christmas and New Year’s days even with their travel difficulties, weather problems, flight delays and cancelations, heavy traffic—and everyone racing about, anxious to get through it all. Now I’m able to get all the things I need by the 31st—your business may close its financial year on the 31st, and you have to be certain your income tax material is in good order. Perhaps the most wonderful time of Thanksgiving and Christmas is the gathering of the family, calling the families “to come home,” and now they come.

This recovering alcoholic wishes to close with a description of our family gathering this recent Thanksgiving. Twenty-five or so children, grandkids, serious boy and girl friends, parents, brothers, sisters, a friend of mine, and eighty-year-old “grand-folks”—they all came to my daughter’s house for Turkey Dinner. Gathering around the fire pit, we found ourselves in the middle of its warmth plus all flavors and varieties of cheese, foreign crackers, and more. Everyone talked of special past Days, the sometimes strange gifts or broken toys, the time the tree almost fell over. We received several recipes of pumpkin pies, two 25-pound turkeys (all consumed that day), then more cakes and cookies and candies—and an ongoing variety of those cheese and crackers—again all consumed.

That Thanksgiving week the family returned from their homes from all over—from Chicago, Milford, Cincinnati, Michigan, Baltimore, Prospect Park, Katonah, Washington DC, “SLO, CA”, St Andrews College, and me from my home in assisted living in Lebanon, Ohio.

I am cognizant of the fact that this 87-year-old recovering alcoholic was able to assist with its organization, enjoy the time together, and recall and laugh at so many of those happy past days of Christmas. I thought to myself of the passing this year of my wife of 65 years and the joys she brought to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There is one Christmas which I always recall at this time: the family was then living in Coffeyville, Kansas. We had invited two uniformed soldiers as guests. It was 1944 and I was 6 years old. After dinner, both soldiers quietly huddled around our small fireplace. The backs of their shirts reflected very heavy sweating.

Each Christmas, without fail, I quietly thank God for assisting Bill W and Dr Bob with the workings of the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous and the saving Grace it brought and continues to bring to us. I recall the times at St X Noon, the folks I met there and elsewhere. I thought of the importance of reaching out to others still living in their alcoholic morass.

With that, this recovering alcoholic passes to all of us a “Merry Christmas” and a “Happy New Year” and reminds us that “It works if I work it.”

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati

Pukalini

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 22:41:50 GMT

Almost 20 years ago, I ran away from home. It shocked me and my friends, but a job was ending; it was 2007 before the housing crash. I rented my house, bought a new car (the one I had was 10 years old).

I left on the spring solstice (March 20) and didn’t return fully until January of 2008. I went to review my life. I had over 20 journals in my car and I read each one. When I finished one, I would copy out the things I wanted or tear out a page to save them. I drove east from Seattle to the east coast and then back again in 9 months.

I went to meetings in Bisbee, AZ, New Jersey, North Carolina and many other places. While staying at my sister’s house in NJ, I got an email from someone I had worked with more than 20 years before. We had stayed in touch, but I had not heard from her in a few years. She had moved to Maui, Hawaii. I was in a place that I couldn’t decide where to go next or what to do. I had decided that I was not moving back to the area I grew up in New Jersey. I think I was looking for a place to make home that wasn’t Seattle. But I didn’t know much more.

My friend asked if I wanted to go to Maui and house sit for her as she was going to the east coast for three weeks and wanted someone to take care of her cats. YES! I would love to! So, I was on the road again. I didn’t want to leave my car on the east coast, so I started back across the country. I got to drive with my college aged daughter, and we had a great time.

Before I knew it, I was on Maui. I was at her house in Makawao. It’s on the northwest side of the island. I drove her to the airport and then started my adventure. One of the things I did often was to go to a small grocery store in the next town – Pukalani. They had local food and I liked the place. It also was often sunny there as there was often rain part of the day in Makawao because it was very close to the rainy side of the island. I loved to say the word Pukalani- it made me smile. I also found great meetings – many on the beach!

One day I asked someone what Pukalani translated to in English. It means “Hole in The Sky! I looked it up and found more information. Pukalani (pronounced Poo-cah-lah-nee) in Hawaiian means "window of heaven." Clouds form above and below the community on Haleakalā the mountain on Maui, leaving Pukalani sunny most of the time! I realized that almost every time I was Pukalani I would see a rainbow with the sun and the line in the sky that separated the sun and rainy clouds.

I felt so happy there that when my friend got back, I contacted a friend who lived on the Big Island (Hawaii) and asked if she knew anyone who needed house sitters and she did! I loved the island and stayed in Kona for 3 months! Someone gave me a cash job; I had a place to stay and a great women’s meeting to go to. Still, I started to feel the pull back to Seattle. Even with the grey, there were lots of times that the sun broke through the clouds and I would feel like God was blessing me. Years before I had an assessment for my drinking. The counselor said that though I had still had some control over my drinking, I would lose it and God would not give me a sign to warn me! This is the drink that will take away your choice. Ever since then, when I saw the sun shining through the clouds, I was reminded of the gift of sobriety I had been given.

Now l live in AZ and see the sun most days but sometimes it is cloudy and the sun peaks out and shines and I remember. My good AA friend here also has this happen to her and we are often walking at the same time of the morning though not together. She will send me a picture, or I will send one to her.

And I remember Pukalani – the hole in the sky – shining god’s promise and love to me.

Christmas and the Recovering Alcoholic

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 22:48:02 GMT

For the practicing alcoholic, Christmas can be a grand and fortunate series of neighborhood cocktail gatherings, office and club parties, gifts of bottles of fine alcohol. Yes indeedy, during the Christmas Season, such gatherings seem to be unending. Even cheap stuff is gifted, but it was more fun to receive fancy attractive bottles from places you never heard of, like Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, from Glenmorangie, Tain, Scotland. An alcoholic plays the role of a taste-master for all the Christmas and New Years’ shindigs.

There’s another characteristic at this time of the year: everyone seems to overdo their drinking, especially the practicing alcoholic for there is more opportunities to do so, more acquiescence to “overdoing it,” and seemingly an attitude of many that getting drunk on these tasty liquors is acceptable, or so it might seem.

But what if you are new in the Program, let’s say newly attending the noon meeting at St X Noon in Cincinnati. What about that very delightful neighborhood gathering, are you attending or not? The best advice is “don’t go,” but if it’s a “must attend” function, call in sick, claiming a tough coughing cold, and be sure to “cough, cough” over the phone. If you’ve been around those basement floors at St X for a while, then go but arrive late, stay a bit, tell the host, “We have a ‘must attend’ gathering at my Boss’ home (or “our oldest is arriving home from college”). So leave, and here’s my suggestion: then drive to 405 Oak Street, Cincinnati’s first AA Club House. There undoubtedly will be a bunch of people having fun, laughing and telling stories of their times when confronted by these “holiday home-tavern parties.”

This escape to the local AA Club House happened to me. We were in Denver with our son on Christmas Day waiting for dinner that evening. I sat there feeling sorry for myself… but suddenly, I said to my son, “Let’s find the Denver AA Club House.” We did and of course I saw folks new in the program but maybe afraid they’d slip back, listened to reading of the Steps, and that necessary question of whether any new folks were present. On it went, just like I knew it would, and just as it did every noon at St X in its basement. It was wonderful for it brought me out of the “poor Jim” downtrodden attitude and put me exactly where I should be that day in Denver.

Sometimes when I recall encounters like this, I ask myself “Why did I keep drinking?” …I could see and feel the damage it was causing. In reaction, we “snuck-drank” to assure access to alcohol. When repairs were made in Dr. Bob’s Akron home, bottles were found in the walls and buried in the yard.

Maybe we were ashamed about our drinking habits and the ramifications, so we snuck out, shouting out as we left our home, “I’m going out to get us some of that new ice cream you’ve wanted.”

We seem to play “hide and seek and catch me if you can.” Sometimes I feel that attitude merely reflects a bit of the old suspicious attitude toward alcoholics, the stigma period and the “stigma label” placed on any alcoholic.

We can’t erase our alcoholic past, but we know we can seek amends. But perhaps it is a good thing to recall but please, please, recall those days for a short time, and infrequently.

A trip Christmas Day to the local AA Club House makes a wonderful Christmas celebratory event. You will be refreshed, perhaps aiding a new person, and will be reminded of the incredible fortune we have to be around the AA Program, the words of Bill and Dr. Bob, the work by many to make a Club House available. Is there an excuse for not stopping at “Oak Street,” as the Cincinnati Club is called?

Look again at what Step Twelve calls us to do … we are to use opportunities to carry the message of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous to those still suffering and those who are in recovery. Carry that responsibility to your conversations with new folks and others who might find value in the discussion.

The Club House offers a fine place to do so.

Jim A., St X Noon, Cincinnati, Ohio

Be Grateful for Mixed Blessings

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:10:25 GMT

This week we will sit down to dinner with family or friends, and gratitude will be the theme as we offer a blessing on the meal. It’s appropriate to Thanksgiving of course. We may even recall the story of the Pilgrims’ thankfulness for surviving their first difficult year in the New World.

At many of our tables someone will suggest, “Let’s go around the table and everyone say what they are grateful for.”

At times like this it’s easy to name good health, career success, and our kid’s accomplishments. This year many of us will be grateful that we still have jobs or homes or family living out of harm’s way. But we often forget that our lives are rarely black and white and that some of our best gifts don’t come in pretty wrapping. So here is a suggestion to put a new spin on the tradition. Today, ask your guests: What are the mixed blessings in your life this year?

Here are some examples: There was the day you were late and therefore missed the big accident or traffic jam; or the day you got lost in a new part of town but in your wandering found a store that sold exactly what you had been hunting for months. Get the idea?

Then up the ante a little: How about when you got fired but at out-placement you found the work you really want to do? Or maybe the person you wanted to marry said “No”, and broke your heart, but months later you met “The One.”

You get the idea, but push it a bit farther. How about the serious illness that knocked you off your feet but staying in bed gave you time to recast your life? Okay, even harder now: What about the death of a loved one that devastated you but one day in the midst of grief you felt something other than pain and realized you could feel joy as you never had before and you knew that you could feel it because the grief had cracked you open.

Similarly, you may have received a gift from someone else’s death because it made you see just how short life is and you decided to quit with the worry/status/fear and get on with your life.

These mixed blessings are not easy to accept or admit, and sometimes it is just faith that is the gift. It can be in the midst of terrible things that we’re forced to develop trust, and then we find, when the crisis is over, that our new beliefs are ours to keep.

Of course the highest level of this kind of gratitude is saying “Thank You” even before the good part comes. If you’ve had some experience with mixed blessings you begin to know-- even while life is painful or unpleasant-- that there will be meaning in it. And so we say Thank You –purely on faith – even when we’re getting hit hard.

Yes, most of these blessings come in less than Hallmark moments. Maybe it was the painful feedback from a friend that clued you in on a truth about your personality, or the DWI that was humiliating and expensive but that’s what it took to make you face an addiction and change your life.

As parents we coach our kids with, “What do you say?” when a gift is given. Could we learn to say that to ourselves when life hands us a package that isn’t very pretty?

So this Thanksgiving when, “What are you grateful for?” comes around to you at the dinner table, dig deep. Name the blessings that came from pain and grief or loss and trouble. When we can say “Thanks” for both the good and the bad, for both easy and hard times, then, just like the early settlers, we’ll have a real Thanksgiving.

Diane Cameron
Albany, New York

Returning to the Center

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 03:51:51 GMT

In his poem “A Persian Lesson” Walter Whitman wrote: “It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen)/ To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,/ Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."

I was too busy dancing, as is said, like a cat on a hot tin roof, that I did not always know I was running away from my Self and my God. Only upon reflection did it become clear to me that the years of active addiction were years involved in a marathon running away from who I am, from my ‘divine source and origin.’

C.S. Lewis said that “in reading great literature, we transcend ourselves, and we are never more ourselves than when we do that. We feel a buoyancy, an alchemical quintessence, a shimmering aliveness that is both still and in motion.”

When I read that, it made perfect sense to me. Those times when I read a great book—spiritual or otherwise— or good poetry, I felt a high, a longing to be and do better. It was after reading those books, poems, folksongs, that I nosedived into depression and Jack Daniels. Those books lifted me up, inspired me, told me what I could be (should be) but then the reality of my dis-ease set in and I just knew I was lying to myself, I could not be like that, I was stupid, I was different in a negative sense, I did not belong in that company much as my heart craved for it.

Bad as the years of active drinking were, the years of a dry drunk were worse. Working the program to please others, doing what I had to do to look good just tied me in knots. Something had to give—a spiritual awakening or return to my friends in the bottle.

Thanks be to my Higher Power, my God, that the spiritual awakening opened those doors for me as it does for all of us. As the advertisement jingle says, “I can see clearly now.” And yes, I knew I had to redo the steps and, this time, with a deep honesty to myself, god, and another human being.

"It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant…" When I first walked a Labyrinth, I understood it to be not unlike my life. There were times, even days, when I felt close to God, to my spiritual roots, and just as quickly I was far from the center.

“Séamus," said one of the men who sponsored me (I didn’t need one) "just because you’re not drinking doesn’t mean you’re sober. You’ve got a lot of work to do on yourself. You need to deflate that ego of yours before you can do any work on yourself or hear what we have to say.”

I couldn’t tell him “I want what you have.” I was afraid that that would make me sound weak. Step one was reasonably easy once I understood the meaning of “unmanageability.” Steps two and three were no real problem. Step four was where I found myself “at the turning point. Half measures availed us nothing.” I’d done this step a couple of times while sharing nothing of importance.

The urge to return to my divine source and origin, while I would not have stated it that way at the time, was an urge to come clean, to be cleansed, to become the Prodigal Son and come home and ask for forgiveness.

With the remaining steps the slate was cleansed, behavior and attitudes changed, I was in familiar territory in spirituality as I was in seminary before I met John Jameison (The Catholic whiskey in Ireland).

Having had a spiritual awakening as THE result of working these steps I became alive, I felt comfortable being back in my spiritual skin and with the source of my being. God, my Higher Power, was now my guide and from whom I would ask “Abba, where do we go from here?” “Abba, what is your will for me today?”

I am no saint as yet. My ego has to be kept in check, and I still have to bite my tongue at times, but I am at peace just being on this journey to perfection and with, as St Paul says, “a great cloud of witnesses” who help each other to come back home where, as Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.”

Séamus D.
Séamus D. is a long-time friend of Bill W, and a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

Gratitude Month

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 01:31:15 GMT

Some years ago, I decided to try to post one gratitude each day on Facebook. It might have been the last time that the world seemed out of control and bleak. Posting each day became a way to live more aware of all the things, and people I am grateful for.

I didn’t try to do it again but when a recovery friend started 30 days of Gratitude on November 1 this year, I found myself making my own gratitude list…..

My AA district had their gratitude dinner where over 250 folks gathered and celebrated the over 4000 years of recovery in AA and Alanon. The member with the most years had 54! And he presented a signed Big Book to the person with the least (7 days).
The foodbank where I volunteer has doubled the number of people seeking help just in this last week. I am grateful to my community that has already stepped up with more than a thousand items of food to help our neighbors. The number of volunteers has increased as well.
The temperatures in AZ have moderated and I am grateful for cooler temps to walk in the morning.
Thousands of butterflies are around now; I am in awe and grateful to see them and I think of them as loved ones I’ve lost coming to say hello.
I have made good new friends easily through AA in just a few years. The women in AA have helped me so much. I can always find a home with AA.
I am grateful for FaceTime so I can see my grandkids every week even though they live miles away.
I love getting my first grader grandson’s letter to me that he wrote himself!
Watching a newcomer in my home group get her 30-day chip!
The view out my back patio on the night of the full moon.
Taking a ceramics class and knowing the teachers are so helpful with my attempts.
Finding my cell phone each and every time I can’t find it in my home – I say thank you each time!
My women friends of over 43 years who have stay connected and visit each month even though we now live in different places.
Zoom – for all the ways I can stay in touch with people and go to meetings at any time of the day or night.

Libbie S.

The central Steps … at least as I see them

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:38:32 GMT

The Twelve Steps are the heart of the AA Program for they lay out for the new people and remind the rest of us that we must continue to work the Steps to maintain sobriety.

I’ve heard it said that Bill W dictated the Steps during the writing of the first edition of the Big Book when a comment was made that, “We need a summary, a short, clear page for what the Program is all about.” The result, pages 71 and 72 of the Big Book, was a list of the steps and a program of recovery. These words were published in 1939 on these 2 pages and have dominated Alcoholics Anonymous all these years

The simplicity of the steps is wonderful. Each now serves as topics for discussion at meetings, the source for papers, publications, and more. Phrases of each Step stick in our minds.

But you know all this. My purpose here is to pull specific phrases from the Steps which I see as marvelous, well written, something “always there” to help me maintain sobriety. Often these phrases seem to pop up when I encounter a specific difficulty. I seem to switch my thought to that phrase which provides a starting point to resolve that difficulty. Maybe this doesn’t give me “the answer” but it does give me a process for working my way through it.

I see the Steps as parallel to the essence of Christ’s teachings of the Beatitudes.

As I work the Program, the following seem to be always helpful to me:

Step 3. “Turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.” These words are the essence of the Program. It can be said that as practicing alcoholics, for years alcohol and its ready availability were the essence of our daily lives. Those moments we “surrendered” were the key to our sobriety, “we gave up” and “turned our lives to the care of God as we understand Him.”

Steps 4 – 9. These are the heart of “how it works” —how we are to wash our minds and provide solace to others for the things we have laid on them by our drunkenness. We do it by making a list, yes, a written list, of the specific harms we have inflicted on others. Call it a “moral inventory.” We review it with our sponsor and find ways to make an amend for the harm we caused. We speak of making amends to them all “except when to do so would injure” a person. The beauty of it is that, usually in practice, we encountered positive responses.

Step 10 reminds us that we are to “continue to take a personal inventory” to identify new harms to others we have inflicted. Christ knew as humans we would sin again, but He forgives us if we admit our wrongdoing. So also, the Program. Some think that the time we took that first Step, that first confession if you will, that we are done with that aspect of the Program. But Bill and the others knew not only that demon rum was always pulling at us, but sometimes “we went back out.” If we aren’t aware of all this, if we don’t attend the meetings, we forget where we came from and we risk our return to those so-called “good old days.” Yes, all aspects of the Program are in a sense continuous. And as Step 11 tells us, reminds us, we are to “continue to improve our conscience contact with God.”

Step 12 calls us to carry these messages to alcoholics, but “What’s the message?” Is it simply that “help is available” to those suffering from their alcoholism? It is not an advertising plan, nor a secret society of former drunks who gather to talk about their lives as alcoholics. Yes. It’s simply that “help is available.”

The Twelve Steps. They call us to surrender our lives to our Higher Power, to make amends to those we have harmed, to continue following these Steps, and to carry this message to those confronted with their own alcoholism.

Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati

Transferring Addictions

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 00:46:57 GMT

My entry into recovery brought me face to face with transferring addictions. Before I came to AA I was dealing with problems with food and relationships. So, I went to OA and AlAnon.

Then I began to notice that romance that went bad had alcohol in it. My food stories did too. I told myself that I was “just having dessert”. I “ate” Irish coffees and Pink Ladies and anything with sugar and cream and alcohol. I always had a spoon in my hand. It was the perfect denial. How bad could it be? You didn’t see drunks with whipped cream mustaches, did you?

My bottom came one day when I was slumped on my kitchen floor. I had slid down the side of the kitchen island to get whiskey from the lower cabinet.

There was no more whipped cream, I didn’t have time to brew a pot of coffee, and I didn’t have patience to rim my glass with pretty sugar crystals but as I slumped on the floor, I still poured the whiskey into a coffee mug so that I could believe I was having an “Irish Coffee.” But that day I saw myself drinking whiskey from a dirty coffee cup and I got it.

So, I then had to deal with food and men and booze. Under it, of course was a messy family history of still more addiction and abuse but that took years to come out. In the beginning it was enough to stop some behaviors and try to change others.

In recovery from food addiction, we use the analogy about the tiger. It goes like this: A drinker has a tiger in a bottle, and he must put a stopper in the bottle. A food addict, on the other hand, has to take the tiger for a walk three times a day.

That was my experience. When I took the booze away it got harder to delude myself that certain other behaviors were OK. But without the booze the hole in my heart showed and my bargain basement self-esteem gapped open. I needed soothing.

Here is a place we get into tricky territory and where the best advice is “Check your motives.” Lots of people in recovery become physical fitness nuts and most of them do it for all the right reasons. After they put the booze down and want to have a life again, they want to be healthy. They stop smoking, start jogging, one thing leads to another and one day they are doing the Iron Man triathlon in Hawaii.

But another group of us take up exercise in the same way and for the same reason we used booze: FIX MY FEELINGS.

This requires discernment. This is also why at a certain point in our recovery we need to find meetings where we can talk about a wide swath of topics. It doesn’t help my growth if I am only attending meetings where the leader says, “We only talk about alcohol here.” By year seven or eight, our booze stories are old and we’re far away from our last drink, but we might be killing ourselves with food, gambling, or a sex addiction.

After I got sober, I still had to deal with food, men and money, and yes even work. Oh, I had such denial about work. How could something so good be so bad? Wasn’t I making up for lost time, finally becoming a productive member of society, doing—by working hard—what I had been unable to do in all those drinking years?

Work, like food, has to be sorted carefully. Long hours may not be the only criteria to say whether it’s an addiction or not. We have to look at motives again and the impact of our work on others. Some people work long hours because they are terrified of life at home or because they have to be at work so they can control every square inch of their workplace. Others work seven days a week and its pure joy and all for the good.

Money isn’t the root of evil, the love of it is; we know that. But money is part of recovery too. My first husband and I went bankrupt. Talk about shame in recovery. Part of it had to do with a bad real estate deal but we didn’t handle money well and the real estate deal was a big fantasy and a lot of entitlement that fed on the same kind of denial I saw that day on my kitchen floor drinking whiskey from a plastic mug.

As I sit in rooms with recovering woman, especially women who have a number of years in AA, we finally get around to talking about the money or sex or food issues. It’s all there. None of us is fixed yet.

What’s under it all? For me it’s been a special cocktail of shame and fear and “not good enough.” The shame mantra pushes me toward too many pairs of shoes or buying a too-expensive gift to impress someone—sometimes for someone I don’t even like.

Some other “not good enough” women don’t allow themselves anything at all; they “treat” their shame with deprivation and denial. They don’t allow themselves any nice things and are tightwads with their money. If you look at the outsides, you’d think we were different but inside we’re a matched pair.

Talking to women who are recovering ten or more years it’s quickly clear that no one is “fixed” yet. But we keep on. Recovery from substances may have given us our sea legs in recovery and showed us our addictive patterns.

Can we ever get to the bottom of addictions and compulsions? Will we ever know what’s under it all? As someone said when I was newly sober, “If you want to know why you drank, just stop drinking and you’ll find out.” It was good advice. Just stop the addictive behavior and the source will reveal itself.

Diane C
Albany, New York

Gratitude at Seventy-Nine

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:59:48 GMT

I was born on October 14. 1946. That means that, as of yesterday, I am seventy-nine (79) years of age (not old), and for almost fourteen of those years I drank blackout alcoholically. Then came treatment and, for almost five years, I was a dry drunk – doing everything right for the wrong reasons. Finally, I had a spiritual awakening and, today, I have forty-one years of sobriety and serenity; one day at a time with the help of my Higher Power.

I did not have a birthday cake and neither did I have seventy-nine candles. My birthday is a day of gratitude for being born and, while there was a lengthy period when I had little to no time for my mother and her controlling ways, sobriety and ACOA taught me that everything I learned about controlling people and getting my own way I learned from observing her. You see, my mother was a dry drunk. She hated the smell of alcohol. Her addictions were work and church/prayers. Morning mass and evening rosary.

Long before I picked up my first drink, I was a dry drunk. I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to, where and with whom I wanted to. I broke just about every rule in boarding school and never got caught. I had created a network of enablers who covered for me.

It is fascinating to me to review my life from the standpoint of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic – albeit a dry one. I was fascinated to learn that, within the confines of our “good Christian home” the absence of healthy emotions was normal; manipulation and volcanic outbursts of anger was normal; and that we, the children, each learned how to survive. No one taught us. No one said “You are the family clown. You are the family troublemaker. You are the gift of God.” Each of us, in our way chose different paths to survive. I was the class clown bordering on being the troublemaker. I was the one who pushed the envelope and pushed it to the limit at home and in school.

As an adult, my “Irish brogue’ and sense of humour was like a sheet that covered a multitude of sins. Also, being a priest (at that time R C), gave me a certain latitude of protection from the confrontation I should have received.

Before I could admit to any of the above, I had to get sober. That in itself took time – almost five years imitating my mother as a dry drunk. I went to meetings, memorized a lot of the Big Book, talked to folks I called my sponsor, and, thanks be to God, I listened to the good advice of a couple of guys (Boston Irish), who talked sense into me. Then came my spiritual awakening and, at this point, I began to acknowledge my dad’s spirituality. He was a quiet individual. After a day’s work, he’d spend a couple of hours in the garden and bring me with him. Through storytelling of his own adolescence, he raised me. His was a low-key but deep spirituality. One thing my parents shared was their concern for families who ran into hard times when work was not available. Service without fanfare. Quietly dropping off a week’s worth of groceries and nothing being said about it.

As I grew in both AA and ACOA, I came to the realization that who I am and what I chose to do is not the fault of my parents, especially my mother. I came to the realization that my parents loved me in the best and only way they knew how.

There is something freeing in being able to take responsibility for my survival skills. I didn’t become the class clown or the troublemaker because of my mother. I unconsciously chose these modes of behavior in order to survive the system into which I was born. My mother had no idea she was a dry drunk addicted to church and prayers. She was a good person doing the best she knew how, and, thanks to mom and dad, I got a good education.

There is much to be grateful for in my background. Gratitude for a good education; gratitude for a storytelling dad, gratitude for growing up in the countryside, gratitude for a seminary training that opened the world to me when the world and I were in a whirlwind.

Today I am grateful for the programs of AA, ACOA, and Al-Anon – those 12 step spiritual programs have given me life and a spirituality I would have sorely missed. Twelve simple steps took me from powerlessness to turning my will and my life over to God and, each day, I ask only for the knowledge of god’s will for me and the power to carry it out.

Séamus D.

Séamus D. is an episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

Doldrums

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 02:11:12 GMT

Definition: A belt of calm and light baffling winds north of the equator between the northern and southern trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Here I am again! I looked up the word once more, perhaps it had changed, but no. It is a sailing term. The winds just stop; they are “calm and baffling.” That’s my life these days. I am in the doldrums!

I am stuck inside my head, bored and anxious. I don’t know what to do, don’t know how to pray – there is no energy, no wind. TV watching and online shopping try to tell me that they will help the situation, but they don’t. I was thinking about doldrums, and I’m not sure if it’s a spiritual doldrum but I have felt that way for a while. Apparently, I suggested to a friend when she was feeling this way that she could look at the time of a great spiritual connection to be a gift, a spiritual experience maybe not something we can expect all the time or try to seek. I am still somewhat suffering from those spiritual doldrums it’s just like I can’t make that conscious contact. I really miss that, but I’ll just stay open for God’s will for me.

I talked with a friend who sails and found out more about this nautical term. He had experienced the doldrums while sailing to Hawaii. When the winds stopped there was nothing they could do. They just had to wait. They noticed that the sea became smooth as a quiet lake and oil from other ships began to collect since there was no wind to move the water. Ocean junk appeared as well. Debris and stuff that normally would move on by or be turned under by waves appeared against the boat.

I imagine that they contented themselves with the wait some of the time and at other times were frustrated or bored by it. I know it went on for days. Reading books and doing maintenance tasks occupied them but they really wanted to be sailing—sailing to Hawaii. The destination was interrupted and their journey stalled.

That’s where I am. Stalled. I would like to think about life as a ‘journey’ but now I see I am really thinking more about a destination. I would like to feel that strong conscious contact all the time. Now what? The doldrums. I cannot force a next step. I want to find a big motor and MAKE the wind come. I don’t want to do maintenance or look at my junk that comes up inside me. I want to be about what’s next, the next destination. But it’s not up to me.

When I was first sober, I was having a difficult time finding a higher power that I could turn my life over to the care of. The only thing that I connected with was the feeling of the wind and that it could care for me and move me to where my higher power wanted me to go. I surrendered to the wind.

It is what it is, so I had to find a way to accept it and live with it until the winds of the next change/growth comes. These doldrums are part of my experience of life and God. Feelings seemed stuck and like they will go on forever. I remember a wise friend reminding me that no feeling lasts forever. If I got hit by a bus whatever I was feeling would only be the last feeling but while alive, all feelings change as does life.

The winds will come—they always do. The weather changes, the days grow longer and then shorter and then longer again. It’s life on life’s terms and I hope that I really embrace that truth more and relax, smile, and read a book. I can go to a meeting and take a walk. I talk with my AA friends and my sponsor while I wait out the doldrums. Perhaps I will remember that the doldrums come at the junction of two great things, two great oceans. I have to wait and surrender to the pause, remembering to keep myself out of god’s way. The wind always returns.

Libbie S.

Retirement and Recovery

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:41:39 GMT

I turned 70 last month—a milestone I never imagined reaching, especially considering the life I once lived in active addiction. A few months before getting clean, I began working at an Episcopal church while in the middle of a relapse. I was at a long-term treatment center, while out at work one day, I had “just one,” and swore I’d never use again. But I couldn’t stop. When the center discovered I was using, they gave me a choice: start back at day one or leave. I told myself, yet again, I’ll never use again.

It was during that relapse that I first started at the church. Day after day, I promised God I wouldn’t use again. Finally, I went back to treatment a few months later and have been clean ever since—January 21, 1987.

I’m deeply grateful I was able to return to the church after treatment. I believe the faithful people there, along with my 12-step program, truly saved my life. Over the years, so many moments stand out. Early in recovery, I was typing the Daughters of the King prayer list when I saw my own name on it. Their prayers carried me through, and knowing I was loved and supported gave me strength. After a few months clean, I helped start a meeting at the church that still continues to this day.

Another turning point came when the church received mail from the local Episcopal Alcohol and Drug Commission. I was thrilled to discover that the Episcopal Church had a ministry for people in recovery. I immediately reached out to get involved and eventually became part of the commission. Though it went dormant for a time, one of our priests encouraged me to talk to the Bishop about restarting the work. That conversation sparked new energy, reminding churches of the importance of guidelines for serving alcohol and supporting recovery in faith communities.

Not long after beginning my work at the church, I learned of NECA—the National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol. I was overjoyed to find a national Episcopal recovery network. I became involved as the organization grew and evolved—from NECA, to NECAD (National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol and Drugs), and finally to RMEC (Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church).

One highlight has always been celebrating Recovery Sunday. For many of the past 39 years, my parish has observed it, with recovery-themed sermons, 12-step intercessions, special classes, and literature displays. I’ll never forget when one parishioner told me that reading the RMEC pamphlet The Functional Alcoholic during Recovery Sunday was the moment she realized she had a drinking problem. That affirmed for me the power of setting aside time in the church calendar to acknowledge recovery, spread awareness, and offer hope.

And now, 39 years later, it’s time to retire—at least from full-time church work. Who would have thought I’d hold a job this long, and stay clean throughout it all? I’m grateful that I still have a seat in the pew, that I can remain active in RMEC and the diocesan recovery commission, and that I still go to my home group every Sunday night at my church.

God has been very, very good to me.

The Path is There, the Obstacles are There Too

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:40:27 GMT

I walk most every day for exercise. When I lived in Seattle all those years, I didn’t much worry about what might be on the trail that was dangerous. Maybe some poison ivy or rocks to get around. Hiking had more things, but I didn’t hike much.

When I moved to Arizona. I learned fast about the desert. All wildlife is protected here, even in towns like mine. The town decided long ago that two thirds of the land would NOT be developed. So, I hear coyotes at night yelling after a kill as well as our most common animals walking on our streets – the javalinas (google them). Looking for plants they like to eat.

Across the street from my house is a trail that leads to an abandoned golf course (a victim of the 2009 housing crisis). I walk the trail to what now is a county park where all the cart paths allow anyone to walk over five miles.

The path I walk was created by homeowners and is very nice, but it has its challenges. There are hundreds of Tree cholla cactus lining the path and when it’s windy parts of the plants come off an onto the path. I must be very careful as there are barbs on the pieces that can ‘jump’ onto your clothes shoes or skin and you can’t just pull them off. If you try, only a single needle will come away and prick you as you try to get the whole thing – It hurts! The first time I got one, it was on my arm as I didn’t realize that you can’t just ‘graze’ the plant. I had to get home quickly and google how to get it off me (they generally are 2 inches round). My husband had to use two chopsticks and place them on either side of the piece and then- 1,2,3, pop it up and off me. It worked but it hurt too!

Sometimes on an early morning walk I will see a snake 10 feet in front of me sunning himself. I stop and try to see if it’s one of Arizona’s famous rattlesnakes. Most often it is, and I have learned that what I need to do is search for a place to get off the path and go around the snake with five or six feet between us.

This week I had a God Shot about all this – my experience is much like sobriety. The path is clear in AA, follow it and life can be good. But life also presents barbs and dangers that are just life on life’s terms. Painful things jump out and hit us as well as dangers we must go around to avoid. Many of my neighbors here don’t like to walk of the trail, they want the smooth concrete cart paths to walk on. I want to explore, stay sober, and deal with life as it comes with the support of people who will help me get the needles stuck in me out!

Oh, and there is something else I see on the trail – cactus blooming the most amazing colors! I wouldn’t see them on the sidewalk!

From Denial to Freedom

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:25:09 GMT

In her book Sage Sayings and Slogans, Isabella C.* writes, “‘The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.’ I remember how very irritating it was to discover that I had made hefty contributions to most, if not all, of my problems. I still find it annoying! My most challenging relationships were troublesome because I was in them.’”

I love that first line, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” I can remember a few of those “firsts” when I had to admit: I am an alcoholic, I am angry, I am jealous, I make mistakes, I am scared. “You made me…”

For too long I was “perfect.” I never made mistakes—other people didn’t understand me, other people made me do it, say it. It was all “their fault.” I never had a blackout. I just didn’t remember everything because I was overworked and underpaid. I would never drive drunk—I just didn’t remember how I got home.

I was in the hall for a youth club meeting in Dublin, Ireland, when a few men came in. We struck up a conversation, and they invited me to the meeting upstairs. I assumed—yes, assumed—they were members of the Knights of Columbus or one of the church associations. I sat in the back, then realized I was in one of those “AA meetings.” I sweated through the whole meeting. I chain-smoked. They were talking about me. I could identify with just about everything everyone shared. At the end, I got out of there and headed for my watering hole—I needed a drink.

It was another ten years before I visited an AA meeting, which I promised my boss I’d attend after telling him I thought I might have a drinking problem. It was another five years before I had a spiritual awakening—that I really am an alcoholic, and if I wanted serenity and sobriety, I needed to work and live the program. Head knowledge was not getting me sober. “I stood at the turning point. Half measures availed me nothing.”

It was the process of the Fourth Step that brought me to my knees. The truth of my past was hitting me with every sentence I wrote down. I felt angry. How could I have done that? Why did I let myself do…say…that? Still in denial, I wanted to blame others, but I could no longer do so. As Isabella wrote, I was discovering “that I had made hefty contributions to most, if not all, of my problems… My most challenging relationships were troublesome because I was in them.”

It wasn’t others I disliked. I didn’t like myself. I was angry with myself. I was scared that others would see me as a phony. Yes, they saw through me—but loved me anyhow.

Then came Step Five: admitting to another human being “the exact nature of my wrongs.” I told this person things I said and did that I’d never tell a therapist or a priest in confession.

Then came the making of amends. In making amends, I learned more truth about myself than I wanted to hear. And yes, it pissed me off. Why did they have to tell me these things? Why couldn’t they have let bygones be bygones? But, like an infection, if I wanted sobriety and serenity, the ghosts had to be let out of the closet, the truth had to be told, and I had to face the person I was under the influence of alcohol. I had to hear the truth of my insane behavior and the reality that my life had become unmanageable.

I continue to be part of my own life. There are days I don’t want to talk to someone, I don’t want to help someone, I don’t want to… But then there’s that annoying statement drilled into my head: “What I see and like in you is also in me. What I see and don’t like in you is also in me—but I don’t want to talk about it.”

Truth be told, that statement is no longer annoying. Thanks to its simplicity and depth, I have learned to laugh and acknowledge I am still growing, and that I never will be perfect until about thirty minutes after I am deceased.

This is the truth that has set me free and helps me enjoy life. I am a spiritual person living a human life filled with all kinds of contradictions—but I can live with them. The truth has set me free and made me smile.

Séamus D
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the diocese of Louisiana.

*SAGE SAYINGS AND SLOGANS; 365 days of Practical, Pocket Recovery Wisdom. Vol.1 by Isabella C.

Three Graves as Road Markers on the AA Journey:

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 02:17:02 GMT

Progress on the journey of recovery can be measured by looking at three graves that mark the resting places of individuals who are important to the history of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In the first five years of recovery the focus is on staying sober. In these years an AA member learns how to stop drinking. The focus is on the self, on “me” and “my recovery”. It is a time when we learn that “it’s a selfish program”, and that “My sobriety is the most important thing in my life.” Many members, especially in the Northeast have an opportunity sometime in those first five years to visit Dorset, Vermont and to see the Wilson House—Bill Wilson’s home and to visit his nearby grave. It is a kind of pilgrimage for many AAs to visit, Bill’s grave and to say thanks.

In the small cemetery Bill’s grave is easy to spot: it is covered with flowers, teddy bears, notes, AA chips and other tokens of gratitude. It is fitting that in these years that a new AA member is focused on themselves.

But as one’s spiritual journey continues a recovering person continues to grow and moves on from not drinking to learning skills in human relations. These are the years when an AA learns how to be in a relationship, how to get along at work, how to make and be a friend.

In these years people remarry or try to repair or improve relationships with their children and make amends which bring family relationships back. In these years one can actually or symbolically, return to East Dorset and visit another important grave. This grave belongs to Lois Wilson, Bill’s wife who was the founder of Al-anon the 12-step program for family members of Alcoholics. AA members who travel beyond not drinking realize in these years that they have to learn how to “live and let live” and how to “detach with love.” This is often harder than not taking a drink.

Lois’s grave that reminds us that this is another level on the spiraling journey of recovery. In years 5 to ten it’s NOT about me, now it’s about other people. The “Lois years” are the time for amends—not just apologies, and for learning how to be in relationships and in the world.

If one chooses to continue to travel on the recovery path there is another significant crossroads that comes after 15 or 20 years. While spiritual work has been going on all along, this next stage is about something deeper. It’s about surrender. And surrender— is a part of every faith tradition as far back as the story of Krishna and Arjuna.

A symbol for these years is another grave, and this grave is not in Vermont but rather here in my town, Albany, New York. Ebby Thatcher is buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery and his grave marks this important part of the journey.

Ebby Thatcher was the man who carried the message of recovery to Bill Wilson’s Brooklyn kitchen table. While AA history credits Bill and Dr. Bob with the first moment of one drunk helping another that is not wholly true. In fact when Ebby helped Bill to stop drinking that was the key occasion of one drunk helping another.

So, why isn’t Ebby credited as a founder of AA? Simply, because Ebby did not remain consistently sober. Ebby moved in and out of sobriety—though always in recovery for the next 30 years. His imperfection was too glaring to be held up as a model.

However, when we visit Ebby’s grave we find not teddy bears or flowers, but many weeds and a few AA chips buried in the dirt. The first time I went to Ebby’s grave it wasn’t easy to find, and I had to dig a little and push away the weeds and there were some chips. Significantly those chips were marked for 20 and 30 and 35 years. I believe it is because people with that amount of time in recovery can appreciate the imperfection that is required on any spiritual path.

While Bill Wilson’s years are about “me”, and the Lois years are about other people, the “Ebby years” are about what is bigger than us—a Higher Power. Ebby Thacher was a broken, imperfect man who was well used by God—whatever name you might use.

But without Ebby there would be no AA, and no spiritual path to recovery for others to follow. At this later stage of a 12 step program we have to ask if we are willing to be used for Good.

Diane C, Albany New York.

Escaping my Alcoholism

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:14:49 GMT

Recently, I was recalling my experiences back when I started to contemplate surrendering my drinking habits. I certainly was aware of the negative effects of my drinking on my family and knew its continuation would worsen the situation. But I also knew it was important that I make the decision of whether or not I surrender.

Then when I did start attending meetings, I of course met people who were in the early stages of fighting their addictions and then others who had been working the Program for various lengths of time. I started to see in these folks a happiness and growing positive attitudes to life itself which I lacked. I learned early that beating Mr. alcohol requires a day-by-day effort. So, when I surrendered and committed to the Program, I knew I must work the Program daily if I was going to get what they had.

They shared with me the paths they were traveling. I saw that this “working the Steps” they all talked about was a way to not only rid oneself of the desire to drink but provided new ways of dealing with one’s every-day encounters.

I was soon experiencing a growing feeling of union with the Program.

There was a confidence that “answers to problems” can be found, that the past was past and couldn’t be changed, and that the way was open to change things that could be changed.

Something else appeared to me: “In all matters, when in doubt, ‘keep coming back’; you’ll find the answers.”

I especially liked the “ten-minute leads” presented by persons whose names were drawn from a hat at the start of a large Saturday evening meeting. In my early days, smoking was permitted but gladly finally stopped, an important move as so many meetings were held in church basements with little ventilation. And those Thanksgiving banquets and the “countdowns” by years of one’s sobriety grabbed my heart in a spiritual manner.

Sponsors! … Everyone “had one” and I saw that it was important to team up with the right person, one who would hold on and guide you as you walked the Steps. People talked about writing an “inventory of those we had harmed” and “making amends” where appropriate. This Step seemed emotionally hard; the reality of undertaking the process was clearly outlined in so many spots in AA literature, and it was a popular topic in discussion meetings. I came to believe it wasn’t always a negative experience but one where amends could re-cement relations. And as time passed, I began to see to see how it was important to “carry the message.”

Perhaps the strongest thing I remember is that I saw how the Program itself, the Big Book, and all the rest of it, how all of it came about when these two total strangers, a New York City stockbroker and an Akron medical doctor, came together on a Sunday afternoon in an Akron Ohio Gatehouse.

Remember? … The Akron guy told his wife,” OK, I’ll go, but I’m leaving in 30 minutes!” Instead, these two strangers talked into the evening, and the New York fella moved into the home of the doctor for weeks and weeks talking about what they were learning from simply talking with one another … nothing more, no outside consultants, just two alcoholics talking.

I believe these two alcoholics came together because a power greater than themselves had brought them together and challenged them to come to grips with their own alcoholism in a simple but until then in an unknown way … just two alcoholics talking to each other.

Bill and Dr. Bob reached out to one another just as Christ reaches for us every moment…no questions asked for all are welcome to learn the Steps and see and find the love of Christ, to live one’s life without retreating to demon rum and its cruel forest of alcoholism, and to find and live our lives embracing the love of Christ.

Jim A, St X Noon

TRUSTHP

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:24:00 GMT

I wanted a vanity license plate for a long time. I knew it would cost more than a regular license plate and for many years I couldn’t justify the cost AND I couldn’t think of what I would put on the plate. By the time I thought of what I wanted to put on the plate, I still had 7 years before I would HAVE to get a new plate, so I just didn’t do anything at all.

I have had friends in the program who have custom car plates. One said SOURCE – the word he used for his higher power. Another says OHW for Open, Honest, and Willing. And another said RULE 62 (Don’t take yourself so seriously).

I wanted my plate to help me remember the message whenever I saw it. Then I moved to Arizonia. I wanted to move, was excited to move and yet also second guessing myself about whether it was the right thing to do. I was anxious and worried a lot. I realized what I was missing was trusting my higher power. So here I was in the new state, needing to register my car, get a new license and a new license plate. I knew what to get: TRUSTHP.

Sometimes in a parking lot someone will ask me what it means – they get the TRUST part but not the HP – I just say what it means and if they look confused, I say “God”. Most times they say “Oh” – I wonder what idea they have about me but then I let it go. Some say – “great”. My AA friends get it right away.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a new friend here. She isn’t in recovery but enjoys learning about the spiritual things I am about. She called me one day and said, “I saw you on the freeway!” “How did you know it was me?” “I saw your license plate and it was just what I needed to see and know right then.”

She had been worrying about many things and saw my plate and smiled. She said she knew then that everything would be alright and that it was a God Shot for her (I had told her about my love of God Shots and how they come so often and when needed if we will be open to them.) For me that day, having her call and tell me about seeing my license plate was also a God shot for me! I had thought that the message on my car license plate was just for me – now I knew that it could be a message of trust perhaps for everyone who sees it. Libbie S.

I Didn’t Come Here to Forgive

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 23:04:56 GMT

Changing my thinking, behaving differently, or becoming an instrument of love and peace—none of that was on my radar when I stumbled through the doors of twelve-step recovery. I came to stop drinking and avoid more consequences. That’s it.

Miserable on the inside and desperate to stay sober, I became willing to take actions contrary to what I believed—including the direction to start praying.

Each morning, I’d shut my eyes and say, “God, please keep me sober today. Thy will, not mine, be done.” I didn’t mean the last part—not really—but I hoped that if I kept saying it, eventually I might feel it.

After a few weeks of this routine, it seemed like I should probably add something more. I’d heard about the St. Francis Prayer and decided to try it. Reading it for the first time, I was confused by its paradoxes: better to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved.

Was it better? I didn’t think so.

I wanted to be comforted. I wanted to be understood. I wanted to be loved.

Still, I kept reciting it. The words sounded a little ridiculous and weak—but they also sounded incredibly peaceful.

Driving to a meeting one afternoon, my phone rang. It was my divorce attorney—with infuriating news. I was seething by the time I reached the clubhouse. I sat down next to an older gentleman named Dave and unloaded everything.

“You should pray for him,” he said gently.

Had he heard what I said? I stared at him in disbelief.

“Pray for him? You’ve got a better shot of being hit by lightning.”

He didn’t flinch. He nodded thoughtfully and asked, “Well, then, do you think you could pray to some day have the willingness to be able to pray for him?”

It took me a minute to wrap my head around what he was asking.

“Probably not. Maybe. Maybe at some point I could pray for the willingness to pray for him. But not now.”

For the next few weeks, I didn’t give it much thought. But the seed had been planted. And one night, as I was saying my prayers, I could hear Dave’s voice. With a sigh and an eye roll, I muttered, “And may I someday have the willingness to pray for him.”

I was aghast. Did those words just come out of my mouth?

Nearly two years later, my phone rang again. This time, it was my son—calling in tears to tell me his father’s engagement had ended.

The next day, as I heard my ex-husband’s truck in the driveway, I felt a pull to go outside.

He looked terrible—His once confident posture was deflated, he was pale, gaunt, sickly—like the air had been taken from him. Though I had never seen him look this way, I recognized the pain. It was the same reflection I’d seen in my own mirror when he left me.

We had slowly moved past the bitterness, but standing there in that moment, it struck me how different things had become. We weren’t enemies anymore, just two people who had once loved each other and shared a life.

“How are you doing?” I asked softly.

“Not great,” he replied.

“I’m really sorry you’re going through this.

We stood there for a moment in silence before he lifted his head and said, “If I ever made you feel this way, I’m really sorry. Really.”

“You did,” I replied gently. “But I forgave you a while ago. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary—for both of us. When I found out what happened last night, I prayed for you. I prayed that you would find love and peace and happiness.”

His head had been hanging low. At my comment, he slowly lifted his gaze until our eyes met. In that moment, I saw disbelief married with a sense of peace. I could see the question he was asking himself in his eyes: How could this woman possibly be offering me such kindness?

“Thank you,” he murmured.

I knew what he didn’t. It wasn’t of me.

“And while we’re at it,” I added, “I’m sorry for the mistakes I made in our marriage. I know I wasn’t always the best wife.”

As if struck by lightning, I found myself doing the previously unimaginable. Reaching out, I hugged him.

“It’s gonna be alright,” I said. “I just can’t tell you when.”

Forgiveness had opened the door to the peace that comes from letting go.

Jaime Hrobar

Unconditional Love, Trust, Forgiveness

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:44:34 GMT

In the gospel of John, we read, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears has not been made perfect in love.” Obviously, I did not understand Love. I had failed miserably in love. In the words of that old song: “Looking for love in all the wrong places.” “I’ll drink to that” I said as my insides turned, and I downed another whatever it was I was drinking at the time. No one would ever love me. I didn’t love myself. If I died no one would miss me.

“Perfect love drives out fear.” How is one to experience anything like perfect love when God is in your head telling you statements to the effect: you’re a failure, you couldn’t keep the commandments, you are a hypocrite, when I take you out, you’re not getting into heaven.

On the other hand, I could talk a good talk about God, a loving merciful God, a kind and generous God who is love itself, who sent Jesus to show us how to love and he did it perfectly. Jesus was, after all, the face of God on earth. Much as I wanted to imitate Jesus, I was not the face of god on earth.

“Fear has to do with punishment.” Oh yes. And I needed to be punished. I lived with fear. It ate me up. I couldn’t get on an airplane without saying the act of contrition between seven and ten times. And, while doing so, filling my glass with whiskey and looking around to see if there was a priest on the plane. I was being punished alright. Nothing in my life was going the way I thought it was supposed to go. And I was raised to think either god told me to do it or the devil made me do it. Nothing, therefore, was my responsibility. I was completely irresponsible and, with friends like Jack Daniels, it was easy to be irresponsible.

"The one who fears has not been made perfect in love." The only thing perfect about me, I believed, was a perfect j _ _ _ a_ _. What is love anyway? I read books by a man called “Dr. Love’ and it all seems so simple, simplistic. Love your neighbor as yourself. Fifty percent of marriages were ending in divorce. Young people were living together rather than risk marriage. Second marriages were terminating at a rate of about seventy percent. Where can one find perfect love?

I didn’t know it then, but this God that I was so afraid of was actually the one who was saving my hide. It was God/my Higher Power, who had been pushing me into people in the fellowship of AA. It was God who pushed me into my boss’s office to admit I had a drinking problem; who helped me open up – a little – in order to get out of treatment; and it was God who guided me with people who loved me enough to keep me – if not sober - at least not drinking for almost five years. Then it happened.

I experienced a spiritual awakening and what an awakening that was. I found courage to take an honest inventory of myself, to do an honest fourth and fifth step, to make amends and was open to hear of things I did not know I had done while under the influence of my many alcohol friends like John Jameison.

God. A Higher Power. A Power greater than myself that restored me to sanity. No doubt I was insane. A power greater than myself whose love was and is perfect. God is Love, St John says, and I began to understand.

Unconditional Love, Trust, Forgiveness was and is what God offered and continues to offer. "There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear." Fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears has not been made perfect in love. What is there to be afraid of when I know that no matter what happens to me, God is with me. I’m not perfect but I know I am getter stronger as I increase my conscious awareness of God through prayer and meditation – talk and listen – and I am available to share my experience, strength and hope with those who need it. God’s love is that perfect Love.

Séamus D
Séamus D is an active retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

AA International Vancouver

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 11:57:52 GMT

The first week of July I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. This was my fifth time attending an International AA Convention, and each time--at different stages of my recovery—I came home with gifts and inspirations.

What is most impressive is how hard the group of mostly volunteers work to make these conventions so thoroughly wonderful. It takes 15 years to plan an international convention so we know that in 2030 it will be in St Louis, Missouri, and in 2035 Indianapolis, Indiana, will be the location. It takes that long to plan because each city must commit all of its hotels, police, fire as well as all college dorms—housing of every kind. The Chambers of Commerce and local government must be committed and fully participating. Imagine the Chamber meeting where they hear, “we have an opportunity to host 50,000 alcoholics.” I can just imagine the organizers explaining over and over: “No, they are sober; No, they do not drink.”

Between 35,000 and 50,000 AA members from all over the world attend these International Conventions. They are truly international, and most inspiring at the opening night big stadium that includes an Olympic-like flag ceremony as each country enters with a representative carrying their nation’s flag.

It’s not easy to summarize the gifts of this convention but I can truly say being surrounded by recovering people practicing recovery principles for several days I come away infused with recovery. Even at 40+ years, I am challenged to grow and learn, and to do more recovery service. At The “Old Timers” meeting on the last night—also in a full stadium—there were 250 people with more than 50 years of recovery. Those were the men and women I wanted to listen to very carefully. It’s not that those folks have a lot of years in recovery—they do—but what we know is that in 50 years a lot happens to a person—a lot of hard things. What many of us want to know is how to stay sober or abstinent when hard things happen. And these old timers are the folks who know. They have been through multiple illnesses, serious diagnoses—their own and of their loved ones, deaths, grief, job losses, financial troubles and every kind of family crisis. And they stayed sober—and committed.

What I heard from the 12 members with more than 50 years is that they—to a person—did a lot of service in the program. In their home group, in their region, their state and beyond. And, they all --through their recovery—and still—worked directly with folks in need. They helped folks struggling to come into recovery (12 step calls), newcomers, and peers on regular basis and very directly. I came home from Vancouver wanting to do a lot more service.

I also heard from this group of 50+ recovering folks that they had active spiritual lives. They still did the basics of the steps and prayer and meditation, and they studied new spiritual practices and were part of some spiritual group—whether a faith community or a weekly meditation group, or spiritual book club, or something spiritual that involved working with others. What stood out was that their spiritual life was not in the past but here and now and very regular.

Conferences are another tool of recovery and a gift. I am grateful.

Diane C.
Albany, New York

Drunkenness

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:46:56 GMT

Not an easy nor typical Red Door topic—memories of our days of intoxication are the very days we run away from. While we might think or hope we have buried them, they sometimes return, rising out of nowhere.

In their first mini-lead, newbies might lean on stories of their drunken conduct. In the days of lead meetings, once-in-a-while, instead of a message of “how it worked for me,” attendees were confronted with a “drunkalogue” i.e., noun—a 40-minute description of every drunken event engaged in by the speaker.

Sometimes family members innocently remind us (but maybe not so “innocently”) saying, “Remember the time you…”. The sharpest stinging recall may be when you walk into the trap yourself, that is, when you stumbled on that photograph which pictures you “…at that wedding party...”

There’s another aspect to recalling those awful “days of old” and that’s when we seem to slip and slide and recall only the” good old fun days,” the days of “social drinking,” gatherings at the club’s golf house, family and neighborhood picnics, or days when we could have “two” and quit.

The answer to all this difficulty is right in front of us: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

There it is. When we hear those stories of our days of rage and intoxication, days we harmed others with our conduct, know that you can’t change those days. They will always exist. Accept that and again seek the assistance of your Higher Power and the Program and accept that you cannot change it, no matter what. And recall that you’ve worked through those days with your work with your inventory and the Steps.

The same holds true for those “fun day” recollections with a different suggestion: Recognize that your drunken devil is simply using those recollections to take another shot to pull you back to the past into that familiar canyon of alcoholism.

“Shoot back” at the devil and remind it and yourself that those fun days weren’t so much “fun” at the end of your spiral—now come on, honestly, were they really fun? If you “can’t remember,”, ask your spouse or children how much “fun” they experienced watching your intoxicated activities.

Now about those specific recalls such as, “Remember the time you…,” or when you do stumble onto that photo of your gala face at that wedding reception.

Those again are past but ask yourself if that recollection is perhaps a “wakeup call” calling attention to something you may need to deal with. Again, the Program tells us what to do, for we are called to find “…the courage to change the things I can.”

Maybe you need to work the Steps to answer that question—work the Steps and free yourself of these old recollections. Do a “double check,” review your Step 4 inventory, and again run through Steps 5 through 9.

So, remember, while we like to think we can erase those days of drunkenness, we really can’t. But, through many aspects of the Program, we can knock out their impact on our sobriety and serenity.

When the past “grabs for you,” go to your Higher Power and Bill and Dr Bob: they’re always with you and their arms of fellowship and strength are always reaching for us no matter what we do.

But here’s a simple answer to all this: just grab your worn “Big Book” or “Twelve & Twelve” —both filled with scribbled notes and cards from folks, and newspaper clippings you jammed into each…

…and get to a meeting.

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati

Birds of a Feather

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 23:47:31 GMT

The only thing I remember about birds from my childhood is freaking out watching Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. It was on our black and white TV, and I was home alone, and crows were attacking the front door, breaking it down to get to the people inside. I jumped off the couch and turned it off, shaking with fear. The movie came back to haunt me when years later I was walking in Seattle. It was spring and the crows had babies. They yelled at me as I walked and then suddenly one swooped down and hit me on my head! I ran as fast as I could to home. (I found out later that they do that when their babies are learning to fly and sometimes fall out of the nest).

Over time, the birds have meant more positive things to me. During the pandemic, I walked a lot. I lived next to a large park, and I could hear birds as I walked. It was also a hard time for me. Many relationships in my life were not as I wanted them to be. I would walk and walk and walk, trying to be present to the sounds I hear in the hopes that I would find peace. One day I watched as a huge bald eagle flew over my head and land in a very tall Douglas fir. I was very close to the tree so I could look straight up and see the bird. I felt in awe and somehow, I knew that I was being taken care of, that I was being watched over. I saw the bird many times during the pandemic and each time I was struck by the knowledge that I was not alone. The eagle has become an image of my Higher Power. I still worried about my family, about those who were sick, the world and how it could possibly be alright.

A few years later I found myself moving to Arizonia. I live across the street from an old golf course. The cart paths are still there as it is now a county park. Most days, I walk there, often in the early morning when the day will not be so hot as later. I now have an app call the Merlin app. It was developed by Cornell University, and it lets me identify the birds I hear by sound since I often don’t see them.

These are worrisome days again for me. My family is facing many health issues, and the country as well as the world seems crazy. It’s been hard to find peace and trust my higher power.

Some mornings my app picks up 20 plus birds singing, especially when I walk as the sun rises. Later in the day as the sun goes down, I often hear at least as many birds. I hear cardinals, finches, sparrows, and quails – so many birds. Birds sing at daybreak and dusk to communicate with each other – to sort of say good morning and good evening.

It made me think of a Bible verse and a Hymn:

“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet God feeds them (adapted).”

I also was reminded of the hymn refrain –

Refrain:
I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I feed birds now and give them water here in the hot desert and as I take care of them, I remember that with the help of my Higher Power, I am taken care of.

Libbie S

When God Meets You

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 17:41:05 GMT

Unwilling to believe in a Higher Power, my first attempt at recovery was a disaster, culminating in a confirmation drunk lasting over a year. Desperate, I returned—finally ready to confront what I’d spent my life rejecting. Ready to listen and take actions contrary to my beliefs, including prayer.

On a seemingly ordinary day in early recovery, a plea for patience marked a turning point.

The routine was familiar—sitting on a bench on my patio, kids still asleep, a dark sky, coffee, and my daily meditation book. As I prayed, the words carried substance, having evolved past rote recitations. I had begun talking to God like a friend.

“Good morning, God. I’m grateful to be sober today. Please help me to be patient, kind, loving, and tolerant. Please put someone in my path that I can help today, and protect me from me. While we’re on the subject of patience—God, I’ve really been struggling. I’m trying, but I really lost it with my kids yesterday. I don’t want to behave that way. So, if you could help me out a little extra in this area—if you could just give me some more patience, I’d really appreciate it.”

Concluding the prayer, I asked for guidance and direction.

Back inside, I was immersed in breakfast preparation when my youngest son, Christian, entered the kitchen with art supplies and began drawing. Flipping the last pancake, I let him know that we needed to clear the table. Satisfied with his work, he scooped up the pile of markers and exited the kitchen, leaving his masterpiece behind.

Wanting to hurry things along, I approached the table, ready to move what appeared to be a poster of some sort. I glanced down and discovered the word PATIENCE stretched across the paper in giant block letters.

Was this divine intervention or mere coincidence?

I had observed him still sleeping soundly after coming inside from the patio. There was no way he’d heard me. As I stood there, pondering the meaning behind this, my oldest son, Jim—who has severe autism—had woken up and needed my assistance, completely distracting me from the poster. The day started to unfold, so I made a mental note to ask Christian about it later, assuming that it must be directly related to something I’d done.

A couple of hours later, my friend Darlene called. Knowing I was in the middle of a divorce and essentially a newly single mother, she was curious if I needed anything from the store.

“Actually, I do need a few things,” I said.

“I can come over and watch the boys while you run out,” she offered.

At the grocery store—a woman on a mission, list in hand—I zipped and zoomed through the aisles, trying to hurry home and relieve Darlene. Having grabbed the last item, I headed for the check-out lane. Swiftly loading the groceries onto the belt, I beelined for the card reader, debit card drawn before the last three items were even scanned, doing whatever I could to make the transaction move faster.

As soon as I heard the last beep, I immediately jammed my card into the machine. As the word APPROVED flashed across the screen, I looked up, pulling the card from the reader—and the name tag of the cashier caught my eye: Patience.

Stunned, I inquired if that was actually her name. Upon confirmation, I asked if I could take a picture, explaining to her that I was going to share this moment with someone I assumed wouldn’t believe me.

Curiosity led me to question Christian about his drawing when I got home. His innocent explanation was beyond the scope of anything I’d have considered.

“Well, Mommy, Grandma gave me seeds to plant a butterfly garden. They’re in the garage, and I was thinking, I would plant the seeds in a pot and then hang this sign over it, because as things are growing, you need to have patience.”

This, from an eight-year-old boy.

This wasn't just about my impatience. It was about nurturing growth and trusting the process—rather than the instant gratification, relief, and control I’d always been seeking. I knew in that moment that God was not only listening—but that I had started to develop a personal relationship with Him.

Later that night, I sent a text to my sponsor, revealing the lengthy details of the day. I read her summation—poignant and succinct. It was just two sentences:

“In literature, the author often uses repetition to drive a point home. God must think you’re a slow learner.”

I laughed. That day, I learned that God responds when I sincerely seek Him—He is always listening, and He is always patient.

Jaime Hrobar

Babar in Recovery

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 01:40:16 GMT

It has been said that behind every successful man is a woman. It turns out that behind the world’s most successful elephant there is also a woman to be thanked. With all that is going on now, there is one Frenchman who remains untouched by criticism and who may even be the kind of leader we need. He is, of course, the French ruler, politician, and diplomat: the elephant Babar.

Cécile de Brunhoff created Babar as a bedtime story for her children. Her husband Jean wrote down the stories and illustrated the first book, which was published in 1931. Jean tried to give credit to Cécile but she had her name removed before the book was printed. Jean de Brunhoff died in 1937 and Babar’s adventures continue to be illustrated by Laurent de Brunhoff, Cécile and Jean’s oldest son.

Most people meet Babar when they are young, but I didn’t meet him till I was much older. The introduction was a gift from a friend when I was at the very beginning of my recovery. It was a bad time. I was scared a lot, and anxious, and not sure at all how to be a leader at work.

Today I keep a picture of him on my desk, and especially now, I stop to say, “Thanks, Babar” for his message.

Babar is a survivor of trauma. In the first few pages of his story, we witness the murder of his mother. It is cruel and sad. He is alone and struggling—just as I was in those early recovery days. But Babar moved from the country to the city where he met the Old Lady who became his mentor/sponsor.

With her guidance he learns to dress well—he’s French after all—and he acquires the skill of conversation and getting along with others. But most importantly Babar moved beyond simply surviving to use his traumatic past to become an individual with deep values and strong character.

Eventually, with the call of the needy, Babar turned to social responsibility and went home to help the citizens of his country.

Babar becomes a leader. He marries Celeste and has a family. His country prospers and there is balance and respect in Celesteville, a community rich with diversity. The bad time comes when Celesteville is burned, and Babar had the bad dream. Those early fears that many of us have. In his dream demons came—hairy winged things named hate, fear, greed. If you have done a 4^th step you know these. But Babar summoned the spirits of patience and hope and chased the demons out of the country. Oh, recovery and The Promises.

Babar is completely comfortable with himself; that’s what recommends him the most. Though he is certain of his authority, and wears a crown to prove it, he is not heavy handed nor a workaholic. Babar seems to have the faith to really live one day at a time. (I have wondered: Did he go to therapy? Elephants Anonymous? de Brunhoff doesn’t say.)

Babar inspires. He is profoundly honest, he negotiates change, he’s committed to his family, and he sends this overriding message: “Don’t panic”.

Babar gives us hope that a wise and caring leader is possible. And that our own growth and change is possible too. We can claim him as a colleague in our folding chairs.

Diane Cameron
Albany, New York

Stay in the Light: From Horror Story to Hope

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 01:11:06 GMT

Stay in the Light is the title of A.M. Shine’s second novel. It was a warning found on the wall of a house in which some folks were trapped by “The Watchers” —the title of his first novel. It was ‘the light” which protected those trapped by some evil power. I’m not one for horror books and definitely not Stephen King, but these two books, given to me by my son, set in Ireland, intrigued me. The protagonist, Mina, realizes that the power of “the Watchers” is growing and it is up to her to convince people that they are real.

What has a horror novel got to do with my addiction? I did not think about it till I looked at jacket of this second book with its upturned bird cage and the words, “You may have escaped…but you’ll never be free.”

Looking back on my life I realize I was in that bird cage from the day I was conceived and born, the youngest of a family of five, into a functioning dysfunctional family system where power lay in the hands of one person addicted to religion and work.

I escaped. I was the scapegoat and the class clown. I got away with most things and was blamed for more—both at school and home. It was not that I was caught, but rather I was highly suspected for more than I actually did. I wore it as a badge of honor. “I escaped...but not free.” I escaped by lying with a straight face; by protecting those who would then become my enablers.

Long before I took my first sip of alcohol, I was already on the path to addiction. I lived life on the edge and loved it. I pushed the envelope, took risks, challenged authority, and all with the external innocence of an altar boy.

Like the folks in the novel, I was moving into the forest totally unaware that the wilderness to which I was becoming attracted was controlling me not the other way around. Like alcohol and other substances, this darkness was “cunning, baffling, powerful.”

Early in the story, Mina is asked by her friend Ciara, “Do you even know where you are?” to which she replies, “No idea.” I was more like Poo Bear who said “I’m not lost. I’m right here.

Mina was arrested and in jail. She asked the guard, “Can I not leave this cell for a while? I actually will go mad if I’m locked up here for much longer.” I remember being at one of those after-meetings and I complained about the speaker—who came from a nearby jail to tell his story. I had heard it before. “All he talks about is his feelings” I said to the chairperson over a cup of coffee in an after-meeting meeting. “Séamus,” he said, “that man is more free in jail than you are walking the streets. You wouldn’t know a feeling if it sat on your lap.”

He didn’t say “Stay in the Light,” but he might as well have. He shone a light into a world I had avoided, rather well, I thought, but now it was opening, and I was made aware of the danger of the darkness in which I lived. Like Mina, I wanted out “for a while” without realizing the danger.

“Stay in the Light.” “Hang with the winners.” “Do the next right thing.” Simple and simplistic cliches, and yet these are the backbone of recovery. They were what I needed to memorize and then put into practice.

“Stay in the Light.” One of the results of staying in the Light is that it makes clear my Character defects which I have to face, acknowledge, and then ask my Higher Power to help me remove.

“Stay in the Light.” “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it…Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change…We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”

My son shared these two books with me “The Watchers” and “Stay in the Light.” Neither of us expected that I would find in them a parallel to my life. As I reflected on the phrase “Stay in the Light” I realized just how much of a horror story was my own life.

The book says: “You may have escaped…but you’ll never be free.” I know I will never be free of the disease, but, today, I am happy, joy filled and free. One day at a time.

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the new Orleans area.

Reminder – Life is Messy - one day at a time.

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 01:31:51 GMT

Back in November of 2024, I wrote a blog post about my needlepoint rug. I shared about how it took every stitch to make it —one stitch at a time and over ten years of meetings to complete it.

I shared that life was messy and difficult at the time I wrote it but if I just took life one minute, one hour, one day at a time, I would find my way with the help of my higher power.

Well, life is still very messy and sad and difficult. I got to thinking about my rug again. When I look at it, I see the completion of all those stitches. I had a friend put a backing on the rug when it was completed so I don’t see the back of it, raw with all the threads and mistakes. I only see the pretty outcome. The problems and difficulties of those years in early sobriety don’t show when I look at it. I do not think about them often.

The other day I looked at another piece of needlework I did. It was hanging on a wall in my bedroom. I see it every day. When I was looking at it this time, it fell off the wall. It was upside down. It looked so messy with threads going this way and that and threads hanging loose —not pretty at all. It seemed a metaphor for my life these days.

Nothing is pretty. My garden isn’t growing like I hoped it would in my new climate. The world is a mess and there seems little hope for resolution and help for those is so much need. Some family members are angry with me, and some are dealing with many problems.

I try to honestly share in meetings my struggles and work to sort out my part and make amends where needed. I talk with my sponsor and have lunch with AA friends. I pray and read daily from spiritual writers. So why do I feel so lost and messy?

The back of that needlepoint showed me —I want life and sobriety to never be messy and sad and lonely. I’ve been sober a long time—shouldn’t my life be smoother and more pleasing? As soon as I ask the question, the answer comes. The gift of sobriety and a relationship with God has no guarantees.

We are instead given promises—12 of them. When the Promises are read at one of my meetings and it gets to the question—

Are these extravagant promises? We think not—but I find myself saying to myself (in a whisper) —you bet they are extravagant! AND YET—They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

There will always be messiness and sadness and all those things I’d like to avoid, but if I work through them and turn it over to God, the promises are there, too. Libbie S.

“Mr. Jim A, ‘Name three ways to maintain sobriety.’”

Thu, 29 May 2025 01:59:04 GMT

Writing for Red Door brought a challenge to me that if I was to write for Red Door and try to carry the message of the AA Program in the context of Christ’s love for all of us, I had to review the way I worked the Program. It isn’t an arrogant objective for the reality of any AA Meeting —the sharing and the way each of us “works the program”. Ideas like what we learn listening to a newbie reveals the fears of the reality of “giving up,” or when we heard “her pains” of rebuilding her marital relationship, or the old timer who quietly says, “I wish I’d listened earlier in my life to the love and power of the Twelve Steps.”

It’s these and so many other experiences which Red Door invites us to pass along, not for personal bravado, not to pad our ego, but for that fundamental rationale of AA.

Survival from our alcoholism rises when one alcoholic talks to another and each share their experiences, strengths, and hopes for if my suggestion worked for me, perhaps it will for you.

So, with that background, if someone were to ask me,

“So again, Jim A of St X Noon, Cincinnati, would you please pass along three aspects of the AA Program which worked for you?

First, I’d say the importance of the beauty of a regular review of the Twelve Steps. When we enter the Program, we are struck by the magnitude and complexity of the life-changing journey facing us, “How can I do this?” We immediately find a step-by-step way to do it. We hear, “Easy does it,” a “Step at a time”, and so forth. We have a personal guide in our sponsor and of course in our meetings themselves where others share their experiences. We focus on our wrongdoings and how we eradicate them and undertake ways of making up for our drunken activities. Some try to work through the Steps alone but it’s best when we seek help from our Higher Power and our sponsor both of whom will walk the very steps we are walking. And as sinners always, we are always reviewing our conduct as we progress through our life and making amends where needed. We learn that life is a process.

Second, maintain a conscious contact with God as you understand Him. Key words: “constant contact” and “your understanding of God.” Recovery is a “constant” effort. It continues each day for something new is always jumping out at you and your armory of responding to life’s surprise attacks is strengthened by constant preparedness, like attending meetings, reading the Big Book, working with others, carrying messages. One’s understanding of God evolves for it seems at first perhaps very thin, but time deepens your understanding. And the best news is that God is aways there, reaching for you no matter where you are or what difficulty you find yourself in. Do something each day to replenish the supply of responses to difficulties you encounter through your “constant contact with God.”

Third, carry the message of the AA Program and practice these principles. In a simplistic way, we learn and build when we “give it away, pass it on.” The Program calls us each day to carry the message of joy and happiness, of a way out of difficulties, and ways to get out of trouble. It’s not a “one shot Johnny” program but a way of life, a life of love and strength and growth. Carry that Good News. We are called by Step Twelve to spread that news—to share what we found and how it changed our lives, indeed, how it saved our life.

That’s it. That’s what I would say if so asked. I get no Gold Star for walking that path but what I do get is strengthening my own program and the reinforcement it provides.”

“Thanks Jim, and to all of you reading this Red Door meditation … remember,

‘It does work if we work it’”.

Jim A. St X Noon, Cincinnati

What Can We Do to Help Our Addicted Communities?

Thu, 22 May 2025 02:40:56 GMT

According to the best estimates, opioids will kill another 52,000 Americans this year alone—and up to half a million in the next decade. The cost of untreated addiction to the US economy exceeds $700 Billion annually in healthcare, crime and lost productivity. Of course that means deaths, communities destroyed, and families torn to shreds.

As a person in recovery—I know from my own experience and from more than 40 years of hearing other people’s stories. Addiction is hard and it is hell. People with substance abuse issues have difficult lives and their addiction makes the lives or people around them a nightmare.

I don’t feel sorry for people with a substance abuse disorder—those who in less polite company we might call addicts and alcoholics. No, I don’t feel sorry for them, and you shouldn’t either. What we should feel is responsible.

Because WE created the community. WE created the economy. And WE create, and allow, a culture that supports and enables addiction. Yes, we know about the Sackler Family. But they couldn’t have done it all by themselves. That’s where we play a role--those who are engaged in our community.

Andrew Sullivan who writes extensively about our drug problem in the United States says, “To see the opiate epidemic as a pharmaceutical problem is to miss something: the despair that makes so many of us want to numb out. Drugs are just one of the ways that Americans are trying to cope with lives where the core elements of human happiness—faith, family and community—are missing.

Until we resolve these deeper social problems, drugs and the many things we can all be addicted to—will flourish.”

Despair. He’s talking about despair.

“Who has what you want?” In early recovery we are told to look around and see who has what you want? When we are trying to find a sponsor, we are told, “Look for someone who has what you want.” And when we are trying to figure out how to “do” this recovery thing we hear, “Look for the people who have what you want.”

But as a newcomer we don’t really know what that means… “Who has what you want?” We might go out in the parking lot and see who is driving the nicest car. But with a little bit of time in recovery we start to hear people in the meetings and they talk about how they got through something difficult or a hard day or a job loss or heartbreak or how THEY changed so that their relationships changed, and we started to think, “Oh, that’s what I want.” They are the people who have moved out of despair. Life may still be challenging, but these are folks who have moved out of despair.

Addiction is dark. It is very dark for the person with a substance abuse disorder-and dark for those around them. Every time a person enters recovery a light is turned back on. In one life yes, but that light spreads: To children who get their parent back. To employers who get a loyal worker, to communities that become stronger, safer and more whole. To remove despair. And that takes all of us. In and out of the rooms.

The Power of Submission: From Addiction to Redemption

Wed, 14 May 2025 22:22:52 GMT

In chapter three verse six of the Book of Proverbs we read, “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

“Submission” was not in my vocabulary. “Submission” was a teenage boy’s game in which they interlocked fingers to push the other to the ground and “submit.” Submission was something of a dirty word. It meant giving up or giving into someone or something. I submitted to no one and that did not get any better when my addictions kicked in.

I submitted myself to Jack Daniels and friends, without a fight. They were so kind I did not see them killing me. They made me feel good; more outgoing. Like the “Mirror of Erised” (desire spelt backward) in Harry Potter, the person looking into it saw what he or she wanted to see until it would drive the person insane. Addiction is, as the Big Book says, “Baffling, Cunning and Powerful.”

How did I not see what was happening? Why was I so different? Why did my father take four hours to drink half a pint of Guinness and not finish it. I drank that much in whiskey to get warmed up. It’s the disease, stupid. It’s the disease.

I submitted without a whimper. I submitted with joy in my heart and a song in my head. Alcohol helped me do what I did not think I could do for myself. I was just into my twenties, in college, in the year nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-eight. The sixties were at their height, and I got high with them.

Then came the crash. Not the stock market. No, I crashed. I submitted to a Power Greater than myself that caused me to tell my boss “I think I have a drinking problem.” Two months later I said, “I need to go to treatment.” To this day, the only rationale I can accept is that God spoke to me loud and clear to get my attention. Perhaps it was because God knew my marriage was not going to last and I needed to be sober in order to become a custodial single dad. I didn’t care for sobriety, but I stopped.

Four years later, a lot of meetings, therapy, and “interventions” by AA friends and people I did not know, but who cared enough about me to talk and share their experience strength and hope so that I could get the point, Step four brought me to my knees. I submitted to a loving God, a Power greater than myself and admitted defeat. I had lost all my values. I was not living up to the values I proclaimed. I was a hypocrite—a false self; a shell of who I could be.

I submitted to the person who heard my fifth step and was welcomed back to the real world—I had Defects of Character, and it was okay. I would learn to work on them and some of them might actually go away. “God was doing for me what I could not do for myself.”

It took me almost five years to submit to God, to the program, to the fellowship, to this way of life. “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

The Big Book puts it this way: “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point….” It was all in or nothing. There could be no half-measures. Sobriety demanded submission to a way of life that was suggested as a program of recovery that works best for most.

I submitted to making Amends, admitting my faults, asking for forgiveness, being humble, accepting feedback in silent gratitude. And then the joy of complete submission. Constant contact with my Higher Power through prayer and meditation. Submission to a power that wanted only the best for me and did not want me wasted. Submission to a power that kept his/her promises; new freedom and happiness; no regrets; understanding serenity; my past was now my strength, a new outlook on life and no more financial fears. I was trusted to make decisions and know that I was not alone.

By submitting completely and wholeheartedly to this program, fellowship and this Power greater than myself, I came to realize that, “God is doing for [me] us what [I] we could not do for [myself] ourselves.”

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the new Orleans area.

Surrendering to Win: A Shift in Sobriety

Thu, 08 May 2025 01:48:15 GMT

I’ve been sober for many a 24hrs. My Twelve Steps app says it’s been 12,869 days as I write this. Very early in my sobriety, someone gave me a mini bumper sticker that said, “I didn’t quit, I surrendered.” Ugg. Yuck. I don’t surrender.

Over the years, I would hear shares in meetings about surrendering to God. Yuck! I also grew up in a household where punishment was harsh, and alcohol was consumed all the time. People would say “surrender to God”. I would hear- “you will be punished”. The Big Book would say: “Turn my will and my life over to God as I understood that” I would hear, “there is no place to hide from being hurt”.

I needed a new higher power. I knew it. I listened, did the steps, and learned to pray to a higher power that I didn’t understand. I still bristled at the word Surrender. The third step was and is the hardest for me. Then at a meeting recently someone said: "surrender means joining the winners" WHOA—what???? I stopped in my tracks—Why had I never heard this before?

So, like any good internet searcher—I googled the phrase. Since AI is now part of Google—here’s what I found:

1.Surrender means joining the winners is a metaphorical way of saying that surrendering can be a path to a more positive outcome, even if it involves giving up something (alcohol). 2.It implies that by relinquishing control or resistance, one can potentially gain access to a more beneficial state or situation (sobriety). 3.This saying often suggests that surrendering can involve a shift in how one views a situation, acknowledging limitations and recognizing that something else may be more advantageous (turning things over to the care of God). 4.The concept of surrendering can be applied to various aspects of life, including personal struggles, relationships, and spiritual practices (all the steps). 5.In many spiritual contexts, surrender involves letting go of attachment to outcomes and placing trust in a higher power or a larger plan (Let God and Let God). 6.Surrendering can be a liberating experience, allowing individuals to move past what isn't working and embrace new possibilities (The Promises). 7.The phrase "joining the winning side" suggests that surrendering can be a path to a more positive outcome or a victory of sorts (Step 12). That means putting in the work and trusting our preparation. It means focusing more on what we can control and less on what we can’t (Step 1).

The author Anne Lamott is often cited as the author of the quote. It states that "surrender means you get to come on over to the winning side." This suggests that surrendering to a situation, whether it's personal challenge or the acceptance of something beyond one's control, can actually lead to a positive outcome or a more peaceful state.

The AI on the internet and Anne Lamott changed my whole outlook in a few minutes. Once you know where truth is, it defines everything else that has to happen. Surrender means you get to come on over to the winning side.

That is the truth as I have tried to live as a sober person. I don’t do it easily but when I do—WOW my life changes in a moment. Thank you to the person who gave me this quote and to Anne Lamott for sharing it first.

Libbie S.

Easter beginnings

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:45:04 GMT

Easter arrives in the Spring of every year. We celebrate Christ’s resurrection. He rose from the dead and returned to guide us as we live our lives. The devil had sought His death but failed.

I vividly recall Easter as a kid in Morgan Park, a neighborhood in a large city in the Midwest. Easter brought trips to nearby Roseland and the local Robert Hall and J C Penney stores for an Easter sport coat and tie, maybe a suit as I grew up. Mother made my sister Spring dresses and blouses. For some reason, Easter meant a special gift—a real “hardball” baseball glove for me and, in another year, Schwinn 26” bikes for both of us. In our family’s Baptist Church, Easter meant a Baptist baptism followed by a pageant featuring a standing 8 by 12-foot (or thereabout) wooden Bible my father had made. The Sunday School teacher would introduce stories of Isaiah, Peter, Mary, and others, and then suitably costumed Sunday School kids would open the door of this giant wooden Bible and walk through into the 9:30 service usually filled with proud anticipating parents.

Later, there was another Easter which arrived, and which brought a deep personal understanding of the meaning of a “resurrection.”I write of the Easter I admitted I was trapped and tangled in the jungle of my alcoholism and all its terrible ramifications.

That Easter I admitted my alcoholic romp had to end and at last concluded I couldn’t do it by myself and find the serenity I deeply sought.

That Easter Week, I surrendered to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I felt born again, resurrected, for I could see a new life, free of alcohol if I but reached and worked for it.

I felt relieved. I so wanted to learn and so I started following all I could learn about the AA Program—about “working the Program.” I studied and worked the Steps. I spent time reading the Big Book. Over time and after a lot of meetings I learned I could fight off demon rum and resist the “social” habits of an alcoholic. I found and tied up with a sponsor to help me and “keep me honest.” I went to a lot of “discussion and lead” meetings. It wasn’t always easy to change my life, but I kept at it. Working the Steps was difficult but necessary and continues today. I provided “leads” when asked to tell my story and I encountered friendly bands of brothers and sisters whose sole commitment was to that path trod by those seeking a life free of alcohol. Laughter and the support of others were part of my new life, and it continues so.

But as humans and former drunks we sometimes return to our sin of alcohol, seduced by that drunken ego of ours. But, just as a sinner, just as with Christ, always, always, I was welcomed back and have long “stayed back.”

Yes, my “Morgan Park Easters” were centered on finding and building a Christian life. But for me at least, and maybe others, today Easter is also about recalling my surrendering and accepting the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I still look for and find Bill W and Dr. Bob, and Dick my sponsor, and the gangs at Oak Street, East One and Two, St X Noon, those meetings on Mohegan Island, in Southwest Harbor and Springboro, and working with newbies who were coming to grips with Step Three, carrying the message of hope to prisoners in the county DUI jail and to lawyers threatened by their tangles caused by their alcoholism.

Easter and Jesus Christ and Alcoholics Anonymous brought to me, and continues to bring to all of us, a way of freedom from the devils of life if we but reach for their assistance … for that I am blessed and eternally grateful.

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati

Is Your Higher Power Too Small (Or Too Big)?

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 01:46:38 GMT

Years ago I read a wonderful book called, “Your God is Too Small” by J.B. Phillips. In it he wrote about how most of us struggle with faith because we keep making God too small—we make or imagine him kind of like us or maybe like a human being with super powers. But even if God was a human being with the powers of the whole Justice League of America—it’s still a human construct and hence, according to Phillips, too small.

I thought about that this week in a conversation with some folks in recovery. This was a smart, well-read bunch and we were discussing some ideas about how God may intersect with physics and …yeah, that kind of talk.

At one point I said, “But what about a personal God?” and I got THE look, and someone said, “Well, I used to believe in a personal God but then I studied…” The message was basically that believing in a personal God was kind of juvenile or unsophisticated.

I sense that slight judgment in other places as well. That look or word that suggests that those who (still) believe in a personal God have not matured in their spiritual development. There’s a kind of spiritual condescension, “Oh, I’m past the personal God thing. Now God is a cosmic force or a New Physics God…blah, blah.

But then after confessing to my very personal God that I feel small cause I’m not making Him/Her big enough, start to think, “Whoa, isn’t making (perceiving) God as a distant, cosmic, force of the universe just another way to make God too small?” (Yes, irony: in making God so big we make him small again.)

Can’t God be a galaxies-wide, loving, impersonal cosmic force and a personal shepherd at the same time? Why can’t God (we are talking GOD after all) be BIG and small at once?

Think about this: If we really grasp the Trinity and if we swear that we believe in this three-in-one business, then why not a God who is all: all forms, all types, all sizes, all styles, all dimensions simultaneously? That’s a Higher Power worth having around.

Step by Honest Step

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:37:22 GMT

Step one was problematic for me. I could not imagine myself powerless over alcohol. After all, I said mass, counseled individuals, couples, and families. I paid my bills, took good care of my car and my dog. I finally got it through my head that the problem was when I picked up a drink, I had no idea—no matter what I said—if I was going to have one drink or a bottle. Once that door was opened, I realized the concept of unmanageability.

Step two was a whole other story. After much thought and research as to why “God” was not in step two, I concluded that folks in 12 step programs seldom, if ever, received Unconditional Love, Forgiveness or Trust. This is what we receive in the meetings and from one another. This is a Power greater than me that could keep me sober.

Step Four was problematic. I did not have any defects of Character until a sponsor had me tell him what I thought of a particular AA member, and I did. Then he said: “What you see and like in another is also in you. What you see and don’t like in another is also in you, but you don’t want to think about it.” True. Now it was much easier to see what I had not seen for some time. It was time to stop pointing my finger at others and look at the three pointing back at myself.

Step Five was the best confession I had ever done in my life, and it was not to a priest. There was joy over one sinner finding peace of mind.

Then, in making a list of all the people I had harmed, I thought of all the friends and acquaintances I had. Slowly my mind began to see life from a different point of view. I had used many of these people, took advantage of their kindness and generosity. It was painful to think that I had hurt anyone. I considered myself, and was often told, I was the life of the party. Making amends opened my eyes to much more than I could ever have imagined. I had put people’s life in danger. I learned that much of what I did was in a blackout. That’s not an excuse.

Then, taking a daily inventory helped me put a filter between my brain and my tongue. “Does it have to be said?” “Does it have to be said now?” “Does it have to be said by me?” I wish I could remember who taught me this. It sure helped keep my mouth quiet and me out of trouble.

“Sought through Prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God was we understood Him(Her). Bill Wilson wrote: “Sometimes when friends tell us how well we are doing, we know better inside. We know we aren’t doing well enough. We still can’t handle life, as life is. There must be a serious flaw somewhere in our spiritual practice and development. What, then, is it? The chances are better than even that we shall locate our troubles in our misunderstanding or neglect of AA”s Step Eleven – prayer, meditation, and the guidance of God. The other Steps can keep most of us sober and somehow functioning. But Step Eleven can keep us growing, if we try hard and work at it continually.”[As Bill Sees It. 264]

When I first read this, I could not help but think, “This is coming from a man who was an atheist.” I had grown up with God, prayers, etc. but not this way. What fascinated me as I practiced prayer and meditation is that in Kindergarten, I memorized the definition of prayer - “Prayer is the raising up of the mind and heart to God.” For the next thirty some years I ignored that definition until I was reminded of it in recovery.

At first, I was not great at it. I held onto my old ideas of saying prayers, attending church, etc. As I listened to men and women share their experience, strength and hope through working this step, I agreed with Bill, “Step Eleven can keep us growing, if we try hard and work at it continually.”

Working at it continually has brought me to this day, another day of peace of mind and sobriety, another day consciously aware of the presence of God in my life.

Séamus D.

Séamus D is a retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans

U-turns and Being Lost

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:44:09 GMT

The topic at a meeting recently was about U turns. Wow, did it get me thinking. There have been many in my life. Not getting the job I wanted after seminary made me want to give up ministry, but the U turn was that I found another job that had me moving to Seattle. Unfortunately, I was the victim of a crime just after I arrived. My friends in Boston thought I would make a U Turn and go back to Boston. I didn’t and would stay and thrive.

The new city had me taking U Turns all the time since I got lost so often and Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet. My best friend died, and I chose to deal with it by drinking more and more. A counselor finally told me I was on the road to being an Alcoholic and if I didn’t stop, I would become like my mother. She said I was playing Russian Roulette with my life and the life of my young daughter.

I needed a U turn, and a change of direction. AA was there to help me make the biggest U turn of my life. The fellowship provided me with Good Orderly Direction. I was no longer lost.

Sometimes I still feel lost and lonely, and I don’t know what to do. Then I remember that we aren’t lost, we need direction from a power greater than ourselves.

This prayer written by Fr. Tomas Merton is the one I go to whenever I feel lost:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Fr. Thomas Merton

My Journey to Sobriety

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 23:40:48 GMT

As far back as I can remember, I have felt different; less than, unworthy, and out of place. My childhood was marked by pain and confusion, shaped by the words and actions of those who were supposed to love me unconditionally. My mother, overwhelmed by her own struggles, often lashed out at me. When I was around seven or eight years old, she punched me in the face, leaving me with a black eye. She blamed me for her marital problems, telling me that I was the reason for her suffering. My stepfather reinforced this belief with his own brand of physical and verbal abuse. I learned early on that hiding my feelings and manipulating situations was necessary for survival.

These experiences left deep scars that carried into my adolescence and adulthood. I struggled to connect with others and often isolated myself. In high school, I kept my head down, rarely speaking to anyone. I longed to be accepted, but fear kept me from forming meaningful relationships. I felt sneaky, smarter than others, and convinced myself that bad things wouldn’t happen to me. These thoughts followed me into my teenage years, where I found an escape, alcohol.

I had my first drink when I was 16 or 17 while working at ShowBiz Pizza Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a party, a gathering where I desperately wanted to be noticed and accepted. I drank sweet wine, and though it made me dizzy and out of control, it stripped away my inhibitions. For the first time, I felt free. I don’t remember much about that night other than lying awkwardly on the floor, hoping someone would acknowledge me. No one did. I barely made it home, my vision blurred, my head foggy, but I shrugged it off as just another experience. I didn’t drink again for a couple of years, but when I did, it was the beginning of something much bigger than I ever anticipated.

On January 1st, 1988, I walked into a gay bar and ordered a Long Island Tea; the only drink I knew. This moment marked a turning point in my life. Alcohol and my identity became intertwined. Drinking allowed me to embrace my truth, but it also became my crutch. Soon after, I came out to my mother and stepfather. Their reaction was devastating. I was kicked out, told that I was an abomination in the eyes of God. My mother mourned me as though I had died, wearing black in my presence for nearly a decade. The rejection cemented my feelings of worthlessness, and alcohol became my refuge.

As I navigated adulthood, alcohol became my constant companion. At first, it made me feel invincible. It silenced my doubts, fears, and pain. I believed I had control over it; that I could stop whenever I wanted. But over time, I became dependent. It was no longer just about numbing the pain; it became my reason for existing. I began drinking all day, every day. The lies, manipulation, and isolation I had learned in childhood became tools to maintain my addiction.

Alcohol robbed me of relationships and experiences. I had almost no friends, yet I convinced myself I didn’t need them. The few relationships I formed; Ed, my spouse; Kevin, my best friend; and Margie and Calvin, my friends from college, were strained by my drinking. I hid my struggles, pretending everything was fine while my life crumbled. My self-perception was distorted. I thought I was smarter than others, that I could outmaneuver consequences, but deep down, I knew I was falling apart.

I now understand that I am an alcoholic. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes it perfectly: “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30). I spent years chasing that illusion, believing I could find the perfect balance between drinking and control. But the reality is, I never had control. Alcohol controlled me.

Sobriety is now my greatest goal. I am committed to honesty, self-confidence, humility, and spiritual growth. The Twelve Steps provide a path forward, a way to make amends, and to live a life free from the chains of addiction. “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 83). My past is painful, but it has shaped me. Through treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous, I am learning to let go of resentment, envy, and fear.

I know that recovery is not a destination but a lifelong journey. I am willing to do the work, to be honest with myself and others, and to surrender to the process. As I continue to write my story, I understand that the past will always be a part of me, but it no longer has to define me. Sobriety is my new beginning, and for the first time in my life, I believe I am worthy of it.

-Eric M

Works Cited
Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. 2002. 4th ed. New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services.

A 4 A.M. encounter with the past: How Christ and Bill W and Dr Bob help us handle it

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 23:59:10 GMT

The other night, I was awakened at 4 A.M. by a loving recollection of my late wife who died 60 days ago almost to the day. Its appearance wasn’t a surprise, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

But returning to sleep can be difficult, but certainly not always. Folks at my home in an assisted living medical facility tell me these wake-up calls continue but “stretch out as time goes on.” I also was aware that she would “appear” during the day when I encountered long favored favorite sites or events.

As Christians and recovering alcoholics, how do we deal with these sudden recollections—what do Christ, and Bill W. and Dr. Bob offer to help us through these moments?

The offerings of Christ are clear: “Turn it over to Christ.” He’s there with us at that very moment. His love for us is clear. Sometimes when I’m hit with one of these episodes, I’m able to stop and recognize it was a dream. As a human, I may try to solve this hurt myself. At my best, I ask for His assistance—and while I suppose it may sound flip, I try to go back to sleep or move on at the event. But His basic teaching is just that, “Let Me have it and deal with it—so turn it over to Me.”

As for Bill W. and Dr. Bob? The Steps they wrote also clearly provide our roadmap:

Step 1- “We’re powerless” over the sudden appearance of these ills—they come and go, always. We don’t control their appearance or content, or veracity for that matter.

Step 2. “Greater than ourselves.” Oh we try our own remedies—self-pity, anger, resentment, blaming someone. Maybe we wake up and try to appear productive or move smoothly through the event, but sometimes our poor efforts are just that, poor and empty.

Step 3. “Turn it over.” Ah, the answer appears—He is there to receive and accept the hurt you feel. The Steps themselves call for us to do that—to reach for Him and seek His help and comfort just as we did when we surrendered our alcoholism.

Step 4.” Make an inventory.” Well, maybe there is something you can do to answer the hurt, perhaps rectify a past wrong, identify the accuracy of the guilt you feel. Was your Higher Power trying to say something to you? So, the next day, ask yourself, “Was she or our Higher Power speaking to me about something?”

Steps 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Be specific about what in the past has awakened which you need to correct—the Big Book readily tells you how to go about that.

Step 10. “Continued” the process. People tell me that this is a non-ending thing and occurs years later. Perhaps its intensity lessens, but the surprise of it might bring a new sense of guilt or sorrow.

Step 11. Again, maintain a “conscious contact” with your Higher Power. It’s needed. Following Christ and His teachings is not a one trick pony situation—it’s an everyday proposition. “Why?” because we are human and our old ways of doing things reappears, like in those past days when our devil-ego told us that we were able to guide our feelings and our ways of life itself.

Step 12. Sharing how you are handling these sudden outbursts of sadness...” You ask, what do I do when it happens at 4 A.M?” Tell people how you handle this—don’t just play “wounded widow or widower.” Be honest about the way out of this jam caused by that 4 A.M. dream.

A final thought: As the episodes trail on, I have concluded that they are reminders of my wonderful loving wife. I’m learning anew why I loved her for 66 years. She seems to help me still by raising the question: “What would Judy do?”

So, you see, our Higher Power was there alongside Bill W and Dr. Bob, at that Gate House that Sunday afternoon and evening and again in the writing of The Big Book. Each brought to us the power to respond, always, to our devil-ego.

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati

Litany of Penitence and Step 4

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 01:00:06 GMT

It was probably my third attempt at doing a fourth step when I sat down with a legal pad, a copy of the ten commandments and the “seven deadly sins.” But, on this occasion I had one more document—the Litany of Penitence of the Ash Wednesday service from the Book of Common Prayer (which is now online).

“We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves…” I easily checked these off. I didn’t love myself so how could I love anyone else?

“We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.” In answering this I discovered how many grudges I carried; how much anger was knotted inside me. It’s embarrassing to remember that. At that time, I believed I had nothing to be sorry for. After all, whatever I did was “all their fault.”

“We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.” Only too well did I know the mind of Christ – the summary of the ten commandments made it clear and I knew I had not lived up to them in a long time. I was not an example of being the Christian I promised to be in baptism and confirmation. Whatever service I did for others was self-serving, hypocritical.

“We confess…all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,” Oops. That was a lot to take in. I had grown somewhat since my first fourth step when I was in denial of my character defects. Now, I could write a few chapters on each one of these. When I came into the program I had no Character Defects, now I was looking at them written large in front of me—pride, using god, people, places and things, self-centered and absolutely no patience.”

“Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people.” Self-indulgence and using others—guilty as charged. Again, I could write a chapter on each of these.

“Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves, Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work.” How often I wished I had what others had. If only I had what they had I’d be happy. I was lying to myself and others about how hard I worked, and I loved those “shiny things” of life.

“Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,” Oh, I prayed, and I preyed. I worshipped but, as an active addict, I did not always remember being where I was.”

“Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty…” It took me a while to acknowledge I had wronged others; that my talk about human suffering was self-serving in that it was all talk to let people know I had a command of all the suffering in the world and what they needed to do about it.

“For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us…” I should probably type this one in red ink. I still blush when I think of my judgmentalism, prejudice, and contempt.

“For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us.” Just throw it out the window, the trash collectors will pick it up tomorrow. Cigarette butts, plastic cups and plates, God only knows what else I dumped here and there and in rivers and streams. The thought of those coming after me never crossed my mind except to comment something about social scientists digging up this stuff in another century or more and wondering what kind of folk lived here.

As we come to the end of this Litany of Penitence hopefully feeling guilty and with some remorse we turn to our Higher Power, To God as we understand Him/Her, and ask: “Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us; Accomplish in us the work of your salvation, That we may show forth your glory in the world.” Despite all that we have done we know that God will and has forgiven us and will use us to show His mercy, love, compassion for all.

And finally, we pray: “By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord, Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.” In other words, let me learn to die-to-self, open my mind and heart so that I too become alive. Amen.

Séamus.

Séamus D is a retired Episcopal priest living in New Orleans

Ash Wednesday

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 22:32:01 GMT

My mother was a by the book Roman Catholic. She followed all the rules. As I child I didn’t really understand what difference it made if I went up to the altar for communion and it was 3 minutes BEFORE the exact time of fasting was met. If we went into any church and forgot or did not have a hat, my mother would use a Kleenex to put on her head and the head of my sisters and me. So much about church was weird to me.

Ash Wednesday was one of the weirdest to me. I was thinking about it this past week and how it didn’t connect me to anything as a child. In fact, it scared me. I didn’t go to Catholic school, so I didn’t have the nuns trying to explain what Ash Wednesday was about. We would go to get ashes at the early mass, before school. It seemed that it was a rule that you couldn’t rub off the ashes on your forehead, so I was teased at the public school I went to. There were a few of us Catholic school kids at my school. When we looked at each other on that day I imagined that they felt the same way as me – embarrassed. I couldn’t answer the question – “why do you have that stuff on your forehead” because I didn’t really know.

Oh- I did know “From dust you came and dust you will return”. I thought it meant – I am dirty, and I will die! Dying was nothing I ever thought of. I was a kid, old people died.

Then there was the “giving things up for Lent” that followed. Again, I didn’t really understand. When I was in my teens and very critical of the church, I watched my mother “give up” alcohol for Lent. She had a loophole though. Sundays were part of Lent but not days of abstinence. So, she drank on Sundays and would explain it by the rubric. The next year she decided that she would only drink wine and then the next year she just drank. I was beginning to understand that she had a problem with alcohol.

This year I found myself reflecting on what Lent could mean to me as a recovering person. Mardi Gras is an alcoholic’s dream. Let’s have a party for days and days, knowing that when Wednesday came you could change your ways and repent. Such a dream for me. I will have fun AND then I will stop drinking. But I rarely did.

When I found AA, the model of Mardi Gras and Lent became something else. It could be a celebration and then a change of heart and mind. The hole in me that would not be filled with more alcohol but rather with my higher power’s help. Giving things up became a time to do more 4^th and 10^th step work so I would rid myself of my more glaring defects. I could also reach out to others who might be struggling with their disease.

I am dust, we all are, and to dust we will return. Now that I am much older with many years of sobriety, I know this to be true. What will we do with this one precious life? I went to church last week and was blessed and given ashes on my forehead. Now it is a symbol of humility, gratitude and grace.

I appreciate this Ash Wednesday Reflection from Kate Bowler:

Today we begin our journey.

The first day to stop pretending.

To sit with what is fragile.

To let grace sneak in through the cracks

Libbie S.

Anyone feeling insecure these days?

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:41:02 GMT

In case you have not noticed there are political divisions among us that continue to tear at the fabric of society and civility. Political polarization is intensifying, with each side pushing against the other, often in ways that challenge the values we hold dear. The sense of unity and common purpose is hard to find, leaving many wondering where all this division will ultimately lead. These threats to our social cohesion are real and serious, raising serious concerns about the stability of democracy itself.

Global warming is becoming more and more apparent. We see the increasingly erratic weather patterns, rising sea levels, and the growing threats to ecosystems that provide essential resources. This does not bode well for the future. That’s some serious insecurity.

Then there’s the war in Ukraine, which threatens not only the global food supply but also the economy and global stability. The ripple effects of this conflict are felt across the world, as economies face inflation, shortages, and unrest. As nations pick sides and tensions rise, we wonder how long it will be before the world faces even greater consequences of war.

There seems to be no end to the gun violence either. Since 2014, the United States has averaged more than one mass shooting a day, with 4,011 recorded incidents in that time. It’s hard to ignore how pervasive and widespread gun violence has become, and many feel vulnerable, unable to escape the constant threat of harm.

And then there’s the rising addiction crisis, claiming more and more young lives. Mental health issues are escalating, and suicides have risen by 30%. These challenges, combined with the growing pressure on individuals, families, and communities, make it feel as though our safety nets are fraying, and our sense of security is slipping further away.

I don’t remember a time when life felt as insecure as it does now. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, security is the second most important need, after food and water. It is essential for our well-being and peace of mind. Without security we can find ourselves driven to all kinds of coping mechanisms, from substance use to unhealthy behaviors, in an attempt to escape the pressure of constant insecurity.

Faith is the only place I know to go when things are hard. My fears and insecurities can feel overwhelming, but my faith calls me to look away from those threats and trust in something far greater than anything that can harm me—including death itself. It’s only in God that I find ultimate safety and security, regardless of the chaos that may surround me. So, when the weight of the world feels too much to bear, I breathe deeply, look up, and remember that I am held in love, knowing that in God's hands, I am truly secure.

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121-1-2 NRSV

The alcoholic’s path.

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 01:38:44 GMT

Beyond a reasonable doubt, the typical active alcoholic simply drinks way too much every day and is intoxicated whenever and as often as he or she wishes, regardless of the consequences. Their ever-present drunken ego joins the frolic and unconditionally releases him or her from that person’s moral standards:

“So, what if I collapsed into a stupor, vomiting on the kitchen floor or on my spouse, or if I lost a job because I was drunk and lied about a contract. Divorce? You bet, she just didn’t understand nor did the kids and at last I can live without all their nagging and crying.”

Looking back, at some point, the active alcoholic may have entered a phase where this promise was made to a spouse, the kids or boss or judge, and perhaps made to all simultaneously:

“Never again will I drink.”

It was uttered with seriousness, perhaps it was really meant ... then. The commitment may have lasted for a period, but too frequently, it was broken.

This is the reality of our alcoholism, a path as clear as can be.

The alcoholic may be aware of this reality but just can’t seem able or willing to quell its power and apparent inevitability.

The terrible fact is that he or she need not ride the car to the bottom of that canyon for he or she can get out of their “drunk-mobile” before it crashes and burns. Part of the tragedy is that the alcoholic probably knows that truth and nonetheless continues the ride down.

The Program’s sunshine tells us that all this horribleness can be stopped, eliminated from our lives. But it calls for drastic changes needed to reject the seductive calls of our alcohol-loving ego.

Make no mistake. Christ came because of the sinner ... we sin, always. But He reaches out to us the sinners, to the downtrodden, to the prostitutes, the tax collectors. He offers His hand to assist us. At “the place of the Skull,” He reached for a thief hanging beside Him.

It’s said that Bill W and Dr. Bob, after they seemed to have found a way out of their own drunkenness, went to the hospitals in Akron and asked if there was “any patient who might be suffering from alcoholism”, and sure enough, they met and carried the Program’s message found in the Twelve Steps:

Those steps cannot be clearer:

Steps 1,2 and 3-We’ve tried everything, we’re at the bottom, it’s “do something about it or die”. We turn to our Higher Power maybe not knowing what it is, but admitting that whatever it is, at a bare minimum, it - perhaps, maybe, dare I hope - will be “better for me” than the bottle.

Steps 4 through 10 provide a detailed step-by-step path to rid our minds and our darkness of the past, to remove it from our being, to make amends where appropriate and possible.

Eleven tells us not to sit on our fannies once we have “worked the Steps” for, as humans, we must recognize that we will always be attacked by our egos and risk returning to ego’s dark days. Step 11 calls us to rework the Steps, to deepen our reliance on a Higher Power who calls us to look for “that next right thing” in our daily lives.

And then comes Step 12 ... it politely says, don’t relax and feel comfortable with yourself...carry the good news. You found folks at the AA Clubhouse who responded to you when you reached out. Do the same for others in the same straits as you were.

It’s just as Christ always does for us...we reach for Him and His hand is there ... always

Jim A, St X Noon, Springboro Noon, Wednesday

The Spirituality of the Twelve Steps

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:29:04 GMT

“The spirituality of the Twelve steps, and of A.A. as a whole, is clear and powerful. Hope, truth, honesty, letting go, acceptance, loving others as a way of loving self, gratitude—these are spiritual realities that are part of the culture of A.A.”* I am grateful that no one told me the above when I came into the program. All I was told, or probably remember, was “keep coming back.” And, truth be told, that was all I really needed to hear.

You see, I looked at the 12 steps and concluded that with my background in theology and the fact that I was an addictions counselor, I would be a significant help to this group. I would be a great asset. {an ass, yes}

After four and a half years on a dry drunk, I finally had my spiritual awakening and saw that I really needed to start over again.

“The spirituality of the Twelve Steps and of A.A. as a whole is clear and powerful.” When I had my mind and heart opened, I came to realize I had to relearn about spirituality, God, and a lot of humility. I was not one of those who came to the program and “got it.” I didn’t get it because of my pre-conceived notions and the fact I did not believe myself to be an alcoholic.

I heard what I needed to hear. “Keep coming back.” And I did. I listened to stories that almost matched my own, but I could not tell that to the speaker. It was my ‘dirty little secret” to be kept inside of me.

“Secrets will kill you,” I heard. Not me. I knew how to handle them with food, nicotine, and unhealthy relationships. “Truth, honesty.” I had this image of myself as being truthful and honest. Listening to stories, unable to not deny them to myself was making it clear that something had to give, something had to change. Going to the meetings and reading the Big Book was not enough. I had to be truthful to someone else. I had to be honest to myself, god, and others.

Emily Dickens once wrote, “Tell the truth but tell it slant.” In other words, not all of it and, in a way that is acceptable. I tried that and it didn’t work. This is an honesty program and “half measures availed us nothing.”

I had to let go of it all. Tell the truth and hope I won’t be rejected; hope I won’t be laughed at. One night I took a risk and told the group that thoughts of suicide had been running through my head. My face was flushed. I felt hot like I was running a high temp. It was nerves and what I had said could not be retracted. It was ‘out there’ and all heard it. One by one each told of thoughts of, and/or attempts of suicide before and after recovery. Better still, after the meeting all gave me a big warm hug. The “letting go” had begun. Gratitude came in its own time also. Gratitude for the Program, gratitude for the Fellowship, gratitude for Life, and for the new life I was beginning to breathe.

Acceptance came. I am an alcoholic. I am a drug addict. I have other addictions. I am a Child of God. “I am a child of the Universe, no less than the trees, or the stars in the sky, I have a right to be here.” Self-acceptance

“ . . .these are spiritual realities that are part of the culture of A.A.” Spiritual realities. Why had I not been told this in my formative years instead of the guilt trips? Another thing to let go of. I’m not responsible for the decisions or opinions of others.

The fellowship has taught me a way of living that demands rigorous honesty and for this I am grateful. The Fellowship has given me a new life and a new lease on life and for this I am grateful. Today, I have experienced the “promises” as being a reality for me and that is a wonderful feeling. I can look back, as through a glass door, see where I came from, what happened, what I am like now, and give thanks to my Higher Power for another day of living sober and with peace of mind.

Séamus D.

Séamus is a retired episcopal priest in New Orleans

* Twelve Steps to Religionless Spirituality. Ward B. Ewing

Reviving the Old-Timers: Reconnecting, Healing, and Sharing the Journey

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:33:19 GMT

We have a group of old-timers who have stopped going to meetings. Some of the group members had more than 30 years of sobriety. We used Richard Rohr's book "Breathing Under Water" as an enticement to come together, and you should have witnessed the beauty of fresh eyes as we poured into the book. People 15 or more years old stop going to meetings for various reasons: boredom, family pressure, old friends moving away, or dying. Some are admittedly hanging by a thread. They had stopped remembering how important it is to share our stories with someone with skin on. We have Al Anons and AA members in the same meeting feeding off each other. I am a double winner with children of an alcoholic who have suffered addiction too. Al-Anon showed me how to protect my family from an active addict. Most of the "saintly nine" I call them have suffered the same way I have and some have lost children. Please, if you know an old-timer invite him/her to a meeting. Come up with a fresh idea that will keep them coming. Don't be afraid to mix with the winners.

Bob L.
Tomball, TX.

Darkest before the Dawn

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 03:17:37 GMT

I moved to Seattle in early Fall many years ago. The days were still long. Seattle is very far north (it is more north than the top of Maine)! It also sits very far in the Pacific time zone and is closer to the next time zone. At the summer solstice there is 16 plus hours of daylight plus another hour or so of twilight. When the sun sets, and it is mostly dark at 10:30 – that’s when the fireworks of Fourth of July go off because before that it is too light to see them well.

By the time I arrived in early September, the sun was setting about 7:30PM, later than it was in Boston where I had lived, and 3 hours less than at the solstice. The weather was still sunny and warm (not like I believed Seattle would be like).

In the middle of October, the clouds moved in and the gray with drizzle that Seattle is known for started. When daylight savings time ended, I learned that THE BIG DARK (as it was called in Seattle) was starting. The Big Dark starts as the days get shorter and greyer (though there are a few days of sparkling sunshine) and wetter. Seattle gets about 40 inches of precipitation each year. Many places in the US get much more rain/snow than Seattle but there it comes in drizzle with a few storms that go on and on. Almost all the rain is from October 15-May 15. Then the weather changes to dry weather and sunny days with temps in the 80’s making the summer glorious.

I was working hard at a new job and barely noticed the growing dark days. Life was good for the first 5-6 years. At the winter solstice, the sun sets at 4:10 in the afternoon without any twilight light and the sun doesn’t rise until 8am – barely 8 hours of light and since it’s grey so much it seems like it is dark all day. My good friend made me a calendar that went from November until March to help me see the minutes that are lost each day and then gained after the winter solstice.

It was during the dark days when my drinking got worse (the details don’t really matter) and my life looked much more like The Big Dark all the time. The winter solstice and the December before I stopped drinking and found AA was the worse. (Again, you can imagine). The Big Dark was now in me so bad that I knew I had to do something. I knew I had problems but couldn’t see that drinking had anything to do with them.

In January of 1990 my sister invited me to visit her. She had been sober for a few years. Then my oldest friend also encouraged me to see her as she had also been sober a few years. It was my sister who took me to my first meeting when I visited. I cried and cried and cried. I owe them both my sincere gratitude.

I didn’t really remember what was the actual first day that I did not drink. It was probably one of the last days of January. I did know though that I didn’t drink on February 1, so I picked that day. Then I learned that February is a very important day in Seattle. That is the day when the sun sets AFTER 5PM and it becomes noticeable that the light is returning, the Big Dark is really ending.

I came to see that the beginning of sobriety was and is a minute by minute thing. Like the sun after the winter solstice, at first, I did not see the change in the light or in me. By the day I claimed February 1 as my sobriety birthday, I noticed that the Big Dark was fading, and a new light could grow in me. And it has kept growing. Yes, there are cloudy and raining days, but I know now they don’t last.

I moved to Arizona a year ago and even though the sun shines most every day, there are still clouds and rain and wind - that’s life on life’s terms. And with God’s help, by the time you read this I will celebrate 35 years of sobriety.

Thank you, Libbie S

A family’s communion funeral service

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:33:41 GMT

A day or so after my wife died at 1:27 AM, Tuesday the 14th, it came time for our children and me to plan her services at our church,” St Paul’s Episcopal Church on the Ohio River.” We sought to follow what Judy would have wanted and then discussed our thoughts with clergy, the organist and soloist. All agreed with our selections for a simple service to be presented to our deeply grieving extended family.

We selected Psalm 121 to be read by my wife’s sister. Its words sang the good news that “...help cometh even from the Lord...” and we “...shall be preserved from all evil...”.

Our Bible study group had been discussing the Gospel of John the week before her death, and we had then focused on Chapter 6 and particularly verses 32-40. The simple words and phrases of these verses had deeply touched me, and I recommended these words for the service. The kids agreed.

John 6:32-40 is the essence of Christ and His message: “... [For] anyone who comes to me, I will never drive away...” (John 6:37, New International Version).

These verses from John were read by her brother whose voice was sharp and was supported by his slow cadence.

The words of the Psalmist and Christ were the “right lessons” for that gathering at St Paul’s. Nothing fancy, all to the point. Judy would have chosen these words.

During her final struggles and especially when it was clear she was slipping away, I prayed with her. I simply reminded her that Christ was there, waiting for her, reaching for her.

A day or two later, I thought of the similarity between the words of John’s Epistle and the essence of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Steps of recovery are always there for us if we but “work ‘em”. The words of the Psalmist, the Epistle and the “Big Book” each welcome us. Nothing fancy; they describe simple ways to find His love for us and our sobriety. For me, it’s the same path.

Jim A, St X Noon

Surprise Me!

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:41:04 GMT

I am an organized person. My father would say: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I like my life orderly and predictable – at least I think I do, but I know I often fail and then try to wrestle my life back into the order I want. It’s really about control. I want everything to go the way I want.

Recently, I heard someone relate a story about a friend who was very controlling, especially around events that they were responsible for at work. I too had been responsible for many years for large events and would get totally stressed out and irritable thinking, that would ensure that the event went off with no mistakes or problems. I made the experience not very enjoyable for all the people I worked with and even some guests.

The person shared with me that their friend wanted to let go of the overly controlling way they were and so they asked God to help. The prayer was simple: “Please surprise me.” What they were asking for was to let go of the outcome and trust. Trust that God would take care of the event and that it wasn’t all up to the planner. The surprise would be to leave room for a – well – a surprise!

So, I recently tried the prayer. I had a very important meeting with someone I deeply cared about and whom I had also hurt. We had hurt each other badly over many years and were meeting to see if we could…. I’m not quite sure what I wanted or what we would say to each other. I had written down what I thought was the amends I needed to make, to apologize, and ask if there was anything I needed to hear from him about my behavior. I knew what I hoped for. I wanted to listen and to share myself without expectations of how it would all turn out. I sat in my car before the meeting and meditated. Just before I got out of the car, I said out loud: “God, Please, surprise me, thank you.”

We were to meet for just an hour or so. It turned into 5 hours of real connection and deep sharing about so many things. We both took responsibility for the hurt we had contributed to the breach in our relationship. We talked and walked and even ended up having lunch together. It was a miracle, a God Shot experience. We hugged as we said goodbye knowing that we were open to a new kind of friendship.

As I got to my car, I realized that I had been given my surprise! I had forgotten all about my prayer from earlier in the day and all I knew was that a surprise miracle had happened, and I said again, “Thank you.”

When I got a new license plate after I moved, I knew what the plate would say, and I was happy to pay extra to always remember:

Libbie S.

Miracles Do Happen!

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:43:35 GMT

“The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could not do for ourselves.”* That quotation can also be found on January 1 in Daily Reflections. I think it’s appropriate to begin this New Year with the acknowledgement of “the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.”

What’s miraculous in not drinking? Any idiot can stop drinking.” So, I thought, when I told my boss I’d “quit drinking and go to AA.” Going to AA was easy. Quitting became difficult as the periodic craving tightened my stomach, and my mind was anywhere but on my work in the office or at home.

Looking back on it now, it is a miracle I did not drink during those first four-and-a-half years when I existed on a dry drunk. Self-satisfied, self-important, self-centered and selfish. I did all the right things for the wrong reasons, and it darn near killed me.

I look back now and think “It’s a miracle I did not kill myself driving on those narrow Irish roads in a black out. It’s a miracle I did not drive into a bayou driving in a blackout in Louisiana. Others did it. It’s a miracle I’m alive and well.

It’s a miracle indeed that I am alive and able to tell my story and know that, on my own, I could never have stopped drinking. After one drink, maybe. After two drinks, possibly. After three drinks came the blackout and God only knows what else. Most of what I did I learned about from those to whom I made Amends.

It’s not just certainty. It’s “absolute certainty.” There is no doubt, nor can there be any doubt that God. My Higher Power, stepped into my life and gave me back my life. I didn’t know I was among the walking dead. I never ceased to find it fascinating that I grew up in a denomination believing we were the one and only true church. Had it not been for AA, I would never have put my foot inside the church of another denomination. Slowly but surely, God was pushing me onto a new Spiritual Path that was wider than I could have ever imagined. Not only other denominations, but other Faith communities as well. The Spiritual program of A.A. not only helped me stop drinking, but it also assisted me – when my head was finally fog free - to open my mind and heart to God’s ways, not mine, nor male-made dogma and doctrine.

“He [God, Higher Power] has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could not do for ourselves.” The simple steps. “Seamus, if you’re not living the program, you’re not working the steps.” What was the difference in living the program and working the steps? What do I have to do? “Just do the next right thing.”

Once I learned how to live the program on a daily basis – and that took a while – I discovered there’s a simplicity about this way of life. And yet, I could never have gotten this simplicity or recovery on my own. I wanted to complicate it with my own way of doing things and they did not work.

It’s a miracle. The spiritual program teaches us that there are miracles on a daily basis; miracles of a newcomer coming to AA on an important holiday. Miracles of someone not killing themselves. Miracles in how we grow up and open ourselves to God’s path and not our own selfish road.

“The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.” And now the miracle lives because “All we have is a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

My Higher Power directed and achieved the goal of getting me into the program, putting winners in my life, opened my mind and heart, and then it was up to me. I now had a choice. I could choose to continue my daily reprieve, or I could choose to return to the wilderness. What freedom!

It is a miracle that I am here at my desk sharing this. It is a miracle that I am alive and well. I am a walking miracle. Miracles do happen. This new year I want to increase my conscious awareness of my Higher Power and especially in seeing and celebrating the miracles around me. We are all miracles.

*Alcoholics Anonymous.25.

Séamus D.
Séamus is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans area.

Running the Laps of Recovery

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:29:21 GMT

I have found it difficult to articulate my feelings each year as I approach my annual “sobriety birthday” in AA.

At my home group, like many groups, we have a chip system to denote our time in sobriety. White chip (one day), yellow chip (30 days), red chip (3 months), and so forth.

The colors of the chips and times they symbolize can vary from group to group, however the act of recognition is the important thing. Celebrating the shared accomplishment, in the context of our fellowship, shows how we are able to support each other. We are able stay sober one day at a time and demonstrate to the newcomer that the program works – it really does.

After a year, you receive a bronze token and get to share briefly with the group (just a minute or two) about “how you did it”.

When I was new to AA and sobriety, I would see folks getting their one-year or multi-year chips and imagine what a celebration it must be. Like a small victory parade: we clap, they smile, handshakes all around. What a momentous and fun occasion! (And without a doubt, it’s an important milestone to recognize.)

As I approached my own first anniversary several years ago, my emotions were all over the place. I was excited to surpass the one-year mark. It seemed to grant access into a certain unspoken society, moving toward “old timer” status where you measure your progress in years, not just days or months.

However, I wasn’t in the celebratory mood I had envisioned. I found myself re-living those last few dark days at my “bottom” before I had totally surrendered, and remembering how unmanageable my life had really become. It was an uncomfortable juxtaposition of tough memories and congratulatory messages. All the while remaining grateful for the journey and the many gifts of sobriety.

So, one of my sobriety tools is running. I ran some before I got sober, however in recovery running has become more spiritual and meditative, with benefits beyond the physical. An hour a day, first thing in the morning – often in the dark – provides time for prayer and contemplation. The first steps of my run each day always begin with the Serenity Prayer.

At my most recent sobriety birthday (my 7th), I found some peace in a running parallel. I realized that each year in sobriety is not really like running a race at all (where you finish, celebrate, and have a big party).

Rather, it’s more like running a lap on a track. The closer you get to the end of the lap; there you are right back at the beginning again. And in truth, that’s the power of a journey in sobriety, rooted in spirituality and connectedness.

The laps remind me of my own weaknesses and fallibility and guide me through what I now find to be a constructive exercise of reliving those dark days. The laps build the muscle memory that through my recovery program (meetings, sponsorship, working the steps) I can stay sober through a power and a fellowship greater than myself, one day at a time.

So, as I begin this next lap, I’ll start it the way I do each morning:

God,
Grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen.

Rich K.
Durham NC

Celebrating Christmas

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 00:48:10 GMT

Many years ago, Andy Williams wrote this Christmas song; “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…everyone telling you “be of good cheer” …with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call…parties for hosting….And tales of the glories Of Christmases long, long ago it's the most wonderful time of the year.”

Oh, how I loved Christmas. Our Christmas parties began on the first of December and continued until mid-January. Tables were covered with all kinds of alcohol, rum cake, egg nog that could knock your socks off, fruit cake that could be set on fire or ingested through a straw. Ah, what memories! I wish I could forget most of them.

Without a doubt, Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. Before Corporations got their hands on the season of Christmas and turned it into Santamas—a profit-making season—Christmas was about the coming of Jesus into our hearts and into the world. It was a time of joy with hymns appropriate to the season. And yet, for all the Joy and jingle bells, I felt alone and lonely regardless of the party.

My first Christmas/ New Year’s Eve sober party was one I have never forgotten. Two tables at the back of the hall were filled with food and drinks—non-alcoholic drinks, the likes of which I had never tasted, nor did I know such a thing existed. There was probably more people in the hall than the fire-department would recommend, and the Joy that was there was something to experience. I remember thinking if that crowd decided to get drunk how crazy they would be because they seemed so crazy- in a good sense- that night and, I wanted what they had. I wasn’t drinking but I wasn’t sober either.

The Christmas season is without doubt a joy-filled season, the Christmas music, the movies for adults and children, all are geared to suspending the darkness of the world around us and letting us dream of a better time, a new life in the year to come.

It took me a few years to appreciate that Christmas does not have to be a lonely, depressing, alcohol-abusing time. After all, for many in the world around me, it’s just another day – people have to work. One year, I joined a few colleagues to work Christmas day so those with family could spend it with their family. That was, in retrospect, a great gift to them and to those of us who worked that day.

Sobriety opened my mind and heart again to the real meaning of Christmas which—for Christians—is the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth who became a radical Jewish Rabbi (Teacher), and, after his crucifixion and resurrection, became the long-awaited Messiah and, in time, believed to be the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity.

This man was comfortable in the homes of rich and poor alike. He had a simple and profound message—the Kingdom of God is within you. Imagine that. The Kingdom of God is within me? Hard to believe, indeed. After all I had done and said and don’t remember the majority of it—god is still with me, within me, guiding me through others to do the next right thing.

I love our A.A. meetings that are held on Christmas day, New Year’s Day, Easter, etc. when someone walks into the meeting and, usually in tears, opens him/herself for the first time in their life, feel at home within themselves, and with the group.

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…everyone telling you ‘Be of good cheer.” And that statement is not followed by offering an alcoholic beverage. Rather, it is offered with a big warm hug from a stranger - soon to be friend and perhaps your temporary or full-time sponsor.

“And tales of glories of Christmases long, long ago…” “I remember my first Christmas AA meeting. My brother….” “I remember this Christmas, I was just a couple of years in the program, and this person….I never laughed so hard in my life.” “I remember the Christmas Mark has his first heart-attack. He scared the life out of us…” Stories of recovery, of joy, sadness, loneliness, togetherness, all told with all the pain and joy that is appropriate to the situation.

And so it is, “the most wonderful time of the year…” However, we celebrate this season, may our days be blessed with peace, serenity, love, compassion, and may the New Year fill us with new friends and another year of peace and sobriety.

Séamus D.

Séamus is an Episcopal priest in the Louisiana Diocese.

Remembering Christmas

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 01:51:58 GMT

The flow of alcohol, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ:

Remembering Christmas

“Cum’on”, be honest...as a practicing alcoholic, you probably saw Christmas as “God sent” in more ways than one.

The former alcoholic in me remembers those December Christmas days of office parties, Saturday and Sunday neighborhood afternoon/evening open houses, endless wine and cheese at charitable fund raisers, and gifting fine wine and liquor.

Honestly, it seemed the excess of alcohol was the norm. But January often brought shame for my December high-jinks. And often late in my drinking days, this started my paying attention to thoughts of ... “maaaybe” ... ah’tending ... an AA meeting! ... But then again ... maybe not. Ohhh, those recollections.

I ask myself, honestly, did my December binge morph into the devil’s debt the payment for which was called in January?

I recall that my “last binged-based Christmas” was just that. My shame and anxiousness, festered and grew and ate at me until the early days of the Easter Season when I finally surrendered and went to my first AA meeting at “East One.”

But yes! Many AA meetings after that first one, I still have no doubt I need to recall those December days. They contaminated my life and accelerated my slide down to my deepest alcoholic days. I absolutely do not wish to return to those days. I do not wish to recall the details; shadowy generalities are adequate, thank you. But I must keep just a tiny bit of those days as reminders of the alcoholic depths I had fallen into.

Christ taught us this. We are sinners and always will be. He tells us of how to live our lives by following His path. We admitted we needed His love to provide a new way of life. We work at it in our meditations with Him.

And AA calls us to reach for Bill and Dr. Bob, the Twelve Steps, and the hands of people who have learned to walk the paths of sobriety seeking that “next right thing” in their own lives.

Referring to our “days of alcoholic rage” is not a comment about going back out but an observation that I need to recall these Christmas alcoholic days and get to a meeting to erase the memory.

I recall one personal episode. T’was Christmas Day in Denver where my son lives. Cold, windy and a stormy snow. Waiting for dinner, Christmas presents opened, noon, quiet, tired of TV and the yakking talking heads and football color talkers. I wasn’t thinking about “going back out” but there was a shadow of those Christmas mad houses. I was not interested in playing “chicken” with that shadow.

I asked my son, “Is there an AA Clubhouse in Denver, and where is it?” It was an easy distance, we headed out, the only car on the road. The Clubhouse was as usual a grand old house someone had left to serve as Denver’s central AA gathering place.

Jammed with people. All laughing and exchanging stories. A typical AA pre-meeting gathering. Then the meeting itself, the same words of every AA meeting were exchanged, words heard at any AA meeting in the world.

What would Christ have said? ... you know well what He would have said...He was there with us talking with each of us and like us, enjoying the feelings of our unity.

What a marvelous time to feel the presence of Christ, Bill W, and Dr. Bob. a presence wherever we are.

That day, a cold snowy afternoon, that Christmas Day in Denver many years ago, that’s where I was.

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati.

Thank You Holly

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 01:08:21 GMT

My very first AA meeting was in western MA. I had gone to visit my sister who was in recovery, and she took me. It was a women’s meeting. I cried the whole hour.

When I returned to Seattle, I was maybe a week sober. My life was a mess. My marriage would end after that first year sober. My young daughter would go back and forth to her parents’ houses.

But this isn’t about all that—This is about Holly.

I found a women’s meeting close to my house after visiting my sister. It was a Friday 5:30 meeting. I don’t remember what the name of it was. It was in a church room. When I walked into it there were maybe 10 women. I listened and was shocked to hear the crazy things these women had done while drinking—and they were laughing! Soon I was too. I realized I hadn’t laughed like that in at least a year.

At the end of the meeting, a woman came up to me and welcomed me. She told me it would be ok. Somehow, she shared that she had two years sober and I was in awe! I couldn’t imagine that could be me if I stuck with AA. She told me some of the women go out for dinner after the meeting and she invited me, but I said I couldn’t because my daughter would have to be with me, and I didn’t have anyone to babysit her.

“My daughter can babysit her. You could come to my place; they could meet and then we will go to the meeting together”. So, I did. My daughter loved Katharine. I got to go to a meeting and then have dinner with women in recovery! I did this for the whole of my first year of sobriety. My AA angel—Holly. She gave me the most wonderful one-year anniversary party!

We went to meetings in Seattle for more than 15 years and then Holly moved. My daughter grew up and didn’t need babysitting. Holly and I still had many adventures. We gardened together when I visited when we could and helped each other stay sober. I had a great sponsor, but Holly was my AA best friend.

Two weeks ago, her daughter contacted me that Holly had died. She had a stroke and died 4 days later. I don’t think we had spoken for maybe a year. I would see pictures on Facebook, but we hadn’t visited in a few years.

At my meeting this week here in Green Valley, AZ, we read the first half of the 12^th step. Holly carried the message to me. Over and over again she cheered me on and when she died, she still had 2 more years than me—36 years!

So, if you think that your being in recovery hasn’t really helped since you never went on a Bill Wilson type 12 step call, think again. Each meeting is a chance to welcome someone and help them

Thank you, Holly.

Gratitude and Meetings Saved Me

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 02:25:23 GMT

Last month things got dark. I thought of drinking. I didn't have a plan to drink but the thought alone was a warning sign. I remembered the tools given to me in the early days of recovery. I reached out to a friend who was with me in those early days; we went to daily meetings and sat in coffee shops helping each other stay sober one more day. I called her up. I told her I would attend a meeting and once done I would call her again (bookend, I remember them calling it).

I have nearly 14 years of sobriety, but in the last six years or so I have not been attending meetings. I moved to a small town, I was worried about my anonymity at meetings, life was busy. There were many reasons and no good excuses. Despite the long absence, as soon as the meeting started, I felt comfortable: the message had not changed. I was humbled when I realized that my turn to thoughts of drinking was based on feelings of resentment. Anger and resentment had surfaced as my life was taking a turn I had not planned. Early on in the rooms I heard that resentment is the number one reason people in recovery pick up a drink again. Now I was living proof that resentment has the power to make the drink seem possible again.

Then Psalm 124 appeared in my daily scripture readings: “Then would have the waters have engulfed us, the torrent gone over us; over our head would have swept the raging waters.” Yes, I thought, that imagery feels very real. I need to keep my Higher Power and AA close to my side so as to keep the waters of anger, resentment, and darkness from sweeping me away.

The antidote to resentment is gratitude. I was reminded of this when I returned to meetings. How much gratitude can be felt in the meetings! Gratitude for being alive, for being sober, and living a life beyond what we dreamed of when we walked through the doors. I am reminded every Sunday when I exclaim: Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. I have been given breath for one more day. And I take that breath sober. I used to start my day every morning thanking God for my sobriety. I am going to start doing that again.

Susanne E

I Wanted What You Had

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 01:28:01 GMT

“Had I not been blessed with wise and loving advisers; I might have cracked up long ago…Many of my dearest A.A. friends have stood with me in exactly this same relation. Oftentimes they could help where others could not, simply because they were A.A.’s.”*

Bill was quite open with the fact that he needed help, socially, medically, mentally and spiritually. He acknowledges that “A doctor saved me once from death by alcoholism.” “a psychiatrist, later on helped me save my sanity…from a clergyman I acquired the truthful principles by which we AA’s now try to live.”

Bill has set a good example for all of us. I look back at my path to A.A. and see that I was confronted early in the disease process. I ignored it but never forgot it. At eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, I was confronted and told “Seamus, you’re an alcoholic.” I told the individual “You should know, you’re one yourself.” He was, but he was also active in recovery.

For just over four years, I ran my own program doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons and was anything but happy. I went to therapists who were not in the program and, while they meant well, they missed—or it seemed to me later on—my conning them, my lies, justifications, excuses.

Then I went to a therapist who was “one of us.” Oops. She did not let me away with my con game and accepted no excuses. I had to be honest with myself, her, and everyone else. It’s not easy to be honest when you’ve hid behind a wall of lies and excuses. But, as scripture tells us, “The truth will set you free” (even if it is a pain in the derriere and heart).

All of that opened a door for me in meetings. I did not want to let people know that, when I was active as a priest, I was a black-out drinker and didn’t remember much of what I was told when I began to make amends. But this program demands rigorous honesty and so I began a new way of living—being honest with myself, and others.

No one said, “You shouldn’t have done that.” “You should have known better; you were a priest.” “How could you have done that with all your education.” What I got was a hug and told “keep coming back.”

There is a quality of life in A.A. that is different from any other group of people. We have to be honest if we are going to live—not just survive. As the program tells us; “We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not for ourselves.”(1)

I did not want to be in A.A. but, I wanted what you had and only AA people could offer me what I wanted. It was by invitation. “If you want what we have then…” Yes. I wanted what you had; the freedom to be and become who we were meant to be. I wanted the peace of mind that comes from living in the Slow lane; the joy of knowing I can make mistakes and it’s not the end of the world. I wanted the spirituality that helped me find a Higher Power and let me work through my negative religious beliefs and find a God of my understanding.

Only people active in A.A. understand the danger of “a bad day.” I was received as a priest into the Episcopal church. One Sunday, as I stood at the back of the church, a man came up and said, “Father, can you help me. I feel like I’m going to drink.” To his surprise, I gave him a hug, told him I am a friend of Bill’s, that he was in the right place and directed him to a noon meeting. I could never have done that without being active in the Fellowship. Today, and every day, I am grateful for the Fellowship and the program that lets me Live.

Grapevine Aug 1961. [As Bill Sees it. 303]
1) Alcoholics Anonymous. 96.

Séamus D
Séamus is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Louisiana

With God’s Help

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 14:32:51 GMT

Quitting drinking with God's help was a transformative journey that reshaped my life. For years, alcohol had a firm grip on me. What started as casual social drinking slowly turned into a dependency that affected my health, relationships, and spiritual well-being. Despite trying to quit on my own, I always seemed to fall back into old habits. It was clear I needed something more, and that’s when I turned to God.

I began to pray earnestly, asking God for the strength to overcome my addiction. I knew that on my own, I didn’t have the willpower to break free, but I believed that with His guidance, I could find the strength I lacked. In my prayers, I asked for clarity, peace, and a new path forward. I also sought out scripture that spoke to God’s power to heal and restore, which gave me the hope I desperately needed. Verses like Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," became a cornerstone of my faith as I faced the daily struggle of resisting temptation.

As I leaned more into my relationship with God, I started to see the change. I found comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone in my battle. God provided me with the peace and strength I needed to resist the urge to drink. I also sought support from my church community, which became an essential source of encouragement and accountability. Gradually, the cravings diminished, and I began to experience a sense of freedom I had never known before.

Through God’s help, I not only quit drinking but also gained a renewed sense of purpose and peace. My faith grew stronger, and my life took on new meaning. With God by my side, I realized that no challenge is too great to overcome.

One Stitch at A Time – Again!

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 02:31:23 GMT

I learned how to needlepoint when I was ten or eleven years old. My mother and my grandmother needlepointed, and I wanted to be close to them, so they taught me. Somewhere, I still have that first project. It is a picture of a little girl walking with a fishing pole over her shoulder. Even then, I was no fussy girly girl.

Years went by before I again picked up needlework. I did crewel and cross stich and some knitting. During graduate school, the professor understood, I would do my needlework during class as I found that I listened and retained the lecture better when I did. I have since found out there is a scientific reason for this. I tried to do the needlework in meetings at work, but I never could convince my supervisor that it would be ok.

When I got sober and started my journey of recovery from alcohol and co-dependency, I was often uncomfortable at meetings. I attended meeting regularly and was told to “keep coming back” and “one day at a time.” I remembered my needlework and how I enjoyed it and started a project one night early in recovery at a meeting I regularly attended. The needlepoint I chose would become a rug. There were five sections, and it would take me years to complete it. I often thought – “why did I start this? It will take forever!” Each time I looked at a blank canvas I was overwhelmed with doubt and frustration at the work it was going to take.

I started one of the panels in the ICU of a hospital where my dearest friend’s husband was. He had had a brain injury after a motorcycle accident and was in a coma. All his and his spouse’s friends took turns sitting with him during the first few weeks as he started to wake up and struggle to understand what happened to him. I remember thinking I will always remember the fear and the happiness that I could be there for them when I look at that part of my rug.

My life these days is hard. My older sister is needing more and more help as her abilities and memory at affected. I am her power of attorney, and I live on the other side of the country from her. It is very hard. A dear friend, who was once long ago a boyfriend died this week, rather suddenly. We had just emailed at Easter. Everything about the election ground me down.

My rug that took 9 years of meetings to finish is on the floor of my bedroom. What I am learning repeatedly each time I enter the room and see the rug is: every beginning, every challenge, every obstacle seems to be ‘too much’ at the beginning. This is life on life’s terms. But I still go to a meetings, talk with my sponsor, live with what is, stitch by stitch. Like my needlepoint rug, it only got completed – one stitch at a time – so too with life and recovery. One stitch, one moment, one day at a time.

Libbie S., Sober Sisters, Mondays 3PM

The “Circus Cover Edition” of the Big Book: Just a Cute Book?

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 01:19:37 GMT

The dust jacket of the “Circus Cover Edition” of the formally titled book “Alcoholics Anonymous” is a very bright red and yellow, centered with a bright red dot on top of an equally bright yellow paper background with a series of yellow and black, white and red stripes. The book itself is enclosed in a very bright red heavy cardboard binding. It’s printed on “the same bulky paper” used in 1939 when published by the Works Publishing Company formed by Bill and Dr. Bob. The cover notes in an apologetic way that the book can be ordered for “free examination” for $3.50 but says the buyer should include “a few extra cents [so that if he or she is] not satisfied the book will be helpful, the money including postage will be refunded.” At 2 inches thick and at a weight of 2.20 pounds, its nickname rightly became “The Big Book”. Thirty million copies of that Big Book have been sold and the Library of Congress has labeled it as one of 88 books which “shaped America.”

The title page of the Circus Cover Edition told us what this large book is all about:

“The Story of How More than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism”

Just a cute story with a happy ending? Certainly, but what else does all this mean to me? Well, it sure tells the story about a bunch of recovering drunks who believed they had found a way out of the darkness of their alcoholism and maybe for the first time in their lives had found the ability to hold a job, to be happily married, and enjoy relationships with their kids.

For me, to put it in the simplest of ideas, it’s one of those “reminder-books” —one which tells me a lot and demands constant referral and use, not unlike the Bible. In AA’s Big Book, we read and study the stories written by those early recovery pioneers, stories we review at meetings, looking for similarity to our own lives, and how their words in 1939 might guide us as we walk their paths today.

Back when the book was published, AA, its very self, was stymied by society’s stigma on alcoholics. But these recovering alcoholics knew this disease was a far greater illness of society than exhibited by those found on South State or Madison in Chicago or on that “skid row” street in your hometown. This bright red and yellow Big Book was the start of ridding society of the curse of stigma, and today, “stigma” is seen as nonsensical.

But another important question: what does the Circus Book Edition ask of me? Surely, it’ a tool for use at meetings to identify topics for discussion of how we can work the Steps for ourselves in our own program. Just as importantly, it shows the way for us to live life in a way which guides us to travel the road to the next right thing, not only in the Program but in the way we live life itself. Isn’t this what Christ and the New Testament writings of the Disciples, Peter and Paul and the others called us to undertake? Is not this Big Book, this Circus Book, similar in its callings?

Never had an organized reasonable path been suggested as a way out of our drunken dungeons. The Big Book was a frank discussion of that path, its wondering, the dangers we encounter.

How Bill and Dr. Bob picked the Circus Book’s cover escapes me ... it appears at first glance to be a bright colorful and heavy children’s book. Maybe that was their intention—to carry the message that they’d found that the Program itself outlines—a simple program for complicated people who were acting like children.

So does the “cuteness” of the “Circus Book” merely cause a chuckle, you bet it does—but then it says to me,

“Get out of your chair and get to that meeting at Noon, offer a comment or two which helped you in your own walk, listen to others and learn from them, and always speak to a newbie and walk this path of recovery with them, just as was first spelled out so well in the “Circus Book” of 1939."

JRA, ST X Noon, Cincinnati

Aging in Recovery

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:01:39 GMT

When we were young in recovery we looked to the old-timers with awe. “She’s got 35 years” He’s got 40 years.” We’d listen when they spoke.

We knew that all that time meant something. We knew it meant they had been through a lot and they still did not use or drink. We knew they had faced all kinds of hard things and had learned a lot about recovery and spirituality and personal growth.

But as much as we admired the old-timers, we didn’t always ask them to be our sponsors—we needed people closer in age to us and we needed people closer to our life stage: other people who were dating or having kids or building careers or making a new life after divorce.

We used the principles of the program—we prayed for God’s will. We surrendered. And, just like the odds in anyone’s life, some of us got the book contracts or the VP titles or the babies. And some did not. We celebrated, and we grieved.

So, it turned out that as much as we whispered our admiration for the old-timers in our meetings, we also didn’t look too closely.

What we missed by not looking closely was the grief, the physical pain, the family losses, and death moving closer. Maybe we knew they had a child that died but the comments in meetings just sounded so wise, still. And we heard that “so and so” had a bad diagnosis or was in the hospital, and maybe we even visited but we missed the fine points.

“How do you get to be an old-timer?” the old joke asks. “Don’t drink and don’t die.” And we laugh. But behind closed doors, and in small living rooms where everyone is over 65, the story changes. The physical stuff is hard, death is not a theory, and we have to face things that platitudes cannot remedy.

Then as it happens, we got older too. We had the career disappointments, and the divorces. The small crises and the huge, shocking ones. If we had kids it turned out that they pleased us, or they didn’t. The baby we prayed for 30 years ago is a drug addict or a too busy parent. They married someone who likes us or who doesn’t.

We lose our jobs—the ones we liked and the ones we hated, and we are shocked that can happen to someone in recovery. Life happens to us the way it happens to the rest of the world. What we have is recovery and maybe a little bit more sanity than some others and some great habits and a community or people who speak our language.

But the divorces hurt, and the wrinkles shock, and the scary diagnoses come slowly and then quickly. Time keeps passing. We sponsor young people, but our recovery friends are aging too.

It’s not a question of staying sober or abstinent. That habit is pretty solid. And over this many years your lifestyle runs itself. You don’t buy wine, and no one offers it. You are not in bars or parties with drugs. Maybe the grown kids are a problem if they bring their substances home post-divorce. You need to tell your recovery friends about that.

And something else happens with those friendships: They get farther apart. As the illnesses and disabilities get more serious, our friends start to move away: they go to special living places or to the town where their kids live. Oh, we promise to call and visit, and we do, but then it’s harder for us too. And the gap grows.

We go to meetings and we speak when asked. Our stories are still admired. But we don’t raise our hands as often. We may be a little bored with ourselves.

We are the old-timers, but we are not fixed. No one is, after all.

It doesn’t matter who you used to be. Who are you today? What does your commitment to recovery look like now? How do you sustain it? And how will you move toward the end of your life?

Diane C
Albany, New York

The World's Wisdom

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:03:53 GMT

Recently I’ve been rereading THE WORLD’S WISDOM*and this sentence stood out to me: “Death…does not mean passing away and extinction of life, but returning home to the divine world…[it] is a passage into a new existence, the transition to a new and true life.” Reflecting on this I realized that this is what happened in the process of working and learning to live the Twelve Step program.

My addiction was killing me. In my active addiction I had become a walking dead person. If I were going to live, then I had to die. As Jesus said, “Unless the grain of wheat, falling to the ground dies, itself remains alone.” The seed has to die in order to become alive.

I did not know I was dying, and I did not want to die. Admitting I was powerless over alcohol sounded so stupid. I could stop anytime I wanted to, and I did periodically. Coming to grips with the true meaning of powerlessness was not easy. It was simply this: I had no idea which drink I picked up would get me drunk.

When I finally admitted I was powerless and that my life had become unmanageable, then the beginning of new life began. My life was unmanageable, I was dead to all the values which I said I held important. Now it was time to “return to the divine world.”

It was a strange concept that I had to “come to believe” in something I thought I believed in already. I believed there is a God. For me there were two gods; the God I talked about to others – loving, kind, merciful – and the one I feared was going to send me to hell. Now I could come to believe in an undefined Power Greater than Myself that could restore me to sanity. I had to admit that my thinking was not reasonable when it came to all that I was addicted to. Sanity, peace of mind, it was a long time since I had experienced that.

Believing in a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity was “the transition to a new and true life.” It was no longer “I” that was doing anything, but rather I was guided by this power I would, again, call God.

I chose to ‘turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood god”. How often had I trusted people to give me directions, to answer a question honestly, to repair my car. Now, this power that had restored life to millions of addicts, was the Power to which I would turn over my will and my life – just for today, one day at a time.

“Returning home to the divine world” included cleaning up the wreckage of my life through steps four and five, eight, nine and ten. And so began a new way of living, being responsible, helping others, making amends immediately (almost). This was new and at the same time a wonderful way of living. No more lies, stories, blaming others. This was the freedom to be who I was born to be and become. But I was not there yet.

Steps eleven and twelve were the important final building blocks. Seeking to improve my conscious contact with God through Prayer and meditation – talking and listening to God – was something I once did and then let it slide away and my EGO [Easing God Out] took over. Now I was returning to something I understood and seeing it as for the first time.

Finally, “praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me.” Not determining what I needed to do for me, for the world that waited for me. No. Praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me and asking God to entrust in me the power to do what God wanted me to do. Once again, I am powerless, I need help. God help me.

As I began to come alive, I experienced what the Fellowship taught; that I would experience a new freedom and a new happiness, I had no regrets for the past as I would be able to use my past experiences to help others; the feeling of uselessness and self-pity gave way to the concept of “I am responsible” and a willingness to reach out to others in need. I was no longer focused on what “I want what I want when I want it” but rather on the needs of others. Fear of people, finances, faded into the background as my new divine life opened up for me. It was then I realized that “my outlook on life had changed. [I realized] that God was doing for me what I could not do for myself.”

Séamus D. Seamus is an active retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans/

*THE WORLD’S WISDOM. Phillip Novak.351

Remembering your first AA Meeting

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:28:38 GMT

...perhaps it was in a church basement. Today—all over town—AA meetings are opening in all manner of places. The Days of Stigma, epitomized by basement AA meetings, are gone and in more ways than one, the Fellowship has moved “upstairs.”

You probably didn’t know a soul at your first meeting, not one person. Some probably appeared a bit shell-shocked. By the way, recall how you looked that first day!

Of course, everyone seemed to know the workings of AA meetings-opening with the Serenity Prayer, a reading of material from something called—as you came to know it—the “Big Book,” then the passing of the basket.

Then out of the blue, the chair asks if anyone is attending their first AA meeting, “Please stand so we can say hello.” Shazam... are you kidding me, you screamed to yourself. Did your face reflect that shock and fear?

You didn’t expect this and racing through your mind was this thought: ‘Am I going to have to stand in a room of people and admit I’m an alcoholic?’

You stand up, but before you can even say your name, everyone claps, smiles, and turn to the last row where you decided to ~~hide~~ sit, some asking your name, others shaking your hand, others, “Welcome, come back! Need a ride?”

Then someone was asked to address the group. She said she was going to tell us what it was like, in her words, “drinking like a skid-row drunk,” what happened, and what she’s learned working the Program. Right off, her story went to her worst days, nights, her torments. It seemed to trace your own path. She told of her fears and sorrows. It became more real to you. You knew she was telling the truth. She spoke of finding the Program, her early days of working the Steps.

But then she said in hindsight, “It was all a lark to get ready for my court appearance.. She said she went back out after a month or two, maybe it was longer. She said she quickly returned to her old drunken path, and really tumbled this time. You could tell she was hurting. Her voice broke, tears were beginning... you knew she wasn’t making this up and you felt her pain, her shame, you wanted to reach for and hold her.

Suddenly, it was as quiet as that church meeting room ever gets. She stood there, barely in control of herself, shaking... then she said,

“I’ll never forget, I came back, ashamed, afraid, crushed as a human can be... but you welcomed me! You cried with me. Some of you said, ‘I’d followed a similar path’... no questions or suspicious looks, just a ‘glad you’re back. Keep coming back!’”

Her story struck you hard as can be, twisted your stomach, but at the same time grabbing your heart. Maybe she was speaking to you, but to you alone?

Those early AA meetings—yes, they often were hard for there was so much to learn, and to learn to have the courage to implement what you had learned. But you finally realized the wonderful news was that these new ways were the start of your new life, one of rebuilding and re-learning how to live without harming yourself and others. You saw the need to carry that message of hope to others. Perhaps most importantly, you learned to seek a spiritual basis for living your life.

Scary first meeting? You bet, but for me, it’s important to recall those days, down and dirty in that dungeon, and how our Higher Power and the Program themselves walked into that dungeon and helped us seize that moment and twist it and surrender drink and accept the Program’s ways. You found the joy of finding a Power greater than yourself and move forward as a Recovering Alcoholic!

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati

Snakes on the Path!

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 23:54:54 GMT

I spent most of my life in Seattle, WA. Here’s a little, known fact about Western Washington – there are no poisonous snakes (too cold year-round)! I like to hike and roam so for all those years I never thought about snakes. In general, they don’t bother me but knowing that if I came across one, I could be assured that it was not poisonous.

Then, I moved to Southern Arizona. I moved in October, so it was getting cool enough that many snakes were heading towards hibernation. Very early on a worker at my place said, “come out by my truck, you can see a rattlesnake – a dead one”. I went out to see a thin snake about a foot long. I didn’t want to get close even though he told me it was dead. He said it was a very young one and that was why it was so small. I asked if its mother was around, and should I be worried, but he let me know that snakes are pretty much on their own two weeks after they hatch. So – no mamas around to worry about.

I walk for an hour each day. During my first winter in my new hometown, I didn’t concern myself much about snakes. There is a trail across for my place and I would walk each day admiring my new world and enjoy the sun. One day I noticed something black on the road as I crossed to go home. It was a snake – a big one that had been run over by a car and was dried out. I took it home to check in my Snakes in AZ brochure and it was a diamondback rattle snake! Thank goodness it was DEAD.

Along about February my friends in AA began to warn me about snakes. They would be coming out of hibernation. The list of things to watch out for was long – look under your car before you get in, don’t leave out empty pots they can get in, they can crawl into your walled back yard through the drainage hole – make sure it has a dense screen to keep them out. If you see one – go the other way. Call the fire department and they will come and get it! Yikes! I was freaking out! The newspaper in town had stories of snakebites every week and classes were available for residents, especially for ones that had dogs!

When I went on my daily walk, I was very aware of walking and watching what was in front of me on the trail. If I heard a noise I would stop and listen and assess and then move on. (By the way – rattlesnakes DO NOT rattle if you get close to them). I walked so that I was present and only looked a few feet ahead. I could enjoy the birds singing and the view of the mountains. I wasn’t afraid, I was cautious. The first time I saw a snake on my trail, I stopped about 25 feet from it. I didn’t see it moving but I still watched and began to look around to see if I could walk around the snake and not get cactus needles in me. Someone had told me that early in the spring snakes are often out getting sun to warm up since they are coldblooded creatures. I found a way around the snake, said hello as I watched, as I walked around the snake, and went on my way. Another time I was walking by the fire station near me, and they were doing a training on capturing snakes, putting them in wooden box and then taking them further out in the desert to release. It was fascinating. All wildlife in AZ is protected from being killed.

I’ve seen a few in this last year and this is what I have learned: Being present in my body and mind is very important. I can enjoy nature and be present at the same time. When faced with a challenge, I can stop, breath, and find the safest way to move through the challenge. Listening to others’ fears and anxiety doesn’t help me, it often just makes me anxious. I can trust myself that with education and AA support I can learn how to navigate my life. Scary things happen in my life. There is a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, and I turn my life of to the care of that power.

ACoA

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:59:43 GMT

“In ACA, we learn to let go in stages…Our attempts at control bring spiritual death to a relationship with ourselves and others.…..At the core of this learned control is a fear that we will not know who we are if we do not have an addict or dysfunctional person in our lives…In ACA...we learn we can survive the journey of finding out who we are. We can change and know happiness.” Adult Children of Alcohlics/Dysfunctional Families; ACA Fellowship Text (The big Red Book) 41.

Recently, I’ve taken to rereading The Big Red Book of ACoA. Ever since I first read anything about ACA, put myself into therapy, and came to realize that I am an Adult Child of an Alcoholic who did not drink. In time, I came to believe that just about everyone in A.A. with at least five years of sobriety, should attend ACOA for at least six months.

ACoA is not just another Twelve Step program. Rather it is a program in which I was able to locate my behavior choices in order to survive a system that was broken, and we did not know it.

My choice (subconsciously) was a mixture of the quiet one (at school), the clown (at home). I had an undiagnosed learning problem, was labeled as being a “slow learner,” and so I stayed quiet in the classroom and around those whom I judged to be well educated. At home, for the most part, I could change mom’s anger into laugher and escape whatever punishment she had in mind.

In ACA I looked back and realized that early in my life I had boundary issues, involving myself in situations (to be of help) that were none of my business. It was clear to me that we did not talk about our family outside the family (nor inside). And, bringing a friend home, or going to spend the night at the home of a friend, was out of the question

Out of the home and into college gave me a new life. I had to make decisions for myself, but I wasn’t sure all the time. So, unconsciously, I used other people to make decisions, to speak up on issues, to make suggestions. My dry alcoholic mother was a master of manipulation, and I learned from the best.

There came the day when I found total freedom and friends. Jack Daniels, Bud Wiser (Stupid), John Jameison, etc. In no time I was the center of attention, could dance, became arrogant, selfish, self-centered, and developed a fear of God punishing me that only got worse as my lifestyle spiraled out of control. Of course, I never doubted I was in control. I knew what I was doing. After all, by this time, I was helping alcoholics on the streets of Dublin.

ACA Step One reads: “We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable.” My mother was a good person who was addicted to Church, to work, and needed to control all she could of her family, what they said and who they were with. After her death, I wrote her a number of letters and in the end, I came to admit she had done the best she could in her circumstances. What a relief.

As a child in this dysfunctional system, I learned to keep my emotions to myself. I concluded there was no point in telling anyone how I felt. I was a couple of years in A.A. when I began to make a list of emotions and then acknowledge I had them. It was difficult to admit “ I am loving. There are times when I am indifferent.” “I am patient. There are times when I have no patience.” “I am loving.” I’m afraid to say I love you. I have difficulty hearing “I love you.” In time I learned to love and be loved.

Some of the ACA promises state “We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves…Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis… Fears of failure and success will leave us.as we intuitively make healthier choices…Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set…Gradually with the help of our Higher Power we will learn to expect the best and get it.”

Alcoholics Anonymous offered me sobriety and serenity and living one day at a time with people I wanted to be like. Sobriety and serenity opened my mind and heart to the environment in which I was molded, learned to love it, and from that become the person I am today, and I continue to grow. Thanks to AA and ACoA.

Séamus D

Seamus is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Happy New Day!

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:44:33 GMT

Except that’s not how I felt when I woke up and said that to myself this morning.

I didn’t feel happy. I felt discontent and tired. After 4 ½ years of avoiding Covid I had finally gotten it! I had to see a doctor about my aching knees. I feel old AND at the same time I have a zit growing on my nose, so I felt ugly and old.

I took myself for a walk. When I don’t know what to do, I walk. I started to walk during the pandemic, and it stuck.

Walking often delivers a God Shot to me and today was no exception. I remembered reading about a man who wanted to cultivate gratitude, so he put 8 pennies in his left pocket and each time he had ANY moment of gratitude during the day, he noted it and moved one penny into his right pocket. It never took him even a half a day before the gratitude pennies were all in his right pocket.

On my Facebook feed today, there was a memory of the start of a year (I think it was 2016). I posted a gratitude I had on January 1 and then I started to post one every day and I did it for a whole year!

This year that felt way too much – but maybe 8 pennies was doable. I tried in the past to list gratitudes as I turned off the light but by the end of the day, I rarely remembered them.

So, I will do this today, and hopefully tomorrow and on and on. I have 6 already: I heard a bird singing. The sun out and the weather is cooling in Southern AZ, seeing my daughter and granddaughter on FaceTime, dear ones I love, who I know love me and a few more.

As I got close to home from my walk I saw a small key on the sidewalk. It seemed to be for me – the God Shot. The key to whatever is going on is gratitude- gratitude and acceptance that life is as it is wherever my feet are at any moment. And this is my prayer: Please help me remember that the Impossible is Possible as long as I don’t believe the lie that it is all up to me. Happy new day!!

Beach Surrender

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 22:00:40 GMT

We went to Cape Cod a few weeks ago. It’s a favorite place with my favorite beach. When we are there, I go to the beach alone in the morning to pray. It’s easy—there’s a lot of privacy—the dog walkers might wave, and I can wave back. The surfers are out in the waves. No one is sunbathing.

I take time at the water’s edge to write the names of each person I love on the edge of the shore and watch to see the water come up and take the prayer away. Sometimes I write the names of people I struggle with—coworkers, former friends, and yes, relatives. I have left many prayers on the beach. Many fears, dreams, people I love and people that scare me. I have cried many tears with those prayers and let the ocean’s saltwater wash away my salty tears. Sometimes the healing or resolution happens right there at the water’s edge, and many times it happens later that day or week or month.

It is always some form of surrender.

I live in the gap between wanting to make a complete surrender, making that surrender for a moment, and then, seeing, even as I walk back to my car some fear returns and my wish to control something or someone is already back in my head.

Surrender is such an imperfect process, but I do think it is a process. I really do wonder about people who say they have done it and it’s done. Do they really never worry again? Worry means I still think I can affect an outcome. Curiosity might be the antithesis of worry. Being able after surrender, to wonder: “I wonder how God is going to play this one out?”

These are the things I surrender and later worry about: my job, his job, my health, his health, money, in-laws, kids and aging.

Maybe this worry habit of mine too is something I need to surrender.

Over and over, I surrender and return to these things. But just the surrendering of them makes them different—if only for a minute I am willing.

The ocean’s rhythm is familiar; in and out, in and out, washing, soothing, wearing me down.

I was “born again” ... and then again

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:28:52 GMT

The first time occurred while I was standing at the edge of that alcoholic abbess. There I came to believe I was an alcoholic and knew I had to stop drinking. I was scared. But I saw changes in the lives of others and worked the Program to bring those changes into my own life. My AA meetings hammered on the step-by-step process of dealing with the harm we’d caused. My sponsor warned me of the importance of continuing to attend meetings and continuing to work the Steps. At that point I knew I had indeed been born again.

As I worked the Steps, I came to understand that Step Two told me much about myself, the depths of which I didn’t comprehend immediately, and to some extent, not for years. It is this Step which tells me to “get outside myself,” to forget that I alone can understand life and function within it. Step Two tells me to “let go and let God,” to always seek the will of my Higher Power, to seek the next right thing to do in any circumstance. For me, accepting that was my second moment of being born again.

You’d be mistaken if you thought that at this point I’d leave talking about this born again business. But I want to point out that I’d missed an understanding of the depth of my “life” I was turning over. More recently than I’ll admit, I see that “turning over” includes not only the big stuff but the junky stuff we run into every day—car keys your son (or you) lost, your printer jams, the snarky letters from people. I need to remember to turn over these mundane sudden difficulties. These daily little things can push me into temper tantrums and anger causing me to fire off a “way-out-of-line” response.

It’s the daily ordinary trivial stuff that grabs me and turns me into a person I don’t like. It forces me to ask myself if I have really done what Step Two says. My failure to do so means I failed to take advantage of His love for me and His assistance in working my way through all of life’s activity.

It’s not always easy to “stop, be quiet and wait.” I fail a great deal. But the fact is that with a few seconds of reflection, I can muster a solution, I can find a way to look again to find those keys, even find a way to clear that jammed printer.

I have found that this “halting time” usually gives me that solution. Our Higher Power responds in many ways...sometimes quickly (calm down and look again for those keys under the chair). He has suggested to me a manner of response as I slept. Sometimes it comes later, sometimes not at all. It’s not always easy to wait and listen, but the fact is that when I am able to overcome my “know-it-all arrogance,” my life is smoother, more productive, and kinder and within Christ’s teachings and the Steps.

And when I am able to do this, I feel in those moments that I’ve been reborn.

Jim A, St X Noon/ Springboro/Frankin, Wed. Noon

The broader the base the higher the point of freedom

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:07:22 GMT

Tomorrow morning, I will catch a flight to Washington, DC, to the World Convention of Narcotics Anonymous. This will be the fifth one I’ve had the privilege to attend. It is an amazing event. My first one was in the mid-90s about a year after I got an internet account and searched for NA and found chat rooms and email lists and discussion boards full of recovering addicts from all over the world and it was an exciting time because many of us met up in person at that convention! Each one I’ve attended my circle of recovering friends has grown exponentially from the previous one. When we stay in the middle of the boat, and get involved with service at various levels, that is one of the results. At the last one I attended my friend who was newly coming back from a relapse was amazed that everywhere we went—every meeting, workshop, meal, hanging out in a sitting area—I would see people I knew. That’s an amazing thing when you’re looking at 21,000+ folks from all over the world!

Not only will I get to reconnect in person with many friends, but I will also celebrate my belly button birthday and turn 69 years old. If not for recovery and all that comes with it—a renewed relationship with God, 12 wonderful steps and 12 wonderful traditions and all the great literature that tells my story—you would have thought they intimately knew me and were writing about me personally in our literature–this would not be possible! Like many of you, I probably wouldn’t even still be alive if not for the gift of desperation that gave me the willingness to go to any lengths to stop using.

Recovery Ministries has also been a very significant part of my recovery as well. I was working at a church when I got clean and one day something came across my desk from the local Episcopal Addiction and Recovery Commission, and I was thrilled that the church had such a committee! And lo and behold, there was also a national Episcopal recovery organization—at that time called NECA (National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol), and later NECAD (National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol and Drugs) and even later RMEC (Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church) as we know it today. I’ve been pretty much involved locally and nationally since hearing about them back in 1987.

My 12-step fellowship was there for me when I got clean, my Episcopal recovery organizations were there for me—and one thing I learned that has stuck with me all these 37+ years—if I want to keep what I have, I should give back to others what was so freely given to me. My gratitude speaks when I care and share with others… And I thought today would be a good time to sign up for a Red Door Blog post!

Ants

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 19:18:24 GMT

One of my fondest memories of 3^rd grade was how our teacher, Mrs. Vantrese, read books to us. The only one I remember was one about a little girl who could make herself very small and visit the ants that lived under her backyard stairs. I too loved ants after that and would lie in the grass in summer and watch them. Later when my daughter was 10 or so I got us an ant farm. I told her that it could be a fun science thing, but she wasn’t very interested. It really was for me.

On my daily walks in Arizona, I walk on the cart paths of a golf course that went belly up and the owners donated the course to our county as a park. You can walk the whole course on the paths, perhaps 5 miles. It doesn’t much look like a golf course any more as the desert has reclaimed the manicured green grass.

Most days, I see hundreds of ants crossing the paths. They often look very random. They bump into each other and seem to not have any idea where they are going or what they are doing. I am reminded of ME before recovery. I was on fire running around trying to stop the chaos and flames and never noticing anyone else and all the while wanting someone to help me!

Sometimes, I notice one little ant carrying something that seems way too large for this small creature to hold, let alone, carry. I watch as she tries to move a crumb of something, and I feel sad for her. I too tried to carry my disease all by myself. I could manage it alone, thank you very much, but it was hard. My life was unmanageable.

The other day I saw what looked like a red pebble on the path. It was the size of a dime BUT it was MOVING! I got closer, bent down to look, and saw an amazing thing. It wasn’t a pebble; it was some organic thing, and it was moving because a dozen ants were moving it! They were working together in a way that seemed to indicate that they had done this many times before. Their survival depended on working together. The ant hill nearby was their destination and there too were ants working together to maintain their home.

So, I think it is with recovery. Meetings and fellowship and reaching out to those who still suffer is the selfish thing I do to keep my sobriety. It also keeps me connected to and in fellowship with others to support and nurture us in our recovery. Carrying and supporting each other as we Trudge the Happy Road of Destiny.

–Libbie S, Sober Sisters, Green Valley, AZ

To Feel Love

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 01:16:53 GMT

Reading Affirmations for the Inner Child by Rokelle Lerner, I came across this affirmation: “I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.”

Growing up in the country in Ireland just before a neighbor bought a combine harvester and before television, I loved the hands-on work in nature. Dad dug the potatoes, and I picked them, put them in the bucket to bring home. I’ve walked behind my uncle as he cut the corn with a scythe, picked up an armful and then took a handful and tied it. When possible, I took my brother’s bicycle and rode around the country as the hay was being cut and I loved the aroma of fresh cut hay. Animals died, stray animals were shot or drowned. Such was life in the country of the time.

I do not recall thinking of myself as a self. Instead, I knew only too well I was “Annie D’s son” and I had to live up to that image – a happy, loving family. I was different from others but not in a healthy manner.

Then I went to seminary and got my head into books. I became acquainted with Jack Daniels et al. I got a motorcycle, then a car and these instruments of travel put distance between me and nature.

As a priest, I have celebrated Mass at the seaside, on a rock on the side of a mountain, by a stream or river. I got out into nature, but it was only a location, a place with which I no longer had that sense of belonging. Somehow, Jack Daniels and friends were hiding me from myself and nature.

As Lerner points out in her Affirmation “I did not learn about my body and facts about the natural world. Nature reproduces, but sex was a shameful secret in my family.” There were a lot of secrets in the family, and I learned early not to talk about the family to outsiders. We were a churchgoing, hard-working family.

“You are a child of the Universe, no less than the stars and the trees. You have a right to be here.” This line from the poem Desiderata was something I loved to quote to clients in counseling but in private it made me cry. I did not belong. I was an outsider. I had secrets which I could no longer tell the trees.

Then came recovery. Initially, it was a long slow process because I couldn’t admit to myself the secrets I spent years burying. Living up to the expectations of another was difficult to change.

Finally, after some four years of a dry-drunk, working the program for all the wrong reasons- just to look good to others especially my boss- I hit bottom. I admitted I am an alcoholic, I am powerless over alcohol, I have an addictive personality, I am an adult child of a dry drunk, and my life had become unmanageable. What a weight to be lifted off my shoulders. Now what? The journey of recovery had just begun.

Everything I learned over the years had lodged in my head. I could give a good talk, teach, make you think you knew me and all the while hiding, even from myself, in plain sight. Now, all that I learned was trickling down into my heart, and, like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, I was beginning to feel love and loved.

“I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.” “I am a child of the Universe no less than the trees and the stars; I have a right to be here.” I became free to be who I am, free to be, become and feel alive, free to splash in the ocean and the ocean of emotions within me.

Today, I love being in recovery, I love the feeling of being a child of God and a child of the Universe. I love to drive into the swamps and smell the sensuality of this land, to see the variety of animals, to feed an alligator from a boat. I love to see, to hear, to smell, to taste and to touch nature and be alive again.

Séamus D is an Episcopal priest in recovery and lives in New Orleans

An AA reunion: Recollections of “working the Program”

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 01:30:56 GMT

Three of us met for coffee a couple weeks ago, “alumni” from a noon AA meeting in a church basement where we had met many years ago when we first sought sobriety. We hadn’t been together for several years. We’d gone different ways and changed in that period, one had moved to an assisted living facility, one had a death in the family, the other had retired and was traveling. But what we immediately saw was that through the years, each of us had continued a very active participation in the AA Program.

We shared recollections of our time spent at this particular “five days a week noon AA meeting”. Usually, all three of us were present. Thirty or so faithfully attended but sometimes that basement floor was packed. We recalled our early AA meetings, the people who reached out to us as newbies, the laughter and support freely given to us by all ... to all. This was an open discussion meeting...topics on all subjects: our hurts and successes, stories of how folks had worked the Steps, phrases from the Big Book, the whole gaggle of topics you find at any AA open discussion meeting. We applauded anniversaries of others whether years or a day. We shared fun and laughter and a special sadness for people we knew and worked with who had tried the Program but didn’t make it.

Our reunion reinforced all we had found and learned and accepted. For us, the Program had become a way of living our day-to-day lives, alcohol-free, but just as importantly as a way of working through life itself. We recalled times of difficulties we had confronted as we aged—normal issues a recovering alcoholic-and all of us-face in our lives—and yet, and yet, for us, sobriety prevailed frankly because we worked at it each day and followed the discipline of the Steps and went to meetings where of course others were walking the same path.

We recalled our Twelve Step work of reaching others—one was the father and grandfather sponsor of many, another worked through the court system, the third spoke through substance abuse programs and in hospitals.

We spoke of meetings in other countries. AA, we agreed, was much the same wherever it was, language didn’t seem to be much of a barrier, after all, the readings while in a different tongue were from the Big Book or the “12 and 12” so we three all said we could easily follow.

Yes, this reunion was a grand time of laughter and recalling days of our early years in the Program. It reaffirmed what we are called to do in Step Ten—our belief in the importance of continuing to “work the Steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We closed our gathering as we did all those years in that noon AA meeting in that church basement...

God, grant us serenity to accept things we can’t change, courage to change what we can, and wisdom to know the difference...and keep us coming back for it really works if we keep working it.

Jim A, and for M and P, St X Noon

Not My Seattle Anymore

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:40:37 GMT

I lived in Seattle, Washington, for 44 years. I got sober in Seattle. Last fall I moved to Southern AZ to escape from the grey and the rain. This summer I returned for one month to visit family and friends. I didn’t expect to feel very different or see Seattle differently as it had only been10 months since I left.

I was lucky to have two very close friends who invited me to stay with them. Both were in neighborhoods I had not lived in. Staying with friends for two weeks each was wonderful and challenging. I brought many things to feel at home and for the most part it was good and yet I saw my former city in different ways. It seemed that maybe it wasn’t ‘my’ Seattle anymore.

After 10 months in the desert, I have two great home groups and was learning to love the desert and cactus. I understood why friends who had visited me when I lived in Seattle from other parts of the country would say “It’s so green here!” It is! And the trees are so tall, not like the short Palo Verdes in AZ. The noises were different than I remember. Seattle is a big city so more sirens, more traffic noises, less bird noises and many, many more airplanes flying overhead to the airport.

In both of my friends’ houses there was liquor. Both are normies and I never thought much about it because they rarely drink (maybe they do when I am not around). I house sat for each of them for 10 days while they went away. While in the kitchen looking for something or in the basement looking for where the laundry was, I would see a cabinet of liquor or a wine cellar. I would find myself looking at the bottles as if I had never seen liquor before. Each time I asked myself if the bottles looked interesting to me. I was a stranger in a city that used to be mine. Before I got sober it would have been a great idea to have some? A lot? Instead, I found myself looking and then closing the cabinet and then didn’t really think about it until I was starting to write this blog.

I got sober in Seattle 34 years ago. My home groups were great, but most were still online from the pandemic and those that weren’t were not near me. Thank goodness that my zoom meetings from AZ and from all around the country were still ones I could get to while in Seattle. I did get to spend time with my sponsor and that was a god send. In addition, my daily readings grounded me and when I felt out of sorts or unmoored, I would walk. I walked in familiar places with good friends and new places on my own. That’s where I talk to and experience God. Even though I was with so many good friends, I would be reminded that I am not alone.

The International AA convention was in Seattle when I was six months sober. It was the very first time I felt NOT ALONE in most of my life. Being back in Seattle, all I had to do was close my eyes and see myself in the Kingdome with 65,000 other recovering people. Seattle may not be where I live now, it may have changed some. I am so glad I went to visit, glad I could move anywhere and find AA, and glad that, one day at a time, a liquor cabinet doesn’t appeal to me.

Who Has What You Want?

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 01:55:44 GMT

In early recovery I heard this advice over and over: “Look for someone who has what you want, and ask them how they got it.” That was, I was told, also how to pick a sponsor. It’s funny looking back. I mean how does a really new newcomer know what someone has? Yes, you can hear a sense of humor or see who bathes regularly. But when I look around the rooms today it’s not always the shiny stars or fine talkers of AA who have what I want.

I’ve been thinking about this because this week I was trying to explain to a sponsee why she should do more step work. “I don’t drink and I don’t want to drink, and I’m really happy about that,” she told me. And I get that, but I tried to tell her that I want so much more than that from AA, and from of my life.

I want so much more than abstinence from alcohol. And I even want so much more than no more “jackpots”. I want the whole enchilada that I believe is possible: peace, serenity and joy (not daily happiness but real joy.) I also want great relationships: with husband, friends and colleagues. And a great relationship with my Higher Power and with myself.

But here’s where it gets tricky. Some of that good, changed life comes with longevity—more time in recovery equals more exposure to new ideas, concepts and layer upon layer of the Steps. But not for everybody. I still have to look around the rooms and ask myself, “Who has what I want?”

It’s possible to have 35 years of sobriety and be obese, angry, gambling, smoking or using some behavior or “legal” substance and still be miserable. I see it and hear it. We share the rooms with folks who have been around a very long time and are miserable in marriage or on the job. That’s not the recovery I want for myself.

In some ways the pool gets smaller the further we go if we are committed to going all the way. What do you think about this? If you have been around a while what kind of recovery are you still working toward? I want deep change as much -- or more -- than I want long years. In a sense that is where my deep joy comes from—knowing there is some crazy character defect I didn’t even know I had two years ago, that I recognized in myself one year ago, and that I see gradually changing this summer. I’m in awe of that, and I can only want more.

Diane C, from Albany, New York

Easy Street

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 01:39:20 GMT

I don’t like driving mountain passes! For most of my adult life and almost all my sobriety, I lived in the Pacific Northwest where there are MANY mountain passes. I feel anxious going up, fooled in the small valleys in between, and so scared when going down those 6+% grades. It’s even worse if there are a lot of trucks.

Going through the mountains between Oregon and California on a trip got me thinking about how the difficult times in life and sobriety are like going through those mountain passes. Going up you can’t see where you are. It can be hard on the car, like it can be hard on the spirit. There are twists and turns that by the time you get used to them, they change. Some trucks go so slowly, and some cars go so fast. I find myself judging my progress against them. It’s like whatever I do in life—comparing and feeling out of control many times. At the top of the pass there is a vista, and things look very clear for a moment. But then it’s all downhill! And that can be as hard as the uphill climb, will it ever end, can I control my speed!

As I came out of the mountains into California, I saw Mt. Shasta brilliant in the sun! It was amazing and for many minutes the difficulty of the mountains was worth the view. As I got down to the flat of Interstate 5, I went through Yreka, CA. Soon I saw an exit sign for the upcoming exit. I knew I HAD to take it: Exit 770 - Easy St./Shamrock Rd!

I had to get to Easy Street—didn’t everyone want to live there? Would there be big houses and fancy cars in the driveways? Did folks look like they were always happy? Did their luck show on Shamrock Rd.? How could I live there?

What did I find? A rural road with few houses. Nothing special, no great signs of wealth and happiness. Then I remembered: Easy Street is a state of mind not a single place or destination. Probably the people who found their way to this place long ago, named the streets in the hope that for them it would come true—their life would be easy, and I’d like to think it did in their spirit; perhaps it kept them hopeful.

I smiled, got back on the freeway, and pulled over on the shoulder to take a picture of the sign so I could always remember. I can live on Easy Street any time I live in the present moment and embrace hope. That second step is my favorite. It’s the Hope step. This is an excerpt from my book—God Shots: Memories and Lessons, A life is Recovery. Libbie S., Sober Sisters Monday meeting Green Valley, AZ

Hope

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 01:03:25 GMT

In his book, Shattered Dreams, Martin Luther King wrote, “Our capacity to deal creatively with shattered dreams is ultimately determined by our faith in God…However dismal and catastrophic may be the present circumstances, we know we are not alone.”

At the age of nineteen, I entered the Novitiate of a religious congregation in the hope of becoming a priest and a missionary. During that year of relative silence, I decided that I wanted to go to Brazil, a new mission of the Congregation.

At the age of twenty-two, I began my final four years of formation in the study of the bible, theology, church history, etc. My dream or hope of being a priest never wavered. That is, until I met two good friends, Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker and their friends. Oh, we had fun times at first but somewhere along the way I let go of who I thought I was and became someone I did not like and did not know how I got there.

I was elected to various committees; I was involved in the city in a number of charitable and wonderful programs including working in a shelter for those who were there because they could not stop drinking. One of them was a brilliant person and a professor but could not stop drinking. I felt sorry for him.

Then I was ordained. About six months before I was to fly to Brazil, I was offered an opportunity to continue studies and, from my low self-esteem position, this was an unexpected jolt. The egomaniac became alive. Continued studies was something I deserved, and the missions could just wait another year.

After a year of studies, and ongoing negative communication with my superior in Brazil, I refused to go to Brazil and, instead, came to Louisiana. At the end of that year, I relocated to California. It could be said I had become a drifter.

I was good at what I did – being a priest, a counselor and speaker – but the external “success” was a façade that buried the broken shattered glass within me. I had no idea who I was, where I was going, or what was going to happen to me. I not only felt alone, but I was also lonely and spiritually dead.

I left the active ministry, got married, and was employed in a hospital setting for teenage alcoholics and addicts. From my days on the streets in Dublin and teaching I had a good working knowledge of addiction. I also had taken a few college courses in addiction. I was the right person for this job!!!

My Higher Power got tired of protecting me and, after a couple of months, I found myself telling my boss, “I think I have a drinking problem.” Two months later I requested time off to go to treatment. Neither of these two things had I planned.

Four and a half years of chaos followed during which time I got divorced, became a single, domicile, dad of my thirteen-month-old daughter and declared bankruptcy. Somehow or other I had my spiritual awakening. I began to listen to the wisdom of the older folks in the Fellowship and do what I had to do and do it for me.

I let go of the negative judgmental god of my childhood, came to believe in a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity; then returned my belief in God. From this beginning, I accepted the help in cleaning up the interior shattered glass. As I did so, I discovered I was not the only one with a hole in my heart, a shattered dream, shattered dreams. It was time to work the steps and then live them.

Life began to return. It was enriched by the diagnosis of depression which was finally treated along with the acknowledgement of my being an ACOA – a dry drunk. The behavior I had adopted in order to grow though childhood and adolescence continued into adulthood and was made more rigid by my addiction.

“Our capacity to deal creatively with shattered dreams is ultimately determined by our faith in God…However dismal and catastrophic may be the present circumstances, we know we are not alone.”

Looking in the mirror I accepted that I am another human being who has made mistakes, who is living with an incurable disease. The promises for the future, due to living this program, became a reality, continue to be a reality, and my worst day today, is nothing compared to what it could have been and, more importantly, I am not alone.

Keep coming back is a unique phrase to AA. It is not said in church. I keep coming back so as not to be alone and to be there for others.

Ending your inebriate trademarks

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 17:49:48 GMT

My early days of “working the Program” brought changes to my life, some perhaps mundane—like my eating habits, being on time for dinner or picking up the kids, assisting with chores. You’ll know what I am talking about if you’ve really decided to quit drinking and work your way to that alcohol-free life.

My appearance changed: I lost 40 or 50 pounds in my first six months in the Program. I could remember the events of the night before or remember to pick up that half-gallon of milk. My evening handwriting improved a bit but, alas, I never did have handwriting that pleased my 4th grade schoolteacher mother. Add some of your own “inebriate-trademarks.”

Thinking back to my alcoholic actions is painful but frankly I don’t want to forget them ‘cause I don’t want to repeat them. Come on, be honest—think of some of your gala flip-flops. But if you can’t recall any, listen to that next “drunk-a-log” lead for that’ll bring back your own days of rage. (I like a drunk-a-log occasionally to remind me of those days, I grimace and recall my own episodes, and recall when the Higher Power reached out His arms for me took me to the Beginners’ Meeting at Oak Street.)

I changed habits with friends—people I’d come to know and socialize with. Take dinner parties: now we ask when dinner is being served and arrive no more than 20 minutes 30 max prior to that time. We leave shortly after dessert. Early on, I’d simply decline an invitation since I was “sick” (which was true, “sick of my alcoholism”). I stopped all “after work” gatherings, club activities, stuff like that, any activities where alcohol was a featured part of the event.

I was focused on dealing with my disease and ridding myself of its harm and these changes enabled me to come to understand and work the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I suppose occasionally I wondered if friends noticed, but soon I realized they were busy with their own lives. But there was a Saturday morning, when, in my front yard a friend, a good friend, a neighbor, Howard, said to me,” I know you don’t drink. I didn’t know you were that bad.” I looked him in the eye, and I said, “Well, Howard, how bad does it have to get before one does something about his drinking?”

Yes, the damage we cause to others and ourselves can be deep and dark, but always remember that through the gift of Christ our Higher Power, the Program gives us a way to make life “happy, joyous and free.”

–Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati, Springboro / Franklin Noon

Making Amends in Gold

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 01:53:40 GMT

My daughter and I were as close as any mother and daughter could be. Therapists would say we were co-dependent. We probably were. I was a single mother for most of her growing up and sober since she was 2 ½. Her dad was a good father and we shared custody well.

In my early sobriety, Rachel taught me many things that I needed to learn to stay sober. Some included not worrying so much (she thought that was silly) and asking for help easily whenever she needed help. I often thought she was teaching me more than I was teaching her. I even wrote a book about what she taught me – God Shots: Memories and Lessons, A life in Recovery.

Our perhaps too close relationship continued though her college years and beyond. She married and had a great job and I noticed that she needed to be separate more and more. That is totally understandable and yet I was not prepared to let go. I wanted to cling to the way we were. When the grandbaby came, I thought I would be there and help daily but that’s not what she wanted. She set boundaries I didn’t like. I thought and kept saying - “I ‘m just trying to help”. Really, I wasn’t listening to her and how she wanted to be a parent.

In my home, two gifts from Rachel were very special to me. One was a ceramic leaf plate that she had made in grade school, and one was an icon of Mary that she brought me from a trip to Turkey she had taken. One month both of those gifts fell and broke within weeks of each other. I was heartbroken and it seemed that they were saying to me that our relationship was broken for good. I kept the pieces that broke and tried not to think about them.

While doing a tenth step sometime later I had to admit that I owed my daughter an amends. I needed to apologize for the intrusive ways I had been acting and for not respecting her boundaries. Slowly, we have forged a new relationship. Not all of it is to my liking but I have learned that I want to know and love my daughter for who she is now, not for the little girl who needed my help so often.

I learned about the Japanese technique Kintsugi, where broken porcelain is visibly repaired with gold. The repair is a symbol and showed that the brokenness was still there, but it had been repaired with gold so that the break would be honored and acknowledge.

I bought a kit to learn Kintsugi. I used it to repair the gifts my daughter had given me, and I had broken. They remind me of the healing that has happened through my willingness to admit may part, make amends, and change my behavior as a living amends. The pieces are more beautiful to me now than they were before. That which was broken can be healed and remembered without forgetting.

Libbie S.

“Keep coming back!”

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 01:12:29 GMT

This invitation is repeated at every AA meeting I’ve attended. I find it as important as “Work the Steps” for it is a sharp reminder to all of us whether you’re a 30-day person or the 30-year person: our sobriety is dependent on the quality of the way we “work the Program” and central to that admonishment is to “keep coming back.”

We’d moved to an assisted living facility, and I was looking for a nearby meeting and found one. The first time I walked in, struggling with my walker to cross unfamiliar bumps in the sidewalk and doorway, those already there greeted me as a friend, a friend. No questions, just “Welcome, git ya some coffee? Where ya from?” No hesitation, just smiles, handshakes. A warmth filled that room. I practically cried. They had their own program format, easy to follow for after enough meetings at various places you sorta get a feel of what’s up next. After the meeting I shook hands with a guy also from Cincinnati where we had lived for over 60 years. We exchanged which meetings we’d frequented and names of folks we’d run into, we both knew one of the granddads of Cincinnati AA. As we said goodbye, he said, guess what, “Come on back next week!” He wasn’t just being polite. He simply said what most of us hear when leaving an AA meeting, “Come on back!”

New in the Program we may have been rather relaxed about a regular attendance, sorta like “Not tonight, I went last night, don’t feel like it tonight,” or “No way...got a lot on my mind.” Then one night, you hear a lead of someone who “didn’t” keep coming back and she slipped back to “them old sick days” followed with guilt and sadness of her failure ... but she soon returned and was of course, welcomed.

The very words of the Steps tell us why to keep coming back: “Continue to take...” (#10); “Seek through prayer...” (#11); and “Practice these principles...” (#12).

We must always remember our ego is watching for a chance to drag us back, telling us “You’re fine, all that time at meetings, you don’t need to go any more.” Our ego never leaves us and seeks to take advantage of missteps by us.

And that brings us to the second part of “why “we need to keep coming back: because one of our charges in recovery is to carry the message to others who still suffer. And where else other than at a beginners AA meeting are you going to have the opportunity to do that. And if you have only a short period of sobriety and are a “newbie” yourself, what better place can you find folks trying to do the same thing.

So, keep coming back, it works if you continue to work it and as you carry this message of hope to others still suffering.

-Jim A., St X Noon Cincinnati and Springboro/Franklyn Wednesday, Noon

The Value of My Past

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 04:04:41 GMT

In the November GRAPEVINE of 1961, Bill W. wrote: “We did not always come closer to our wisdom by reason of our virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains of our former follies. Because this has been the essence of our individual experience, it is also the essence of our experience as a fellowship.”

“I wish I had never…” “If only I could go back and do it again I would.” “I don’t know if I can trust myself because I…” I can’t believe that I used to…” “I have no idea why I did what I was told I did. I have no memory of it but the knowledge of it just pains me.”

Our past can be a weight that will one day be the death of us, or we can use our past experiences to help ourselves and others because we have learned from our past mistakes, our past failures, our past guilt and shame.

My first moral inventory of myself was as shallow as a pancake. I wrote what I thought the Unit Chaplain would expect and I could get away with. He accepted it and I got away with it—for a short time.

As time passed, I knew I had not done a “fearless and moral inventory of myself” and, to be honest, I didn’t want to do one. First of all, much of my drinking was blackout drinking and so I had only a few—but serious—memories of my drinking life. What I did remember were the so called “good times.”

Once I began to make amends and to ask classmates and some friends about my drinking in their presence I got a shock. I didn’t want to hear what I was being told. Me? Me, a priest? I did that? I said that? Yes. That was me under the influence of alcohol.

There was no way I was going to share with anyone what I was hearing about myself. If I felt guilty and ashamed while I was drinking, I was doubly guilty and ashamed now that I was not drinking and not yet sober.

For almost the first five years in the fellowship I did everything right for all the wrong reasons. I read the Big Book so I could quote it at meetings; I went to meetings, quoted the Big Book, and talked, and talked. Then, one day, someone loved me enough to tell me publicly: “Séamus, shut your mouth, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth. God gave you two ears to listen twice as much as you talk.”

I listened. I listened and realized that being a priest had nothing to do with my addiction. I was as human as every other person in the rooms of A.A. I made similar mistakes, lost my values, wasted my money, went “looking for love in all the wrong places.” “Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you [think} you’re perfect in every way.”

This humpy dumpy fell off the wall and cracked. I began to see myself through the eyes of others, which was different from the manner in which I saw myself. I was not “that bad.” Then “I’m not bad.’ ‘I am a good person who made some terrible mistakes.” What I am guilty of I did under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. I used, misused, and abused and became addicted to alcohol to hide from myself and thought I was also hiding from others.

“We did not always come closer to our wisdom by reason of our virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains of our former follies.” Today, my wisdom comes from “Let me share this with you…” “I remember when…” “I was told that I…” “If it were not for my past, I could not make sense out of what you are sharing with me.”

My past has become a foundation stone. I started on shaky ground and almost every step I took was a minor earthquake. As the aftershocks stop, flowers, grass, trees, grow through the asphalt and Nature takes back her life. As I listened to the rumbles of my life, I learned to embrace the shaking of my foundation and appreciate that these rumblings would help to keep me in check and grow as long as I shared them with others.

I listened, learned, reviewed, learned to work the Steps and Live the program and, in so doing, I gained the knowledge to ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Séamus D.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New Orleans.

Get Out Of God’s Way

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:18:16 GMT

In long-term recovery we often lean back into moments from our early recovery that help and sustain us. In my book, “Out of the Woods,” I write about some of these experiences. Here is one of mine:

When I was very new to the rooms of recovery I heard a woman share in a meeting in a way that made me truly want to be deeply in recovery. The woman was telling the group that the day before her daughter had been hurt—hit by a car in front of their home. The woman said that she got into the ambulance with her daughter and she began to pray that her daughter would be okay and she was praying that God would fix this situation.

And then, she said, she stopped and she changed her prayer. Instead she began to pray, “God help me to get out of your way.”

I was stunned by her words. Just stunned that anyone could have that prayer come to mind in such a scary situation. I knew in that moment that it was recovery working in that woman’s life. And I knew then that I wanted what she and those Twelve-Step people had. I understood that what this woman did came from being in this program.

That was more than 30 years ago and that moment of realization and revelation has stayed with me. I still want that. It’s why I continue my recovery.

God help me to get out of your way.

Diane C.

The Rapture of Life

Thu, 23 May 2024 04:19:29 GMT

The May 18 reading in Karen Casey’s classic meditation book Each Day a New Beginning includes this line, “We are offered, moment by moment, opportunities to experience the rapture of life.”

Rapture? Ecstasy? Delight? Joy?

But this rapture does not always equal pleasure. The “rapture of life” promised to us in recovery is the ineffable glory of being alive. The “rapture of life” is the intense experience of living life awake, alert, and head-on.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. I’ve had some health issues to deal with. My best friend fell, broke her ankle, and had to be pinned-and-plated back together. Another friend has a grandchild who is grievously ill. Another couldn’t find affordable housing locally and has had to move out of town. Oh, and then there’s the state of the world, the state of the nation, and the bewildering climate.

“We are offered, moment by moment, opportunities to experience the rapture of life.”

The promise of sobriety, the promise of living life in the fellowship of AA, using the Twelve Steps as a guide for personal behavior, is the promise of not only enduring the difficult times, but of finding the joy in those times. We are promised the ability to live life moment-by-moment. We are taught how to bring ourselves away from the shame of the past or fear of the future by focusing on right here, right now, this breath, this blink, this chiming of the clock. This is joy. This is rapture: being present for our own lives.

Every moment of our lives is an opportunity to be grateful. That is hard to believe in the midst of pain, loss, fear, and frustration. It can seem callous, numb, and unrealistic to say that. But grace is found in the wee pockets of time, in the fleeting thoughts of “I need to call my friend” or the silent presence of the mourner with the bereaved. It’s in helping make new pillow shams for the apartment that’s too far away.

Yesterday morning I was taking my Golden Retriever BridgetAdams for a walk. She smiles at every single neighbor and each neighbor smiles back. Some give her pats and belly rubs and some even give her biscuits. She is equally glad to see them all. The shining sun makes her fur glitter and sparkle. I am glad to be alive now, right here, walking the dog.

And then we come to a little field and there is a bluebird, hopping on the ground, grubbing for breakfast. It’s years since I’ve been this close to a bluebird. The little bird looks up at me and then at Bridgie, acknowledges our presence with a little nod, and calmly takes off and flies to a nearby tree. I am grateful to be alive now, right here, nodding back at that beautiful bird.

“The opposite of addiction is not abstinence: the opposite of addiction is community.”

I’m not sure where I first heard that statement, but I believe it’s true. I’m not relying on my own strength alone to endure or enjoy a day. I can reach out. I am sober. I am alert. I can make choices. I can pick up the phone or walk the dog.

These beliefs, this “alone-no-more” and this “moment-by-moment rapture of life” bring with them some obligations. The Fellowship and Program of AA made the principles I had wanted to live by possible for me to live by. Because I was able to admit my own weakness and neediness, I was able to reach out and find the hand of AA there for me. That sure support gave me the courage to let go of the crutch I had been using—alcohol—and stand up. I am able to open my eyes and look around and experience the tiny, beautiful details of the present moment. My strength regained and increased; I can reach out. I can be present with those who are sick and suffering. I can look people in the eye, and I can promise, “You are not alone.”

And I can witness others as they live life one day at a time, one rapturous moment at a time.

-Christine H.

Finding an Image of God that Worked for Me

Wed, 15 May 2024 23:50:20 GMT

Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I was never going to take the first step if the second step wasn’t there to give me hope. My life was such a mess and I felt very insane. The promise and hope allowed me to take a chance…

And then there was that third step:Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the CARE of God as I understood God.

I was stumped—I knew I had some idea of God, but it wasn’t a very good one. I had a secret when I got sober. I worked for the church; I didn’t really have any connection with God by the time I stopped drinking. I hit my bottom after my dearest friend died when she was only 33 years old. Between 12 and 21 years old, 20 relatives died including my father when I was 12. My God was gone from me with all that grief and pain.

My sponsor suggested that I do a sort of 4^th step on my spiritually. My first memory of an insight, or the experience of God, or a higher power, was when my grandfather died. I could see myself sitting on the screen porch tying my shoes. My grandfather had taught me how to tie my shoes just a year before. In those days you had to be able to tie your shoes to show that you were mature enough to go to kindergarten. Everyone was so sad, but I knew he was still with me. Then the gentle sense of a grandfatherly God left me. I got busy with life and school and drinking and lost any real connection to God. I studied theology in the hopes of finding God again.

Raised a Roman Catholic, the church either boggled me or I found hypocrisy in every area of the church. As a child I rushed through confession making up sins, didn’t understand the Latin mass, and was freaked out by the corpus on the crucifix. That God was a punishing one—no thanks.

I spent time trying to know God. I walked a lot and I often noticed that the wind was the only thing that I could feel as a power greater than me. I couldn’t turn my will and my life over to the care of the wind! I searched back into my life to see what I could connect with.

I remembered that as a kid we had a babysitter named Miss Connie. She was British and had a big lap and gave big hugs. As I remembered her in early sobriety, I used her as my image of a loving power greater than me. She had looked a lot like Queen Elizabeth II’s mother. I cut out a picture of the woman and had it on my bureau.

My daughter was almost three when I got sober. She loved Mr. Rogers. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I often stopped to watch with her and felt such love and support from Fred Rogers that I thought I’d use him as a higher power. It was a bit odd since he was a living person but what he said and how I felt gave me such peace. I knew a God like Mr. Rogers was a God I could depend on to care for me. I had a picture of him on my bureau as well.

As time and sober years passed, I have found comfort in other images—Mary the mother of Jesus and Quan Yin, the goddess of holding sorrows in the Buddhist tradition. I watched songbirds at my feeder and saw that they soared on the wind and trusted the wind to help them find food and water. Maybe I could do that too. Each image or experience of something greater and deeper than me has helped me find a way to hold that true connection that I am loved, and that I could turn over to the care of God all my life and will. When friends say, “I can take care of that for you” I trust it more and more. I know God will do the same. I don’t second guess the people closest in my life that answer my request for help—so I have learned not to question that God would be there if I asked. The challenge is to ASK and then turn it over to God’s care. God could and would if sought.

Finding a Spiritual Life

Thu, 09 May 2024 00:43:22 GMT

“I finally surrendered” but not until the passage of six weeks of the Program...

...when I came to believe, I was living in a dark tunnel, one which never seemed to end. It was sucking me into times of pain, loss of much, and shame. I finally admitted it, on my knees. I admitted it to someone, and I guess I have to say I admitted this to something greater than myself not knowing what or who it was. I knew this was the only option I had... one night at home, on my knees, silent, begging for help to find light, a way out of this darkness I had fallen into.

As I rose from my knees, I felt something lift me by my shoulders, I sensed a newness, a hope. Sounds too simplistic and superhuman, but don’t tell me this couldn’t have happened to me. It did. Later that day, at my meeting, I relayed what had happened. The reading that night was about Bill W’s encounter with his Higher Power. People reached for me, smiling, tears in our eyes, others saying, “Just like me.” A brighter path seemed to open for there was more than just those in that room, a power greater than us was there. Believe it!

It was a loving something whose aim seemed only to provide a way to help me. I realized that night that I’d tried all my life to “run the show,” I knew it all, and could manage my life without assistance following what I felt was the right path. That path brought me deep into that tunnel and its pain and harm to others and myself. I came to believe there had to be a better way. The people with me that evening told me of their experiences finding this greater help, this “Higher Power” they kept calling it. I heard their stories—some stories of their travels were deeper than I had fallen, and I was reminded that that option was available if I went back out. But I heard they had found light, a way to live life without alcohol, lives of happiness, of joy, free of that tunnel.

When I went home that night, I finally realized what was happening for I had to admit to myself that “I gave up. I handed my life over to this Higher Power.” As I did so, I again felt His hand reaching for me, showing me the way. I knew each person at the meeting that evening was doing the same. It was a way I could walk with help from my higher Power.

Now I am taking steps to strengthen my surrender, building on it, and finding an alcohol-free life based on love, honesty, and reliance on our Higher Power. This takes effort and time. Yes, I was told that I would find a spiritual life, one which reveals the next right thing when caught in a jam. They told me and I believed them that this was a daily effort, to build on the very things I was learning those first nights. And they told me that I had an obligation to carry the message of these early meetings to those who still suffered.

This is how the Program came to my rescue at my early AA meetings.

Jim A, St X Noon & Springboro/Franklin, Wednesday Noon

Coming to Believe

Wed, 01 May 2024 23:54:18 GMT

In his review of Kenneth Branagh’s movie “A Haunting in Venice,” in PARABOLA Summer 2024 , Jame Tynen writes, “it deserves more recognition for its powerful picture of what happens when a committed rationalist encounters the supernatural” At the end of the review he writes, “A Haunting in Venice reminds us that to take a step into the supernatural is to risk being swept into powers that can’t be described as facts , clues and deductions. It is a journey into a reality that can’t be measured or rationalized yet nevertheless has the power to change us.

Over the span of my time in the Fellowship I have come across many agnostics, atheists, and rationalists who, like the rest of us, had some problem with the idea of God since we had prayed to God for help, cursed God for not helping, abandoned god.

When I first heard that all I had to do was “Read the Big Book, talk to my sponsor, and go to meetings” I was more than skeptical. I had difficulty in acknowledging that I was powerless. Coming to believe in a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity was laughable. I could stop drinking anytime I wanted, I was not insane. My boss sent me for treatment not to a Psych ward.

“Turned our will and our life over the care of God as we understood Him.” I was a good catholic, of course God was in charge of my life. I had no control over anything, except that I acted like I had control over everything.

“What happens when a committed rationalist encounters the supernatural?” Miracles happen sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly but they will always materialize if we work [look] for them.

“To take a step into the supernatural is to risk being swept into powers that can’t be described as facts, clues, and deductions.” Having read the Big Book, the Twelve and Twelve, The Little Red Book, and the history of A.A., I knew it all except this part that few really discussed—the supernatural, the Spiritual.

The Spiritual cannot be discussed in terms of facts, clues, and deductions. It is to be experienced and once experienced it leaves us speechless. As Bill reported, “Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a freeman. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, “So this is the god of the preachers!””

Bill had experienced a “presence,” a “wind,” saw himself on a mountain. But there are those for whom this may be the result of medication, medication withdrawn. And yet, for Bill, it was an experience , a spiritual awakening, that changed his life and the lives of millions of others over the years.

“It is a journey into a reality that can’t be measured or rationalized yet nevertheless has the power to change us.” I never expected the changes that I have experienced since I finally acknowledged I am powerless over alcohol and other drugs, that my life had become unmanageable. In the process of making Amends, I learned just how unmanageable my life had been. I thought I knew about God—so much for a degree in theology (attained under the influence of spirits). I had to come to grips that I had to relearn all I thought I knew and see it in a totally different light. It wasn’t about positions to be taken; it was about being open to the Spirit as I came to understand god. The journey was from the head to the heart, from rigidity in thinking and expectations to finding fluidity in life; it was a journey from arrogance to kneeling in respect with humility; a journey from being under the influence of spirits to being led by the Spirit, a power greater than me, that restored me to sanity.

This was a new reality that could not “be measured or rationalized.” Somewhere in reading the Big Book, talking to sponsors and members of the fellowship, listening and sharing at meetings, a Spirit, a Power greater than myself, crept into my heart and mind and changed me. Recovery is not “to risk being swept into powers that cannot be described” but rather experienced as life giving.

Alcoholics Anonymous p 100

Séamus D
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans Diocese.

The most “important person in the room” is…

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 23:50:50 GMT

...that new person, or is it the old timer? Make no mistake about it. Everyone in that AA Room is important! Each is present at an AA meeting to reap the harvest of the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous. But the new person? He or she may be plain scared, maybe angry, but not likely to be glad to be there. His attendance may be “court or spousal-directed.” Deep inside herself, she recognizes she may be embarking on making serious changes in her life. Ask yourself how you felt at your first AA meeting? Remember, Step 12 calls us to reach out to these new folks, to carry the message to them.

What’d’ I see that first day: A “lead meeting,” at East One, basement of a branch bank, Tuesday night at 8, smoking and coffee encouraged. Walking in I saw only strangers. I of course sat in back. People were laughing, welcoming each other. A guy leaned across chairs, asked my name, shook hands, said “I’m George, welcome.” Others followed, I guess it was apparent I was there for the first time, ...strange, no one had a last name. I met Art, Sally, and others before the meeting started. Did I feel “important?” No way. That was the last thing I wanted. Just let me sit in this corner!

We started. Seemed strange. They read some sentences from a book and Art handed me what I later learned was the Twelve Steps and some other stuff and asked me to read a paragraph. People read from what I came to know as “the Big Book” and it was indeed “big”. A basket was passed, announcements, then the Chair said, “Anyone here for the first time, just tell us your name so we can greet you”. I froze. A guy stood up (must have been sixty or so) and said, “Charlie, I’m an alcoholic”. A couple others followed. People sorta looked at me, so I stood, “Jim,” and sat down. No way I was going to tell them I was an alcoholic. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself, and I wasn’t going to admit it to a group of people I’d never seen before. What if I ran into them at Kroger’s and a guy said, “Hi, good to see you at the AA meeting Tuesday, next week I’m givin’ the lead.”

Then the evening’s speaker, Bill, gave the lead I’ll never forget, ever. For 45 minutes he told his story. I was torn. Much of what he said was the same path I’d traveled… razz-ma-tazz at college and into my 20s, early 30s, but bumps started appearing, difficulties at home, and more, lots of laughter from others, nodding of heads of agreement, “Yeah, I did that!” We clapped for the speaker and with a prayer, and (imagine) holding hands, said something about, “...it works if you work it”, and off I went to ponder all I’d heard and seen.

To be Continued on May 8^. At Red Door.

Jim A, St X Noon & Franklin/Springboro, Wednesday Noon

Fingers Crossed No More

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:42:58 GMT

I have spent the past week wading through my first case of Covid. In the space between naps, I found myself making some new connections.

When I first came into the rooms of recovery, I remember hearing people tell me, correctly, that this is a spiritual, not a religious program. For some of those folks, it also meant that any “religious” language was suspect. I was warned that if I told stories that sounded “religious” I didn’t understand spirituality, and I was unlikely to get the program. Other folks told me how lucky I was that, as an ordained person, I had already nailed the third step…as if. The truth, I suspected, lay somewhere in the middle.

In the early years of sobriety, I listened to countless stories of “God moments” from people who told me such moments were only to be found in the out-of-doors, or in downstairs church – but never, ever, in upstairs church. As a result, I spent a lot of energy avoiding religious language.

Gradually, though, I realized that this wasn’t true for me. One of my close friends occasionally reminds me that I am an “Old-School High Church Anglican cleric.” Besides “recovering addict,” this might be one of the most accurate labels for me. It didn’t make me special, or better-than. It simply made me…me.

Imagine what a blessing it was for me to discover RMEC and this blog. Finally, a place where I could express myself with images that didn’t quite fit in either upstairs church or downstairs church. Most of the writing I do here looks at scripture stories through the lens of this addict’s recovery.

Today, I want to offer two intensely personal examples of how traditional religious language and ritual have guarded me until I found the grace to surrender and have guided my recovery ever since.

The first is an ear worm. I have strong memories of wandering around Hell’s Kitchen (subtle, right?) in the middle of the night, in search of my next fix and/or companion. There were times I paused and asked myself what the hell I was doing. Given what you’ve read so far, you won’t be surprised that the answer came as a fragment of an Advent hymn: Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding. All those nights, the message from my Higher Power was, cast away the works of darkness, O ye children of the day. Even in the places of deepest despair, even when I knew I wasn’t yet ready to cast away the works of darkness, I was being reminded who I really was…a child of the day. A hymn that I had sung since boyhood kept me company.

The second is a liturgical gesture. Those who celebrate Rite I Eucharists are familiar with the phrase (this is from Prayer II, p. 342 of the BCP), “, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies.” I was taught, when I got to that phrase, to place my hands, palms up, on the altar – an embodiment of offering.

In the years before recovery, this was always a moment of cognitive dissonance. There I was, with hands upturned, while mentally crossing my fingers. When I was still using, I knew that I wasn’t offering myself, or my soul, or my body…just bits of them. I wanted to. I didn’t know how, yet. But there was that little bit of willingness acknowledged in my crossed fingers.

Today, that moment of oblation is one of joy and gratitude, and my fingers are crossed no more. Perhaps people wonder why the priest is smiling. Because God has restored me to sanity.

Does anyone else experience these kinds of God Moments, couched as they are in traditional religious language and ritual? I couldn’t possibly say. It’s clear that not everyone does. But I wonder if some of you who read these blog posts do. Maybe you, too, have been told not to talk churchy. That if you do so, you don’t really get the program. So, you keep many of your stories to yourself. Stories that could help others who find themselves in the same place.

If that sounds like you, we would all love to hear those stories. My experience is that the more stories you tell, the more you will see … in your life and in the world around you. By sharing them, you learn that you don’t have to cross your fingers again either.

Happy Easter,

Paul J. in Muncie

Hazardous Waste

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:37:05 GMT

In my sober adult life, I have lived in 5 homes. I moved to my ‘retirement’ home just this past October. Each time I moved I found that the last owners had left lots of stuff in the garage—old paint, gardening sprays, oil, and other toxic stuff. I generally left it there and added to it and then left it for the next owners. When I added to the toxic stuff each time and told myself that the new owners might use the stuff even when I could see that some cans were corroded and were many, many years old. I didn’t throw any of it out because I knew it wasn’t good for the environment. But I didn’t do anything about finding a place to dispose of them properly.

When I sold my home last summer, I decided to have a garage sale to rid myself of unwanted stuff and baggage. I set out all the toxic stuff (including mine) and put a free sign on them. A few things went but I was left with a lot of unsafe and dangerous stuff. I decided I didn’t want to leave this stuff for the next family. I would leave the current paint cans that held the colors that were in my place but not the ones from many years ago along with a dozen other toxic stuff.

I looked up Hazardous Waste places and found that the city I was in had one close by. I packed it all up in boxes and off I went. What a relief! The folks there were friendly and helpful. They did not criticize or judge me for the icky stuff I had. With each thing I gave them I felt lighter and happy to know that my bad stuff would be delt with properly and I would not contribute to harming the environment.

Then I moved and bought another home. On the day I moved I looked in the outdoor storage closet (no garage this time) only to find that the previous owners had left hazardous stuff! I choose to believe that they thought I might want to use it but there was nothing I wanted.

This time would be different! I packed up the stuff and put it my car to take to the hazardous waste place. I would take care of the icky stuff now! I would not leave it for the next family. And then it sat in my car. For months. I even had to take it out to put other things in my car and then put it back in.

I was busy! I had to settle in, get to know the neighbors, find great new AA meetings, get to know the town. So, I drove around with this toxic stuff in my car for months!

Finally, this last week I dealt with it all. Where I live now meant I had to drive 25 miles to the hazardous waste place. I had to use navigation because I didn’t know how to get there on my own. I thought I might have to pay to get rid of the stuff since I live outside the city limits. But I was going to do it!

When I arrived, the person at the gate told me I didn’t have to pay and directed me to the area where I could give up the stuff. Friendly men, just like before, took each thing and then THANKED me for bringing it! I felt so light and happy as I left that I had physically let go of things that were not good for me or anyone else. Used in the correct way they helped but later their use became toxic and had to be disposed of it with help.

It's now the 4^th month of the year so I find myself thinking about the 4^th step. “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” and then the 5^th step- “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” And the 6^th- “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” And the 7^th- “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

My experience with the hazardous waste took me through 4,5,6, and 7! It was a very visceral experience of inventory, admitting the toxicity of the stuff even stuff I inherited, I got ready to remove it, and finally I got the help to do so.

The stuff that others left became my defects because I didn’t deal with them. I let them become part of my mess. Driving around with all that stuff in my car reminded me of holding on to my defects and letting them bother me because I knew I wasn’t dealing with them. Getting help to find a place to take the stuff AND the help I got there to unload it freed me from it.

Steps 11 & 12: “Our constant contact and carrying the message.”

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 23:51:18 GMT

Step Eleven: How do we maintain our “conscious contact” with our Higher Power? As with all the Program, it’s a simple Program for complicated people. Paraphrasing the Big Book, we’re told that each night we are to stop and review our days’ encounters with family, friends, and enemies. Were we angry about something, did we treat someone unfairly, is there anything that occurred which will chew on us for days, or an amend you still need to make? Perhaps the main question might be to ask yourself, “Is this a difficulty I really can do anything about?”

A spiritual life isn’t an event, but rather an association with your Higher Power. There we recall that He’s at your side for in the words of that old hymn, “He walks and talks with us and tells us we are His own.” Cultivate that contact, talk to Him, listen. A thought about the day may come to mind, “out of the blue” so to speak, a thought which suggests a resolution.

Step Twelve: How do we carry the good news of the AA message? Your attitude. Remember, you are not a salesman but a drunk who, with His Higher Power and the Program, found an easier softer way. You’re not a “Big-book-Thumper!” Remember, however, the way you handled life before your surrender, got you into trouble, and you became a “drunk”. You cannot be judgmental, no “shame-on-you” stuff. You’re not their father or their priest... just a person who found a way out.

Speaking with a parent, spouse, brother/sister, employer. Listen, let them talk. What’s on his or her mind? Why were they even talking to you? Don’t forget Al-Anon for often/usually families are troubled also. Al-Anon provides a way a non-alcoholic can learn to live with the alcoholic whether practicing or in recovery. Al-Anon can be a tough gathering for often this person faces an alcoholic who just won’t quit, perhaps calling for the cutting of the relationship.

“First meeting” with practicing alcoholic. Again, let him or her talk, there will be openings for you to briefly tell your story: “It worked for me, perhaps for you too.” She may be fragile, perhaps beaten down by courts, family, bosses, friends, children. It’s a quiet invitation “Just come with us to a Noon Meeting at St X”. There folks will greet you and introduce themselves for they know how you feel and will assist you just as folks did when they were newbies. Treat it as a happy moment, the start for her of a new life. There is a laughter at AA meetings, and she may be surprised when folks cry out, “I’m just glad I found all you alcoholics!” A general thought: when approached to talk with a practicing alcoholic, talk with your sponsor or friends in the Program and solicit their ideas of how to approach the person.

Your conversation with the practicing alcoholic may call you to end your session with this question, “Well, your story is sad, familiar. I’ve been there. But I ask you, ‘What are you going to do about it’?”

Addresses to groups. I spent years speaking to all manner of groups... teens, church people, alcoholic and mentally incarcerated folks, prisoners working the system to reduce their jail time, and lawyers who had to sit and listen to hear someone tell them about alcoholism, seemingly a serious problem among lawyers. I approached it this this way: Lawyers generally aren’t stupid; they know the facts. I slanted my thoughts to their clients, families, kids, fellow partners, and for lawyers, there can be no greater devastation for a client to come to you and tell you that whenever they are seeking his or her legal counsel, one of your partners is always close to inebriation and that he wishes to work with a different attorney in your office.

I stress how the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous might be of service. After sessions, folks sometimes quietly approach and say, “Thanks.”

Yes, my friends, it is just another disease, not a stigma of some sort and the Program is Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s gift to us through their Higher Power.

Jim A St X Noon Cincinnati

April 3, 2024

Hi. I’m Devin. I’m Recovering Grace.

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 23:37:33 GMT

“ Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” — Matthew 11:28–29

Hi. I’m Devin, and I’m missing something.

I have been fighting to find recovery and I’m not there yet.

My battle with addiction has been relentless, leaving me frustrated and lost. It all began in 2019, a year marked by a difficult divorce, the loss of my dream job, and a forced departure from the city I loved. The reasons behind my addiction matter less now than the fact that it’s something I’ll carry with me for life. At this point I don’t care whether it’s a disease, a choice, a behavior or genetic predisposition that is activated by environment. I want to find peace.

Addiction is insidious. The little maniacal voice inside my head pushes me toward using, weaving a web of lies.

“You’re alone on a Friday night. All your friends are out having fun. You could use and no one would know.”

False. They found out.

“COVID gives you the perfect excuse to be alone, to use, and to hide your come down. You can quit once the lockdown is lifted.”

False. I couldn’t.

“Tell them you don’t feel well. Your face is red because of a sunburn. You’re sweating bullets in January due to new medication.”

All lies. People eventually figured it out, and even if they didn’t, shame weighed me down.

In just four years, I’ve had hospital stays, spent thousands on my habit, ruined relationships, lost friends, and watched my goals crumble. I’ve been through rehab twice, changed cities, and missed loved ones’ life milestones. My family is at their wit’s end, and my vocation and career are in ruins. Most recently I lost my position at a job I viewed as a dream job. It was devastating.

The list of remedies and treatments I’ve tried is long, including meditation, medication, counseling, prayer, participation in various recovery programs, exercise, yoga, diet changes, adopting pets, changing social circles, journaling, and more. Despite my efforts, I haven’t been able to stop… yet.

So, what’s missing?

I’ve been forgetting about Grace.

I am saved by grace alone.

I can’t earn my way to recovery. Recovery happens when I have the courage to stop the cycle of self-deprecation and embrace that, in the eyes of God, I am already whole and loved.

Grace means recognizing that everything we have is a gift from God, from our first breath to our intellect, our nourishment, and life itself. “Give us today our daily bread.” God gives us what we need to sustain our lives. There is nothing, NOTHING that already has not been given. This revelation didn’t come from a meeting, book, or workshop; it came from loving churches, participation in the rites and sacraments of the Church, and mostly ordinary people extending God’s grace to me.

I’ve always been a member of a church that taught me I’m a beloved child of God, no questions asked. So, who am I to judge myself otherwise? My journey to sobriety is now about working alongside God to mold and transform my life, making Christ more visible through sacrament, repentance, learning, serving, forgiving, and accepting the unearned love that is God’s grace.

At this point in my journey, I am unwilling to identify with my brokenness when something better insists that my brokenness is nothing but the cross on which I will find grace.

I’ve wanted to try this for a while now: to use the tools of my faith — scripture, tradition, and reason — to discover the wholeness that was already gifted to me. I want to explore how a deeper internalization and acceptance of the grace present in Baptism, Communion, Repentance, Anointing of the Sick, etc. is the same grace that will lead to long term sobriety. I want to use the “grace tools” to allow me to live my saved and “recovered” potential that was not earned by me or by anyone’s tough love except Christ’s.

I want to dive head first, reaffirming and feeling love that is at the forefront of everything in the cosmos. I want to accept it not because I earned it, but because it's been there for my acceptance all along. I want to accept it so I can more fully embody what God has and always will desire for me. I want to help others do similarly.

I suppose that addiction will be the heaviest cross I’ll ever carry. However, crosses aren’t tools of death; they are the means of finding life.

Hi. I’m Devin, a Beloved Child of God.

Sand Cranes in the Thousands

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 01:19:10 GMT

It’s March and at several meetings we read the step of the month in the 12x12. I know I am deeply connected to step one —I AM powerless over alcohol and so many other things. This is the Surrender step. Step two is my favorite step. I deeply know that a power great than me can restore me to sanity. Otherwise, step one would not be possible for me. Step two is the Hope step. Step three, though, has been a tough one—decided to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as we understood that. This is the Faith step.

As a child in an abusive family, attending a very rigid church, there was no way I was turning myself over to the god I grew up with. That god could hurt me no matter what I did. I could not be good enough in my family. We were asked EVERY night at dinner: What did you do today to justify your existence? You can’t answer that question with just a simple answer. It had to be approved by my father as to whether it counted.

But then I saw that the step asked me to turn my will and my life over to THE CARE of God. Well, that’s a different thing. I understood the idea of trusting others when they would say “Oh, I’ll take care of that” or when I offered to take care of something for someone. It meant that I would receive help and that I didn’t have to worry about it. Most often it worked. So maybe with God it could work even better. This might just be a God who looks out for me and helps. I needed only to plan (often many times a day) to let God take care of my life.

So, this weekend my partner and I went to Willcox, AZ, to see the over 30,000 sand cranes that winter there before they fly back to the Midwest and finally to Minnesota for the summer. We knew it might be a bit late and that many had probably left already but we were up for the adventure.

The first place we were directed to was wrong and took us miles out of our way. I was so bummed. We went back to our motel and after deciding we had been given the wrong directions, we would try again in the morning. The cranes are usually hanging in groups in the morning and then later in the afternoon. Not being early risers, we knew we were taking a chance. But out we went to find them. This time we went the right way and soon were looking at huge marshy pools with many different waterfowl and maybe 5 cranes. My heart sunk. We had driven over a hundred miles and spent a night in a motel to see 5 cranes??

In that moment I was so disappointed. I had wanted to do this trip and see the cranes for several years. I blamed myself for not having come sooner and many other things. It was all my fault! As we drove away from the ponds my partner said he want to stop at a golf course we had passed to use the bathroom. I sat in the car and moped. Then I thanked God for all we had seen in this part of Arizona and tried to let go and relax. Next year we would try again. It was all ok.

When Steve came back to the car, he told me that the woman in the clubhouse had said that that the cranes often were on the course and hung out in ponds next to the course so we went to find that area thinking we could remember it for next year. It was an overcast and cool day, but we could see perhaps 100 cranes in the distance hanging out. I said thank you to my higher power and THEN—looking to the north we saw a huge flock winging its way towards us and then circling and landing with the others, and then another arrived and another and another! They flew over our heads and as best as we could count, well over 1000 cranes flew over and by us for perhaps 30 minutes!

It was so amazing to see them, hear them and watch how they formed themselves in flight. Just when we thought we would see no more another string of cranes would emerge from the clouds and over our heads.

I realized I’d had put the cranes and my seeing them in God’s hands and was gifted the amazing experience of seeing thousands of them. Perhaps the cranes will remind me to make that decision to put my will and my life in THE CARE of the God of my understanding.

My Role in AA

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 01:01:45 GMT

In THE BEST OF BILL we read, page 65, “We will cooperate with practically everybody; yet we decline to marry our Society to anyone. We abstain from public controversy and will not quarrel among ourselves about those things that rip society asunder – religion – politics, and reform. We have but one purpose; to carry the AA Message to the sick alcoholic who wants it.” This was written in January of 1955 some twenty years after the founding of the Fellowship. By then they had sufficient experience with the importance of Anonymity. He opened his talk by stating, “As never before the struggle for power, importance, and wealth is tearing civilization apart. Man against man, family against family, group against group, nation against nation.” Today he might add, church against church.

I remember my early days when the tension in our local groups was palpable due to the newcomers from treatment centers, younger people coming into AA and taking about their addiction to drugs, and mental health issues being raised. A letter was read at the beginning of each meeting telling participants to keep the discussion to alcohol resulting in some folks walking out.

Looking back on those times, I don’t think we quarreled. We avoided the topic of addiction vs. alcoholism. Some of us talked about it in the meeting after the meeting at a local restaurant and discussed how we could bridge the divide. Now, some forty-five years later, we continue to state at the beginning that we confine our discussion to alcoholism. However, it is accepted that almost all of us who have been in the program for a long time are dual addicted if not multiple addicted.

Politically, socially, and religiously our world is, once again, being pulled apart. And yet, in the meeting rooms of the Fellowship one would not realize this fact. We have our differences, we are aware of them, but it is our well-being that keeps us together. We are together because we know the dangers of losing our spiritual strengths. We have but one purpose and that is to help the alcoholic who is still suffering. Some of us, due to age related health issues, are suffering and we need the Fellowship to remind us of the strength we have through living the twelve steps.

Bill goes on to say that “To gain enough humility and self-respect to stay alive at all we have to give up what had really been our dearest possession – our ambitions and our illegitimate pride.” Bill does not speak softly. He can’t afford to. People like me deny any ambitions or Pride. I was taught to be humble and to think of myself as being humble. I became proud of my humility and then just outright prideful. I had every right to be proud. I was good at what I did. But Bill was talking about illegitimate pride; the kind that kills people like me and destroys the possibility of healthy relationships.

There are, today, people I want to take aside and educate them as to why they should not vote one way or another. I want to point out the failures of this or that person and why the person I support is the best of a bad lot. It’s my responsibility to make sure that all voters are educated before they vote. But that has no place inside the halls of the Fellowship. That has no place in a sponsor- sponsee relationship. It has no place in conversation unless those involved are sufficiently respectful of one another that they can agree to disagree. “…AA would always depend on our continued willingness to sacrifice our personal ambitions and desires for the common safety and welfare.”

After a few years in the Fellowship, I no longer consider it a sacrifice to put aside that which I think I need. Rather it is more a responsibility to be present to the individual, the group, and AA as a whole. It is a responsibility to be present for others and I can’t do that when I want what I want.

This brings me full circle; I am powerless over people, places, and things and when I think I’m in control my life has become unmanageable, I need help, God help me. My role in AA and, frankly, in other places, is to share my experience, strength and hope and give others the space and the respect to share theirs. Stories bring us together. Opinions divide and destroy. So, I keep it simple, “Do justice, Love mercy, and walk humbly with your God [as you understand God].

Steps Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, “Cleaning House... then what?”

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 01:16:58 GMT

At this point, we are carrying a lot of guilt, a gunnysack filled with the consequences of our drinking. Hurts to our family and our friends, troubles at work. It haunts us and it gets in the way of working other Steps and learning how to live as a sober person free of Mr. Ego. How do we empty this gunnysack? We make a list, but we don’t dwell on its details, but I suppose some do and that’s fine with them. But I suggest a more modest course and take your family for example. No need to detail the hurt you have inflicted on them for believe me, they’ll remember. Repeating a list of your drunken events may aggravate the situation. You probably meant every apology but the next day you welched on the deal and continued your merry alcoholic drinking ways. Your past words of apology meant little or nothing, so this time when you do apologize, tell them you have found a deep new approach if indeed you do mean it: “This time I don’t stand alone.” At the time of a true surrender, you are then backed by your Higher Power and your sponsor and your AA group, they’re all at your side and with their support and your work of these Steps of the Program, you will succeed. Think of your alcoholic behavior, understand your sins as an alcoholic and ask your Higher Power for His forgiveness. A part of this “forgiveness” is to be able to forgive yourself, to move on, not to dwell on the past or jump into that pity-pot. He loves you, always, and will support you if you but reach for Him, so will your Sponsor and AA Group. At first, your family may not understand that, but be patient with them. They, just like you, may start believing that. Remember, your family may also be sick, for your disease may also have twisted their lives in response to your behavior. The Big Book makes a unique point when referring to our drunken sexual sins. Sometimes the pain of resurrecting some of the hurts on that list isn’t appropriate for it’s just too awful. As I said before, we all seek forgiveness from those we’d harmed but we “cannot bring about still more harm in doing so” (Big Book, p 69) just to quell our own ego clothed as your guilt.

And this is important: Talk to your Sponsor about this list-making stuff. Don’t make a list and run around seeking forgiveness. Take it easy. Is an apology really going to help? Maybe ...stop and give it a second thought. “Prove it!” by working the Program now, not tomorrow, and hard day-in, day-out. The truth of your beliefs will be demonstrated with time by showing your changed patterns of life. Gain some self-respect. But by all means remember it’s not, “ready, shoot, aim.”

The joys of Step Ten! Some think the Program is but a way to stop drinking. How wrong can they be! It is that and more for it is intended to be a way of living your life—to be free of the ego that tells you that you are still in charge of your life. You need to seek the aid of your Higher Power in doing so. We’re told in this Step to continue to review how we handle life’s bumps. Do we fight them or accept them and seek His will for the next right steps? We can’t eliminate or stop the bumps, but we can learn to meet them, find what they are, seek help, and follow His direction. He’s there, always, watching you, He’s never asleep and never will rebuke you. But He will suggest ways to deal with those bumps on “His schedule” not yours. Reach for assistance from your Sponsor, your AA home group, and your Higher Power to isolate you from the devil incarnate Mr. Ego. And this is important: as we put our time into the Program, we may become loose in the way we work it. That’s why we must continue going to meetings and working the Steps. For me, as one confined to assisted living, I like to think of this as having an “AA Contact” of some kind every day, and often every night—a quiet reading, a telephone call, a real USPO letter, writing a meditation, anything—just make every day an “AA Contact Day,” for remember, it only works if you continue to work it.”

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati

March 6, 2024

Walking on Vodka

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 01:11:59 GMT

“Miracles were all good way back when,” said the man just holding on, “but I think God is no longer in the miracle business.” I understood but disagreed.

I was there when he first entered the rooms of AA. I remembered his glossy eyes, puffy face, and shaking hands. I could still hear his tales of excessive drinking, shattered relationships, and frequent thoughts about calling it quits. With each fingernail-grabbing step, I marveled at how, with God’s help, this man was climbing out of the pit of despair and becoming the new creation St. Paul described long ago. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see it.

It reminded me how often I’ve been blind to God’s miraculous work. So often, the fog of my daily life settles in and prevents me from seeing the grace-filled landscape surrounding me. It causes me to question my path and whether God is with me at all. When the pressure at work squeezes tight, a child brings up a past mistake, or I begin singing my often-used shame-based refrains, the fog settles in. Like my friend, I’m no longer able to see the miracles surrounding me.

The blind see, the lame walk, if we have eyes to see. Our desire to walk on water prevents us from seeing that we’re walking on vodka. A modern-day miracle. Thanks be to God.

Beads of Gold

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 01:53:56 GMT

I have always been a person who marked life events with something tangible. It could be as simple as a new dress, a book to remind me, a souvenir of somewhere I visited. When I looked at the items I have collected, I would be taken back to the event or place and remember.

Sobriety is marked often with coins, and I have many. For me though I have marked the change and growth I have found in being sober with jewelry. My great grandfather was a jeweler and I worked in jewelry stores in college. I thought about becoming a jeweler myself once.

I wanted to mark my journey in sobriety and spiritual growth. When I had one month without drinking, I bought a hollow gold bead and put it on a chain. It was a way to mark the month and I wanted another bead, so it helped me stay sober that month and the month after and the one after! I bought another one each month until I was sober for two years—24 gold beads. I loved my necklace and wore it often.

After the two years, I changed what I did to mark my days and months of sobriety. I marked the years instead of the months, often with some simple jewelry. Some years it was something like a ring that had inlays of turquoise that matched the number of years I had and one year it was a ring with February’s birthstone—amethyst, for the month I got sober.

Years after it had been two years of sobriety, I was sitting in a meeting one day. I was excited to share that I was having a yearly anniversary. While I was waiting to speak, I noticed that I was wearing the necklace with 24 gold beads. Tears came to my eyes. It was my time to speak. “I am celebrating 24 YEARS of sobriety today”. I told them about my first 24 months and how I had bought the beads each month, never imagining that one day at a time, one bead at a time I would have 24 years! Time takes time I had learned, and it passes in the present moments of life. Change takes time and I found I had arrived in that place by learning, and sharing, and making and keeping the changes that would support my sober spiritual journey.

I started to buy beads again and have bought a bead for every year that I have continued to not drink one day at a time. Now my necklace has 34 beads on it. The gift of sobriety is all the moments I have connected to spirit and been able to share my sobriety with others. Thank you.

This is an excerpt from my book God Shots, Libbie S.

Thank God for the Discipline of Recovery

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 23:31:51 GMT

In his book THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON, Henri Nouwen writes, “At times this dark voice is so strong that I need enormous spiritual energy to trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son. It requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found. Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” *

“God loves you.” I can’t think of the number of times I said that to others and watched them tear up as it finally got through to them that they were worthwhile.

My problem was that I did not believe God loved me. I was a priest. I was drinking and periodically using drugs. On the outside I looked normal. Internally I was like a cave filled with ashes, pools of water, dank, dark, and had no idea as to what to do about it.

When advised to go to therapy, I did. I told the therapist what he or she wanted to hear and what I wanted them to hear. I was deemed to be “sound.” That was cause for a celebration, a drink. One can’t celebrate without a drink.

I remember only too clearly when I slipped one rung of the moral ladder. Before too long, I slipped another rung, and another. Then this became my new normal, properly excused as “everyone does this” but I knew that was not true.

One by one the lightbulbs went out on the inside. God could not love me. I didn’t love myself. The night of my thirtieth birthday I drank all night and cried that I had no home, no wife, no children. I had nothing to show for my life. What I was failing to see was my vocation as a priest as being worthwhile.

I participated in leadership in retreats I don’t remember as I was in a blackout. I talked about a loving, kind, forgiving, compassionate god. He or She was not my God. My god was going to punish me one day. My weekly flights to one city or another were a nightmare. I just knew we were going to crash, and I was going to hell. I repeated the act of contrition until Jack Daniels renewed my spirits and all was going to be okay. But it wasn’t. I did not “trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son.” I could not trust that. As far as I was concerned, I was in a living hell of an existence, I was like a duck in a lake, calm but paddling fast under the surface. I was drowning in my own self-pity and awareness of my own sinfulness. How could god love me?

Looking back to my participation in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I realize that God—my Higher Power—had been pushing me toward A.A. from the time I began drinking. Initially, I was helping A.A. in Dublin (Ireland) to find meeting places. Working with adolescences brought me into a new world of addiction. I came to the United States and found myself again working with young adults with alcohol and drug problems. I took university courses in addiction and not once did I see myself in any of the profiles.

One day I found myself at the door of my boss’s office saying I thought I had a drinking problem. Two months later, in a staff meeting, I said I wanted to go to treatment. In neither of these situations had I planned to say what I said.

I did not come into the Fellowship willingly. It took just over four years of a dry drunk, white knuckling it, before I acknowledged “I am powerless over alcohol.” It took a while longer to admit “my life has become unmanageable.

I learned that recovery “requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found.”

A real honest fourth and fifth step cleared the way, opened the door to seeing myself as a human being with character defects, and in need of a good hug. Internally I was able to look back, not in anger, but in thanksgiving, for the grace given to me to live while I was dying.

Steps eight through twelve became my discipline. “Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” Read the Big Book. Go to meetings. Get a sponsor. Prayer and Meditation—the maintenance of our spiritual condition. “I’m Séamus. I’m an alcoholic. Thank God for those words of freedom. Thank God for the discipline of recovery.

Séamus D
A retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

*The Return Of The Prodigal Son – Heni J. Nouwen.

Our Basic Steps: One, Two & Three: My Perspective

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 02:14:49 GMT

Step One: “Powerlessness and unmanageability.” Ask yourself—now be honest, “Am I powerless over whether I’ll take that first drink?” I was powerless. I knew I would. I was drinking too much. I’d watch my friends, they could have two drinks and stop, but I couldn’t do that.

We must see this as a crossroads—to drink or not to drink, that’s the question—it’s that simple. We must see drink’s dead end and decide whether we select its path or the path of life.

Step Two: Yet we know as did Christ, that we are all sinners and that as alcoholics we may honestly mean that “I quit” one day but maybe not the next. We need help and Step Two hits that dead on, for it calls us to look to a “Power greater than ourselves to retore us to sanity.” We proved we can’t do it alone. We must reach for our Higher Power’s hand, Christ’s hand. We reach for that at an AA meeting, for our sponsor, the Big Book, for the others who have walked on this path. They can help us because that’s the very essence of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Christ and AA people will walk with you. And you will be welcomed just as Christ welcomed the man on the Cross on that first Good Friday.

Step 3: I “made a decision” to turn “my life over” to God—unconditionally, not temporarily, not just for today, not just until people get off our backs—unconditionally, like a defeated nation in war surrenders on the battlefield, just as that headline should read,

“....Unconditionally Surrenders.”

When we do so, we are surrendering our ego. No more are we to look to it for guidance. Our ego is what brought us to this point. If we “turn it over,” if we but surrender, we’ll not be alone.

I’ve talked with alcoholics right at this point in their lives—right at that “White Light point” —that same point Bill W saw as he lay on that hospital bed. The question becomes, “What are you going to do about it?” Yes, we surrender, then what? And you know deep down it isn’t going to happen without assistance—and your present assistant, Mr. Ego, is destroying you, for he in the past has stopped your efforts to avoid drink. But he still sits and waits. Mr. Ego knows he has a chance to win you back. Your struggle with him doesn’t end there, so accept this Program of action.

The Program of AA thunders into action if we now reach for its assistance and take the last next several Steps. This raw newbie will find that AA is a program of action and practicality. The Big Book tells us in detail what’s next in Steps Four through Nine, or as some would say, “How do we in the Program learn to stop that next drink, reach some peace, remain sober, and rid myself of all those past ghosts?”

And yet, and yet Christ knew we were sinners and Bill and Dr. Bob also knew that, for they had “gone back out.” The next Steps tell us how to fight that…

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati, 2-7-24

In Praise of Sam Shoemaker

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 02:04:09 GMT

A saint, I believe, might be someone whose life’s work and witness continue to affect the lives of others after their death. Hoping to achieve one thing by their life’s work, their work might instead unexpectedly inspire another. Such describes the life, witness, and ministry of Sam Shoemaker, who, although not called a “saint” in the traditional sense, is listed among the holy men and holy women of the Episcopal Church. And well he should be. Without him my life, and the lives of countless others in recovery would be very different! His feast day is January 31.

It's no exaggeration to say that without him it’s likely that recovery as we know it would not exist. There might not have been an AA, Al-Anon, or any other Twelve-Step fellowship. His work, witness, and ministry laid the groundwork for AA and through it, for the other fellowships. What he did fundamentally altered my life, even though both he and his work were completely unknown to me when I entered recovery in 1988. I was also hardly aware of AA, let alone Bill W. and Dr. Bob. Even so, the recovery program which Shoemaker inspired and nurtured was there when I needed it. Through Bill W, Dr. Bob, and the early AAs as the vehicles of God’s grace and mercy, Shoemaker exerted a profound influence on the course and direction of both my life and the lives of others.

To paraphrase the author of Ephesians, Shoemaker’s life’s work, ministry, and witness were offerings, pleasing to God, whose fragrance spread abroad through the lives of the early AAs into the lives of countless others. While other spiritual movements arose during the Twentieth Century, for millions the most significant one was arguably the Twelve-Step movement spawned by AA. All of those fellowships arose from Shoemaker’s fostering of Oxford movement groups both in this country, in Canada, and at his parish in New York City. He was the midwife and spiritual inspiration for the original two Oxford meetings of alcoholics from which AA arose.

Ironically, Shoemaker probably never intended that his life’s work spawn either AA or the Twelve-Step movement. Focused, instead, on church renewal, he and his mentor, Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford group movement, fostered that renewal through the formation of Oxford group meetings throughout North America. He, therefore, probably never intended to inspire a group of drunks to use an Oxford group meeting as their model to create the makings of AA in 1935. But ironically that seems to be how God’s Spirit, which blows unpredictably where it will, creates surprising effects!

Shoemaker’s efforts with the Oxford group movement began in 1925, when the vestry of Calvary Episcopal Church, New York City, called him as their rector. Hoping to revive the parish by applying methods he’d learned from Frank Buchman, Shoemaker saw parish participation and membership increase. Despite the onset of the Great Depression four years later, he led the parish to build a multi-story building, the Calvary House, next to the sanctuary to provide housing for the church offices, for the Oxford group movement’s activities, and for the church staff. More importantly for the emergence of AA, he encouraged the parish to refurbish a rundown Calvary Mission which served unemployed street people and the homeless. Many were alcoholics such as Ebby Thatcher, who through that mission, not only became a parish member, but also led Bill Wilson to join an Oxford group meeting at the church. That meeting consisted of leading men from the parish who were struggling with alcoholism. Later calling themselves the “Alcoholic Squad”, their Oxford group evolved into one of the first of two meetings of alcoholics which became AA. The other, also originally an Oxford group meeting and the one in which Dr. Bob and wife, Anne, were participants, was in Akron, OH. Shoemaker nurtured and encouraged both.

From Shoemaker, the men in the “Alcoholic Squad” learned the core of what would become AA’s self-understanding—the Steps. Later reflecting on Shoemaker’s influence, Bill Wilson honored Shoemaker by calling him AA’s “cofounder” and crediting Shoemaker with being the source of “most of the principles” and “spiritual keys” of AA, such as self-examination, admission of character defects, restitution for harms done, working with others and prayer and meditation.

A Prayer

Merciful God, we give you thanks for Sam Shoemaker whose work inspired the founding of AA and the Twelve Step movement and whose life, witness, and ministry, by enabling our recovery, have immeasurably enriched our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit, are one God, now and forever, Amen.

Surprise me, please

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 02:04:27 GMT

I am an organized person. My father would say: “A place for everything and everything in its place”. I like my life orderly and predictable—at least I think I do but I know I often fail and then try to wrestle my life into the order I want. It’s really about control. I want everything to go the way I want.

Recently, I heard someone relate a story about a friend who was very controlling, especially around events that they were responsible for at work. I too had been responsible for many years for large events and would get totally stressed out and irritable thinking that would ensure that the event went off with no mistakes or problems. I made the experience not very enjoyable for all the people I worked with and even many guests.

The person shared with me that their friend wanted to let go of the overly controlling way they were and so asked God to help. The prayer was: “Please surprise me”. What they were asking for was to let go of the outcome and trust. Trust that God would take care of the event and that it wasn’t all up to the planner. The surprise would be to leave room for a—well—surprise!

So, I recently tried the prayer. I had a very important meeting with someone I cared about. We had hurt each other badly over several years and were meeting to try to make amends and apologies to each other. I knew what I hoped for. I wanted to listen and to share myself without expectations of how it would all turn out. I sat in my car before the meeting and meditated. Just before I got out of the car, I said out loud: “God, Please, surprise me, thank you”.

We were to meet for an hour or so. It turned into 5 hours of real connection and deep sharing of so many things. We both took responsibility for the hurt we each had contributed to the breach in our relationship. We talked and walked and even had lunch together. It was a miracle, a God Shot experience. We hugged as we said goodbye knowing that we were open to a new kind of friendship.

As I got to my car, I realized that I had been given my surprise! I had forgotten all about my prayer from earlier in the day and all I knew was that a surprise miracle had happened and I said again, “Thank you”.

New Year’s Resolutions

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 02:01:21 GMT

At a recent 12-Step meeting the topic was New Year resolutions. As I thought about the topic, I first felt guilty, because I had not made any or even thought about it. But then I remembered all the broken resolutions I have made over the years. What I have learned in my recovery is that I cannot resolve to do anything to change myself. I do not have the will or strength to bring about the desired changes in my life.

So what, do I just give up making myself a better person, or trying to stop bad behavior?

My understanding of change comes from 12-Step recovery and scripture. I have learned that most change happens slowly and involves struggle. If I want to change any aspect of my life, I need to follow the principles of the 12 Steps—first surrender and trust God, then a willingness to examine my issue and why I have it, then a confession to God and another person—but there is more. There is a process of becoming willing to finally let it go. And then when I fully realize I do not have the power to bring about this change, I humbly ask God to remove it. That is when God does for me what I could not do for myself.

This long painful struggle is designed into humanity. When God rescued Israel there was a lengthy process of back and forth between Moses and Pharoah and it was not until there was this long terrible struggle that they were finally set free.

Joseph had to go through his brothers trying to kill him, and then live as a slave, then as a prisoner for something he did not do. Through this long painful struggle Joseph was used by God to keep his people safe and deliver them from a terrible famine.

God is at work in our struggles to bring about healing. Change is happening in my life all the time and when I am struggling, I know it is because God is doing a good work in me. I will be better for it on the other side. I just need to be patient and trust.

After all, our ultimate deliverance came after an exceptionally long wait, then a bloody and painful death and resurrection. Awful but also magnificent.

Our world is in a struggle right now that requires some momentous change. The change will come I believe, but not until we have gone through the terrible struggle. All good things have come through pain and struggle—but they do always come. I do not like it, but I trust it.

Blessings to you in the new year as you struggle with the changes you seek in life.

God’s peace
Ed T.

First Things First and then Second Things First

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 04:32:45 GMT

Many years ago, I heard Fr. Joe Martin tell the story of a man who was leaving home to go to his evening A.A. meeting. On the way out, his son asked him to play “Catch.” The man said he did not have time as he had to go to an AA Meeting. “Can’t you miss just one meeting?” the son asked. “Miss a meeting? And then get drunk? Is that what you want?” The son relied “it makes no difference, you’re never here anyhow.” Fr. Martin’s response to this story is, “First things first and then Second things first.”

First things first: understand your disease, go to meetings, read the Big Book, get a sponsor, work the steps, and live the program.

We’re told to go to ninety meetings in ninety days. We’re told “Go to one hundred and eight meetings in 180 days.” We’re told “If you drank every day, then you need to be at a meeting every day. In other words, get an understanding of this disease into your head. But it doesn’t have to take a year-long absence from one’s family to get this into one’s head.

As we get into sobriety and the family, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances see that we are serious about our sobriety, then it’s time to put second things first, put family first. Yes, there are those who say if you begin to miss meetings you’ll drink again. That’s not true for the majority of us. I’ve missed a lot of meetings, and it did not cause me to drink. What did happen was this, when I began to go to meetings again, I found myself more relaxed, happier, at peace. There’s something in these meetings that impacts us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially.

The meetings are not therapy, but they are therapeutic. If I don’t drink for another month, I’ll have forty-five years active in the fellowship, (2/2/24) . That said, I remind the newcomers at the end of a meeting that what all of us have is today and that is based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.

When I first began attending AA meetings, I attended a lot, and I mean, a lot of meetings, but for all the wrong reasons. I spent over four years white-knuckling it as a dry drunk. That is no way to survive. It certainly wasn’t living. I was a single dad with custody of my thirteen-month- old daughter and was a single dad for ten years. When I was blessed with my spiritual awakening I learned about this disease and did all I could to improve my spiritual condition. I found a Power greater than myself that restored me to sanity. Then I was able to give the name “God” to that Higher Power and begin the processes of cleaning up my life by working steps four through twelve. It was then, I believe, that having had the spiritual awakening, I began to live the program.

Living the program is how we learn the balancing act of family and other commitments in life. We begin to live mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially and all of this impacts us physically.

Living the program, practicing the principles in all aspects of my life gives me the freedom to decide when and which meetings to go to. When out of town and in a new environment, a meeting becomes part of that experience.

By the time the Steps were written, Bill W. and others had done some serious reflection on how they got sober and the balancing act of integrating meetings with the rest of our life’s commitments. It was not either/or, but both/and.

First things first is a morning “Thank You” to our Higher Power, a cup of coffee and some quiet time to ground ourselves on the gift of today. Second things, getting to work, kids to school, meetings, groceries, car maintenance, and all the other things that may fall into our lap. We create time for the sacred hour of Fellowship in the morning, noon, or late evening.

A book, written a few years ago, had the title “First, make your bed.” For us in recovery it could be titled “First, talk to your Higher Power.” It is that conversation, or lack of it, that can make a difference to the remainder of the day.

As we begin this new year, it may be an opportunity to review our values and ask ourselves are we putting first things first, and then are we ready to put second things first.

Séamus D.

Seamus is a retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Strange is the Program?

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 02:01:54 GMT

I’m sitting tonight in an assisted living facility writing a paper on my family’s history to be read to a group that gathers to hear papers by its members. For no reason, this thought raced across my mind: “I’d worked the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous for years and I recalled my ups and downs and that I was finally able to surrender to my depth of being and to work the Steps, all of them, one-by-one.”

This stopped my focus on my paper so I checked my emails and found one from Lucy asking if I could write something for “Red Door … “Yes of course” said I, then the thought, “About what?” … But it really wasn’t too hard to come up with something: acceptance.

If there is anything to learn about living in assisted living, it is that “acceptance” is the key to serenity. If we don’t take that path, we wilt and crumble—physically, mentally.

To understand the Program, we had to accept our addictive living, else we’d die. We had to face that reality and twist it into something positive, for yes, I am a sinner. I’m an addict but I saw that our Higher Power was always with us offering a hand of assistance if we but reached out, if we but surrendered our ego-driven ways and reached for something better—a way of life, of love, fellowship, concern for those still suffering, a way for us to check ourselves so we didn’t become so self-impressed that we’d fall victim once again to our demons.

The Program gives us ways to work through those ups and downs and to correct our behavior. Easy-peasy? …’course not, but we are called to keep at it, to work the Steps each day, to address mistakes and to move on. What a blessing.

Strange, isn’t it—a simple program for complicated people and it all came from a Higher Power through Bill W and Dr. Bob in that Gatehouse at the Seiberling Estate in Akron, just two drunks talking to one another.

My take-away? Get to a meeting, work with someone, and whatever happens, keep coming back for as someone said, “Sinners are Welcome.”

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati, 1-4-24.

My First Sober Christmas

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 22:35:55 GMT

My family went to my grandparents’ house for Christmas dinner. After they both died, we went to my Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob’s. They lived in the same town as my grandparents and had lots of room. The grownups would eat buffet style in the living room and the kids (I had lots of cousins and 3 sisters) would eat in the basement at the ping pong table.

Before dinner there would be lots of loud visiting time and what I came to know—lots of drinking—EXCEPT for my Aunt Sally. She would sit quietly in the living room and visit with folks. Often someone would ask: Does Sally have her Tab? (Tab was the precursor to Diet Coke). I remember wondering why so many of my adult relatives wanted to know this. I don’t really know why I always noticed all the attention my relatives had about Aunt Sally’s drink.

As a young adult I learned that Aunt Sally was an alcoholic. Her disease started when she was young, and her system had a terrible time with it. She had blackouts and seizures. Apparently, she was too drunk to go to her own mother’s funeral. In the 40’s there was little that could be done but to have her go to a hospital and dry out, which she did repeatedly. I learned all this indirectly through comments made here and there. No one really talked about it.

By the time I was 10, she was sober. No one in the family talked about it. She never talked about it, but later I found out she had been in AA. I think the family (many of whom I believe were also alcoholics) believed that only Aunt Sally was an alcoholic and that their drinking was normal. My family was a whisky and wine in crystal glasses type of alcoholics. The only thing they did to acknowledge Sally’s drinking and then sobriety was to make sure she had her Tab. I believe she was the only adult at those Christmas dinners who wasn’t drinking heavily.

Fast forward to when I was 36 years old, drinking daily, and Christmas is coming, and I am falling apart. I was angry, irritable, and very discontent. My anxiety was out of hand and all I could do was to figure out a way to drink and not have it show. Our elegant Christmas dinner that year was tense, though I think some of the friends who came (by then I lived 300 miles from my family) didn’t think anything was amiss. I was the one though who kept going to the kitchen to get another bottle of wine.

By the end of January, I knew I had to do something. One of my oldest friends was two years sober and one of my sisters was sober as well. I went to see my sister and she took me to many AA meetings—it was my version of a treatment center. I returned to Seattle, my home, and my life got better and better.

When Christmas came around again, I wanted to have a big dinner. It was my first sober Christmas. I looked at the crystal wine glasses in the china cabinet and felt sad. What would I do with these goblets now that I didn’t drink? I took my sadness to a meeting and talked about it and shared that I didn’t know what to do—a few people laughed and I didn’t understand why. One woman came up to me after the meeting and said with a smile that she understood but wondered: “Have you ever thought that you could drink some other liquids in those glasses other than wine”? Then I laughed—“no, I never thought of that!”. I was sober!

I could have a wonderful Christmas and be honest about my sobriety and I could fill beautiful glasses with juice or something else. I toasted my Aunt Sally, who had long since died, that Christmas with a Diet Coke in a beautiful crystal wine glass and thanked her. Now I understood on some level why I so remembered her drinking her Tab. She was planting a memory that I would need 26 years in my future. —Libbie S.

A Moment of Grace

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 23:45:49 GMT

Job 11:18 And you will have confidence, because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.

Over four years ago (this was written in 2008) I lost my job. At first, I was confident this was a momentary setback, that a new and better situation was sure to turn up. After several months of looking without success, and on the verge of losing my unemployment, I was getting scared. I had foolishly failed to significantly adjust my living expenses and my savings were dwindling. Feeling depressed and frustrated, and uncertain what to do next, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days visiting a friend in New York City. What better place to forget my troubles and have a little change of scene. I rode the bus (amazingly cheap transportation!) and slept on my friend’s couch. My troubles, of course, came right along on the trip, and soon the fears returned and, with next to no money to spend, I just wandered around Manhattan. This aimless wandering when I was feeling fearful and anxious was dangerous for me. As a recovering alcoholic there was a real danger, I would suddenly decide a drink would make me feel better, take a turn into some anonymous bar, and lose the sobriety I had worked on for thirteen years. Drinking again would mean a slow and steady descent into a living hell. As I walked down Second Avenue with this self-destructive impulse growing inside of me, I remembered that the national oﬃce of The Episcopal Church was at 815 Second Avenue. I figured there must be a chapel in the building somewhere, and I decided to stop there and pray.

When I entered the chapel there was one other person seated there. I closed my eyes to meditate, and I said a prayer. I continued to pray in silence with my eyes closed, but I was aware that others were entering the place. Then a woman began to play the piano and sing. She was very talented, and I love good music, so I stayed rather than leave. The thought did enter my mind that maybe some service was about to start because by now there were others entering the room. But I was near the door and thought I could exit once things started in earnest. I looked around to see that the chapel was filling with around thirty people, all women.

It was surely God's hand pushing down on my shoulder that kept me in my seat once they started the prayers for the day. This was no sedate Episcopal Noonday Prayers service but rather a circle of black women swaying, singing, and praying with hands in the air. I’m a child of my church, and I’m generally uncomfortable with extemporaneous and spirit-guided praying, but this group had me spellbound.

Then one of the women came to me and asked me what had brought me there that day, what was it that was weighing on my mind? The words “I need a job” tumbled out of my mouth. I thought I would faint from the sensation of lightness and release I was feeling.

The women had me stand in the center of their circle as they surrounded me, placed their hands on my shoulders and head, and prayed that God would give me strength and courage to find my way to new life. I felt like I was swimming in warm, clear water and I wept.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the service although there was a sermon preached on the verse from Job I read at the start of this story. Afterwards many of the women came up to me and hugged me. Then I realized that they were putting dollars in my shirt pocket!

I wasn’t actually broke at the time, and I thought I should refuse the money, but it was so freely given that I had to accept it. The last person, the woman who asked me what was troubling me, gave me this small New Testament as she said goodbye. The next day I was on the bus back to Columbus. I renewed my job search, and I was working again within a couple of weeks.

Life is all about change. Sometimes those changes feel a lot like death, and we simply have to accept that. Trusting in God is not our only option when we walk these valleys full of shadows, but it is the only option I’ve tried that releases me from fear and oﬀers me a new life of abundance. God does not exempt us from enduring life's darker moments, but God does travel with us through those darker times and is there even when we have diﬃculty finding a Divine Presence. Jesus felt a moment of desperation and fear in the garden before his arrest and trial, and he prayed to God for deliverance. Later Jesus prayed a prayer of abandonment on the cross just before entrusting his spirit to God. He taught us to pray "Thy will be done" and that is how I try to end my prayers now. Practicing resurrection... for me it is the only way to live ...an abundant life.

Defense Mechanisms that We’ve Outgrown

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 01:30:38 GMT

Ever since I started my life in the 12 steps in the fall of 1984, I've had a sponsor. And I have always had sponsors who are kind and encouraging and patient. Thank goodness I was never told to “take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth” because certainly at the beginning that would have sent me flying out of the room. I had a tough exterior but inside was soft as whipped cream and as fragile as a windowpane. For all my educated vocabulary and posture, I was scared and vulnerable. I would have been crushed by any kind of silencing or we-don’t-need-you-here-ing. But always, my sponsors have been women who can see through any bravado and understand who I am and what I need…acceptance and understanding.

I started out in Al-Anon and it was there that I learned that people who grow up in alcoholic homes can suffer negative residual effects from that upbringing. In homes beset by chronic illness, as alcoholism is, there’s often a lack of stability, understanding, or encouragement. When a parent is unwell and not able to offer the nurturing that a child needs, a child will often think that they don’t deserve nurturing or stability, understanding, and encouragement. In those early days in Al-Anon, I felt great relief and immense joy to find out that I was not alone. I was not the only one who had an exterior that appeared mature and capable and an interior that was scared and lonely.

It didn't take me very long to realize that not only did I need Al-Anon but also AA because my own personal substance use was out of control. So, I have done the steps in both Al-Anon and AA over the years and I have talked with my sponsors about character defects. It seemed pretty harsh and not very helpful to call parts of myself defective. My first sponsor told me that her understanding of character defects was that they were “defense mechanisms that you've outgrown.” I decided to do a little research on what defense mechanisms are. In layman's terms because I'm not a psychologist, a defense mechanism is an unconscious way people cope with stuff that they can't acknowledge or handle because it hurts too much to face what’s going on.

One of the biggest ones that I used (and probably still use, even in recovery) is the defense mechanism of denial. I can deny reality by just saying something is not as bad as it is, whether it’s my personal behavior or a situation that I'm dealing with or the way I have been treated.

There are other defense mechanisms, such as repression (not remembering events or feelings) and projection (saying someone else is doing the mean things that you’re actually doing,) but as we grow spiritually in the program, as we grow to love ourselves and accept ourselves as we really are, we don’t have to defend ourselves against reality. We can cope with “life on life’s terms.”

In recovery, we begin to accept all of ourselves—the strong parts and the weak parts, the mature and the childish, the brave and the scared. That's what Steps Six and Seven are really all about. They’re about asking God to bring to consciousness these unconscious automatic behaviors and attitudes so that with our sober and serene brains we can deal with reality.

Luckily, the reality we have to deal with is that we are beloved children of God. No matter what we were told by someone who was ill, we are not useless, worthless, or unwanted. We are beloved children of God. The defense mechanisms that we developed before we had maturity, sobriety, serenity, and compassion are behaviors and attitudes that we can let go of now because we're safe.

I wasn’t so different after all.

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 23:18:55 GMT

From the beginning, communication in A.A., has been no ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. Because of our kinship in suffering, and because our common means of deliverance are effective for ourselves, only when constantly carried to others, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.* I won’t go so far as to say that when I came into A.A., I didn’t have a heart. I did. However, it was a selfish and self-centered heart that heard and responded to what made me feel good. I enjoyed the Fellowship, and, at some level, I wanted what those in the Fellowship had, but there was a wall between me and them; there was a blockage between my head and my heart, and I was unaware of it.

I was much more comfortable in my head. I wanted to learn about the disease of alcoholism. I wanted to learn about addiction; about the spirituality of the program; the history of A.A. and especially the founders. If I knew all that then I might not need A.A.

The problem was that the more I learned the more convinced I was that I had this disease of which I was in denial even though I had confessed to my boss “I think I have a drinking problem.” And., a few months later, stated “I think I need to go to treatment.” That was the day he was planning on doing an intervention.

The helpful information was useful. Now I could talk about the disease with a sense of authority. I could talk about Bill W. and Dr. Bob, and (mis)quote them. I told sufficient of my story to feel I belonged and yet, I did not feel connected to the story I was telling. It was not me as I thought I knew me. I was not carrying a message or the message to another alcoholic. I was sharing at a superficial level. There was no way I could connect with people who had been in jail, had multiple DUIs, and many other issues related to their abuse of alcohol.

After one noon meeting, I asked the chairperson, “Why is John asked to come here so often and tell his story. I practically know it by heart. Is this his way of getting out of jail for a couple of hours once a week?” His response was, “What is your problem with John?” I quicky responded that John was an emotional wreck. That led to an “intervention” of sorts. Over coffee, this person let me know that, from his listening to me, he concluded that I was more locked up within myself than John was in Jail, and that I wouldn’t recognize a feeling if it sat on my lap.

I was angry. I felt insulted. How dare this individual tell me I was locked up inside myself and that I wouldn’t know a feeling if it sat on my lap. I knew however, he was telling the truth that I did not want to face. He essentially told me what the therapist had told me to do in treatment, take the books you are reading and apply them to myself.

I preferred to think of myself as being different. I had not lost a job, a vehicle, a roof over my head. Now, as I read the books, I began to identify emotions that I had buried for so long. Feelings of loneliness; emptiness, low self-esteem, resentments, jealousy, self-pity, and more. Now, instead of listening at the meeting to catch those phrases that said “you don’t belong here” I was hearing statements with which I could identify. “That sounds like me,” “I know how that feels.” Now I was truly listening to all that was being shared. I was listening with my heart.

Now I had a “kinship in suffering.” I knew how these individuals felt and, even though we had different jobs, and different consequences, the emotions matched—loneliness is loneliness, low self-esteem is LSW, self-loathing is self-loathing no matter where we are on the socioeconomic ladder or the place of employment.

These men and women whom I wanted to think were so different from me, were the ones who helped me connect the dots together as they carried the message to me, and it was not an intellectual journey. It was the language of the heart that, once I learned it, I felt different, I felt alive, I did not need alcohol of any kind to be who I am and who I want to be. The language of the heart connects us to one another as Dr. Bob said of Bill W” He spoke my language.”

*As BILL SEES IT. 195.

“Oh, I Feel So Much Better.”

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:30:53 GMT

My daughter was two when I got sober. I went away for a week to visit my sister who was sober, and she took me to many meetings. It was my ‘treatment center’. Those first six months were not terrible, but I knew I had to get to meetings. A few meetings had childcare, and my then husband watched her often. I went to as many meetings as I could during the day when she was in daycare. I was working really hard to connect with the program. It never occurred to me that my daughter had any awareness of something being different. I believed I had been able to be just as attentive and loving as I had ever been. I was, what most people called a high bottom drunk, so I also believed that my drinking had never really affected her.

One day when she was three, she was playing and got out the play purse that she had. She asked me if I knew where her ‘keys’ were. She had a set of old keys that we had given her so she could pretend to lock the door or drive a car. She went to the closet where her coats hung on hooks low enough for her to get to them. She got out a coat, sort of put in on (it may have been upside down) and marched out of the kitchen/playroom towards the front door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I’m going to a meeting,” she said brightly. I chuckled and was so surprised to hear her say that. I had no idea that she tracked my going to meetings. She couldn’t get out the front door, so I stayed in the kitchen making dinner. I could hear her in the living room talking but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After ten minutes or so, she marched into the kitchen and said: “Oh, I feel so much better!”. She knew! She knew that when I got home from a meeting, that I felt better and was BETTER. She knew I was in a better mood and perhaps kinder and more loving with her. She KNEW!

Years later at a meeting, I told this story after we were reading from The Family Afterwards in the Big Book. In that moment I realized that my behavior BEFORE I got sober had affected her and I was clueless. I felt some shame but also knew that my behavior changed rather quickly after I got sober, enough for her to recognize that Mommy felt better and that something called ‘meetings’ helped, and it helped her as well. Meetings make all the difference!

Loneliness

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 23:58:37 GMT

In Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill wrote: “Almost without exception Alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and the people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn’t quiet belong.”

It took me a while to acknowledge the depth of loneliness I experienced throughout my life. I was in denial of it because I had to be, after I got to college, the center of much of what was going on. For this reason, for the most part, I thought I was integrating really well with my fellow students. But I wasn’t.

When I got into sobriety and truly began to work the steps and live the program, I realized just how lonely my life had been. As I reviewed my life I can remember being with local boys and girls at a football game, enjoying the game, but not really part of the group.

I’ll admit, my mother kept a tight leash, and a short one, on me throughout my teenage years. Looking back on it, she had a good right to do what she did. She knew me better than I knew myself.

When I was in seminary, right after Vatican II, it was like I had escaped something. I began to drink—most of my drinking was blackout. I was over involved in the city of Dublin in all kinds of charitable works, youth clubs, etc. All of this was wonderful. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I wasn’t there, I was missing in action. My “self” was hiding deep inside of me.

I participated in class in the morning, taught in a local high school in the afternoon, attended meetings, studied, and drank. At that time, I drank with friends who lived nearby. I did not drink on my own because I believed that’s how one becomes an alcoholic.

My sense of loneliness hit me the night of my thirtieth birthday. A priest friend and I pub-crawled across San Francisco all night. I don’t remember much of that day and night, but I do remember at one point crying and telling him that I was a failure, I was not married, had no children, and didn’t own my own home. I felt miserable, alone, and lonely. Not only had I lost appreciation for my vocation as a priest but also I was isolated and isolating emotionally. My awareness of that caused me to drink more instead of getting help.

My Higher Power pushed me into my boss’s office one Friday afternoon and ruined a weekend of blackout drinking (a whole other story). Dutifully I went into treatment followed by lots of therapy and aftercare. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had this glass wall around me, and knew enough of the counseling language to “put on a good show” except for those who saw through me, and I felt uncomfortable in their company.

My first four years of the Fellowship were those of a dry-drunk. That was even more miserable but, fortunately, going to lots of AA meetings (for show), my employment as a counselor, leadership in a couple of organizations, and being a single dad, kept me busy. Finally, doing an honest step four and five, and making amends, opened my eyes to my behavior in my blackout drinking. I had enough glimpses into those blackouts—which I thought were signs of being tired—that helped me come to grips with my past. I needed people. I used people. I was addicted to being busy in case I’d have to be alone with myself.

My Higher Power kicked me again and this time I laughed. I had just declared bankruptcy, went home, and realized I had one thing no one could take from me—I was sober. I laughed, and I laughed. That was the beginning of my journey to peace and serenity through the program of honesty, not baloney.

Today, I am responsible for my emotional life. I enjoy meetings whether I share or just listen. I can come early, stay afterward, or leave. I have permission to be who I am. I have learned to like my Self.

“Life takes on a new meaning in AA.” Bill writes. “To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have hosts of friends—this is an experience not to be missed.” That’s for sure.

I became alive. The Promises were fulfilled. Loneliness vanished and, while not perfect, I have continued to enjoy a wonder full life in my own company and with that of others.

Séamus D.
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

AA and assisted living … plus a personal note

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:33:20 GMT

Last week, Libbie S told us of her experiences finding AA and its warmth, fellowship, and support at meetings across the land she encountered in her many travels. I had the same experience, only mine took place when my wife and I had to move to an assisted living facility. When we were deciding on the move to our new home, I asked if an AA group met regularly there but, alas, there was no such regular meeting. Later, after we moved in, we were socializing before dinner with a large group when someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder, I looked. Someone had placed an AA coin on my shoulder and disappeared. Grabbing the coin, I looked around and across the room and spotted a smiling vigorously waving gentleman. From that moment, every time our paths crossed each day, we ‘held” an AA meeting. What joy we experienced.

The Program brought us a release from our addiction, but it also brought us a way to live life with serenity, a way to reach out when the road suddenly takes an unpleasant turn. Oh, I suppose there are others like us living here perhaps still walking the path of the addict, but I now know the Program reminds us to accept people as they are with the joys of life itself.

That smiling face across the room was David D. During the year and a half we were both residents of Traditions of Lebanon, the time we spent focused on laughing, verbally poking each other, tracing our own paths to and into and now living with the Program, and the self-inflicted messes of our Country. As his wife continued her decline, we spent time sharing our personal feelings. When he left, he gave me a couple of “AA books” I did not have, including “As Bill Sees it.” But what made the gift even more meaningful and personal was the fact that this was the book he carried when he first came to the Program and carried it to those early meetings. But the wonderfulness of it all is that he had recorded in that book statements made by the “old-timers,” which as you probably will recall were usually uttered in a stolid voice. The sayings he noted in the book are ones which struck a note with him as something to remember. Apart from family gifts, it’s about as personal a gift as I have received.

…………………

With this meditation, I bid Red Door adieu. I’ve written enough. That door of red is always open so please join in carrying the good news of the Program’s easier softer way of dealing with our addiction.

Jim A. St. X Noon.

Where two or three are gathered

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:37:01 GMT

To paraphrase a thought that comes to me whenever I am at a meeting:

“For where two or three are gathered together for recovery, Higher Power is there among them.”

I have recently moved to a new town and a new state. I often feel adrift. I don’t know how to get places without google maps. I don’t know where things are in the new grocery store. Most everyone is a stranger to me. Friendly, but a stranger.

The first AA meeting I went to away from my home group occurred when I was 7 months sober and driving across Canada with a non-AA friend. I had made a commitment to attend at least one meeting while on our trip. I was the only woman at the meeting I found by calling the AA office (no apps then). It was in a church basement, and I walked into roomful of only men. Most of them were smoking (tells you how long ago that was) and a few were smoking cigars! Trying to breathe in that room was awful and I thought about leaving but I was welcomed without question, listened too, and supported in my newfound sobriety, so I stayed.

Since that day, I have been welcomed in many different rooms. I have gone to meetings in Mexico and others in Canada. One year I drove across the US twice and went to meetings in many states. During the pandemic I was on meetings with people from other countries. I even have found a way to stay in a virtual meeting that has been my home group even though the meeting is located far from me. On vacations I like to go to local meetings as I know I will be received with a “Hi Libbie” when I say my name and that I am an alcoholic. I also will most likely find out about great places to see and restaurants to go to and sometimes even offers to take me places to see. Going to a meeting has always been a way to easily get to know a place with REAL people who live and work and stay sober there.

So here I am in a new place. It is a big change for me, moving 1500 miles from where I have lived for over 40 years. I feel insecure and lost a bit of the time. Will I make friends? Will I be happy here? And then I got the list of meetings in the area. There is a women’s meeting walking distance from my new home!

I started crying when I got to the church where the woman’s AA meeting was about to start. I was home, not a stranger, just a fellow sufferer who knew hope and sobriety and welcome were just moments away for me. We are a WE program and I am happy for it.

Libbie S.

Step Ten

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:36:04 GMT

Awareness. I use a lot of guided meditations as part of my daily spiritual practice. One that I found supremely helpful during the early days of my widowhood was “Yoga Nidra for Grief” with Scott Moore on the app “Insight Timer.” Moore suggests that grief is an opportunity for deep awareness, and that we don’t try to deny or minimize grief, but rather welcome, recognize, and witness it as an experience that can lead to a deeper awareness of our individual self and also of life itself.

There is a part of ourselves, Moore teaches, that can witness both our grieving and our not-grieving simultaneously and see them both co-existing within our own selves. That part is Awareness.

In Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr links “consciousness” with AA’s Step Ten, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” Consciousness is the awareness, the ability to step outside ourselves and look at our own behavior. We monitor our own actions impartially as we develop the perspective of being onlookers of our own lives. By gaining that distance and developing that viewpoint, we can see how we actually do affect others, and we can make decisions about taking responsibility for the consequences of our choices and actions.

When I was new to the Twelve Steps, I went to a meeting and the topic was Step Ten. I wasn’t at all familiar with the steps or the program—I was just grateful that I had found a community which welcomed me and whose members understood and talked about what I was going through. The woman who was speaking about Step Ten said it was her “most favorite step of all” because it recognized the humanness of those who choose 12-Step recovery as a way of life. “I don’t have to pretend to be perfect or to get things right,” she said about the Step. “Step Ten acknowledges that even when I’m doing the best I can do and trying to live a responsible, moral life, I will mess up. Step Ten leads me back to behaving the way I want to.” Being ready, willing, and able to recognize and admit to wrong-doing means being relieved of the burden of attempting to be perfect.

Before I came into recovery—and believe me, I was a churchgoing, choir-singing, self-satisfied sort of person—I would tell myself that what I did, how I behaved, didn’t negatively affect other people. “It doesn’t matter” was a mantra I used back then. I would say, in the adolescent voice coming out of my 37-year-old head, “Hey, I’m doing the best I can,” if my performance on any task didn’t measure up to expectations. Or “Hey, I’m only being honest,” when I said something rude or intrusive to someone who had irked me or whose life I imagined I could improve with my observations and advice.

The Program taught me—gently, kindly—not only how to stay sober (one minute at a time) but also (to paraphrase Step 5 from the 12 & 12) how to recognize “what and who I really was” and follow that “by a sincere attempt to become what I could be.”

The Program (i.e. the Twelve Steps) and the Fellowship (i.e. meetings and sponsorship) did not say to my confused, terrified, self-deprecating newly-sober self that I was bad or stupid. I was told that I was a “sick person getting well” and that as long as I stayed sober, I could learn how to live the moral, helpful, responsible life I had always wanted to live.

Recovery has taught me how to be awake and aware in my own life. Recovery has taught me to be conscious of my words, choices, and actions. Recovery has taught me how to make healthy choices so I can be a healthy person striving to live a sober life and forgiving myself when my humanness messes things up for a while. I have the steps to lead me back to my center where I can welcome, recognize, and witness the astonishing beauty of my sober life.

-Christine H.

Willingness and Growth

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 02:04:32 GMT

In the July 1965 GRAPEVINE, Bill W wrote, “The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.” *

“All you need to do right now to become willing to do what is necessary for sobriety.” I was not exactly sure what that meant. It sounded good. All I had to do was to “become willing.” The problem was that what I thought was needed for sobriety was not what they [A A members] thought.

In treatment, I encouraged other patients to be willing to go to any length for sobriety- even if that meant going to a half-way house someplace in Minnesota. I knew the lingo. A nurse broke protocol and told me, “Seamus, if you don’t shape up, the staff are considering sending you to Nebraska to a half-way house.” At this point, I became willing to do anything to keep me from going there. I completed steps one through three and completed a very shallow fourth step to be shared with the treatment chaplain.

I was willing to go to Aftercare on a Friday night. I was willing to go to as many A.A. meetings as I could in order to brag to my counselor and my boss about the number of meetings I was attending. I was not willing to listen to what people said. I heard their stories. I heard their difficulties. But I was not like “them.” I was different. In my mind, I was someone special, different.

“No pain, no gain.” Growing is something of a painful experience. I had to change a lot of my thinking. I had to develop an attitude of gratitude. I had to admit to and examine my prejudices. I loved change when what was being changed suited my needs and wants. But this kind of change was such that I was being confronted by my humanity, my pride, my (God-forbid) Character Defects.

As I began to change, there were days when I felt jealous of those individuals both young and old who came into the program and “got it.” Unlike my journey, they did not spend their first few years on a dry-drunk. Instead, they got a sponsor, read the Big Book and applied it to themselves. They came to meetings and listened to what was being shared. They were ready and willing to do what was necessary.

When I “came to,” having had a spiritual awakening that gave me a completely new insight into the program, I was then willing to change, willing to learn, and willing to do what I should have done four years earlier.

“The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entail.” Change for the better. Not just change for the sake of change. Not change in order to look good. But change that makes a real difference on the inside and creates a whole new outlook on life.

Change brought a new insight which brough about the “unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entail.” The first responsibility being to not only work the steps but also live them, make them a way of life, a second nature. That is my responsibility to me and to others in my life.

From the moment I came to grips that I am an alcoholic and accepted that I have this disease, then the responsibility of sobriety was on my shoulders and the path ahead had already been prepared by millions of others who had gone before me. All I had to do was follow them- read the Big Book and apply it to myself; go to meetings and listen and, where possible, identify with others, talk to my sponsor, and live the program.

Growth came with the willingness to promptly make amends when I was wrong. This became easier as I learned to think before I spoke or did something. Growth came as I became willing to redo all the steps honestly with an open mind and heart.

Growth came as I became willing to make amends and to listen and hear from others who shared with me about my past actions.

Growth came as I became willing to shed my superficial self and allow others to love me into health. As Skin Horse told the Velveteen Rabbit, “you will know you are loved, when all your hair has been rubbed off.” Yes. “Those people” loved me enough to walk with me through my darkness and brought me into a light I did not know existed as well as a freedom and happiness I had always wanted but went looking for it in all the wrong places.

Séamus P D.
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

*AS BILL SEES IT. 115.

The “To Do List”: Aid or Bane?

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:11:24 GMT

For an alcoholic, a “to do” list provides the perfect “hide-behind” excuse to drink. We’d say, “You’d drink too if you had the to do list I do.”

I understand the importance of a continual contact with the Program. After over 50 years of the practice of law and 13 years of retirement and now living in an assisted living facility, I’ve discovered my “to-do habit” has found a new way to sometimes disrupt my serenity but, thanks to the Program, not my sobriety.

At 85, those “do lists” might seem to be merely a nightmare. Sometimes those dreams emit a flavor of authenticity and I get up, hit my computer, pound out a few notes but soon discover a new level of lunacy, sheepishly crawling back to bed, mumbling to the cat that I don’t even have a to do list.

Mr. ToDo appeared once again last week. This time, I took the trouble to ask “why” this was happening—why after 13 years of retirement has he reappeared? I asked but frankly feared his answer would be a snippety, “Well what do you want the answer to be?” Silence. Then I redoubled my search for any possible good. And I think I found it.

Mr. ToDo is here to remind me to keep in touch with my Higher Power as I walk life’s varied paths. He also reminds me that I must stay in touch with the Program, to work the Steps, to carry the message.

Morn comes in due course, we recall those night-time tensions of anxiety, that old invitation to reach for our addiction and instead we recall the pains it brought to ourselves and others. Oh, what a friend we have in the Program—if we but reach out, away from our selfish “human-beingness.”

So, a “To Do List.” A bane? Sure, if we let our addictive orientations of the past re-enter our lives. “To Do,” is this list really a aid? I think so. It’s our Higher Power’s way of calling us to the Program and its serenity.

Indeed, the words of that old hymn come to the fore, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer.”

–Jim A/St X Noon, written at 5:45 A.M, after discussion with Mr. Todo.

The Real Me

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:31:44 GMT

I come from a family of all girls—4 of us. Our given names are Evelyn, Barbara, Elizabeth (that’s me) and Jessica. Connie Francis was very big when my oldest sister was born and even though she was named for my paternal grandmother, Evelyn became Evie from an early age. So started the tradition - Barbara became Barbie, Jessica become Jessie and I became Libbie. All ‘ie” never “y”. My sisters called my Bibbie because Ls are hard to pronounce but Libbie was who I knew myself to be then.

I almost never used my given name. Not through elementary or middle or high school or college. Not even when I went to Divinity School. When I talked to myself, I always thought of myself as ‘Libbie.’ After college I taught in an all-girls Catholic high school. I was 22 years old but looked 15. I was and still am barely five feet tall. There were only three girls in the whole school who were taller than me. So, to feel and look like I should be taken seriously I was Miss (no Ms. then) Stellas. I wore a lot of makeup and very high, high heels. I think I fooled the students but inside I was Libbie—insecure, anxious, and drinking a bit more on the weekends than was good for me.

After seminary I took a job in Seattle with the Catholic Archdiocese. I moved across the country and knew I was going to work with many priests. I wanted to be taken seriously! So, I changed my name—I would use my given name Elizabeth. It was a big name for a serious job. It took some time to get used to being called Elizabeth. For over ten years I was Elizabeth. I changed jobs and worked with many leaders in most every Christian denomination as well as those in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and even New Age congregations. Elizabeth seemed to suit me in these situations.

At the same time, I was drinking more and more. I had married, had a child, was heading toward divorced, and lost my childhood friend to cancer.

In Seattle, at AA meetings, people sign in with their first name and then contact info (if they want). I remember distinctly looking at the sheet at my first meeting and pausing - Who was I? Was I Elizabeth, Libbie, or something else? I only really knew that my life was totally unmanageable and that my drinking had something to do with that. I knew I needed help and I wanted to believe I had found the place and the people that would help me.

And so, I wrote my name: Libbie. It was the name that I used for myself, the name that was the real me, and I wanted the real me to get the help I needed to be sober. Naming myself was important. It was a way to claim myself and own that I was an alcoholic. I have the disease of alcoholism. Diabetics know they have the disease of diabetes. There is little shame in the knowledge that their bodies don’t metabolize sugar correctly. I am an alcoholic. I do not metabolize alcohol correctly; it is a poison to my system. The only “cure” is to not drink it.

Who I am is more than an alcoholic but when I wanted to be sober it was the only thing I connected with, and I wanted others to know me as I really am. I am Libbie, and I am an alcoholic. They said to me “HI Libbie.” I knew I was in the right place, with my right name.

Libbie S.

Spiritual Principles

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 23:49:05 GMT

“A man who persists in prayer finds himself in possession of great gifts. When he has to deal with hard circumstances, he finds he can face them. He can accept himself and the world around him.” As Bill Sees it 293.

Not too long ago I was asked: “Where are the A.A. principles. I never saw them in the Big Book?” I remember in my early days in the program hearing folks say, “We place principles before personalities.” I had no idea what these principles were or where to find them. My self-esteem was such that I could not bring myself to ask for fear of being laughed at.

I had always grown up with prayers being said in our home and, periodically, I would say prayers on my own. Prayers were the answer, but to what? Prayers were what we said in church and before bedtime and in a crisis situation.

The Roman Catholic catechism taught that “Prayer is the lifting of the mind and heart to god.” In my formative years there was no one doing Yoga, or Meditation. There were no Gurus. In seminary, meditation was a time to shut down the brain and be quiet and it was done in church.

As my addiction to alcohol increased my spiritual life and spiritual practices decreased. I talked about a loving God but the God in my head was going to send me to hell. My conscious awareness of god was that of a ring master with a whip and I was running round in circles like a clown with a smile and tears no one could see.

Working the steps and learning to live the program opened my heart and mind to the eleventh step; Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood Him, praying only for god’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

Somewhere on my journey I came across the Principles of A.A. and realized they were a one word summary for each of the steps: Honesty, Hope, Surrender, Courage, Integrity, Willingness, Humility, Love, Responsibility, Discipline, Awareness and Service. Prayer—lifting the mind and heart to God, meditating, asking only what is God’s will for me and the power to carry that out—was a new way to look at the world around me. Doors opened. I felt free of the guilt and shame that had been eating me alive. The principles and prayer began to knit together.

Bill Wilson found an answer for difficult times—prayer. My solution had been alcohol. Now, thanks to the Fellowship and the program I could face the worst day and still remain at peace with myself. I was “in possession of great gifts,” the AA principles which had restored me to life. I had learned to “accept myself and the world around me.”

Prayer is my conscious contact with God who is within and all around me. Thanks to my new life in the Fellowship, I learned to be Honest with self and others. And, thanks to ACOA, I learned how my family of origin survival methods impacted my life. Working both of these programs increased my Honesty with myself and gave me Hope for a better future. It took a few years to Surrender and, when I did, I felt the new peace and the new happiness of the promises.

False Courage changed into an inner strength I did not know I had and with it I became whole, at one with self, others and God. My willingness to do anything but the steps changed into a Willingness to work all the steps and learn to put principles before personalities.

My extremes of either being the best or being the worst found a balance in the true meaning of Humility. My God-given gifts and talents were given to me, as St. Paul says, “for the good of the community.”

Selfishness gave way to love of others, respect for others. I learned that helping others was and is a Responsibility. The discipline of taking a daily personal inventory curtailed many of my character defects.

As my conscious awareness of God’s presence increased, my mind and heart were opened in ways I would never have considered. I joined a different denomination, continued with my priesthood, and respected the teachings of other Faith communities.

I learned about Service by watching and listening to my parents. However, in my active addiction, service became something of “look at me.” Recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous and ACOA, the steps. and the principles have given me back the true meaning of service and the understanding of doing God’s will not mine.

Séamus P Doyle.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

No Other “We” But Thee, O Jesus.

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 01:18:47 GMT

“We”—the first word of the first of the twelve steps and the prerequisite to recovery from substance use disorders characterized by selfishness, self-centeredness, and isolation. Groping, lurching ahead on the “road to happy destiny,” we face an array of “we” encounters: our own tormented Jekyll and Hyde selves; our sponsors and companions in recovery; the elders, counselors, and clinical specialists who nurture us; the employers, creditors, and institutions we have shortchanged or bilked; and fatefully, the intimates and bystanders we have harmed and whose forgiveness and support we now solicit. We, the lonely, now rely upon the universal “we” for healing and hope.

“But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find him now!” Whether our God, our primary “we,” be a He or a She, an Essence or a Presence, their cardinal trait is not likely to be some sovereign superpower that overwhelms our addictions. Raw strength does not elicit our trust or entice our surrender. The Samaritan woman at the well, a notorious outcast, knew that Jesus saw through her and read her soul, and that he offered her relief, release, and redeeming love. This shunned woman’s transformation drew the entire village to Jesus, and he stayed among them for two days (for we who are counting one day at a time, that is, all of us).

No other “we” but Thee, O Jesus. An anthem for recovery by grace, in faith—

We Cannot Measure How You Heal

We cannot measure how You heal or answer every sufferer’s prayer,
yet we believe your grace responds where faith and doubt unite to care.
Your hands, though bloodied on the cross, survive to hold and heal and warn,
to carry all through death to life and cradle children yet unborn.

The pain that will not go away, the guilt that clings from things long past,
the fear of what the future holds, are present as if meant to last.
But present too is love which tends the hurt we never hoped to find,
the private agonies inside, the memories that haunt the mind.

So, some have come who need Your help and some have come to make amends,
as hands which shaped and saved the world are present in the touch of friends.
Lord, let Your Spirit meet us here to mend the body, mind and soul,
to disentangle peace from pain and make Your broken people whole.

DD, AH, GM

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 02:11:45 GMT

The first time I spoke to anyone about not drinking was at a conference on alcoholism. I was there not because I personally had a problem with alcohol, but because I, a high school English teacher, was concerned about the effects of alcohol on my students.

A few months before that conference, through will power and a desire to prove that I was not an alcoholic, I had put down the drink. I was slogging along in an unfamiliar world. It had been gin-and-tonic that had made me a great singer, a fabulous dancer, an effervescent storyteller. It had been white wine that had helped me relax in the face of obstacles, ignore problems, or laugh off baffling situations.

Without those spirits and that wine, how could I live? Deep down inside, I didn’t know who I was or what I liked to do, and I certainly didn’t have the coping skills to face any challenges. But I put up a good front.

So, this woman told me people could recover from the disease of alcoholism. She said there were only three things a person had to do to stay sober: Don’t Drink. Ask for Help. Go to Meetings.

She looked at me and added, “DD, AH, GM—even you can remember that. Six letters. DD, AH, GM.” I was affronted that she thought that I was incapable of remembering all her words. I had not mentioned to her that I had not had a drink in almost three months. I had been engaging in a generic, theoretical conversation about a serious social and educational problem. Was it not apparent who and what I was: an educated, intelligent, professional woman? What did she mean, “Even you can remember six letters…”

Something was missing. I was as dry as a bone and quaking in my boots that day when I spoke to the woman I met at the conference, the one who gave me the gift of six letters.

From my vantage point today, I believe that woman knew exactly who and what I was. She clearly saw a woman who was struggling, new to the idea of not drinking, foundering, and headed for some mighty challenges in the months to come.

She had told me, “DD, AH, GM.” I remembered those six letters. I recited them to myself like a mantra, “DD, AH, GM; DD, AH, GM; DD, AH, GM ” and no matter what was going on, I would keep chanting them until the moment of despair or craving or hopelessness passed I would still be breathing. I would still be sober. I didn’t drink. But I was pretty miserable.

I needed help. I needed people who wouldn’t let me snow them with multi-syllabic words, an erect carriage, or confident delivery. People who would see that underneath it all, I had no idea how to live a life without alcohol. Sure, I had put down the drink. But who was I? I couldn’t sing, dance, or tell stories while sober. I couldn’t ignore or laugh off complex situations. I had no skills, no tools. Nothing to guide me.

But wait, I did have a tool. DD, AH, GM. As hard as it was, I had, for now, done the DD part: I hadn’t had a drink in three months. But that woman had given me six letters, not just two.

DD: Not drinking was the first thing—Don’t Drink—okay, sober, no alcohol—but now what was I supposed to do?

AH: Ask for help. Who do I ask? I asked God to send me a group I couldn’t BS, and I had found myself at a conference on alcoholism, learning about the disease and recovery, and listening to a woman assuring me that I could certainly remember six letters and that using them would make my life better.

I thought of the last pair of letters that woman had challenged me to remember—GM: Go to Meetings. I had learned at that conference that there were meetings where a way of life based on “The Twelve Steps” was practiced and discussed.

These were meetings of people who admitted they had a problem, that their lives had become unmanageable. Meetings of alcoholics. Meetings of drug users. Meetings of people who had spent their lives trying to control someone’s behavior. Meetings of people who were raised in homes affected by active addictions. Meetings of people who were addicted to food or sex or spending or gambling.

There were meetings where people spoke about themselves and their lives and how they enjoyed or coped with what life was offering without using alcohol, drugs, trying to control others, or any of the other things people can become addicted to. Meetings where people were living life now, in the present, on life’s terms. Meetings where people talked about gratitude and acceptance. Yikes.

In all of these meetings, people were admitting that they were powerless over their addictions. And they were asking for help. They were learning who they are—what hobbies and interests they had and how they could spend their time and enjoy life. They were being adults who accept that their actions affect themselves and others and learning how to behave responsibly and kindly. They were talking about the difficulties and challenges they face and how they cope.

And they were learning, profoundly, deeply, that no one is alone.

I could go to those meetings: I was not alone. I am never alone.

I don’t know that conference woman’s name. But she saved my life and showed me that I could be restored to sanity. Thank you.

Six letters, that’s all it takes:

DD, AH, GM.

Christine H.

Don’t Water Your Defects

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 00:53:25 GMT

I’m an avid gardener. I have been pretty much since I got sober. I remember my mother didn’t like to garden—too much work. So, I guess I didn’t come from gardening stock.

My gardens are entirely flowers, flowering bushes, and trees. No vegetables for me. I did try to grow them once, but I was too impatient. I pulled up some carrots long before they were ready. I wanted to see their progress—of course that killed the carrot—I couldn’t put it back in the ground to grow.

Recently I heard at a meeting: “Don’t water your defects.” It got me thinking about my garden and my defects. I water my garden almost daily in the summer. My dahlias, daisies, and delphinium love the water and the summer sunshine. I have zinnias, roses, fuchsias, and coneflowers as well as pots that brim with annuals (the ones that only last a season).

I also have weeds. I do not love them. I hate them. Just when I think I have gotten them all they come back, often much stronger than before. I’ve used vinegar to kill them sometimes. I tried mega chemicals as well as organic weed killer. All my efforts fail to remove them for good and often I end up killing some of my beautiful flowers!

So, what to do? I must accept that the weeds will always show up. Resisting them, hating them, or getting angry about them never gets rid of them. Like my character defects, my determined will, will NOT get rid of them. I can work on the weeds. I can pull up and throw out the weeds as they come up. Do my flowers hate the weeds? I think not. They don’t stop blooming just because of the weeds. They only need a bit of fertilizer (support) and sunshine (hope) and water (nourishment).

Ah the water! The gift of life we all need. If I water the flowers, I water the weeds, such a dilemma! I have come to accept that my defects will always be with me, just as my blooming positive qualities are. I can make sure not to water the weeds more than the flowers. I will water and know that my higher power can sort out the weeds if I do my part. I need only pull weeds when I recognize them (sometimes they even look like flowers) and let them go! Then I do my best to clear my garden of them, celebrate, and share my flowers.

I don’t water my defects by encouraging them or feeding them much anymore. I know my higher power, if I only ask, will take care of them.

Libbie S

As Bill Sees It

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 01:33:24 GMT

The Daily Reflection for August 1 is a quote from the Big Book: “The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.” When I first read that I knew what it meant, or so I thought. After all, I had spent seven years in a seminary and I ought to know all about, or a good bit about, the Spiritual life. Sad to say, I knew very little in terms of the practice of the spiritual life. I knew that I said my prayers, did my morning reflection (not meditation), and daily celebrated the eucharist (Mass). What else was there to do?

Fortunately, for me, someone gave me a copy of As Bill Sees It, which helped me to read the Big Book better. I could read the different topics and identify with them much easier than speed reading through the Big Book.

Beginning on page 5, I got hit with my first reality of living a spiritual life: “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the sudden rage were not for us. Anger is the dubious luxury of normal men, but for us alcoholics it is poison.” I wasn’t angry. People made me angry. That mindset had to change.

On Page 8, “Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? No, sobriety is only a bare beginning…a new life of endless possibilities can be lived if we are willing to continue our awakening, through the practice of AA’s Twelve Steps.” That was an issue.

My first few years in the Fellowship was that of a dry drunk. For a few reasons, I choose not to drink or used mood altering chemicals. That and going to meetings and reading the Big Book so I can quote it showed how smart I am. I did the 12 steps in order to show my After Care Counselor I was working the program. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even treading water. I was struggling for my life and didn’t know it.

“We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition” P.27. I may have stopped drinking and using drugs, but I was anything but sober. I had resentments, anger issues, jealousy, self-doubt, fear, etc. etc. etc. As I had done in my drinking career, I kept what I thought was a good front, but I could hardly breathe for fear that someone would really discover how shallow I really was.

“If we cannot or will not achieve sobriety, then we become truly lost, right here and now. We are of no value to anyone, including ourselves, until we find salvation from alcohol. Therefore, our own recovery and spiritual growth have to come first—a right and necessary kind of self-concern.” I didn’t think I was lost. I was like Pooh Bear who said, “I’m not lost. I’m right here.” I had no idea of where I was spiritually, and I splashed around thinking I was making progress.

“Following a gossip binge, we can ask ourselves these questions: “Why did we say what we said?... Were we not trying to feel superior by confessing the other fellow’s sins? Or, because of fear and dislike, were we not really aiming to damage him?” P 80. I did not consider myself to be involved in gossip. Afterall, I only told the truth about my boss or whoever it was whose character was being assassinated.

An old timer once said to me “Seamus, if you’re not living the program, you’re not working the steps.” I had no idea what he was talking about, and I took a dislike to him and his superiority (as I saw it) and I did not ask him.

When I got my spiritual awakening, an experience that changed how I looked at the Fellowship and the program, I began with step one and came to grips with my powerlessness and unmanageability and by step five I had a clear understanding that I had not lost anything materially. Instead, I had lost all the values I once held so proudly. I had been living in a hole and satisfied with shadows instead of reality.

When I finally got around to actually working the 12 steps, I began to realize what Bill meant when he wrote: “To the newcomer: Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you -until then.” P.164

Séamus P Doyle.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

Is Serenity the Stopping Point?

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 02:17:41 GMT

I am a person drawn to complexities, often choosing to make things more difficult than they need to be. Sometimes, it is a gift that allows me to think precisely. On the other hand, there’s a part of me that seeks out something to push against, to wrestle with…all the while telling myself it’s good for me. I realize, though, that while some complexities forge my soul, others drain it.

I can manufacture complications either because I’m caught up in something that really doesn’t matter, or because I’m avoiding something that does. There are days when I keep hammering away, wanting one result, and getting another. I wonder how much my creating (=controlling?) my own complications gets in the way of seeing the ones that arise naturally in a spiritual life, a life with God.

This brings me to a couple of Sundays ago when many of us heard this brief verse from Matthew 11: “Yet Wisdom is justified by her children.” I confess I never paid much attention to it before. This time, though, the invocation of Wisdom rang a bell, and drew my thoughts to the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

When I first came into the rooms of recovery, there was a saying that all you needed for a valid meeting was two people and the Serenity Prayer.

The overwhelming intention of the prayer seems to be serenity—a sort of time-out, invoking a sense of detachment to slow down the hamster wheel of stressors. But, on that Sunday morning, I found myself recalling that the prayer asks for three things: serenity, courage, and wisdom. If Wisdom is justified by her children, I wondered how I could become one of those children.

The echoes of Wisdom got louder when we got to that famous invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

For Episcopalians, these verses form part of the “Comfortable Words,” a series of Bible verses following the Absolution of Sin in Rite I. On their face, the words are comfortable, and have spawned countless samplers, greeting cards, and memes; not to mention some terrific music in Handel’s Messiah. But is Jesus’ yoke easy, and is his burden light? There’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Given my own battles with complexification (see? I even like using complicated words!), I wonder if some of the difficulty and heaviness that I experience within me and observe in others comes from the human tendency to try to do it all myself, to make my own damn way, rather than nurturing a connection with the One who is the Way, and who walks beside me.

Maybe, just maybe, this passage means that walking with Jesus (= a Higher Power of your understanding) isn’t necessarily uncomplicated, but if I’m focused on my relationship with him, the road before me opens with less resistance and less striving on my part.

I struggle with the image of a yoke. To me, a yoke indicates bondage or servitude, the lack of freedom and choice. But then, I realize that I have in my mind a single-user yoke, such as on a water carrier, or an enslaved person, or an addict. But what about double yokes, designed for working animals to pull in tandem?

What happens when I imagine a double yoke as the yoke Jesus was offering – a yoke that I don’t have to pull alone? A yoke that the God of my understanding wears with me?

If I nurture this kind of connection with the God who labors alongside me, it becomes possible to walk with courage through the complicated realms that my soul sometimes faces. I also have hope that I may be granted some degree of wisdom in choosing between the complexities that deepen me and those that deaden me.

When I am yoked with a Higher Power, I am set free to step off the hamster wheel of obsessions—of self and the world; free to live no longer for myself, but for the good of others.

Twelve Step programs were designed for people seeking to change those things to which they are yoked. So, I find it worth taking time occasionally to ponder exactly what I am attached to. I think that people are always bound, however subtly, to something: people, places, things, habits, possessions, beliefs, ways of being in the world. What or whom am I yoked to right now? Are these connections I chose, or have they been imposed on me? Do they deepen me or deaden me? Do they draw me closer to my Higher Power or drive me further away? Do they connect me to the power, freedom, and choice that God gives me, or do they diminish my power, freedom, and choice?

What if Jesus isn’t part of the God of your understanding? I like to think that when he addressed the crowd that day, Jesus was drawing from a deep and ancient well of Wisdom literature that continues to refresh and encourage us today.

Come to Wisdom with all your soul,
and keep her ways with all your might.

Then her fetters will become for you a strong defense,
and her yoke a golden ornament.
(Ecclesiasticus 6:26-30)

Paul J.
Muncie, IN

The beauty of living a sober life

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 02:45:34 GMT

I have enjoyed sobriety for 36 years. The cure for my addiction has brought me so many gifts and miracles it is hard to name the most important one. A God of my understanding who is present to me when I need him, also a wife who has stood at my side and in front of me for 67 years. A child died from this addiction at the prime of his life, bankruptcies, and business failures—I cannot relate to you the pain I have gone through. But, we have had many joys too, which I would not have experienced had I not been sober. 15 Grandchildren, 16 Great grandchildren, with two more on the way, business successes, and grief assistance from stalwart members of our recovery members.

At 72 years of age, I headed to the seminary, and after 3 hard years of study, I was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church. These last 11 years have been a miracle. I don’t have the words to explain the joy and love I have found in my duties as a deacon. This is my 87^th birthday so I will retire at the end of the year. What a ride, and if I hadn’t got on my knees 36 years ago, I would have missed all the beauty of living a sober life.

—Bob L

Can 55 thousand plus Alcoholics be wrong?

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 01:27:34 GMT

Six months after I got sober the International AA/Alanon convention was held in Seattle, WA, my hometown (it was the last time the two met together as the conventions had grown so large). My first meeting of Alanon had happened many years before and at that meeting a yelled “What do you mean I can’t stop my husband from drinking!” My first meeting in AA was a woman’s meeting and what I most remember about it is that I laughed so much at the meeting. I realized that I had not really laughed for years until that night. The women were telling the most outrageous stories of what their life had been like while drinking and laughing about it! I felt that I had found my tribe. I was still scared and worried but there was some hope in me too.

As the convention got closer, I heard people at all the meetings talk about the program, when they were attending, and who they were going with. I wanted to be asked to join them, but no one was asking. I was scared to ask—again—for help. Finally, I did, and two women said yes and told me where we would meet for the opening ceremony in the Kingdome. I was happy yet still scared. I felt like the cool girls in high school had let me join them but that I knew I wasn’t cool.

As we moved into the Kingdome (Seattle’s multi-use stadium at the time), I felt excited and calm even though I didn’t usually feel calm in big crowds. I am short and often can’t see above anyone’s shoulders so it’s scary for me that I can’t see ahead. But I wasn’t scared there, and it hit me: I felt safe with all these Alcoholics! I trusted no one was drunk or on drugs and that often in crowds it was the unpredictability of people that scared me.

We took our seats and waited for the ceremony to begin. There was to be an introduction, a reading of the 12 steps and traditions as well as everyone saying the Serenity Prayer. I felt myself getting very emotional and tearing up. The stadium was not yet full. Then the parade started.

Slowly, delegations of recovering people (both AA and Alanon) walked in behind their country’s flag. There are about 195 countries in the world and AA is in 180 of them! Each nation was introduced. I would guess there were close to 100 countries there that day.

Suddenly, I was on my feet, just like most of the attendees. With each country named I clapped and smiled and then something miraculous happened. I heard myself say, “I can do this. There are enough people and enough support for me to stay sober—I am not alone!”

That moment has stayed with me until this day. I even experienced it while writing this blog. I am not alone. The hand of AA and Alanon is always there if I need it and ask for it. Whenever I forget this (and I still do sometimes) I close my eyes and I am back in the Kingdome with all those recovering people—I am not alone.

The International Convention happens every five years and moves around the world—often in the United States. It falls on the weekend close to July 4 and that seems appropriate: to celebrate our independence from alcohol, drugs, codependency, and other addictions.

The next convention is in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on July 3-6, 2025. I hope to be there. Maybe you will too.

Doing the Footwork

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 01:48:03 GMT

As I scrolled through Facebook this morning, I came across the following quotation attributed to Marianne Williamson: “Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we will keep trying to slay them in the outer world. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there we must do our work.” Earlier this morning I was talking to a friend about a sermon preached by his minister. While the minister seems to have good intentions, his sermon was not only dour, boring, but also negative.

As we discussed the sermon it dawned on me that this man’s sermon had something of the quality of sermons I might have preached when I was active in my addiction. Recovery has changed me, my attitudes, my approach to sermons/homilies. There was a time when I saw the world as negative, and in my mind, I was convinced that God was going to send me to a place of darkness for eternity because the god I believed in was a punishing, vengeful God.

The more we discussed the sermon it became clear to me that my friend and I had something that the minister did not have; a Twelve Step program. I went on to explain that no one in their right mind would take a fearless and moral inventory of themselves, then call someone to listen to it.

How could a church begin if the church planted told people: “You first have to admit you are powerless over people, places and things; that your life has become unmanageable. Then, you come to believe in a power greater than yourself, turn your will over to the care of that Power, and then you take a fearless and moral inventory of yourself and share that with a member of the church.”

In my active addiction, the problems of the world were “out there.” Other people were to blame. If only “they” would listen to me all would be well. Why can they not see that I am right? And the ones who were especially wrong were those individuals in positions of authority. “Who in their right mind put that person in charge?”

And, almost all the time, I was running into a brick wall with its negative consequences.

“Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we will keep trying to slay them in the outer world. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there we must do our work.”

I did not enter treatment with a positive attitude and certainly did not believe I had a problem with alcohol or other mood-altering chemicals. Five weeks in a four-week treatment program did not convince me I was an addict. Nothing people in AA said convinced me I was an addict. It was a sense that I wanted what they had. They were “happy, joyous and free.” I was tied up in knots. As one old-timer told me: “Seamus, that man who comes from the prison and tells his story is freer in jail than you are walking the street.”

Just over four years of what I later learned was a dry-drunk, I had my spiritual awakening. I grudgingly took responsibility for my attitudes, my behavior and slowly began to see how I had hurt other people. Slowly, I became aware of the monster living within me that I was fighting on my own. What fascinated me was that as I became open to listen to others, to identify with them instead of looking at our difference, I began to see the light to recovery and serenity.

I began to do the work of the steps. But another old-timer told me: “Seamus, if you’re not living the program, you’re not working the steps.” The program soon became alive, the lights went on in the darkness of my mind. Living the program meant that I had to make it a way of life and not just something I did.

In working the steps, I met the monsters, turned my will and life over to God, made a real moral inventory, shared it, identified my defects of Character, made amends, and began a life of being consciously aware of my Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out.

The darkness lifted. The world around me was brighter. I found the peace and serenity I wished for. At a meeting one day I was reading The Promises and I almost cried. They had become real in my life and all because, with God’s help, I did the necessary internal work to change.

Séamus P Doyle.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

Forgetting the Obvious

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 01:54:19 GMT

This month is the one-year anniversary of moving to an assisted medical living facility with all the necessary preparatory work and stress. This was necessary because of the surprise emergency surgery and hospitalization of my wife. After this passage of time, I can say we have done just fine in our new abode and believe without question we both were eligible for this manner of living. The process took all the stress and energy necessary for what had to be done and there were times I wondered if I or the children would be able to complete the transition without emotional or physical breakdown. We stumbled along for a bit until one morning following another early morning “To Do” list to the kids, I was met with a chorus of ”Hey Dad, what happened to easy does it, acceptance, let go let God, and you’re not master of the universe?” I stopped. Wow! The kids had heard a lot from me in my years in the Program.

I had forgotten the obvious. We decided then and there we would start following those ideas, and we got done, on time, with no emotional family damage, and even with some moments of laughter all wrapped up by these words of counsel from the Big Book and Bill W. and Dr. Bob.

You can’t get a lot done if you’re in a mental knot, nor thinking clearly, and your attitude doesn’t encourage others. “Easy does it” adds confidence to what you and others are doing.

Sometimes in life we just must accept something. I’m not talking about acceptance happily or angrily… take it as it is, just that. Make the best of it. That’s the key to living a life of serenity. “If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it…”

“And Dad, look around. Who’s on your side? That’s right, your Higher Power. Think if we ask for His will for us, a way will open up? Can you find better support and assistance?”

I muttered to the kids, “OK, OK, I got it. I remember it now. Stupid. When I needed it, I forgot it. Thanks for the reminder. I am not the world-know-it-all, or its master. I need all the help I can get, as we all do. Let’s get ‘er done with some class and intelligence and love and support… and we did just that. Thanks to Bill and Dr. Bob!

Jim A/Traditions, Lebanon OH.

THE SKY OPENED UP

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 01:03:56 GMT

My oldest friend died almost exactly a year after my daughter's first steps. I traveled to San Francisco many times to help Sarah and care for her. I was able to see her for the last time just twelve hours before she died. We got to have our last goodbyes.

I was devastated. Old people die, not childhood friends, not at 33 years old. Some six months after her death, I was sad, depressed, and lonely. They were dark days, and I went to see a counselor.

In one of our first few meetings, she asked me if I drank alcohol. She knew that I was on medication and was not supposed to drink while taking it. I answered, "Occasionally.”

The truth was I watched the clock every day for my husband to come home so I could have my first glass of wine. I was drinking two? three? More? glasses but never when I was alone with my daughter but, in truth, since Sarah's death, I had noticed that I felt I had to have those glasses.

My counselor asked me to see a friend of hers for an alcohol assessment. My issues were not alcohol, I thought. I didn't drink and drive, I never "had too many” (although I did at a party a few weeks before and had thrown up (something I had never done, not even in college). I didn't consume alcohol during my pregnancy, though it really annoyed me. I went to see the woman just to prove to my counselor that I didn't have a problem with alcohol.

Randy said she would meet with me three times and then give me her assessment. Towards the end of the first session, she announced that she did not need to see me two more times.

Vindication! I thought. See, I'm not an alcoholic; I don't have a problem!

But what she said stunned me. "You are heading down a very dangerous road. You're drinking rather than dealing with your feelings and life. It appears that chemically speaking, you still may have a choice about drinking. You might keep that choice for some time but because of all you have told me about your family's history of alcoholism and alcohol abuse, especially your mother, I am concerned for you. It's my opinion that if you continue to drink, the disease of alcoholism will take over and you will lose your choice and your body will make you drink even if you don't want to. It may not happen tomorrow, you may have perhaps four more drinks, or four years, but it will happen.”

"My advice: stop now while you still have the choice. You may think that you will know which drink in the future will be the one to create complete chemical dependency. Do you think you are clever enough to figure out which drink it will be? Just before you take that drink though, the sky will not open, and God will not make an announcement alerting you that 'This is the drink'."

I was silent. I knew she was right. Would I take the chance of destroying my life, my daughter's life, and my husband's life for a glass of wine? I saw in an instant that I wasn't smart enough to know which drink would take my choices and my life away from me. I didn't want to be an alcoholic mom, like my mom. I didn't want my daughter to look at me with pity and anger.

I could see that for me drinking was like playing Russian roulette with my life and hers. If l stopped now, I wouldn't have to wait to see which chamber the bullet was in. Perhaps, I could start a new family legacy of sobriety and health.

In AA they speak of "reaching your bottom," the point where you are given the gift of realization that you must quit. Like an elevator in a skyscraper, the elevator lets you off on any floor. I didn't want to go all the way to the basement.

The sky did open that day. It wasn't like in the movies. God didn't grab a drink out of my hand and stop me. God doesn’t work that way—at least not in my life. The voice that I heard came from an older, petite woman with kindness in her eyes. Her voice spoke to the quiet knowing part inside of me. God gives us a choice. We must make it and keep it. I did hear God and I got off the elevator and stepped into a new life. It has made all the difference.

Libbie S - from her book - God Shots: Moments & Lessons, A life in Recovery, Motherhood to Covid

Embracing the Journey: Unveiling the Power of Willingness in Recovery

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 01:39:50 GMT

Sometimes I like to hold on to things.

This is especially problematic when those things are my defects of character. I do this even though, deep down; I know they hinder my progress in becoming the person I believe my Higher Power has created me to be. I have a remarkable ability to resist change, even when it's for my well-being and growth.

In the sixth step, I read to be "…entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." This step calls for a genuine openness to let go of my self-defeating behaviors and attitudes. As the Big Book of AA emphasizes, "When ready, we say something like this: 'My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad'" (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous). For me, willingness begins with acknowledging the need for change and recognizing that my Higher Power can guide me toward growth and healing.

What hinders my ability to be willing? Often, it is the relentless grip of my ego, that little voice within that tells me I don't need to change or that my defects somehow define me. I may fear losing control or mistakenly believe holding onto certain behaviors or relationships provides security, comfort, or validation. However, true freedom lies in releasing my attachments to these false sources of stability. By surrendering to the process, I open myself to the possibilities of a more fulfilling life, liberated from the chains of our defects.

I recently reconnected with self-reflection as a powerful tool on this path. Taking regular introspection and honestly evaluating my attitudes and behaviors has allowed me to recognize patterns contributing to my defects. Through compassionate self-awareness, I've identified areas where change is necessary, and genuine willingness emerges from this place of honesty.

After 13 years in 12-Step recovery, I still seek support and accountability. Surrounding myself with individuals who understand my need to be willing and my resistance to doing so has made a world of difference. Engaging in recovery meetings, therapy, and support groups have allowed me to share my experiences, challenges, and triumphs with others on a similar path. I cannot overstate the importance of connection and support for my recovery. The adage "our secrets make us sick" rings in my brain as a reminder to get current when I am holding on to my character defects.

Letting go of the illusion of control and trusting in my Higher Power's guidance has been liberating and challenging. It's a continuous practice of releasing my grip on outcomes and having faith that I am creating space for positive change and growth by surrendering. Surrendering is an act of vulnerability and courage, but through this surrender, true transformation begins to unfold.

I read in Matthew 16 where Jesus addresses the outcome of not being willing to let go of the things that may stop me from becoming who I am meant to be.

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me, and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?*

I have experienced the profound impact of unwillingness to let go of my character defects. I am never pleased with the results. However, when I am willing, usually after suffering and pain, I am rewarded with the peace and serenity of a new level of integrity.

Now I have to be willing to let go.

By Shane M

*The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson

Finding True Hospitality

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 02:11:25 GMT

Recently I was reading a book for a study group I attend, and I read the following: “Concern for fostering good relationships with others and the ability to overcome prejudice and fear are essential ingredients for promoting the culture of encounter, in which we are prepared not only to give, but also receive from others. Hospitality, in fact, grows from both giving and receiving.”¹ I had little to no intention of fostering good relationships with others when I came into the Fellowship, and I certainly wasn’t prejudiced [except toward the British.]

I did what I had to do. I was invited to come early and stay late, to participate in the preparation and clean up afterward. I was friendly and yet kept most people at arm’s length. If I didn’t, they would get to know me, realize I was a skeleton, a fake, and know I was stupid. Best to keep them at a distance.

The Steps don’t work that way. When I finally experienced my spiritual awakening and took the program seriously, I discovered that step one is about “concern for fostering good relationships with others.” All my life I had hid in plain view. I’ve no doubt that people saw through me, but for most people, I was superficial.

Step one created a level playing field for all of us regardless of our socio-economic status or our place of employment. Step one opened my mind to the chaos I had created for myself and others. While I did not want to be an alcoholic or belong to this fellowship, I wanted what they had. I wanted what I saw in others with long term sobriety.

Step Four brought me face to face with my prejudices and fears. I was prejudiced against more than just “the Brits.” I was prejudiced against WASPS, Asians, and others with whom I had never had a conversation. I was prejudiced against myself. I had no idea who I was, what I believed. I was a stranger unto myself. I wanted company.

“Concern for fostering good relationships with others and the ability to overcome prejudice and fear are essential ingredients for promoting the culture of encounter…” First, I had to admit I was prejudiced; admit that I am human just like every other human on this planet, I made and make mistakes, have attitudes etc. Admitting that I am human brought me out of hiding, opened my mind and eyes to the goodness of “them,” of ‘those people” of whom I was one. It was essential that I begin to change my attitude and behavior in order to have an encounter with “them,” “us” and me.

The Fellowship, I discovered, is a place for a “promoting the culture of encounter.” I encountered people of all walks of life, all faith communities, all cultural backgrounds, all parts of the socio-economic ladder. I came face to face with them and they were me. This was no chance encounter. This was a real gut-level encounter that would not have happened in any other format—not even in church. This was a human encounter, a healing encounter, a spiritual encounter.

Our desire for fostering good relationships and the ability to overcome prejudice and fear broke down my walls and helped me encounter myself in a manner that no therapist had ever done. Steps one through five broke through my denial system and gave me the strength to reach out to others whom I otherwise would have judged or avoided.

I changed. Through working the steps and learning to live the program, I came to experience the promises coming true for me. I wanted what they had, and they gave it away freely by invitation and example: “Hospitality, in fact, grows from both giving and receiving.”

The Fellowship is not a place for selfishness. Rather it is in this fellowship that I learned true “hospitality.” “It grows from both giving and receiving.” As Bill W. wrote: “Many of my dearest A.A. friends have stood with me… Oftentimes they could help where others could not, simply because they were A. A’s.”² I received so much initially that I did not understand. I was grateful for it, and I was selfish in the way I took it. In time I learned I too had something to offer, to share and it had nothing to do with currency or status—it was my experience, strength, and hope.

I came into this Fellowship as a stranger to myself and others and “too smart for your own good.” It was the genuine “Concern for fostering good relationships with others and the ability to overcome prejudice and fear’ [which created] ‘the culture of encounter in which we are prepared not only to give but also receive from others. Hospitality, in fact, grows from both giving and receiving.”

1) POPE FRANCIS: A STRANGER and You Welcomed Me. Edit Robert Ellsberg. Orbis Books 108.
2) AS BILL SEES IT. 303

Christ, Bill W & Dr Bob: Handling Self-Pity *

Thu, 25 May 2023 00:26:56 GMT

Following his death and resurrection, Christ allowed His close followers to hide, to be afraid, to be angry that He was betrayed by one of His own, then tortured and hung on a cross to die with 2 thieves… and they did nothing to stop it. They hid in that room for 40 days, probably feeling sorry for themselves, fearful, not knowing what to do. Christ was dead but had risen. Could sadness be any deeper? The Risen Christ let them morn his death and let all the feelings of anger, guilt, fear, and so forth ebb and flow through the gathered. Christ waited. When He had waited long enough, He appeared to the hidden and told them what they were to do: He told them to move on, to leave their fears and pity pots, and go into the world and carry His message to all. He forced different languages on each, giving them access to foreign countries. He wanted these people in that room to carry his message of joy, of recovery of His Grace for all. So, I have no doubt Christ’s message today to those who hurt, those in deep sorrow and confusion, is, “Yes, morn, but at some point, you must pick up and move on, taking back your life.”

We recovering alcoholics know a thing or two about pity pots. For some that pot is the door opener to a return to one’s alcoholism— an excuse to drink. Sometimes the pot was deep— death in a family, divorce, any event having heavy emotional consequences— but for the addict, any size of pot will do. It’s just an excuse— you may know the game. “You’d drink too if you [fill in blank]” But the former active addict knows the Program, the Steps, the meetings, and his or her sponsor are there. He learns he’s not alone and that others have experienced the same feelings and have dealt with them by working the Program. They know from experience that they must get into action, take it easy, and perhaps the most obvious, to let go and let God.

Someone said to me when I was whining about some stupid sad feelings (I forget about what):

“Every day I need a good ol’ contact with other alcoholics to remain sober, a meeting, helping others, whatever. I do that to keep the Steps in my life. You need to do that too… Get off that Pot and get to a meeting. I learn something new every day that carries me to a serenity I thought I’d never recover. It’s an “into action” thing. Pity pots? When I feel one coming on, sneaking up on me, what do I do about the approaching flood of self-pity? Easy peasy. I get to a meeting, any meeting, and bring it up as a topic for discussion. Believe me. That takes care of it. It’s not a onetime deal. It gives me a way to continue the fight against that dark cloud. It tells me to be grateful and abandon that attitude of arrogance. Write a gratitude list— it’s a way off that dark cloud. OK? There you have it, Pity Pot bye, bye.”

Christ and the Steps essentially teach us to get outside ourselves, to work the Steps, to accept that which we cannot change and to seek His will and the power to carry it out.

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati

*Forgiveness sought for combining incidents in the first paragraph from different sources. JA

Principal Five Unpacked: Integrity

Thu, 11 May 2023 00:22:57 GMT

Well $#%@.

That was my immediate thought when I looked up this month’s recovery principle. I felt shame and guilt again because the word integrity has been destructive. In the past, integrity was the highest standard for an evangelical pastor. Pastors with integrity were super-Christians, who seemed to float into rooms, could preach up a storm, and see thousands of conversions. Integrity was directly related to results in ministry.

The inverse was communicated as truth as well. If I lacked integrity, my ministry was “of the flesh” and would not produce church growth and success. If your ministry was not fruitful, it was because of unconfessed sin, a lack of faith, or doing things of our efforts. I recall numerous conversations with fellow pastors who commented in negative ways about preachers who were not dynamic and how they equated that lack of “power” to a lack of intimacy with God.

As an active addict at that time, I ate that up. I knew the hypocrisy with which I was living. I knew that on any given Sunday, I was preaching a sermon prepared during a time of acting out in my sex and love addiction. Even when I was “clean” from those things, I always felt my integrity didn’t meet God’s expectations because I was in denial about being gay.

The church I identified used integrity as a synonym for holy, pure, and virtuous. While the Biblical word certainly can be used for those meanings, I believe such a definition reinforces a culture of shame and guilt that keeps others compliant or locked in abuse. Shame and guilt are often the catalysts for acting out as addicts.

It is time to view integrity differently as people in recovery.

Is it possible that integrity occurs when what others see on our outside mirrors what we know to be confirmed on the inside? In recovery, I embrace the synonym of “honest” as a replacement for integrity. Step five breaks the power of the secret life through disclosure. After taking inventory of my moral defects, having another human being who listens to my darkest deeds without flinching breaks the hold shame has over me. For many of us, this is the first time we are congruent in our private and public selves.

I wonder how much internal and external congruence would impact our churches. Imagine clergy that set aside the urge to be perfect in the pulpit and were transparent with their struggles with addiction, insecurities, and self-will. Imagine marriages and partnerships in which ego takes a backseat to the integrity of being honest with those we love. Dare we embrace this as a culture? Well, $#%@ that sounds like heaven.

-Shane M

Time

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:50:05 GMT

In the current issue of PARABOLA*, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee writes: “Time speaks in many voices, many different images and sounds…Time itself has become a standard, isolated, no longer able to communicate, to share its ancient knowledge…In today’s world the hectic, stress-inducing demands of time are often answered by the spiritual teaching that only the moment of now exists…But within each moment are all the rhythms of time, the patterns that flow from this still center…Each moment is both outside of time and also contains time, for, as .S.T. Eliot writes, “history is a pattern of timeless moment.””

“It’s time.” “What time is it?” “Time to get up. Time to go to bed. Time to go to work. Time to play. Time to pray. Time to eat. Time to get dressed. A time for everything under heaven. A time to be born, to die.”

One of the things I missed most in my years of active alcohol and drug abuse was Time. I never had time for those people, places, and things I now consider important. I thought I ‘managed’ my time well as I got my work done, kept appointments, made sure I looked good, etc. The problem was I was not there at the time. I was in a Blackout for just about all of my drinking/using years.

When I think about time, I think of my adolescent/young adult years when I would take my bicycle and ride around the countryside. I had all the time in the world. I loved the smell of new mown hay. I loved the aroma of the bog and the turf. I had time to stop with a neighbor—whether or not I knew them—and talk about the day, the weather, etc.

Then came the combine harvester and “real work” began. Gone were the days of turning over rows of hay for it to dry. The owner of this machine came early in the morning, turned over the hay, bailed it and spit it out for us to pick up and take to the shed and then go to the next farm to do the same. There was less and less ‘time’ to play, to visit, to sit around and play poker.

Then came college and a frightening new world of Bud Stupid, James Jemison, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, and friends. And time vanished. They took up a lot of my time even when I was not actively drinking. They gave me courage, strength, a belief in myself that had not existed before. I drowned myself in their presence and time was not important except for them. I always had time for a drink.

After I came to grips with my powerlessness and the unmanageability of my life due to the influence of mood-altering chemicals, including alcohol, I had to make time to reflect more seriously on my life as an active alcoholic. During those years I buried my emotions, I had a split screen on God—one I believed in, the angry one; and the Loving God about whom I talked to others.

Sobriety was a time-consuming process of relearning to say, “I feel…” and learn words other than “fine” or “Great” and to avoid “You made me…” I skipped through steps four and five and then had to make time to take a fearless and moral inventory of myself. The more time I took to reflect, the more honest I became.

By the time I reached the eight, nineth and tenth steps I was beginning to appreciate the program and its “demand” for rigorous honesty.” It was time to grow up. It was time to take my life seriously.

The next step was to seek “through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understood him.” I was good at saying prayers, prayers I had learned by heart as a child. But “Prayer is the lifting of the heart and mind to God.” And, to do so, is to become more consciously aware of God in my life. God’s time is Now, the here and now of everyday living. I didn’t have to stop and say prayers. I could look around me and see the presence of God in the sun, moon and stars, in the rain and storm, in the peace and quiet of a beautiful day. The world became for me “God’s art gallery.” As I walked or drove through God’s art gallery I witnessed the changing of the day, the changing of the weather, the changing of the seasons. God was present all around me. I was living and being alive in God’s time.

I don’t know when or where it happened but, in living the program, I found a new meaning of time and having time especially for those in need.

Séamus P Doyle
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

* (Summer 2023 Vol 48.NO 2. 25-29. “Sacred Time: The Seasons and the Cosmos.”)

“Were you there?”

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:16:20 GMT

Yes, I was. This time it wasn’t “Film at 11.” I was scanning the news stories and happened on one that seemed to have broken within the hour. The video from that school was on the internet, more becoming available.

I watched as her dirty van entered the school parking lot. Later, I saw Audrey Hale’s picture, and she looked as your high school teen would. She parked and I watched her, dressed in camo pants and a red baseball cap jauntily worn backwards. Walking to the school’s locked doors, a semi-automatic machine gun in hand, she blasted the glass and entered the hall. She strolled about looking for people to kill.

Then I heard other voices from outside: “In in in,” “There, there,” “Go, go,” “Clear!” Each harsh, stern, focused--shotguns and rifles pointed. They moved fast, room by room, closets, bathrooms.

Suddenly we hear gun shots, heavy, solid, angry. Then cries, “Upstairs-up, up, up.”

Then it was quiet as these men slowly walked down the hall leading to the room where the shots came from--no sound. Suddenly 8 shots …bam …bam …bam…bam ….bam …bam …bam …bam. It was over.

This killing of children and teachers wasn’t any different from other shootings. For me it was, as this time I saw and heard all if it, almost as it happened--intimate, in color, with voice. Have I reached a level of familiarity of the killing of school children such that I just earnestly pause, pray for parents and survivors, then put it aside and go on my way?

What would Bill W and Dr. Bob say in these moments of deep tragedy. Well, the first thing they’d say is our Higher Power was there just as He was for all of us, for as sinners, we were always welcomed into the Program. Perhaps we weren’t aware of His presence but at this depth of our lives, we weren’t alone.

So it was that day in Nashville.

“Wait a minute,” I’m thinking, “even with her, can that be true? That’s hard to accept. We can empathize with the shooter, but she pulled the trigger, so she pays the price!”

God’s infinite power is beyond us, unfathomable, incomprehensible. Our minds can’t assimilate that. Can we limit that power? We know our Higher Power was with us through our final drink at the depths of our being. We didn’t earn His Grace and the question isn’t how serious our sins might have been. It is God’s love for us that we’re speaking of. We’re not required to earn that Grace or His love.

The Program gives us much--how to live life, acceptance, letting go, and more. Our ego intercepts this serenity and seeks to steer us away. We are always wrestling with our ego. He appears in many forms, and here our ego's plea was to ignore and disavow Christ’s presence with Audrey at the moments of the depths of her very being.

I must recall Christ’s Grace as the sinners we are and yes, I believe His Grace reaches Audrey Hale, and “yes,” in the words of the hymn, “He was there.”

May the peace of God, the serenity of the Program, be always with us.

Jim A, Traditions, Lebanon, Ohio

Courage to Change

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 22:11:22 GMT

My favorite theologian was only 2'2" tall.

Of course, I speak about Yoda, the Jedi Master from the Star Wars movies. In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda warns his young apprentice, Luke Skywalker, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." I missed the spiritual truth of that line as a teenager. Now, after beginning my recovery journey, I not only understand that truth, I feel it at a cellular level.

My addiction and being in the orbit of an alcoholic have taught me the role Fear plays in my life. I never knew if my dad was drinking or the mood he would be in once I returned home from school. I lived in constant fear of being discovered, fear of having my most current acting-out partner show up at work, and uncleared search histories of being found. I lived in hyper-vigilance, constantly assessing the risk level of any given person, place, or thing.

In recovery, we can choose to fear as a catalyst for our work. By that, I mean that Fear, the unpleasant feeling triggered by the perception of danger, real or imagined, can paralyze, or energize us. In active addiction, I remained paralyzed by my fears of being alone, not being loved, a lack of validation, and rejection. In my relationships with alcoholics, I was often paralyzed by the dread of abandonment, not doing enough to keep them sober, and other's perceptions of me.

Courage is required to shake off the paralysis and begin progressing in recovery. Courage is simply the choice and willingness to confront the feelings, real or imagined, of danger, pain, or uncertainty. As Dorothy Bernard says, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." Courage is grounded in steps one, two, and three. By acknowledging that we were out of control, that our efforts were useless, and that only something larger than ourselves (and our addictions) could restore us to sanity, we have set foot into the realm of courage. These steps bring us to the point where we can do the one thing we fear most.

Look at our own perfectly imperfect lives.

Step four requires examining our sketchy morality, dubious motives, and self-destructive patterns. While good sponsors also ask us to write down our character assets, it is the character liabilities we desperately try to avoid with one more drink, one more score, one more bet, one more online video, one more anonymous hook-up, one more marriage, or one more chance to play the victim. A fearless look at our lives will require us to establish a stronghold in reality, and surrender to the fact that we make pretty lousy higher powers.

I believe that recovering people are the most courageous humans on the planet. They may not run headfirst into the burning building, charge enemy fortresses, or skydive from a perfectly functioning airplane. They admit their fears and then choose not to be defined by them. Courage happens when they look in and risk sharing what they discover with another human being. Fear's power over our lives disappears as we admit that our lives contain patterns of ego, deceit, and self-will run riot. As Yoda also said,

"Named must be your fear before banish it you can."

Shane M
April 13, 2023

Out of the Bleachers

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 00:21:19 GMT

I heard the crowd from far away. There were waves of cheers and laughs, and I’m sure some sobs if I got close enough to hear. But I stayed at a distance. There was something about the place, something about the game and the crowd that intimidated me. I was glad they were assembled, but I didn’t feel the need, nor did I have the desire, to join them.

Then, I had nowhere else to go. I knew the time had come, and I walked toward the stadium. The sounds were familiar, and I recognized a few faces making their way to the game, but when I saw the place and approached the gate, I wanted to turn back. Somewhere deep down, I knew if I entered the arena, I would not be able to return to life as I knew it. With a deep breath, I pushed the gate and entered.

The sounds were louder from inside. I could hear what people were saying. Although I was surprised by the size of the crowd, there were still plenty of seats in the bleachers. I took my place in the back, toward the aisle in case I needed to leave. But I didn’t. I thought about it a few times, but instead of leaving, I moved down and sat closer the others. Still, I was happy in the bleachers. From there, I could look on. Like the others, I could comment on the performance of those on the field, question a call, and lift my arms in disgust when someone made a mistake.

“At least they’re on the field,” someone muttered loud enough for me to hear. I looked around but couldn’t identify who’d said it. The words haunted me. No longer was it satisfying to talk about the game or judge those playing. Eventually, I knew I had to stand and walk onto the field.

“Don’t,” the person next to me said as he grabbed my arm. “It’s much warmer up here.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” added another. “You might get hurt. You might make a fool of yourself.”

It was all true, but I continued down the stairs and onto the field. The players who were grass-stained and sweaty smiled and came over to greet me. A few hugged me and got my clothes dirty. Seeing the look on my face, they laughed. “Just wait,” they exclaimed with a smile as the pushed me onto the field.

After seventeen years in the bleachers, it felt good to get on the field. Yes, I’m bruised and muddy, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I wish I’d done it long ago.

Chip B.

The Joys of Service

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 01:26:03 GMT

The Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy/ I woke and saw that life was service/ I acted and behold! service was joy.” After a few weeks of attending the same meeting of the Fellowship it was suggested to me that instead of coming in late and leaving early, that I might come somewhat earlier and help set up the hall and stay afterward. My first thoughts were that these guys had really listened to me and knew that I had something to offer and therefore wanted me to be part of the group. I was somewhat egotistical in those early days.

Not only that, but I was also asked to go on 12step calls to meet with individuals who had called the AA hotline and asked for help. I was taken to the State psychiatric hospital to tell my story. There was no doubt in my fogged-up brain—still fogged after five weeks in a four week program—that I was being groomed for leadership in AA. It took a while to get through my head that leadership in AA was about service that came from a desire to serve the group locally and the Fellowship at large.

Most of my life of service was that of doing good so that others might see how good a person I am. Looking back, I am amazed that while I was taught the importance of service by my parents—by word and deed—I somehow turned it into “all about me.” I didn’t know there was a hole in my heart that needed to be mended and healed.

In the process of recovery, I realized that service is part and parcel of all religious backgrounds and various clubs that help those in the community who have medical or nutritional needs. “I acted and behold! service was joy.”

There is something different about gathering with others in order to be of service to the group locally and at large. While the work may be serious, money raised, plans made, schedules kept, transport arranged, food arranged, there is within that time frame a time for what Fr. Mulcahy of M.A.S.H. fame referred to as “jocularity, jocularity.”

Service is simple. It does not require a lot of time or strength, or wealth or even health. Service can be as simple as showing up for a meeting. All too often we do not realize the importance our presence may be to another member. Service can be as simple as opening the door and stepping back to let someone go ahead of me. Service can be asking the man or woman next to you, “Can I get you a refill on your coffee.” Service can be giving a ride to or from a meeting. Service can be volunteering to serve on another board, region, or national level.

I acted and behold! service was joy. If you don’t like it, don’t do it just because no one else wants to do so. If no one wants to make the coffee, then perhaps that group doesn’t want to drink it, so why make it. It is not healthy to be on a committee if the length of service is a lifetime [requirement]. Committee members need to step down for a period of time to prevent themselves from burnout. Service to the group or region can be in finding the right person to serve. There are those whose gifts and talents can be beneficial to the group or region, but they may be shy about volunteering. They may not think they can serve as the same three people rotate in and out of service. I was in the Fellowship for a number of years before I volunteered to serve on a committee as it seemed to me that certain individuals were tapped for those positions. And there are those who prefer to serve behind the curtain. They are not comfortable in the limelight, but they will gladly be a “gofer” and they will go for anything needed.

One of the joys of the AA fellowship is that there seems to be no end to the ways we can be of service to one another, the group, region, nationally and internationally. As Martin Luther King once wrote: “Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Séamus P Doyle.
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

Miracles

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 01:03:43 GMT

I’ve been thinking about Miracles.

My sobriety began with a miracle. I was miserable, desperate, and unsure of what to do. I was alone and suffering. I couldn’t explain it. I was outside and everyone else was inside the circle. I didn’t understand. At one time alcohol had eased my pain, helped me forget my isolation and made things bearable—but then alcohol turned on me. I couldn’t drink enough and anything I drank was too much. I cried out, yes, actually cried out, “God help me, I can’t do this alone.” And within days, I was led to 12-Step Recovery. Yes, within days…

And the miracles continue. Being sober means my whole self is available to participate in life. And that means being able to see the miracles that are all around, every day, everywhere. Even in the midst of loss and anxiety, even during illness and insecurity, I can see the miracles. Being sober means having my eyes open to life, to possibility, to the miracle of the unfolding story.

In January of 2020 I got a highly anticipated phone call from Oklahoma. My goddaughter Maggie had just given birth to a daughter! Miriam, Maggie’s mom and one of my dearest friends, phoned to tell me of the baby’s safe arrival. Then Miriam said that Maggie had decided that the little one would be named after herself…and me. I hadn’t expected that miracle of generosity, and I cried tears of—relief for the safe arrival, astonishment for the surprise, and gratitude for the honor.

We all planned to get together on Holy Saturday, April 11, for the baptism of Miriam Aini Eleanor (Miri). You know what happened. The world shut down in March 2020—just for a few weeks, we thought--until this COVID thing got under control. Miri’s baptism was rescheduled for Pentecost, May 31. And then rescheduled…and finally happened in April 2021. But wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles (thanks, Fiddler on the Roof)—in the midst of the tragedy of the pandemic, the physical isolation, and the uncertainty—we got to see Miri grow from infancy to babyhood to toddlerhood. Daily texts and pictures from Maggie, phone conversations and Zoom suppers and bath-times brought us together to share the miracle of daily living.

On my first sober anniversary my sponsor had given me a plaque of the Serenity Prayer and on the back she inscribed “Alone no more…” And that is the miracle of miracles. Whether isolation stems from the tragic blindness to connection that active substance use causes, or it comes from the distancing required to end the spread of a deadly virus—we are never ever alone. Sobriety opens our eyes to connection and fills us with gratitude.

And we see miracles everywhere.

Conversations with the Practicing Alcoholic

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 16:31:33 GMT

“You promised to do something about your drinking, but that you had to think about taking that step.” That’s no promise; that’s fantasy.”

“Hedging your bets doesn’t aid attaining your sobriety. It’s just the old effort to get the spouse or boss off your back. You’ve broken that promise before. C'mon, it’s not forever anyway. In the Program we quit only for today. You can do that.”

“You must quit for yourself—not for your father, mother, husband, or minister. This disease is an addiction—physically and mentally.”

“Even I, as one in recovery, remains an addict and powerless over a deeply held thirst for alcohol.”

“The grinding tragedy of it all is that help is available and all one has to do is accept that fact and work the Program.”

“Yes, this is a disease never cured—once an addict, always an addict.”

“And to make it worse, this disease always worsens. Even after a goodly amount of time of sobriety, a drink will put you right back on that downward slope you jumped off of all those years ago.”

“Sure, I too remember those early days of drinking, but it wasn’t fun at the end.”

“You’re right. Don’t go to the meetings just to protect or grow your own sobriety. The Program tells us we also have an obligation to carry the message to those still suffering. In some ways we ‘get it’ by ‘giving it away to others.’”

“Worried about finding all those bottles you hid? Don’t worry. You don’t remember where you hid them way back when and you’ll probably find them the next time you’re upgrading the insulation in the walls of your den.”

“Yes, you are absolutely correct: your complete attention back then was devoted to seeing how long you can fool your family that you weren’t still drinking. You looked at this as a game—pure and simple.”

“Of course, those gala holiday parties are tempting. Everyone else is over-doing it, but you don’t have that option so don’t go to those gala events as you call them. The guests won’t miss you for they’re too busy making certain they get enough free booze.”

“You’re correct, yes indeed. Working the Program will change your life. It’s a fresh start free of those old drunken hangovers.”

“Yes. You’ll have to adjust all aspects of your now alcohol-free life. You won’t have that phony crutch to deal hide behind. The Program offers a Higher Power that will be with you no matter what happens. It gives us a chance to get outside ourselves and carry an attitude of accepting a spiritual strength, a life of serenity. Maintaining and deepening your own alcohol-free life is enough to worry about and making sure you go to those daily meetings available no matter where you are or what you are doing. Today you can ZOOM anywhere, any day, at any time. Don’t tell us you can’t find a meeting.”

“Just keep coming back. The Program works if you work it.”

Jim A/Traditions Assisted Living, Lebanon, Ohio

Finding Faith: The Third Step of Recovery

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 01:36:40 GMT

Sometimes my faith is weak.

This poses a problem for me, a person in recovery. The Third Step states: "We decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." After all, recovery is a spiritual program and requires a leap of faith. Much like the one performed by Harrison Ford in the movie Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, at Step Three, I must close my eyes, extend my foot over a bottomless chasm, and step into the void with no assurance that something or someone will stop my fall. In my experience, such a decision works well on the silver screen, but in real life, not so much.

The word faith carries with it a lot of spiritual baggage. I am accustomed to the term being used to browbeat me into compliance from my experience in the evangelical church. My lack of faith was a sign of unconfessed sin or lousy theology. When I began my recovery journey and got to step three, I struggled to make the step of faith because of my experience with how my evangelical church defined faith. My experience told me that this would not work. "Why should it be any different now?" I asked.

But it was.

Steps one and two had to proceed this leap, be they on paper or in my heart and mind. As I surrendered my ego, I discovered that I was powerless over my addiction and my ability to muster up enough faith to change my ways. That power had to come from outside of me.

In the rooms of my programs, I found people who lived to tell stories of sobriety and recovery. In the sharing of their experience, strength, and hope, they were able to redistribute faith. Working with my sponsor allowed him to transfer some of his faith into my account. Finally, my Higher Power taught me about grace and how it makes a difference when my faith weakens. That's the dynamic of the program. Fallible human beings are being restored to sanity by grace in the context of community— God doing for us (often through others) what we cannot do for ourselves.

Admitting we lack faith may not be such a bad thing. Perhaps there is a larger world where faith is shared between those with much and those with little. The purpose of faith may be to empower us to experience life on life's terms, apart from attempts to control life outcomes. Is it possible that what we call faith in our religious experiences is just a cover for a set of beliefs and tenants used to control us?

Father Richard Rohr says, "Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them—all the way through!" I am learning that faith is a journey through circumstances and not a destination to which I arrive. It is the first of many steps on the road leading closer to serenity.

On this journey, my faith has grown, and I have been able to help others amid their faith struggle. Doing so has increased my faith, not dogma or heartless religious definitions. I can take the ladle of love, dip it into the well of faith, and pour some into the cup of a newcomer or trusted fellow in need. I now understand that faith is about emptying me of myself so that the God of my understanding may fill me with God's presence and power.

All I need to do is close my eyes, swing out my foot, and take the leap.

By Shane M

I had “lost the world”

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 01:11:58 GMT

In his book, Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

I spent five weeks in a four-week treatment program followed by a year of individual therapy and “Aftercare” group counseling. I “graduated” from the in-patient program. A graduate from a treatment program for alcoholism. Years later I reflected on this and though I was not unlike the students who graduate from high school and still cannot read or write. I still did not believe I was an alcoholic.

I “completed” steps one through five before I graduated. and I knew I cheated on all of them. How could I admit to being an alcoholic when I knew perfectly well that I had control of it. Well, most of the time.

I was employed, had my own transportation, and a roof over my head. How in the wide world could I be an alcoholic. I had not lost anything. Nothing like the other folk in treatment with me. They were real alcoholics.

In the first eighteen months post treatment, I experienced divorce, becoming a single dad to a thirteen-month old baby girl, and having to relocate. My life, as I later looked back on it, was now on shifting sand and I was still in denial. As Pooh says, “I’m not lost. I’m right here.” I was not lost.

It is fascinating what can happen when we begin to really listen to others and to ourselves at meetings both inside AA and those meetings in the coffee house down the street afterward.

Men I did not know, knew me better than I knew myself. “Séamus you’re full of it,” I heard them say. I laughed and then, inside I cried. Life as I knew it was eroding around me and within me and I had no language skills to ask for help.

Four years passed and I was busy looking for a mother for my child instead of a partner for life. I went to meetings. I didn’t drink or do drugs. I became addicted to unhealthy relationships, to nicotine, to food. I kept myself busy in order to seem to be in control of my life. I was given a book on Adult Children of Alcoholics to read and, despite my initial negative attitude toward the topic, I read it and sought help. If I were to put my life back together, I had to understand life before I began to drink. Oh, I was an alcoholic in waiting. I really needed to redo the steps I had already redone, and this time be honest, totally honest with no one but myself and God. That’s when I realized I had “lost the world” in which I pretended to live. I was but a shell of a human being. I had no values, and my spiritual life was nonexistent despite all the prayers I had been saying.

With each step I came to grips with my powerlessness and unmanageability; I found a Higher Power and turned over my life to Her care. I outlined an honest fourth step and shared it and began to own up to having character defects for which I needed help to remove. I began to find myself as I opened up to self, God and others. It was then I realized something which I found in an article I read: “Healing can take a long time. But it can begin, perhaps, with a willingness to just sit in the dark and open our hearts,”

Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Willingness. It was there in front of me all this time, but I was lost in my own world and did not see it. Cliches became life supports: let go and let God, one day at a time, keep coming back. I am an alcoholic. I am right here where I belong.

As I began to travel, I learned of “the infinite extent of our relations.” A.A. was everywhere and we all walked in each other’s shoes for most of our journey. I could go anywhere and was only a phone call away from a meeting. I could walk into a meeting anywhere, pour myself a cup of coffee and be at home within myself and with my companions on the road of recovery.

Today, I continue to be grateful I lost the world to which I once belonged and for all those who helped me find myself so I could then join them in helping those who seek help.

Séamus P. Doyle.
Séamus is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

“I give up”, she says but did she attach strings?

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 01:19:22 GMT

This is the newbie’s usual hedge. What did we really expect her to say? But with that half-surrender she still has a chance to find the way out of her downward slide. She probably at least understands her alcoholism will get worse, never better. But what’s your next step: say goodbye? Did you really expect her to cry-out, “Yes, I admit, admit, admit I’m an alcoholic and I don’t attach strings to that admission!”

So, if you are working with someone who hesitates, who wishes to engage in more fieldwork, guess what? There is only one response for you to pass along to this newbie: “surrender” itself can be viewed as a process but yes, it sure was an event for Bill W. in that hospital room when he “gave up.” But whatever, you just be patient. Keep in touch with her. Ask her to attend a couple meetings with you… no harm in asking. Try to get her to a discussion meeting, sometimes a regular straight drunk-a-log sheds light on her reluctance to surrender, and tell her, “Yes, it really does get that bad. It’s all out there for you to experience. Your choice.”

Another approach is gathering a couple of similarly situated people and take her to lunch. Listen to what’s she saying and feeling (how does she look, maybe hung-over?) The lunch isn’t a round-robin talk-a-thon about the evils of alcoholism. Hope for a real conversation with her. Get her talking. Is she playing games with you? Tell her a bit of your process and what made you undertake that 100% commitment. How’d you feel? Just remember that you are asking for major life-style changes. A life she has lived for years maybe very effectively, but deep down, she’s not so sure. Maybe all you get from lunch is, “So long, thanks, let me think about it.”

So, our reaction? It’s a simple, “Sure, we’ll be here. If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, we’re here.”

Through talks like this, the old cry of “Stigma, Stigma, Stigma” may rear its ugly head. Ask her if the stupidity of others is to control her life. But fortunately, these stigma-days have passed. The dangers of alcoholism are spread widely. People know help is available and rare is the family that hasn’t personally experienced the ravages of the alcoholic or have seen the sorrow in others caused by the disease.

What’s Christ call to us: “I’m always there with you, always. It is just that simple. Even if you don’t want to accept my invitation, I’ll stick by you. You don’t earn my Grace and love, there’s no scorecard or a certain number of points needed. You’re never alone, like it or not. Remember the thief next to my cross? Grace overcame his humanity.”

So, remember, the Program is always available for the practicing alcoholic. If you like what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, come on, get to a meeting. It really does work if you work it for it provides a way to serenely live life understanding and dealing with its foibles, without alcohol.

—Jim A/Traditions, Lebanon

A Song in My Heart

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:53:49 GMT

One of the gifts (of many) I have enjoyed in almost 37 years of sobriety is waking up daily with a song in my heart. Today it’s “Hard Hearted Hannah,” last night it was “Holy, Holy, Holy. I can be all over the map of different artists and songs og “O Holy Night” and it does not have to be Christmas for me to love Ceylon’s version of this song. A walk with Jesus “In the Garden” or “Rollin on the River” has also been in my head and heart over the last few days.

I am a deacon in the Episcopal Church. I entered seminary at 73, was ordained at 76 and I am about to retire at 87 having served my church for 11 years. How has this all happened? In 1986 on April the third, I fell on my knees in a chapel and asked God to teach me how to love him and others with my whole heart and soul. I had lost any part of me that knew how to love, and I despised myself. John, a very kind brother in the John of The Cross community who was an alcoholic, offered to help me. My plea was almost immediately answered by my Higher Power and the first thing I was taught was to work at loving me first.

He asked me to write something good about myself and I was not aware of anything good about me, so he gently started helping me with a list. Things I had forgotten about myself gave me a few threads to hold on to. I attended AA meetings in my area, found a sponsor, and the list of personal plaudits grew. My sponsor told me at one of my sessions he was going to teach me how to love another man. He introduced me to a group of guys that shared gratitude for something in their lives daily. I soon started to love those daily reminders of why I should be grateful for them and my Higher Power.

Fast forward, I met a deacon at my church who started questioning me about the deaconate and asked if I would be interested. By now I was in love with Christ and all that that love meant to me. I said to Jesus, if you want me to be a deacon, I will start the process and trust that if it is your will, nothing can stand in the way of your wishes. The rest is history.

What has happened to me from the time I knelt in chapel and begged God to intervene, to enter my life, and to teach me how to love again? My marriage almost ended because of alcoholism and is now headed into its 68th year. My children both love and admire me, my friends are like the sand particles on the beach, I am loved by many, and I know it. I love and I see Christ in almost everyone I meet. All because the people of AA brought me into their midst and tutored me. My church polished the work done by AA. I am grateful, eternally grateful. I will soon be going to the big meeting upstairs and I will find my son, who died of this disease, my mom, my dad, and countless kin and friends to greet me. What gifts that love gives!

My song today is “Joy to the world, all the boy and girls now, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and joy to you and me.”

Amen.

Death, Life, and Hope

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 03:14:42 GMT

“The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.” — Richard Rohr

My mother passed away on January 20th.

The last three weeks of her life were painful to watch. They had to be even more painful for her as she struggled to breathe, each attempt more difficult than the last. Recovery helped me be physically and emotionally present for her. Letting go of my resentments and expectations around her allowed me to love her where and how she was at that moment.

At one point, mom arched her eyebrows, and her eyes lit up. She saw something beyond. Someone or something I could not. A few breaths later, she was gone. The Hospice Chaplin told me that a look of expectation and recognition often appears on a dying person's face. It is proof that what awaits us on the other side is worth the pain of the human experience.

As a recovering addict and card-carrying member of Al-Anon, this experience has exposed me to what happens when hope is fulfilled. Growing up in church and a lifetime of ministry taught me the seminary definition of hope. Knowing what hope is from an intellectual standpoint differs from experiencing it as a spiritual being. It is one of the things I missed in Bible College. I didn't understand my need for hope until I hit the bottom of my addiction.

Step Two embodies hope amid hope-lessness. In both S.L.A.A. and Al-Anon, I now realize that it is in Step Two where hope is no longer ethereal but becomes incarnate. The same hope available to me in recovery is the hope that was real to my mother as she saw her dad, her mom, Jesus, or just eternal peace as she crossed over. I saw an ending while she saw the realization of purpose and wholeness. A beginning.

My sponsor says that there must be a death before there can be a rebirth. That sounds a lot like the apostle Paul.

All around us, we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Romans 8:24-25 (The Message)

I wish I had space to write at length about these few paragraphs. Let me sum it up as best I can. I joyfully stay connected to my recovery and others on this journey because of hope. There are days and moments when recovery is a struggle, and every second of sobriety is hard-won. But those moments are just birth pangs. The longer I have them, the more distance I put between me and my bottom. Doing so only pours more joy into my expectation.

Someday, my hope will be made real. My eyes will arch in recognition that the past years of embracing recovery, struggling with it, and the myriad of phases in between were not in vain. It is hope which keeps me in the fight. That hope will reunite me with my mother and result in me laying down my struggle once and for all.

I do not know what heaven is like, but I hope I just got a glimpse.

By Shane M.

A New Teaching

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 02:32:21 GMT

And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. The people were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority!” 1 Mark 26-28

I can imagine a psychologist/psychiatrist in the early 40’s, having treated a client for his drinking, and now the individual has been to A.A. for a few months and is “clean and sober.” The person returns to the counselor and is asked: “How did you get sober. I’ve been treating you for years and you never stopped drinking. What gives? Who did this to you?”

Without a doubt it must have been a strange phenomenon back then for a person who was considered to be “beyond help,” then found to be sober, rational, and spiritual. “What is this? A new teaching—with authority?” Yes. When asked, how did they get sober when no one could help them, the answer was the Twelve Steps; “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” They knew that. They knew the drink had gotten the better of them. They had tried all kinds of ways of stopping, changing patterns, drinking milk, anything they could do, but it didn’t work. And they knew their life was unmanageable. They had lost their jobs, been fired, threatened with jail or prison. None of this stopped them from drinking.

Their stories were documented in the “AA Bible,” the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. I was fascinated by the stories. They made sense. These men and women drank and could not be helped. But I was different. I didn’t do the things they did. I could suspend my drinking --for a few days—but then I was still under the influence even if I was not consciously aware of it. They turned their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understood God. I was a practicing member of my denomination. I knew all about God. I didn’t have to “make a decision” about turning my life over to God. I was Baptized, Confirmed, and I attended church. That was enough. As for steps four and five, I went to confession, so I didn’t have to get a sponsor and tell him all my deep dark secrets.

No priest told me I had Defects of Character I needed to work on. I really didn’t have any. Other people made me angry, caused me to… therefore I did not have to make Amends. And the other steps I did anyhow, like prayer and meditation. Big deal!!

As each year passed, I was still not happy. I wasn’t drinking but I didn’t have what those who were “living the program” had. They had peace of mind, the ability to be honest with themselves and others. “What is this? A new teaching—with authority?”

Bill W said that there was nothing in the Twelve Steps that could not be found in religion and or philosophy. It was an old teaching packaged in a simple manner so that a bunch of drunks could understand it if they worked together. It wasn’t “I admitted,” or “I did this” or “I did that. It was “We admitted…” We made a decision…” Together we discovered we were spiritual beings trying to live a human life with all our faults and failings. Together we supported one another to live honestly with ourselves and with others. Together we found a Higher Power that was greater than us who “could restore us to sanity.” Oh, yes. I was insane.

No matter how much I understood about the disease, I was neither sober, sane, nor spiritual. My problem was my EGO. It was I who was Easing God Out and leaving me spiritually dead.

What I was hearing was, for me, a new teaching indeed. It was a new way of looking at myself, others, and God. How often had I been told by my parents to listen to the teacher. Now I had to relearn, “Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth for you have two ears to listen twice as much as you talk.”

Just as people were amazed at Jesus, so too were professionals, co-workers, and family members surprised at our recovery. Jesus simply trusted in his Abba, his Father, his Higher Power and restored people to sanity. We too, reach out to those who are suffering from this disease, teach them to “go to a meeting, read the Big Book, and talk to your sponsor.” It’s that simple. It works if you work it. It works if you live it. Keep coming back.

Séamus P D
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

Grateful for what is here, now, in front of me.

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 01:14:14 GMT

The snow is deep and beautiful here in New Hampshire tonight. The road in front of my house is not a major road, not even a secondary road. Not a tertiary road. So, although it has been plowed a few times since the storms began (we’ve had two back-to-back and expect a third one to arrive tomorrow), the little road is nowhere near scraped clean. BridgetAdams, my seven-year-old golden retriever, loves to get outside and make snow dog-angels in the drifts and then run a few yards and lie down in the middle of the quiet street to roll back and forth, grunting and groaning with delight. She’s like a puppy in her glee.

But—what does this have to do with Recovery. Faith. Twelve Steps. The Church?

Everything.

In my sober life, I have learned to be grateful for what is here, now, in front of me. For the snow and for the snowplows and for the people who plow the snow. For witnessing the joy of a dog and feeling the joy of a sober human. For the little, tiny 12” snowman that I built and put on the stoop and for my nephew thoughtfully clearing off the steps a few hours later, not noticing the little guy and scooping him up and tossing him away.

In recovery, I’ve learned to identify, not compare. I have friends in Buffalo and Minneapolis. The snow in my front yard doesn’t seem so deep and the storms don’t seem so fierce when I hear about what the winter has been like for them. But I’ve learned that differences don’t mean hierarchy…there isn’t a better and a worse. Their huger quantities of snow don’t take away the breath-taking beauty of the snow on my branches or the sunlight glistening on my snowdrifts.

I have a friend who found her family in the fellowship of AA. She had gone to many Al-Anon meetings where she had always felt welcome and where she had learned a lot about serenity. She was a woman of deep faith and commitment to God and the church and had never missed a Sunday service or a chance to serve the community.

But when she came to an AA meeting, she knew she was home with a certainty that she hadn’t felt before. At first she was afraid she didn’t really belong because she didn’t have the “war stories” some speakers talked about, but she came to understand that she belonged because she knew she belonged. She could identify, no comparison needed.

Generosity, acceptance, appreciation, gratitude—those are some of the deeply beautiful gifts of recovery. Praise God.

—Christine H.

Is Prayer merely a shopping list for our Higher Power?

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 02:07:55 GMT

The last couple weeks of December I was ruminating about 2022. Our family had dealt with major medical issues and moving to assisted living quarters, a 100% transition of our lives. Throughout the arduous and often emotional work to make this move, we had reminders from our daughter to seek the Will of our Higher Power for directions as we walked this path.

Then, after all this, the other day, I prayed for a “better 2023.” I am ashamed of myself. How could we have had a better year, for through our Higher Power’s love and guidance, we did it without coming apart as a family and in fact seemed unconsciously to use this emotional project to build stronger relations.

I’m most ashamed because my 85-year-old ego quietly suggested, “Pray for something better in 2023.” Did I thereby turn my prayer into God’s shopping list? But what could be better than this family’s positive transition following our Higher Power’s guidance?

Can I just blame this request for a “better” 2023 on human nature, the one that says. “I always want something better?” Again, no, I cannot. So, what’s OK to say about 2023? Crudely stated, we can and do express a profound appreciation to our Higher Power for His guidance. But is that it?

Puzzled, I turned to the Big Book, for where else would we followers of Bill W. and Dr. Bob look for aid, and there it was at p. 87. In our prayers, we are to ask “what our next step should be,” and for whatever we need “to take care of problems.” We ask for “freedom from self-will,” never asking for “our own selfish ends” and making no requests “for ourselves only.” The Big Book continues at p. 88: for we are “to remind ourselves we are no longer running the show.” And for me, perhaps, the most important aspect of this discussion is to realize we are not trying to “arrange life to suit ourselves.”

So accordingly, my revised prayer for 2023 is merely, “Guide me in all things to seek thy Will and strength to carry it out.” and yes, I am not trying to “run the whole show.”

We see yet another non-alcoholic situation not attributed to our old alcoholic living but to a higher calling and reliance on our relationship with our Higher Power whom I call God.

JRA, Traditions Assisted Living, Lebanon, Ohio

The Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 03:36:46 GMT

I have just spent thirty minutes holding my mom as she cried, tearful over her declining health due to late-stage COP and Emphysema, a direct result of her addiction to nicotine since the age of fifteen. Watching my mother at the end of her life is heartbreaking, and my recovery has allowed me to be present for her as she reaches the end of her life. Without it, I would be either in prison or dead.

Mom and I have a complicated relationship. Both of us addicts, we often bring out the worst in each other as much as the best. For much of my life, I held resentments against her for what I felt were wrongs. Working the steps in SLAA enabled me to forgive her, and I offered amends by caring for her as she aged. Step work helped me realize that mom loved me as best as possible. Perfectly imperfect.

As a member of Al-Anon, I now see that no matter what, I cannot talk, pray, or manipulate mom into health. I sure tried. I threw away cigarettes. I asked her to quit for her great-grandkids. I showed her videos about what it is like to die from COPD. For a season, I just avoided her. As I review the past seven years I lived with her and my stepfather, I felt so damn sad.

The kind of sadness that resides deep in my bones.

My relationship with the Bible is just as complicated as that with my mother. But in the silence of my room, I asked my Higher Power to give me some sense of presence. I was so tired of holding everything in - of having everything together. Then I came across this passage, and the love and presence of the Holy Spirit wrapped me in a warm embrace.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you ’ll recover your life. I ’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won ’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you ’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The Message Matthew 11: 28-30

In the depth of my sorrow, I felt love seep into cracks and crevices. I accepted that my best defense to this challenge before me - the challenge of being a good son to a dying mother - was to accept that I was not alone. In addition to my family and friends, my Creator was in the middle of this transition from life to death to life for my mother. All I had to do was quit trying to do God ’s job.

Acceptance is the first of twelve spiritual principles of recovery. It is another way of describing the positional change Jesus calls us to make in Matthew 11. We must ‘come” with Him. We have to stop working for our spirituality. We must watch the one who bore our pains and sorrows as He goes about His God ’s business. We must be so openhearted that we allow lightning bolts of love, mercy, and grace to penetrate our rebel souls. In short, we give up control. I am not the greatest at doing that.

But I am learning.

Shane M
Conway, AR
January 2023

Celebrating the Christmas Season

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 03:33:27 GMT

There are times when I wish I could remember “Christmas past.” Most of my drinking was blackout drinking. My daughter once said that my brain was made of Swiss cheese; it was full of holes. It’s true that there is much of my drinking life I do not remember and, what I do remember, is embarrassing, and shame filled.

I began drinking in seminary and my memory of this time of year is one of visiting friends in Dublin where there was a table set aside and loaded up with all sorts of alcohol. Oh, at that time, it was heaven to me.

I remember one Christmas when I took a bus to the center of town and walked the streets now empty of people except the few who were begging for money “for some food” but I knew they would use it for alcohol, and I gave it to them anyhow. Then I returned to my friend’s home and drank myself into oblivion while talking about “those poor alcoholics” on the street.

My heart goes out to those who do not remember the trail of sadness and sorrow they left behind them as they wrecked the family gathering and ‘came to’ in jail. It was not until they got into recovery that they were able to hear about their abusive and destructive past and are grateful for the ‘nudge from the judge’ who offered recovery as an option to jail.

The Christmas season is, without doubt, a difficult time for many of us in recovery. It is a time of togetherness and extra meetings, Christmas-eve midnight meetings, and all-night meetings filled with joy and the sharing of really good food and a wide array of mixed non-alcoholic drinks.

There are those who are recently separated, divorced, widowed and it’s their first Christmas alone, or alone with kids, and they are more than grateful for the support of the Fellowship to carry them through to the New Year. Then there’s the joy of welcoming the newcomer on Christmas-eve or Christmas day, who is in deep emotional pain and cannot fathom why the rest of us are laughing and having a good time.

Like the newborn child, we experience a new birth in recovery. Gratitude is new. Emotions are new. Honesty is new. Open-mindedness is new. Listening—really listening—to others is new. Like the newborn child, we are carried by the home-group until we find our feet and begin to think clearly for ourselves

Christmas can be “the most wonderful time of the year” despite the snow (or lack of it), the lack of sunlight, the ghosts of Christmas past, etc. The Christmas season is one of renewal, of coming together to celebrate our new life individually and together. We celebrate because we have been given a new lease on life which is the biggest present we ever received or will receive.

Like Scrooge, we can be brought back to our Christmas past and take an honest look at how we once behaved and the attitudes we carried, the contempt for others which was in fact a projection of our contempt for ourselves. The Ghost of Christmas present shows us that those who are less fortunate than ourselves can be happy because they accept their situation in life. The ghost of Christmas present shows us that presents and financial success is no guarantee of happiness

The ghost of ‘Christmas yet-to-come’ can be the most frightening as families struggle with being in debt; struggle to keep old traditions alive even as change in family situations change. Change is not always easy for the newly sober member.

Celebrating Christmas sober and serene is a gift. We may not recognize this gift at first but by our second and third Christmases, we will have seen how our past can help others, that we don’t have to worry about finances, that God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This is our Christmas every day.

However we choose to celebrate this Christmas season—alone, with family, or at a fellowship meeting or two—let’s celebrate the occasion of new life as Moses told the people of Israel that God said: “Choose life that you and your descendants may live.” Choose life and live with every fiber of your being and love your neighbor as yourself. Live it one day at a time and know that you are a special gift to all from God.

We celebrate because we have been given a new lease on life which is the biggest present we ever received or will receive.

The Christmas Holidays

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 03:52:47 GMT

Folks like to remember the family Christmas with its religious and social events, the feelings of love and affection. The family together as one. The familiar music. Falling snowflakes, sledding down nearby slopes, neighborhood caroling.

But for the active alcoholic, there is usually a dark side.

Sometimes I think our Christmas traditions exist to remind those in recovery and their families of what it was like back in our so-called “fun days of rage” when the active alcoholic took advantage of all the seasonal gaiety.

When I finally made the choice of Unconditional Surrender and sought the help of my Higher Power and the Steps, my recollections of my past days of rage seemed to gradually fade away, and in their place, the Holidays came to be a loving family experience.

Fueled by our ego and its call for a return to the boozy days of old, they don’t just disappear. The memories sometimes return, perhaps weaker with the passage of time, but they never disappear completely.

Somehow various specific inebriated actions in the Christmas Season seem to hover around. For example -- slipping into the beautifully decorated tree; assembling a wagon at two-thirty on the morning of Christmas Eve and finishing up with an extra clamp, a bolt but no nut, and a handle; or your late, maybe noisy, arrival at the church pageant. An inappropriate toast to a friend, or inappropriate sleepwear is given to one’s spouse. But perhaps worst of all was our failure to get to Walgreen’s before it closed on Christmas Eve to buy a bag of batteries for the kids’ new games and electronic gadgets --late because you bumped into one of your old pals, Murph, a buddy from the Antlers Bar, and spent 45 minutes toasting Best Greetings to Murph and Sallie the bartender. Are all these incidents fictitious? Well, let’s put it this way: “What do you remember?”

Come Christmas morning, the active alcoholic exhibits nothing but shame, sour looks and words are hurled. Maybe he himself recognizes he’d messed up again and failed to even get that promised couple weeks in the Program. Excuses flow capped by that old self-pity favorite, “You’d drink too if you had my job.”

But thanks to our Higher Power, the recovered alcoholic now arrives at the family festivities with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude: to his whole family for sticking by him during his troubles, to his home group at the Church, his sponsor, and probably Bill W and Dr. Bob for seeing the light of their Higher Power and learning how to seek and follow His ways.

But listen to this reality: Attend an AA meeting close to Christmas. The speaker with thirteen years of sobriety is well into her regular extravagant Christmas drunk-a-log. Are folks nervously looking around, embarrassed by the stories being told, maybe worrying about their impression on the two newcomers?

No sir! You’ll hear laughter, cries of “I did that!” and “Just like me” and “I couldn’t get that &%lksc# bike together to save my life!”

The joys of recovery, of new starts, of love and hope all come forth. We now live on all the good stuff we get from the Program and have gratitude for those who came before us who responded to our shame and showed us the way they had taken. But alcoholics need reminders of the past to remember our vicious alcoholic conduct.

But dwell on the muck of the past? No! We don’t look at it in shame. We were sick and had lost our Higher Power. Making amends, we moved on. We know this as a bright new life, so we go to our next Twelve Step call to carry the Message we ourselves had embraced.

And with that, on this day, we pass along the Glorious Greetings of the Season to all.

Jim A/Traditions of Lebanon

Long-Expectant Advent

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 02:33:11 GMT

It came to pass in the 2^nd week of Advent there went out a decree to post a blog about recovery. And it came time to deliver the blog and it was taxing to talk about the words of the prophet Isaiah from this week’s lectionary Old Testament readings. The rod of his mouth shall he smite and the wicked shall be slayed by his breath. This does not sound like the countdown to Christmas the Hallmark channel promotes.

But there are great promises here too that we can view in the time of Advent—and through the lens of recovery. Righteousness, faithfulness, children and animals playing together. We shall not be hurt or destroyed and the dwellings shall be glorious. These are kinder promises and look a lot more like the images on the Christmas cards we may be preparing to send.

The reality is the story of the birth of Christ, the day we are long-expecting during this season, is one of great hope and promise especially for those of us in recovery. The prophet tells us a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse and in the least expected place a king will be crowned. Generations later, a babe in a manger of the lineage of David will be given for all people. Humble beginnings, unexpected places, the rough ways made smooth. This is often what we see in the lives of individuals in recovery. It is in our own humility and transparency we are restored. When we admit our powerlessness we are made strong. And one day becomes 30 becomes six months and the next thing we know we are in long-term recovery because we took one day at a time.

Of course, along the way we may have met with the Baptizer’s winnowing fork and been swept into the granary. We may have had our own experiences of being denied room at the inn, forgotten, alone and scared. We may have been burned as chaff emotionally and spiritually. But over time, with a sponsor, doing step work, finding sober supports, talking to a therapist, getting our house in order…we begin to be restored. Our own internal lion and lamb lie down together. We make peace with ourselves and learn to forgive. Because of this, we escape the unquenchable fire of our own making. Our true selves, our little child, leads us.

This is the Christmas card and the Hallmark movie that can be ours this Advent season. And this is also what recovery can begin to look like after 3 days or 40 weeks or 16 years. This can be our hope, our consolation, for which we can say, Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth, good will to ourselves.

Deborah M., MA, LPC
Lancaster, PA

An Attitude of Gratitude

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 13:10:43 GMT

“Were not ten made whole. Is there no one to return to give thanks but this outsider?” Luke 17:11-19.

I was in the Fellowship almost five years before I accepted, I am an alcoholic. Then it was a while longer before I could verbalize thanksgiving for this simple suggested program of recovery.

Recently I read the gospel of Luke about Jesus healing ten men with leprosy. Only one returned to give thanks. I identified with “the other nine.” I did not return – at least initially – to give thanks. Many of those who talked about gratitude were people who did not attend church or at least not attend it regularly. This is not a judgement on them. This is a judgment on myself. I was the one going to church on a regular basis. I was the one who taught “Sunday school.” It never dawned on me to be thankful for my recovery.

In fact, I was anything but thankful. I did not believe I was an addict and when one doesn’t believe the reality of their addiction there is no way they can be grateful for the program of recovery. I was at meetings to warm a chair; to make coffee ahead of time, stay afterwards and clean up, do anything to look good and learn to say “the right things.”

To become thankful is to be aware of what is missing in one’s life. Those who buy clothes at a second-hand store aren’t grateful because they can’t afford the same clothes at the higher price. They are grateful that they can buy clothes for their children to send them to school. They are well aware of their financial limits and grateful for the kindness of others.

There were a few times in my life when I had no income and depended on the generosity of others for food and shelter. I was, and remain, grateful for everything they did for me.

One would think that one who went to church regularly would have an attitude of gratitude, an attitude of thankfulness. Yes, I was grateful for what others did for me, but I did not have an “attitude of gratitude.” I was angry that I had to depend on others. I was angry at God, myself, and others. I had resentments about what “they did to me.”

To have an attitude of gratitude is to have a habit of being grateful. We can see it in a person who has the attitude of gratitude. Those with an attitude of gratitude are at peace with themselves, they are genuinely happy, and much less stressed than the rest of us.

“The other nine” were busy running to see the priest who would tell them they were cured and could return to their family and friends. They were looking forward to a good meal, a bed, and shelter for the night. No doubt they were grateful for these things, but they did not return to give thanks to the man who cured them.

As I began to work the steps and live the program I came to grips with the negative aspect of my life as an addict. I had to admit to myself that I was absolutely not perfect. I had to admit that my drinking had been out of control, that my life had become unmanageable. I had to admit that I am a human being with all the good and negative qualities available to me, but my addiction led me down a very dark, negative, and destructive path. How did I get out of it?

First of all, I did not get out of it by myself. Were I to follow my instincts I would more than likely to be dead and not writing this blog. Some folks get a nudge from the judge and others get a nod from God. God did not give me a nod. She kicked me in the derriere and, when that did not work, She set me up to feel Embarrassment and Shame in such a manner that I sought the help She was steering me toward. And for that I am grateful.

Five weeks in a four-week program were not sufficient to make me acquire an attitude of gratitude. It took over four years and a declaration of bankruptcy that got my attention. That day I came home, and I laughed a good belly laugh. I could lose everything except my sobriety. It finally hit me, I am sober, I am at peace. I am grateful for sobriety and the Fellowship. That day was the beginning of recovery, the beginning of being thankful, the sowing of the seed of an attitude of gratitude for my Higher Power and the reality of the program and the promises.

Séamus D., is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

“… my life is complicated.”

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:34:51 GMT

Most of life seems so and it is really complicated when alcohol is introduced into the mix. Complexity appears in a fog which seems to hide the essence of the issue. Fog uses words we don’t understand, words perhaps made up by the speaker to appear to be the only person qualified to help. The discussion then turns to arguments about definitions—always a sure-fire way to delay dealing with the real problem. She complains, “How did all this happen to me?”

Then some old-timer breaks through the “poor me fog”, and says, “Wait! How long had you been drinking that day?” Silence follows for a few seconds. Then, someone in the group suggests, “We get the picture, just sit still, and listen.” The comments switch to the real issue: mixing addiction to alcohol with a busy life. The listeners’ stories emerge with their own experiences of the results of continued alcoholic behavior producing the dreary lives of a drunk.

As she listens to others, look what happens: suddenly there is a ray of hope suggested—for the group explains that their own alcoholic addiction caused their confusion, anxiety, depression and so forth. The Program worked for them and maybe it will do so for her.

Yes, there really are complications that cause recovering alcoholics, strong believers in the ways of the Program, to encounter depression. At our best, we understand that we must seek help when this fog envelopes us. We go to a meeting and raise the issue and many others step in with the same theme, “Here is what I did, it might work for you, maybe not, but please never give up.” Some might suggest the making of a gratitude list to put problems into prospective. Another suggestion could be to “reach out to others, try a little Twelve Step work.” And maybe, “Give a lead at that Tuesday night group.” But it’s always an “into action” response.

Dr. Bob’s last words to Bill may say it best, “Bill, keep it simple.” It is remarkable when the recovering alcoholic who sees his confusion then seeks help from her group—and we are reminded of the consequences of our alcoholic dependency, plus we learn ways to deal with our complicated lives without that dependency.

“It works if you work it.”

Jim A, Traditions of Lebanon

God as I understand God

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 01:08:12 GMT

There are a number of people, in and out of the 12-Step life, who have ‘issues’ with “the G word”: God. And not without reason!

Many of us, when we were told about God when we were children, were led to believe that God was an entity who tended towards hot anger, stern judgment, and fierce wrath. Many of us were also taught that God is tender and merciful and loving and wanted nothing but the very best for us.

And some of us were taught that God was angry and rejecting AND loving and merciful, which was certainly confusing. How can one entity be both, at the same time? But we were children and didn’t know any better, and tried to find a way to hold both sets of ideas in our minds - usually, without much success.

And many of us, perhaps most of us, have not been taught hardly anything at all about God since we were children. So it stands to reason that we have childish notions about God. And because we haven’t had occasion to reexamine and reevaluate our ideas, we were not in a position, as St Paul wrote, to “put away childish things.”

As a result, many have rejected “God” and will not have anything to do with such an awful thing.

Before I came into the Program, I had many jumbled ideas about God, but none that I really had thought about for a long time, and certainly none that I had thought through in any rigorous or careful way. I believed in God, I suppose, but I had no idea what that God was, or was like! And as my addiction progressed, my thinking about God regressed, to where I had not much more than sullen fears and vague longings.

But since I’ve been rescued from the hell of addiction into which I was sinking for such a long time, I have come to have clearer and, well, much more relaxed ideas about the Ultimate. And most of the other people I know who are in recovery seem also to have less fraught and more familiar concepts of whatever Power it is that has freed us from that bondage of self.

For some of us, “God” means something like “the spirit of the Universe.”

For some, “God” means something a lot like what is described in the Nicene Creed.

For some, “God” means Love … “and where love is, God himself is there” as the hymn tells us.

For some, “God” means the 12-Step program itself: “Group of Drunks,” “Good Orderly Direction,” infused with strength and wisdom of countless partners in recovery from the decades since Bill and Bob first met in Akron, almost ninety years ago.

And so, whenever a member of AA or any other 12-Step program says the word “God,” they do not mean that confusing and harsh supernatural entity which frightened and confused us so badly as children. They also don’t mean a vaguely benevolent, merciful Being which comforted us as children. They mean “a Power greater than myself, as I understand that Power.” Whatever that might be.

And what that word means to the speaker need not have anything at all to do with what that word means to the hearer. What the Power means to the speaker need not have anything at all to do with what that speaker or that hearer or anyone else was taught or mistaught as a child.

Because what matters for sobriety, for recovery, is not what anyone thinks or believes about “God,” but the fact that one thinks it and believes it. What matters for recovery is not the content of one’s faith, but the having of faith. What matters isn’t what you think but that you think it, not what you believe but that you believe it, not what you rely on but that you rely on it, whatever it is.

I daresay that most of us have developed an understanding that is more benevolent and merciful than it is confusing and harsh, but it is the understanding, and not what is understood, that is important.

And thank God for that! If the gift of sobriety were available only to those whose ideas about God were correct and accurate - whatever that might mean - then nobody would be sober, nobody at all. But if the gift were available to those whose desire was sincere for a relationship with God - whatever that might be - then, well, lots and lots of us would be sober. And that is exactly how things are!

Because what matters for sobriety, for recovery, is not what anyone thinks or believes about “God,” but the fact that one thinks it and believes it.

- Scott E

Benefits of Working the Steps

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 02:50:16 GMT

Kelly Corbet wrote: “Left unstewarded, anger, resentment, fear, frustration—any form non-Love takes—can grow into all sorts of warfare, internal and external.”

When I came into the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was, externally, happy as a clam. Internally, however, I was at war with God and self. In A.A. I thought I had found a place where all I had to do was to read the Big Book, work the steps, go to meetings, talk to a sponsor. Oh, I had to stop drinking, but that I thought, was no big deal. It was some time before I understood that “alcohol is but a symptom” of this disease.

Some of the A.A. folks gently encouraged me to come early, help set-up; stay after and clean up. I felt welcomed by them. I wanted whatever it was they had and I had no idea what it was nor did I know how to ask the question. My grandiosity had me thinking these folks were grooming me for a leadership position. Before long I’d be chairing meetings and being a speaker.

I glanced through steps four and five and a small—very small—light lit up and I sensed something was happening to me. There were men and women at the meetings around whom I felt uncomfortable. As they shared their behavior and attitudes while they were in active addiction, I could see my own image in their stories, but there was no way I was going to admit this in pubic. I told myself: “I can’t tell “these people” what I did when I was a priest in a parish. They would be embarrassed and shocked.” I was the one who was beginning to become embarrassed. I was admitting to myself: “I did that.” “I said that.” In time I was to learn of things I did and said that not only embarrassed but also shocked me. Thank God for honest friends. This information was creating a conflict between my image of myself and what I was now admitting to myself. Mental and emotional conflict was now in operation.

I have always considered myself to be honest, truthful, compassionate, spiritual, generous, etc. Unfortunately, I misused these gifts for all the wrong reasons—to get what I wanted. Yes, I had to admit I used people, places, and things, for my own gratification, my delusional “self-importance.”

And so, I began to work the steps – beginning at the beginning, step one. I remember the night I went over to the dark side. I took to whiskey like a duck to water. Johnny Walker, James Jemison, Jim Beam, and friends were to be there for me in good times and in bad. They smoothed the negative emotions; they left me emotionally frozen even as they forced me to smile and be happy. They gave me courage to do what I could have done without them but did not think I could do so. As time passed, they assisted in the numbing of my spiritual fight with God. In Sunday school and preaching I presented god as a loving, kind, forgiving Parent. Within me, however, I lived in fear of sudden death and being condemned to hell.

My internal war came to a head as I continued working the steps, living—as best I could—the program. It came to a head as I grudgingly accepted responsibility for all my words and actions while under the influence. Then one day I had what I later knew to be a Spiritual awakening. I accepted I had a disease and I was no longer at war. Rather, I was at peace with self, others, and God. It was a strange and wonderful feeling that helped me understand that this was the gift of what we call “the Promises.”

I knew a new freedom and happiness; I did not regret the past nor wished to shut the door on it. I finally understood serenity and experienced peace. In being honest with myself and others, I learned that my past was helpful to them. The feeling of uselessness and self-pity disappeared (although it raises its ugly head now and again); I lost interest in selfish things and gained genuine interest in others; Self-seeking disappeared. I began to enjoy this healthy outlook and attitude about life as a sober alcoholic. Fear of others and of economic insecurity left me and I realized I intuitively knew how to handle things which used to baffle me. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. War, no more. Peace began with me being sober one day at a time as I worked to maintain my spiritual condition, living the program, working the steps and being the hand of AA where needed.

Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

“Pick one … a bit of anger, fear, loneliness, sadness”

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:53:46 GMT

While I was undertaking skilled graduate work to become an alcoholic, I felt I’d earned the right to continue my drinking alcoholically. I felt “you’d drink too if you were as lonely as I was.” Just a bit of anger, fear, sadness was all it took to find that next bottle of scotch to hide behind.

In sobriety, I look differently at this kind of reaction -- one usually sparked by conversation of a sharp nature, boarding on insult. I know there are people who love to get into sharp crisscross back and forth exchanges. But that’s different. I’m talking about the normal conversational exchanges, the slights perceived as out-of-line, not nice, and sometimes hurtful.

In sobriety, we must watch for these incidents. Do we preserve them and foster and cultivate them so that they become something far greater? Sometimes these inappropriate quick jabs can end up in an accumulated pile large enough to support anger and self-pity on their own.

That leads me to understand the wisdom of regular attendance at discussion meetings. When they ask for a topic for discussion, mention you are troubled by crude statements which hurt and embarrass. Sure, “words don’t hurt us,” but accumulated, they can be a trigger to run and hide to that “same-old, same-old” alcoholic haze. We attend meetings for many reasons. One is to learn how to deal with these slight hurts. As recovering alcoholics, we just can’t take things too seriously. Don’t sit back and carefully and quietly nurse the “hurt” you feel. What to do? Get it out on the table at a meeting, especially if you fear your negative feelings might deepen.

We need to hear someone say to us in response, “Come on, poor you. Look, that guy across the circle lost his job because of his drinking.and you’re complaining about some caustic words which “hurt your feelings?”

The lessen is don’t let ill-will be blown out of proportion and nursed and carried for a time. Get to a meeting. Bring it up, see what others say to you about your perhaps too sensitive skin.

The Program is serious business and so teaches us what is important in life. We have a place to ask the silly question like this to avoid making something out of nothing. “Get to a meeting.”

JRA/Traditions of Lebanon

The guy at the ATM.

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 00:33:44 GMT

Several years ago, one weekday morning I was standing in line at an outdoor ATM on a main street in my residential neighborhood in Chicago. One person was ahead of me at the machine, and another man about my age behind me. As we were standing there, a homeless person shuffled by, pushing his shopping cart laden with crushed aluminum cans, rattling along the sidewalk.

The man behind me and I both watched as he made his way slowly by and turned up the alley, no doubt in search of more cans to recycle in exchange for his daily sustenance. The other man glanced at me and I at him, and he said, “Hm. Must be one of those alcoholics.”

I paused and thought for a moment. The other man in line and I had both clearly stopped off on our way to work, were both dressed in clean clothes with pressed pants and shirts and ties and jackets, shaved chins, bathed and deodorized, recent haircuts -- the whole productive-member-of-society thing.

I thought about it for a moment and replied, “Well, I’m one of those alcoholics.”

The other man’s glance became a stare. “Really? You don’t look like an alcoholic!”

“What does an alcoholic look like?” I asked, to which he had no answer. I stepped up to the machine, got my money, said goodbye, and left.

I wish now that I had said something a little less accusatory. I wish now that I had said something a little more friendly, like “We’re all over the place” or maybe quoted Talking Heads’ song, “Life During Wartime:”

We dress like students, we dress like housewives

Or in a suit and a tie

But I didn’t. At least I did put the tiniest of cracks in that one guy’s false notion that alcohol dependence and being on the extreme low end of the socioeconomic spectrum are one and the same. In my awkward, irritating way, I was an evangelist for accuracy in thinking about addiction, and that might have helped that man, years later, when dealing with alcohol or other drug dependency in himself, a loved one, or an employee or employer.

But also:

Upon saying that, I felt a surge of affinity, even of affection, for that homeless man, far more strongly than I had ever felt for anyone like him before. He and I were radically different, of course, in so very many ways. But we were also the same, and the same in ways which, oddly, are deeper than the sameness we all share as members of and participants in humanity. I felt a kinship: we were family, and we still are.

That feeling has faded, of course, but has never quite left me. Ever since, when I see a homeless person - as I do with some frequency, living in a major city and all - I get at least a memory of that feeling, for which I remain grateful.

–Scott E.

“…I didn’t know you were that bad.”

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 23:52:46 GMT

So said my very good friend Howard at his annual Labor Day party, who noticed I wasn’t enjoying his special party wine. My immediate response raised the question, “Well Howard how bad does it have to be … do I need to experience 3 (not 2) DUI court appearances, or divorce at least one wife, before I do something about it?”

Howard was just speaking from the vestiges of STIGMA, the widespread view that alcoholics lived in cardboard boxes on the street rain or shine and begged for enough coins to buy a “six-pak” of the cheapest beer available. But back then, “treatment” could mean shunning, isolation, maybe confinement.

“Stigma” haunted the practicing alcoholic. It was a barrier to entering treatment of any kind. It was associated with those old hospitals for the inebriates. Even those who had achieved sobriety faced an eye of doubt and suspicion. But addicts started to emerge from all manner of socio-economic groups as our society recognized a more responsible understanding that our malady was a disease, it was treatable, sobriety could be achieved, and best of all, retained and a sense of spirituality developed.

Occasionally, a friend will ask me at social gatherings, “Say, Jim, I have a cousin who drinks a lot. What can her family do?” So, I join the many who carry AA’s message of hope.

Stigma can be a two-way problem. Often the addict is a broken person, he knows the bottom has been reached, and that the alcoholic way of life has cursed him. He’s let his family down, lost his self-respect and perhaps the material things of life. He may realize that just as his early social drinking took time and effort to progress to an uncontrollable addiction, so will it take time and effort and many changes in his way of living to reverse that lifestyle and return to a life of sobriety and a life of serenity.

He comes to know he must work the Steps, attend meetings, work with others, study the Big Book for just as alcohol was his life’s driving force, so the whole program of fellowship and community becomes his life’s driving force.

What provides the encouragement to continue growth in the Program? I believe it’s the Grace of our Higher Power -- the grace to provide a way again and again and again to each of us despite our missteps. Our Higher Power is always there -- we can reach for it countless times until we finally “get it.”

The recovering alcoholic is blessed by His Grace. Do I feel “stigmatized? Absolutely not! A problem which almost brought an end to so much is gone but His Grace was there for me to accept.

I saw a problem, accepted the Program and its teachings, and licked my addiction.

Stigma? No way.

Jim A. Traditions, Lebanon, OH

Living the Program

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:21:14 GMT

In his book SUN DANCING, Geoffrey Moorhouse creates a story of monasticism in Ireland. He begins with a few monks who land on the desolated rock island known as Skellig Michael, climbed to the top of it. and created a way of life on this remote, Atlantic beaten rock off the west coast of Ireland.

One of the monks asks: “But how shall I know that I am advancing nearer to Him, that I am becoming purified?” The other replied, “You won’t, especially if you think of prayer and meditation in that way. You must simply open yourself to God’s grace, by excluding everything that might come between you and Him. Open yourself and be still. Nothing in this life is more important that the stillness of it…Open yourself, be still and breathe the prayer. Trust that the Lord will then raise you up.”

In my first years in the fellowship, I thought I was near perfection [Sober]. After all, I had “done” all the steps. I went on “Twelve-step calls.” I read the Big Book, the Twelve by Twelve, The Little Red Book, I went to two and sometimes three meetings daily. I was invited to tell my story. Oh, I was so good that a few folks wanted me to go on the ”Speaker Circuit.” Thank God my sponsors in their blunt and loving manner told me, “NO, you’ve got too big an ego, it will kill you.” For once in my life, I actually listened to someone and did as was suggested to me.

What I was confusing was Living the Program with Working the Steps. I was busy doing all the externals for all the wrong reasons. I was doing everything so that others would notice me and see how good I am and how dedicated I am. I was doing all these things because I did not see myself, I had no idea as to who I was other than that I was lost and a looser and so I had to do all this external stuff so I could look good. I came very very close to relapse – that’s another story.

“You must simply open yourself to God’s grace, by excluding everything that might come between you and Him.” The God I taught and talked about was not the God in whom I believed. The latter was an angry, vindictive God just like me. I knew there was a loving God, patient and kind, but She was not my God. I had to let go of this image, I had to “exclude everything that might come between me and Him [Her].” That meant going back to Step One, coming to grips with honesty, willingness, and open-mindedness. This risk brought me to a Force, a Power Greater than myself that could restore me to sanity. By implication, I had to admit that my attitudes, thinking, and behavior were insane. They were – when I finally took a good honest look at them.

“Open yourself.” Never in my life had I opened myself to anyone and perhaps not even mySelf. Opening mySelf to another was asking to get hurt; asking me to take a good look at mySelf was not something I ever wanted to do. Learning to trust in a Power Greater than mySelf who could restore me to sanity came as I actually listened to others at meetings and saw mySelf in them. Becoming human was the door to steps four and five which, at first, I had hoped to skip. As I returned to sanity, I realized that each and every step is a hinge to the next one. There is no cherry picking in the steps and when they are “done” then the next step was to make them come alive within me and in my life. This was the return to sanity.

Be still. I had taken courses on meditation. I knew how to meditate. Problem was that I had no idea how to be still while meditating. My mind raced from one topic to another, from one location to another, from one idea to another. “Be still and breathe the prayer.”

Breathe the Prayer [and] trust the Lord will raise me up. S/He did. I became alive. I came back from the dead. I was lifted up from my powerlessness to be given the Power I needed to live and share my experience, strength and hope. Progress is sufficient as it keeps me humble and reminds me there is always something for me to learn or relearn. Perfection can wait till my next life.

Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Patience, some thoughts

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 20:50:51 GMT

You may not find a patient practicing alcoholic, but if you are looking for people attempting to learn how to be patient, attend an AA meeting and listen especially to the newcomers seeking ways to live a patient life.

The lack of patience is another hidden harm for it often brings the alcoholic to raw anger, depression, a “poor me” syndrome, anxiety, a feeling of helplessness.

All this is caused by our ego: “I am the master of my universe.” If we are recovering, a key sign of difficulty is an expanding ego: “I have this booze thing under control.” We take our tools for sobriety for granted and suddenly we wonder why a slip grabs us. AA meetings are “reminder meetings” -- easy does it, let go and let God, turn it over. The Steps ask us to ask our Higher Power for His assistance as we travel this path.

Often hidden behind a cloud, impatience creeps up on all of us but especially newcomers: “Yes, I tried, but the Program just didn’t help, 32 in 90”, and newbie then cries out, “I don’t have the patience to work all those steps and attend all the meetings. I just couldn’t get it.” It took time to become a real alcoholic. We sometimes forget that becoming an alcoholic and finding its supportive and necessary habits usually takes time. To rid ourselves of those alcoholic habits takes time.

But often we seem to want it all and we want it now. Perhaps some of us aren’t working the Program as hard as we should. We don’t discard those hard-earned habits overnight. Our ego is always looking for a spot of weakness to jump into and start beating tom-toms to the sounds of “You don’t need this Program. You can do it yourself. Don’t waste your time. Get out of all those meetings and the accompanying stuff.”

Some would look at impatience as a way to blow-off steam -- maybe a way to draw attention to yourself and your combative personality: “I’m in a hurry, and important!” and we mumble, “Get this line moving, what’s the problem?” Of course, we firmly believe our often-boorish words themselves speed things along, remedy the congestion. A lack of patience is the prelude to the loss of control over oneself. And impatience stands in the way of securing that 60 seconds before we reply in an unreasonable manner.

Patience also seems to me to relate to the importance of control, an issue I carry around. When it reaches …

“… Wait! Stop! Excuse the interruption. I must end this. So sorry, but I have to take care of my 5-year-old grandson who we are babysitting who’s right now standing by my side and poking me as I write this, he’s crying and yelling at me that I promised ice cream! “Let’s go”, he says, pulling my shirt sleeve trying to get me to deliver on my promise …”

Better end this: but boy, he’d better learn some patience -- and where the heck did he get that impatience.

JRA, Traditions, Lebanon

The Cost of Sobriety

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 01:14:12 GMT

The gospel reading in this week’s lectionary (Luke 14:25-33) is entitled “The Cost of Discipleship” in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. This prompted me to view the passage in the context of the cost of sobriety and, through that lens, all that from which we are to abstain. One thing I try to do with my clients experiencing addiction, is ask them to reframe their view of sobriety as what they receive as a result of their sobriety and not what they lose. If that’s the case, is it a cost or a reward we are talking about? Because how did chasing the dragon work out for you? Was there a reward or jail, institution or death? We are told in the rooms we can’t give away what we don’t have. And our faith tells us there is strength in weakness, the last becomes first, the meek inherit the earth--all the upside down stuff that makes sobriety and discipleship so appealing in the end.

Indulge me as I look at the passage from the gospel of Luke. If we can’t despise our binging which we think we love (mother, wife, children), we can’t remain sober (a disciple). And if we can’t make our recovery a priority (bear our own cross), we can’t remain sober. And if we can’t make a plan (sit down and count the cost of the tower we are building), we plan to fail and we can’t remain sober. Because we have all learned a failure to plan is a plan to fail.

But if we sit down like a king in a meeting and take counsel from our sponsor or therapist, we can find peace. When we renounce our use, we remain sober. Which reminds me of our baptismal covenant: Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? And we answer, I renounce them. If only it was that simple, right?

Then there’s this week’s psalm and the promise of being grounded and delighted. Indulge me again. In the words of Psalm 1, I couldn’t help but see a healthy meeting or support group seated in folding chairs by a stream of water. A light breeze is blowing and there are fertile fruit trees all around. When we change our people, places, things (counsel of the wicked), we can delight in the law of the Lord and we take life on life’s terms. Our baptismal covenant also asks us, Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers? And we say, We will, with God’s help. Because we also made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. As a result we can enjoy bad coffee in a church basement on a Tuesday night and feel better and freer than we ever have.

So are we talking about the cost of discipleship or the cost of addiction or the cost of sobriety? Are we giving something up or getting something in return? No matter how we frame or reframe it, we can be sober disciples who are drawn toward the love of God. We flourish and prosper. We don’t wither and we don’t perish. And that all seems to be worth the cost.

Deborah M., MA, LPC

Lancaster, PA

“4:00- Friends of Bill- Chapel/ 4:00-Happy Hour- Pub” --- Recidivism Redux?” *

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:47:51 GMT

Since July, my wife and I have been residents of a full-blown medical assisted living facility. Like similar operations, various programs and events are published monthly by management and include such regulars as bingo, Bible study, assembling 2000-piece jigsaw puzzles and socializers featuring of course a selection of fine alcohol as the top attraction. For August’s calendar, I noted the above simultaneous sessions of AA and booze. But which to attend? Maybe I could attend both and pick the one with the brightest picture of life. I thought it would be interesting for those in the Pub Group to occasionally listen to conversations of the Friends of Bill, then the following week, vice-versa.

Isn’t there is a synergism between the Pub and Friends? Could one really exist without the other? Some of us have done that very thing. We spent a lot of time in the pub but ultimately found friends of Bill’s. Does life tell me the two are co-dependent?

In “Three Hots and a Cot”*, I wrote about the threats of recidivism by recovering alcoholics, this “going back out” in spite of earnest time working the Program. The reality is that our ego, dressed as Demon Rum, is always trying to pull us back. My first reaction was perhaps the assisted living facility might be facilitating this fallback activity. But no, I think, perhaps, I am not certain about this, but maybe the facility is just using this simulcast of Chapel or Pub as a reminder that this Chapel or Pub choice is before us every day that we’re alcoholics, for in a sense, we must recover each day, a commitment to work the Program in some way each day.

Maybe some say, “Do I ever drop this burden of our addiction?” No, but we receive merely by asking for the armor of our Higher Power to provide the grace of Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s discovery of a way to blunt our ego, despite this co-existence.

Remember, as humans we are bound to our egos. That force is always there -- always telling us we don’t have an alcohol problem, that we have licked it so we can take it easy. All to haul us back to those “good old” days of three hots and a cot.

Bill stood in that foyer of the hotel in Akron and heard the happy crowd down the hall finding companionship and release. He had a choice and found his Higher Power with its always-present Grace, the beauty of the Program.

So, for me, which is it - Chapel or Pub? A happy crowd? No thanks, been there done that. I’ll take the honesty of the high road of the Chapel and treat “recidivism” for me merely as another fancy 50 fifty cent word, my ego once again run amuck.

Jim A, Traditions, Lebanon, OH

* See meditation, “Three Hots and a Cot,” Red Door, August 17, supra.

“Three Hots and a Cot:” Recidivism and the Program

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:33:31 GMT

Usually, we read about “recidivism” in connection with a frequent repetition of criminal conduct. We probably ask ourselves, “Don’t they learn …if they steal, they will go to jail. What don’t they understand! Do they really prefer jail with its “three hots and a cot?”

Isn’t this just like a recovering alcoholic. “falling off that sobriety wagon ridden for months, maybe years?” Or a newbie working the program for a couple days or months but “going back out?” Those harmed say, “Can’t that alcoholic learn? He’s back at his normal intoxicated self. Does he remember when he drinks, he drinks too much? Does the alcoholic really prefer the sadness and harm to himself and others once again caused by his inebriation?”

Early on, I was working the Program. But, in hindsight, I was only “going through the motions.” So, surprise, surprise, I went back out. When I did, I carried with me the knowledge that I was an alcoholic and that sooner or later I would have to return to surrender once again.

Sometimes, when we have “gone out again” we seem to act as if there will be a sense of relief ahead when we surrender once again. Do we look forward to once again giving up -- a truly strange reality? Then why did we go back out? Is it like hitting your thumb with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop the hitting? We’ve probably surrendered before, but it didn’t take. Why this time? I believe that the final emergence of joy at the point of surrender reflects the triumph of reality over ego. If I drink, I will get drunk, period. No ambiguity or guesswork … drunk, period.

But my ego is always with me. It hides maybe for a bit, but it always sneaks back. And the beauty of the Program is it provides a defensive mechanism when we remember to keep coming back, for it works if I work it. Surrender isn’t a one shot-pony, it’s a process. It’s a life-long struggle, easy sometimes, hard others. We attend meetings to strengthen that defensive wall. Meetings give us tools to fight off that resurgent ego.

But, yes, recidivism … it will always be a threat to the sobriety of recovering alcoholics. We can never relax. We must work the Steps of the Program ‘til the end.

Jim A, Traditions, Lebanon

The Big Book and the Letter of James

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 01:13:28 GMT

In the letter of James, we read: “Come near to God and He will come near to you.” (James 4:8).

In the early days of the Fellowship, the reading for the meetings, before the Big Book was composed, the groups used the Letter of James and, at one time, Bill W wanted the group called, “The James Boys,” until it was clarified there already was a notorious group by the same name.

Bill came from an atheistic background and, with the help of Ebby, discovered he could believe in a God “as I understand him.” I don’t believe Bill ever explained how he understood God.

As Bill continued to grow spiritually it makes sense why he turned to the Letter of James. Somewhere in my life I came across the following statement: “[James] is a book written for readers whose faith in God is threatened by a daily struggle with hardship. This ‘testing of faith’ is provoked by a variety of external and historical circumstances or ‘trials.’ Yet more importantly, every test occasions a theological crisis, when the believer is more easily deceived or confused about who God is and how God acts.”

James understood the difficulties of life and especially the difficulties experienced when we begin to question the existence of, or the nature of God. James’ letter is practical; it deals with the reality of the difficulties of life and the need of perseverance. For James, the person who perseveres at the time of testing is the one who does not let themselves be overcome by negative desires and chooses life. This could be a reference to the Book of Deuteronomy where God said “Today I set before you, life and death, blessings and curses, Choose Life so that you and your descendants may live.” For James this meant making good choices to live rather than be spiritually dead.

Then, as now, there are those in life who are wealthy and those who struggle to makes ends meet. This is true not only society in ancient times, but also at the time of the creation of the fellowship and it continues to this day. For James, the humble rich are those who, regardless of their socioeconomic status, believes their gifts and talents are gifts from God. Those who acknowledge that all they have comes from God and nothing they have could buy the happiness they have or want. Another similarity between the wealthy and the poor is that – no matter how much they have – it will pass away. Put it another way; financial resources or the lack of them are irrelevant to one’s standing with God or Higher Power. One of my joys in the fellowship is the folks I have come to know on a first name basis, and I know nothing about what they do away from the fellowship.

Another human issue is that of favoritism. For James, favoritism is breaking the law “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As James puts it: “If you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” And then

as now, favoring those who seemed to be more intelligent or wealthy is destructive to a healthy community. All members of the community/fellowship should be welcomed equally, without regard for their socioeconomic status or religious, or lack of it, background.

“Seamus, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth. You have two ears to listen twice as much as you talk.” I’ve wondered if the individual who said that to me was aware he was, in a sense, quoting James who said: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” I was too quick to talk, slow to listen, and became angry when confronted about one or other character defect often related to not listening. James also cautioned that although the tongue is a small part of the human body, it is the part that steers the course of the whole of one’s life. But life has not changed; People continue to lie, break promises, spread gossip, break confidences. Sometimes we use words for self-promotion by belittling others. For James, what a person says is an expression of who that person is.

Also, for James, God is the source of all wisdom. Perhaps it is this awareness that rounds off the Steps where we “pray only of knowledge of your will and the power to carry it out.”

The Big Book is still my “go to book” but I also keep in mind that that which formed much of what Bill W wrote and said came from a letter written some two-thousand years ago and it is still valid to this day.

Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Some things I (Re)learned this Year

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 01:16:39 GMT

The Program as a Tool for Life. I sell myself short if I look only at the Program for its process of dealing with our addiction. It’s a marvelous set of ideas to get us through some days not directly involving our addiction that aren’t exactly what we wished. I can see myself sometimes slipping into a case of the “Poor-Me’s.” Life’s bumps seem to get the better of me. Downcast, angry, all the bad stuff we know and are ashamed we might once again slip back to the old ways. I need to grab myself and start a gratitude list —what a lucky soul am I, I have a way out of my dilemma through access to my Higher Power.

Friendships. Sure, we have old time friends from childhood, school, and work and merely traveling through 84 years of life. These folks may know us better than ourselves. Sometimes we acted with these acquaintances as they wished us to act, or at least as I thought they wished me to act. But often I hid—hid behind a false personality of the “happy go-lucky guy,” when on the inside I was empty, living without a spiritual base as one example. But the Program saved me. My Higher Power’s Grace reached across that gap with the help of all those new people I met at all those evening gatherings in church basements.

E-ze Duz it and Over-Reaction. A habit I dislike and wrestle with all the time. Something unexpected happens and disrupts what I see and the normal course of things. It’s the next 60 seconds when I over-react and it upsets me and those working with me. It disrupts my mental processes of how to solve the unexpected happening and it’s that weak impression I leave with spouse and children. It’s juvenile. It sends a message that I really am a 13-year-old dressed in clothing of an 84-year-old. It delays any thinking or action dealing with the problem. It may even destroy the ability or patience of others who give me a look of “I don’t need this nonsense” and walk away letting me stew in my own juices. Oh, for those first few minutes of quiet, maybe time enough for a humorous quick, “Well now. Whata’ we goina’ do?” Often, we know what went wrong and recall having fixed the same problem yesterday. It’s usually not the end of the world. Oh, for that 60 seconds. It may relate to our ever-present ego, “How dare that package break.” A loud “3XX0*&^ss2” often follows. “And that Thanksgiving jam spilled all over me!” That 60 seconds clouds everything, slows finding a solution quickly, and forces us to shamedly try to rehabilitate ourselves. People say, “Forget it,” etc. But we know the truth. As we couldn’t control our drinking, so we can’t, apparently, control personal habits like this 60 second issue. I must return to my Higher Power to find salvation.

Gratitude. In some ways, Gratitude is the glue that holds us all together at times of stress and self-pity. It draws us away for ourselves and pushes us to think of others—those in trouble with the law, a raving disease with no likelihood of a cure, a loss of a child. There is so much pain and suffering around us. How can we ignore it? So, we might make a list during a time of stress for us. But, isn’t the question, “What does this list ask of me?” Sure, a contribution helps. Maybe that gift would be better served by giving it to the person suffering and at risk. Offer to visit those confined to bed. Maybe check for possible errands you might run for the family. There are so many ways to respond to your gratitude list. And keep at it for sometimes the person suffering resists assistance … keep at it … maybe just show up someday (“I was in the neighborhood; thought I’d drop in for a second”).

In summary, all of this reminds me of the importance of “getting outside myself,” of thinking of others and being grateful for a Program that gives us a way to work through the ups and downs of life without escaping to drink to blank it from our minds. Instead, it gives us a way to take advantage of life’s bumps and carry a message of hope, kindness and the message of the Grace of our Higher Power who is always with all of us … always.

Jim A, 4:00, Wednesday, Lebanon OH

I was distracted

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:12:37 GMT

In the New Testament story of Martha and Mary, Martha tells Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help her. Jesus tells Martha: “You are too distracted, only one thing is important, and Mary has chosen the better part.”

When I came into the fellowship of A.A. I was distracted. I didn’t want to be there as I didn’t believe I was an alcoholic – even after I completed thirty-five days in a thirty-day program. But that wasn’t what distracted me. It was my Ego. I had this belief that I would be a big help to “these people” as I was a counselor and had a background in theological studies.

I was distracted. I was taken to the State Psych Hospital to tell my story. I was invited to a variety of meetings to tell my story. I was invited to be on the “speaker circuit” [fortunately, for me, two mentors made it clear to me I was not going to do that and, for once, I listened to someone.]

I was distracted. I was reading anything and everything I could get my hands on about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, about the “not-god” spirituality of the fellowship. I believed that the more I understood the better person I would be. I memorized “How it works,” and “the Promises.” and, when someone quoted a line from page … I highlighted that line and memorized it for the next meeting.

I was distracted. I was busy doing everything that would draw attention to me even as I built a wall between me and all others. And yet, I knew there was something missing. I was not as happy as the old-timers and, at some level, I wanted what they had.

I was distracted. I was a single parent and I wanted a relationship. What I really wanted was a mother for my child instead of a life-partner. I wanted everything yesterday. I kept busy so that I did not have to think about anything in a serious manner.

I was distracted. I had to work the steps so I could get them finished before I completed the “Aftercare” program to which I was assigned. I was so busy “working” the program I was not living it. Truth be told, I had no idea what ‘living’ really meant drunk or sober.

I was distracted. I was busy trying to distract others from seeing me as I really was and I had no idea who I was. I was scared, lonely, and alone and dry as a the Mojave Desert.

“…only one thing is important, and Mary has chosen the better part.” “It makes no difference what you are doing if you’re not sober.” I heard that. I had no idea what it meant until I was blessed with a spiritual awakening which resulted in my conscious awareness that I’m an alcoholic, an addict, and sobriety is possible.

I began the steps again. First, admitting I was powerless helped me to have a more honest look at my drinking, drug use, and the negative consequences. Then I had to understand God differently from the vengeful God that haunted the recesses of my mind and kept me in guilt and shame.

Sobriety taught me to accept myself as a good person who had made mistakes just like other human beings. Sobriety taught me that I could become free of my guilt and shame as I faced my past, confronted it, made amends, began to live a clean and sober life. Sobriety taught me go to meetings to meet people, to listen twice as much as I talk, to find ways of being service to others, to the group, and be the hand of AA when it was needed.

Sobriety cleared my mind. Being sober - as opposed to being dry - I no longer had to have things my way, I could share my thoughts and feelings without any expectation of what I shared being utilized.

I no longer had to go to meetings. Going to meetings did not keep me sober. Living the program kept me sober. I go to meetings to listen, to learn, to share. “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we carried this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” Only one thing matters, and, for me, that is sobriety and then living the program. Thank God for Bill, Bob, Sam Shoemaker, and the early old timers.

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

Bill & Dr. Bob’s First Conversation

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 20:38:16 GMT

So, we’re looking at two drunks—one needed to talk to a drunk, “anyone.” He didn’t care whether the person was actively drinking or was trying to fight his need to do so. The other was a physician about ready to perform a medical operation the next day, but first had to have a bottle of beer. The Doc didn’t wish to meet this guy muttering, “I’ll give ‘im 15 minutes, then I walk”. They’d never met before.

But the fact is, both stayed—long into the night—two drunks just talking about their addictions. They shared their experiences and feelings and shame of their drinking, the damages it caused them and their families and friends. Maybe, stories of their efforts to quit came up, each sharing how those efforts failed. Maybe there were some guesses “why” their efforts failed.

But from this fumbling talk, a seemingly accidental dialogue, a program of something was born that turned out to be a way for all drunks to find sobriety regardless of where they lived—in any nation—a program that ultimately stretched sea to sea.

They made promises to each other to “stay in touch” and they did that. They must have believed or at least suspected the strength of simply one alcoholic talking to another. They looked for the means to continue those conversations. Both were important parts of their search. Bill didn’t have a drink since that first meeting with Dr. Bob. Yes, the good doctor had one more episode, but he found a way to deal with his shame—he simply went around Akron talking with all those he had harmed with his drunkenness. It was Dr. Bob who by this effort created the heart of Steps 4 and 5 and 8 and 9. Yes, Dr. Bob saw the importance of simply making a list of those we had harmed and seeking ways to make amends.

Work proceeded for several years. AA groups were springing up all over. The Big Book was published. And the medical professionals came to believe that this program was a way to find sobriety and to maintain that sobriety.

Then suddenly, Bill and Dr. Bob stepped aside, turned the program over to others but continued to carry the message of hope to those who still suffered.

What is one to say about this. Bill and Dr. Bob didn’t get paid for their vision—and then as the Program reached maturity, they turned it over to the Program itself. I need to remember those early days of struggle and the slow progress. I need to remember the devotion of these early believers and their devotion to finding a better way. It’s akin to our Higher Power’s gift of Grace.

Yes, I must acknowledge Bill and Dr. Bob, for without their vision and hard work I am afraid I might not have made it and might have continued on my slippery slope of my own addiction until that final moment.

Jim A, Wednesday,4:00, Lebanon OH

When One Door Closes, Another Opens

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:45:13 GMT

“America! America! God mend thine every flaw,confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”
Katherine Lee Bates

This past Sunday, July 3^rd, we had a patriotic hymn sing-along after church to celebrate a little early the 4^th of July. One of my favorites is the music to Katherine Lee Bates’ poem, “America the Beautiful.” O beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain”. Bates wrote the hymn after she arrived in a prairie wagon on top of the 14,000-foot Pike’s Peak near Colorado Springs in the summer of 1893.

I connected to the poem and the hymn when I helped plan a pediatric radiology meeting at nearby Colorado Springs in 1994. I took a six-month sabbatical from Children’s Hospital to prepare for the international pediatric radiology meeting. I had much help from people worldwide, but I had a touch of what Parker Palmer calls “functional atheism,” believing I was the “only” one who needed to get most of the work done.

After a year of planning and everything was ready, I vividly remember sitting in a board meeting in May at the event hotel just before the conference began. I looked out of the adjacent large bay window and saw, to my horror, the beginning of the last snow of winter. I had planned in detail a multitude of outdoor activities that now would never see the light of day. I now keep this beautiful picture of snow on the tulips in front of the hotel to remind me how little I can control in life.

There was a multitude of other hiccups. We recorded speakers for a meeting video. One speaker did not like his recording and required us to redo his filming at least five times. I will always be indebted to Marilyn Goske, whom I had casually asked to watch over the videoing of the speakers. She patiently stayed with the speakers and missed the whole meeting to get this done. Another hiccup was our evening entertainment after dinner. We had scheduled the Air Force Academy Cadet Choir. Then without warning, they were called to maneuvers. Our meeting planner booked a local children’s chorus. I was embarrassed that this would be amateurish and poorly performed. But, as you might expect, they were some of the most charming, talented, and poised children performers I have ever seen. They ended their concert by going to individual members of this highly-educated, sophisticated audience and holding their hands and singing directly to them. We all gave them a standing ovation through our tears, remembering that the children we serve as physicians can teach us so much about life as “American the Beautiful.”

I also learned from this meeting that I am not in charge, and that God provides impressive people around me who will take over overwhelming situations. I especially learned after dinner that when a door unexpectantly closes, the next door that opens often is surprisingly magnificent. All of these principles are in the 12 steps, as well as our church’s scripture, tradition, and reason. I had learned all this from both directions, recovery and my church. I don’t know about you, but for me, I seem to need to relearn them almost every day. What a gift that God keeps giving us a new chance every day, one day at a time.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

What I Want Today

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:03:58 GMT

“What do you want?” Jesus asked the mother of James and John in Matthew 22;22. It’s a question that has been asked of those coming into a 12 step program for years. “I want to stop drinking.” “I want to be able to drink normally.” ‘I want to keep my marriage.” “I don’t want to lose my kids.” “I don’t want to lose my job.”

When I came into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, forty-three years ago—one day at a time—I had no idea of what I wanted. I knew I was not an alcoholic, but I had told my boss, “I think I have a drinking problem” and so I wanted to keep my job. Later on when divorced, I wanted to keep our daughter (which was granted.)

Of course, since I had certifications in addiction, working on a Master’s degree in Family Therapy, a counselor in the field of addictions, and a background in theology and religion, what I most wanted was to be of help to those in A.A. I wanted to become the next “Chalk Talk” priest like Fr Joe Martin.

I wanted people to know just how good I was as a person. I wanted to be a sponsor—but I didn’t want to have one. I wanted people in meetings to know I had read the Big Book and so I quoted it just about every time I opened my mouth. I was invited and went on 12 Step calls, to speak at meetings in the State Psych hospital, be the moderator at a meeting, and be the speaker at a Speaker Meeting.

Oh, and when I was asked to be on the Speaker circuit, I wanted to do that—again—because my belief was that I had so much to offer. Fortunately for me and all concerned, two men, who had taken me under their wings, bluntly told me I should not do that as I had too big of an ego and I would relapse.

I wanted to get through the twelve steps as quick as possible. These were—in my mind—simple/simplistic and did not need a lot of thought and I had no character defects to speak of. I did not have to make amends as most of what I did or said was in reaction to the words and behavior of others, so what I did or said was their fault not mine.

I want... I want… I want… For as long as I can remember, I wanted something and had no clear idea what it was that I wanted. Even in my drinking I got glimpses of what I wanted to be a good person—but I could never be that. I was, for the most part, the trouble maker, the one living on the edge, the so-called life of the party, and inside I knew at some level I was disintegrating, I was dying, and some days, I felt or wished I were dead. I wanted to disappear.

Thanks to this fellowship and the simple program of honesty, I learned that what I really wanted was Serenity, peace of mind, the ability to be myself, to know myself, and to be able to communicate my thoughts and emotions without hurting another.

I did not particularly want to have to do the work necessary to become whom I was called to be. I did not want to have to face myself or others. What I needed was, and thankfully got, a person who held up a mirror to me so that I could see myself; someone who helped me get to know and to love myself and my failings, and to accept that I am not perfect.

What I needed was to attend meetings and listen more than I talked. Read the Big Book and identify with the stories as best I could. What I needed was to become honest with myself, others, and God. What I needed was a spiritual awakening and, when it came, it opened my heart and mind for me to begin to experience what we lovingly call the nine promises.

What I want today is based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. What I want today is to be alive in every fiber of my being so that I can be compassionate, caring, responsive and responsible when the hand of AA is needed. What I want today is to admit my powerlessness over people, places and things and let God direct my life.

—Séamus D is an Episcopal priest in the Greater New Orleans area.

Holy Spirit in the Rooms (not just Upper)

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:37:25 GMT

They say it was like the rush of a mighty wind and there were tongues of fire resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Spirit and began to speak in other languages. And it confused the most devout.

They also say this was the start of the church. Chaos. Confusion. Bewilderment. Sounds about right.

Sometimes the rooms feel like places of chaos and confusion. Another young person has died. There is wailing and lament. Let this cup of addiction pass over me! Fiery chants from our mouths and tongues. A song of hope and healing. How long, Lord? How long to sing this song?

Surely there has been needless death not unlike our Savior on the cross. And fires and more blood and vaping and bad coffee. Lots of bad coffee. The young girls are prophesying, their tears are running through the streets. The young men see visions of a better tomorrow and freedom from cravings. The old dream dreams like many before them and carry the good news to the sick and suffering outside the doors. Because they know that 60 days and 90 days and 6 months turn into multiple years.

How long, Lord? How long?

How long until the rushing wind rests upon me? Until the wonders appear in the heavens above and the earth beneath? Until justice rolls down like waters? Until righteousness like a mighty river not the tears of the mothers? Until we learn to accept life on life’s terms?

So we lean into the God of our own understanding and we do the next right thing. We know we are a program of attraction not promotion. We know we are stronger as a body than we are by ourselves. We remain ready for God to remove our defects of character. We know we can call our sponsor and upon the name of the Lord and be saved from ourselves. And maybe even restored to sanity.

For such a time as this there may be chaos and confusion. But we also might actually see signs and wonders if we pay attention. Until our great and manifest day.

Deborah M
Lancaster PA

Repairing the Past

Wed, 25 May 2022 23:13:30 GMT

In the July 2022 issue of PARABOLA, James Opie shares his journey with respect to responsibility. The article ends with this statement: “For some of us, more than others, truly “repairing the past” must be an ongoing undertaking one small step after another toward becoming responsible.”

The Twelve Steps are, to me, a process in becoming responsible. We begin with the first step in which we acknowledge not only powerlessness over our addiction but also that our life had become unmanageable. In other words, we were irresponsible in word and action. Even those of us who pride ourselves for being responsible have to come to grips with our irresponsibility.

As we begin to document the downward spiral of our irresponsible life under the influence of one or another mood-altering chemical – legal or otherwise – we slowly (and, for me, it was a very slow process) of fully admitting my unmanageability/irresponsibility.

By the time I got to step five (for the third or fourth time) I became aware – in the words of James Opie, “…the past can only be repaired inside a person in the present, inside me, by confronting my own past and bringing it forward consciously, with efforts to not deflect or hid from what is recalled, but work to be present to feelings and related thoughts that appear.”

The past can only be repaired inside of me in the present. I am the one who was irresponsible. I am the one who choose to drive intoxicated. I am the one who said, “I can handle this.” “Don’t worry, I drive better when I’m loaded.” “I’m the one who said, “No one will know….” Now, I have to come to grips with this past behavior in the present, look in the mirror and say “I did that.” “I said that.”

I recall spending a weekend with some friends and attending a carnival where I had a “good time.” I woke up in their sitting room on Monday afternoon in a sleeping bag in my underwear. I got dressed, got coffee and a drink. When I was asked about statements I was supposed to have said to one or other woman with whom I was dancing, I flat our denied it. First line of defense: lie until you know differently. I was “sober” a few years when my friend told me he was too embarrassed to tell me what I had said and done at the carnival. I had no memory of it.

By the time I got into recovery I had lost contact with many of those who should have known about my irresponsibility. However, I had sufficient vague memories to feel shame and guilt about my actions. These memories however did not prevent me from wanting to blame or hold others responsible for my actions.

As Opie writes, “Resistance to seeing all retrievable details is likely, and it’s important to observe this resistance, too, and not be cowardly.” I would never use the word ‘cowardly’ with respect to myself, but that is exactly what I was – a coward. I wanted to hide, disappear, deny, blame, project. “NO, not me! I couldn’t have said that. I couldn’t have done that.” I could say these words even as my mind told me, “You are guilty as charged.” I knew what I had done and did not want to look at it.

Finally, finally, I reached a point where, as Opie writes, “In all cases, we have no choice but to begin precisely where we find ourselves, bearing in mind our inability to change anything, except in a developing interest to be present to whatever appears.”

Over the years I have met up with folks with whom I had lost contact, and after the initial pleasantries, I asked the awkward question, “In case you are not aware of it, I have been in the program of A.A. for___years. What I’d like to know from you is this; Did I ever say or do anything that embarrassed you or your family? You can tell me anything I need to hear so I can make amends and remind myself I don’t want to go back there.”

Out of these conversations I have learned some frightening – and I mean frightening – things and embarrassing stories. What I greatly appreciate today is this – no one can blindside me with my past. Thanks to this program – living and working the steps – I am open to hearing about my past as it increases my conscious awareness of past irresponsibility and reminds me to continue working on my responsibility which I can only have through the maintenance of my spiritual condition on a daily basis.

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

Psalm 33 and Recovery

Thu, 05 May 2022 02:18:47 GMT

Recently I was reading Psalm 33 and I was struck by these verses; “There is no king who can be saved by a mighty army; a strong man is not delivered by his great strength. Look, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear [love] him [Her] on those who wait upon his [her] love.”

I did not have “a mighty army” but I had a lot of excuses and rationalizations as to why I was not an addict, that “I can handle this,” that “I’m not like those who have to go to meetings,” that “I can take it or leave it.” Ah, yes! What power! I would have laughed loudly if I had read that alcohol was “cunning, baffling, powerful.” It’s only alcohol, it can’t control my mind, it doesn’t affect how I think or behave. If you think alcohol controls your mind, then you must have a very weak mind.

I don’t think of myself as being powerful. I know that I get what I want when I want it. That’s not power. That’s just knowing what I want and going after it. That’s real strength. If I don’t do that, people will walk all over me and I’m not going to let that happen.

So much for my power and control. A strong nudge from God and then a second nudge – moments before an intervention happened – landed me in treatment, still in denial, and attempting to use my “charm and the luck of the Irish” to get by with a lot of methane gas. Fortunately, the assigned therapist was trained in the detection of such gas and stopping it before it contaminated the surrounding community.

It was humiliating to learn that, for all my perceived strength and control that I was at the other end of a leash controlled by Jack Daniels and friends. It was embarrassing to learn that I could not handle my drinking on my own. It was mortifying, as I began my third fourth step to come to grips with the emotional and moral destruction caused by my lack of control over Jack Daniels and friends. So much for being a strong person, having a strong willpower.

“A strong man is not delivered by his great strength.” My belief in my strength resulted in a four-and a half year dry drunk as I tried to work the program “my way.” I didn’t need a sponsor. I didn’t need to call on anyone. I could figure out life on my own. With my background in counseling and theology I was going to be a great resource to “these people.”

Prior to treatment I had never lost a job, always had a roof over my head, and had transportation. All of these were indicators that I was not an alcoholic. Within the next five years I had four different employers. Something was seriously missing in my life. I did what I thought I was supposed to do; I went to church; to meetings; read the Big Book; but did not have a sponsor.

My problem lay in the fact that I read the Big Book and went to meetings for all the wrong reasons. I read the book so that I could memorize lines to misquote at my next meeting. I went to meetings so that I would look good to my boss; to share my knowledge, etc.

What hooked me into recovery was how I was treated at meetings. I was encouraged to help set up before the meeting. I was encouraged to stay afterward and clean up. I began to like what I was seeing in these men and women who were “happy, joyous and free.”

It wasn’t until I had the experience of declaring bankruptcy that I had my spiritual awakening. In fact, as I look back on it, the financial bankruptcy was but a symbol of my own emotional/spiritual/moral bankruptcy. I came to grips that I had something no one could take from me – my sobriety. If I had sobriety then, perhaps I am an alcoholic and, if so, then I am powerless.

“Look, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear [love] him [Her] on those who wait upon his [Her] love.” The eye of the Lord came to me through the love, compassion, and friendship of people in recovery and a couple of men who sponsored me into what I then fell in love with: serenity, a power greater than myself, peace of mind. Today, my strength lies in the “maintenance of my spiritual condition” and for that I need to live the program, work the steps, share my experience, strength, and hope, and “walk humbly with my god – my Higher Power.

Take me as I am

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 13:59:31 GMT

“Take me as I am” was the title of an Easter sermon for “the Denver women’s prison” delivered by Nadia Bolz-Weber. She’s referring to Christ’s appearance in that locked room where the disciples were fearfully huddled, hiding from the mob, pondering their own failures to support and assist Christ during His trials, for denying any association with Him, failing to even stand with Him at the crucifixion itself, and each searching for someone to blame.

And standing among this woebegone group of followers, the Risen Jesus suddenly appears and says, “Peace be with you.” He is taking them as they are, with all their betrayal, denial, and fear. That’s His Grace. And, He takes us as we are, not what we should or could be, but as we are. So, with the disciples. They were learning that Christ was a power greater than themselves, the depth of their belief’s deepened.

My mind slipped to my own moments of surrender. I had long denied any need to quit drinking. I denied hurting friends, family, my boss. At best, if I knew I’d hurt anyone, “fuhgeddaboudit” for I was interested only in keeping the good times rollin’.

The Program doesn’t require a certain level or frequency of pain. But it does require us to surrender our ego, to come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could bring us to sanity.

Christ accepted those “locked-up” disciples each afraid of himself, filled with self-pity, blaming everyone else. His Grace touched the disciples “as they were.” He welcomed them and so does the Program welcome the drunk surrendering his addiction to his or her Higher Power.

His unlimited Easter Grace is freely given to me, a sinner. So, it is with the Program.

JRA, St. X Noon, Cincinnati

Don’t Drink and Don’t Die

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 01:46:01 GMT

When I was very young in AA, I was at a meeting with my sponsor and an inspiring speaker finished telling his story of experience, strength, and hope through recovery in AA. He went back to sit in the corner with his cronies and they slapped him on the back and laughed together. I leaned over to Sharon and whispered, “I want to be an old-timer like them…” And Sharon said, “Don’t drink and don’t die…”

And here I am, on April 10, 2022, an old-timer celebrating 37 years of continuous sobriety—one day at a time—because, by the Grace of God and the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have not had a drink and I am still alive.

In those early days I remember a speaker saying, “My washing machine came with an instruction manual but I didn’t—I had no direction or directions until the Program and Fellowship of AA came into my life.” I thought, “That’s cute,” and wondered, “but that’s not me. What about my Church? What about the Bible and the Ten Commandments? What about my parents and the Protestant Work Ethic they instilled in me? Why didn’t all that keep me sober? Why didn’t that make my behavior match my values? I compromised my beliefs and my ethical system—it’s not that I didn’t have any. Why did I ignore the directions I had been given?”

Why? Because of the disease of addiction. That’s why hearing that I was a Beloved Child of God didn’t penetrate my heart or mind. I did not become an alcoholic when I picked up the first drink or when I put down the last one. I was born an alcoholic. I always knew I was different…special, actually. The rules didn’t apply to me.

Early into sobriety, I drew a picture of myself where my cartoon head was covered not with curly hair but with Spoolie-like “caring deflectors.” Deep inside my alcoholic brain I had a fundamental belief that I was not the same as others: I was not worthy, nothing I did or said really mattered. Or maybe my fundamental belief was that I was better and didn’t need the structure and guidance that others needed since I already understood everything. Whichever, whatever, I was—worse or better than others—I could not hear what anyone who offered guidance or kindness was saying.

About four months before I stopped drinking, I had fired yet another therapist. I had been through a series of counselors, going to them for explanations and answers and not listening to a thing they said or observed, quitting when they got to close to my desperate inner self. But I was so sad. I was convinced that no one understood what I was going through and that I would always be alone.

After I left that therapist’s office that day, I went to pick up my mail. I clearly recall standing on the steps of that post office and looking up to the sky, up to Heaven, and saying—out loud is what my memory tells me—“God, I can’t keep doing this. Please, God, send me…a group that I can’t bulls**t.”

And God did.

Step by step, day by day, over the next few months I was led closer and closer to the doors of The Rooms. Finally, I entered. I walked in and was greeted—more than that—I was welcomed. I heard people saying things that I had been thinking. I heard stories of loneliness and confusion and errors and betrayals—and redemption and forgiveness and rebirth.

I did not get “cured” that day I put down the drink. I didn’t become all better when I found a sponsor or did 90 in 90 or when I worked the steps. What I got is the chance to learn…to listen, to identify, to improve my behavior and my understanding. Every single time I go to a 12-step meeting, I learn something new. Every single speaker teaches me something I need to know so that more and more, I behave as would a Beloved Child of God.

I am alone no more. Isolation has ended.

God Is Not Finished with Us

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:33:58 GMT

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him…” “What does it mean to meditate?” “How do I begin to meditate?” It was a wise decision to hold off on talking about prayer and meditation until one had experienced the preparation for this through working and living the other steps.

I have heard individuals say they take a cup of coffee and sit on their porch for ten to twenty minutes in the morning or evening and that’s their meditation. What I find missing in this form of meditation is any reference as to how, in that space of time, they improved their conscious contact with God as they understood God.

Step Eleven is about more than meditation. It is seeking through the process, or activity of meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God. Step eleven implies that we already have a conscious contact with God or Greater Power which has brought us through steps one through ten. Without our Greater Power, we would not have completed step one. let alone steps one through ten.

Richard Rohr writes that “To practice meditation as an act of faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being of everyone and everything around us is the generosity of God. God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being, such that our very presence is the manifestation of god. We meditate that we might awaken to this unitive mystery, not just in meditation, but in every moment of our lives.”

“Our very presence is the manifestation of God.” What a thought that is to sit with on the porch with a cup of coffee and ponder. “My very presence, sitting here, is the manifestation, the expression of God.” Do I see God in me? Do I see God in nature all around me? Do I see God in others? Or do I pick and choose who or what I think represents God?

When I came into the program many years ago, I had already experienced meditation. It was a meditation of absence. I could sit there and clear my head of thoughts, space out - some said. When I came to step eleven, I felt certain this step would be easy until I realized that meditation had a purpose. The purpose of meditation is to improve my conscious awareness of God; to become consciously aware of the presence of God within and all around me at all times.

“God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being…” As the saying goes, “God’s not finished with me yet.” God is creating me at all times and in all places. God is appearing to me in the form of people in authority, people who are mirror images of me prior to and since getting into recovery. God is recreating me as I learn to laugh, learn to be serious, learn to be punctual, learn to relax, learn to ‘let go’, learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness, learn to love and accept love in return.

“To practice meditation as an act of faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being…. is the generosity of God.” The endlessly reassuring realization… the nonstop realization; the perpetual realization; the unbroken realization; the persistent realization that my very being is the generosity of God. What a gift to begin or end a day, or just take a mid-day break and reflect that, at any time, without my permission, God is creating me, giving me opportunities to do the next right thing; to make better decisions, and, even if I fail, God is still creating me.

No wonder St Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.” God is seeking us out and we, unaware of it, are seeking God until we complete Step one and then God takes over and we discover we can do nothing without God. Now, in Step Eleven, we create time to be present to and with this God who was seeking us while we were looking for peace in all the wrong places. God was with us and now we are with God and God is not finished with us.

God continues to create us in His/Her image and likeness, and we assist as we do the necessary work to remove our short comings, our defects of character and replace them with virtues that mirror the God of our understanding.

Séamus D is an episcopal priest in the Greater New Orleans area.

Accepting people as you find them.

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 01:51:01 GMT

I entered the Program, an alcoholic. I wasn’t told to sit in the “newbie chair.” No one called attention to me. Probably, when the chair asked if there were any “newcomers present,” I may have sat still, not saying a word. But when Mike asked, “How are you?” I felt he really wanted to know! But the fact is that from that first day, I really felt accepted as I appeared, just a drunk seeking help.

I must admit I don’t always carry that level of acceptance into my everyday normal interaction with people. I might ask, maybe, a bit of background and perhaps superficial information: high school, residence, and of course, the Big One, “Do you know …?” By doing so, I fear I might pigeon-hole who and what I think they are?

Learning new things about people is interesting -- their hobbies, travels, schools -- it can be just plain fun, but “pigeon-holing” is not fair. It’s more game-playing and we already have more than enough of that in our lives. Worse, we might tie them into our preconceived notions, or worse yet, reflect our prejudices. There is sometimes an element of fear on our part and maybe in some cases it’s justified.

Perhaps the introductory question really should be phrased as words like, “How are you today, how has your weekend been?” and said as if I really mean it. From that, why can’t we answer with some feeling that our response is the truth?

I view Jesus as my Higher Power. He’d ask, “What can I do for you?” Why can’t I treat people in the same manner? “I understand your story … been there.” As recovering alcoholics we have the obligation to share our message of hope. Would my Higher Power expect anything less than that in our normal everyday conversations? Doesn’t He call us to reach out? For some reason today we tend to avoid or discourage, to shy away from “getting to close” to someone.

I need to remember to ask, “How have things been this week?” and really mean it. And if asked, respond truthfully. Our Higher Power in the Program calls us to mean it. Is there any reason we should prejudge a person, or dig into our prejudices to avoid deepening our relationship?

Once again, the Program teaches us new ways to live all aspects of our lives.

JRA, St. X Noon

Again, how are we treated as newbies at a meeting? We say, “Glad you’re here, you’re always welcome.” That’s about it. We may not even get their last name or email address. What would our Higher Power say to that newbie? Probably,” Welcome, glad you’re here.” I doubt the question would be, “Where did you go to high school?”

I’m trying to grow up and learn to accept people as they are and not prejudge or burden them with a cross examination to learn where they went to high school, etc., etc. Heck, by this “preselection “process we may (probably?) miss a lot of good and interesting persons, or if we stay open, we might come across a practicing alcoholic seeking help or one in recovery – Yikes!

JRA, St X Noon.

Lent and Desert Experiences

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 01:09:16 GMT

Last month Jesus told us to love our neighbors, ourselves, and goodness knows, even our enemies. Could this commandment be related to Jesus’ recent journey into the wilderness where he meets our greatest enemy called Satan?

In her last book, Inspired, Rachel Held Evans leaves with us her experience of wilderness, enemies, and how this relates to Jesus and the God of love. She reminds us that our enemies will eventually drive us into the wilderness. Goodness knows, our addictions, once our friend, now our enemy, drove us into a wilderness where all hope seemed lost. Our enemy, our addiction, often causes us to flee to a wilderness to escape the life our enemy has brought on us. We are like Hagar, and her son turned out by Abraham and Sarah, or Jacob fleeing his brother Esau, or Elijah fleeing Jezebel. Evans believes that even the God of love, when clothed in human form, visits the wilderness to prepare for future head-on meetings with the devil.

The wilderness is usually thought of as a scary or barren place where God seems even more absent. Instead, I have learned from my daughter, who is a wilderness forester, that the wilderness is a most sacred place where we, like Elijah, best hear the silent voice of God. The wilderness is out of sync with our usual routine. It disorients us and leads us to a different way of thinking where we learn that the only way to face our enemies within and without is by connecting to the God of love.

We all have had experiences where we have been harmed: death of a loved one, loss of a job, struggling with our addiction, physical or verbal abuse, a severe illness, depression, other mental disorders, difficulty with our children, parents, or siblings, struggling with our present political and pandemic scene. Rachel reminds us that we are driven into the wilderness from these experiences. We will always learn a great deal about ourselves and especially about the God of love that has been there before us and with us. That is the experience of the children of Israel, Hagar, Jacob, and even Jesus, our constant companion. When we are driven to this more barren place, we meet and are saved by the God of love and are attended by angels. We realize we have been living with the personification of evil, the one who lives only for himself without love, that part of us where love for others does not live because our addiction has become our love, our God.

When Jesus confronts the devil, the evil one, first he listens. This is what we are called to do, to listen. We will soon hear another voice that was always in us, but our addiction blocked it out. That tiny voice of the love of God within us calls us a different life. Evil, our addiction, and our self-interests do not understand this voice. Evil can never overcome this love.

Our usual modes of travel, most of the people who helped us seem gone in the wilderness. It is so quiet we can hear the still small voice of God within us. Our enemy, our addiction, once our friend, has led us to hear a higher power that now can be most heard in the quiet of a wilderness experience. This time, we listen, and our life is changed. The enemy, our addiction, has led us to a new way of life that we could only see and hear in the wilderness.

Lastly, Rachel reminds us to name these wilderness experiences. Hagar names the well in the wilderness which saves her life and her son, Ishmael, “I have seen the God who sees me.” Just as Jacob is about to meet Esau in the wilderness, he wrestles with God and names the place Peniel, which means “ Face of God.”

In these next few weeks, we have another opportunity to be quiet and hear the powerful voice that saved us when all other voices within were silenced. The name of our yearly liturgical wilderness experience is called Lent.

Lent calls us to remember where God was with us in the wilderness and led us to recovery. Lent is a time to remember that our addiction was what brought us to our knees in the wilderness and a life beyond compare. Lent is a time for gratitude.

One more time, we have an opportunity to listen to a voice that often can only be heard when we intentionally live in silence and listen.

Lent is a time for silence and listening.

Rachel Held Evans in Inspired ( Nelson Books 2018) pp. 48-50.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

The Power of the Stories We Hear

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 00:55:53 GMT

I’ve been thinking a lot about stories lately. Stories are everywhere. Stories are how we tell others who we want them to think we are. Stories are how we tell ourselves who we are…or are not. Above all, stories are how we learn about the world around us. Most of us discover early on that not every story is for everybody. For those of us who straddle the communities of recovery and faith, this can complicate things.

When I was in early recovery, both in rehab and in the rooms of NA and AA, I often found myself surrounded by deep, sometimes hostile, anti-religiosity. Perhaps you have had similar experiences, but as a religious person, not to mention an ordained person, I was beyond bewildered.

Some people told me that I had to change everything… including the way that I understood God. Others told me, or scolded me, that my occasional use of religious vocabulary meant that I “just wasn’t getting it.” I often felt that I was being asked to make a choice between God and recovery. Of course, I thought, as an Anglican, the either/or thing didn’t make any sense. The real story, however, was that this this stubborn and scared person didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

Fortunately, the grace of humor (what I call humor, anyway) came to the rescue early on, and I began to change the story that I was telling about myself. When people asked me what I did for a living, instead of (ever) saying that I was a priest, I might say that I worked for an internationally recognized Higher Power. Laughter really can be the best medicine, lovingly jostling stubbornness (especially my own) into a bit of teachability.

Spoiler alert! My understanding of God is not the same that it was in those early days. For me, my understanding of religion, the Who of God, has remained fairly constant: traditional, western, and Trinitarian (no surprise there). But here’s the good news: my understanding of spirituality, the How of God, has blossomed and grown. And this is where stories come in.

Over time, I have come to believe that the How of God is most active when stories are shared within community. In the fulness of being heard aloud, stories can embrace the entire human condition, good, bad, and indifferent – our joys, our scars, even our still-open wounds. And in that embracing, stories of experience, strength, and hope – whether told downstairs or upstairs – serve to convict, and caution, and comfort us.

This is the great gift of stories shared in community. The tradition of cross-generational storytelling, whether from the Good Book, or the Big Book, generates a matrix. You might see it as a tapestry. The sharing of our stories, and the stories of those who went before us, gives us a context in which to see our own experience, our own strength, and our own hope. This communal matrix provides a framework on which each of us can organize our amazements and our agonies, our joys and our sorrows.

We need each other’s stories to remind us that we need each other. We need each other’s stories to remind us that each of us relies on all of us for health, and wholeness, and sanity. We need each other’s stories to remind us that we are not alone.

One of the spiritual exercises I’m trying on this Lenten season is to recall some of the stories that were important in my recovery and in the growth of my faith. There’s the first time I heard someone tell my story. And that story that said, “there’s someone with whom I can identify.” And that story that planted the seed that, maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t quite as alone as I had thought. And that story that gave me enough courage to say, “Hi, I’m Paul. I’m an addict.”

For me, for this recovering person, the How of God as I understand God is in that place where the matrix of Christianity and the matrix of Recovery are in deep conversation with each other, sometimes even dancing with each other. The way I hear upstairs stories has been forever changed by the stories I’ve heard downstairs. New light fills the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers, and the one about the prodigal child, and the one about the raising of Lazarus.

The list is endless. Every story of a power greater than me gives me hope and, in that hope, the power to imagine that I am not alone, that I belong here, in these twin communities of recovery and faith. I hope you can, too.

Paul J.
Muncie, IN

“Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous”

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 01:52:48 GMT

“Not-God” by Ernest Kurtz is worth reading. Comprehensive, readable, and without an ego-driven bias. It has the appearance and format of a thesis written to fill a requirement for a PhD from Harvard and indeed the author received his PhD in 1978 and the book was published in 1979 and expanded in a new edition in 1991. It was published by Hazelden Press a well-known long-standing center for the study and treatment of the abuse of substances.

I’m always interested in histories of organizations but what caught my eye on this one was this part of the title: “Not-God.” At first, I thought it was a reference to the difficulties some saw in the early drafts of the Big Book where the role of God in the Program was described. Hence, “Higher Power” was substituted for “God.” That change made sense. Remember back in the 30s there really was no recognized process for the effective treatment of alcoholism. Back then, the definition of “an alcoholic” seemed limited to the down-and-out-alley-drunk. Today we know differently. Back then, some treatment plans seemed to be focused on the sin of it all, “God abhors alcohol. If you are a drunk, you probably will dwell in Hell forever.” That so-called treatment was ineffective for any long-term sobriety. Moreover, medical experts didn’t have any good suggestions for treating or dealing with alcoholics.

Remember that Bill and Dr. Bob had figured out a new way to deal with an alcoholic simply by adherence to a program of conversations with other alcoholics, of carrying the message of recovery, and the importance of a genuine willingness to stop through some sort of ‘white-light’ experience.

So, I thought his point for the Big Book was simply “God” evolved to “Higher Power.” But no, that’s not what he was saying. He was saying that WE are not God and we have to accept that the problem centers on our ego, our arrogant feeling that we can do it all – “I can handle my booze intake, thank you.” And that forces us to focus on the ego as a cause of much of our anxieties in life. Ego causes us to think we know it all, that our word is Right. Even the Program itself doesn’t claim to be the “be-all-and-end-all remedy to deal with alcoholism.” We tell the newbie, “It worked for me; maybe it will work for you.” Abandoning the idea that we’re God’s gift to the human race, permits us to develop a humbleness, a feeling of gratitude. We drop that arrogance, and we don’t have that need to be “right all the time.” A self-righteous attitude gets in the way of our interaction with others.

So, if you are looking for a good read, try “Not-God” but just remember your Higher Power is not you.

JRA, StX Noon

A Companion on the Way

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 01:29:50 GMT

Today is Ash Wednesday. And we are reminded we are dust and to dust we shall return. The sign of the cross is made on our foreheads from the ash of the palms we waved in joyful hosannas a year ago. Now it is dark and we wonder what the next 40 days hold for us.

We might be kick starting our sobriety, picking up where we left off after an anything but Dry January. We might be swearing off Facebook, Instagram, FOMO and swearing off swearing. We might be wondering how to terminate the relationship with the Girl Scout cookies in the cupboard which also, ironically, occur this time of year.

Whatever it is, Ash Wednesday demands our attention. And perhaps a reframe. We may want to deliberately choose to focus attentively, mindfully with our “face toward Jerusalem” as the gospel of Luke declares. Rather than what can we give up—which seems a recurrent theme in sobriety—what if we focus on what we gain? Clear head. Less shame. Restored relationships. And what about a Companion on the way? The prophet Joel reminds us this Companion says we can return to Him with all our heart, with fasting. For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relents from punishing. That will definitely be helpful!

We can take this 40 day One-Day-At-A-Time journey knowing it takes us into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Through a dinner with friends sharing the bread and wine and washing the feet of the betrayer. Tears in a garden praying for anything but this, anything! Mockery, torture, death and the darkness of the tomb.

But it takes us to salvation as well. To that happy morning when hell today is vanquished.

And doesn’t that sound like recovery? Haven’t we all endured our own heart breaking betrayals? Unsure who our friends are? Our sleepless nights praying for anything but this, anything! Even our own deaths?

So this year invite the Spirit to join you. To enter into your recovery, into your next day, into your next 40 days. Journey with Jesus of Nazareth who was acquainted with infirmity and rises from the grave with a mighty triumph o’er his foes.

We all need a Friend like that who loves us even though we are dust.

Deborah M
Lancaster PA

Was a crushing event a condition precedent for us to seek help?

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 02:04:56 GMT

We all know many people say it took a “crushing event” to bring them to their senses. Of course, we don’t need that disaster. It may be just a question of definitions for if we sustained just enough small disasters and we seek help, that “small” incident was enough. I believe any incident causing us to seek help is enough. The alcoholic doesn’t need to kill someone, suffer loss of a job or family. But honestly, get serious, an alcoholic usually doesn’t wake up one morning, stretch, yawn, and proclaim, “Gee, I think I’ll go into alcohol rehab. I’m drinking too much, maybe.”

Sadly, more likely than not, it does seem to take a jarring bump to tear us away from our ego, our supreme arrogance, and self-reliant attitude. “I can quit myself.” Well, most of us learn we can’t quit by ourselves and maintain sobriety for any period. Those who can usually call it that “dry-drunk time.” No, we must cleanly and finally break from our past dependence on ourselves and admit that we can’t do it. We’re helpless when it comes to alcohol, it’s wrecking our lives and our families. And the first thing we learn is that no matter how long or how much we drank alcoholically, we can do it if we take it one day at a time.

Maybe a “jarring bump” is needed. Remember, we have lived our lives depending on our own decision-making processes. We’re self-reliant or maybe we just follow the crowd and don’t know any better. Usually, we’ve lost much or all our spiritual basis for life. We don’t admit our life is unmanageable and even if we do, we don’t seek any spiritual support or guidance. Why? As human beings, we have the gall to claim outlandish arrogance. “I need no help from anyone or any spirit in the sky.”

As sensitive and uncomfortable as it may be, we need to recall those moments. After all, it was those moments of pain that probably pushed us into action and entry into the Program. It was the time we looked ourselves in the eye and asked, “Is this how I want to live?” “Help!” Maybe it’s something I need to recall around the time of an anniversary.

And, speaking of an anniversary; it approaches for me.

JimA St X Noon

Another Look at Tolerance

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 02:27:27 GMT

In AS BILL SEES It, we read; “Honesty with ourselves and others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way” (312). I do not wish to disagree with Bill, but, in today’s world, the world “tolerate” has more negative baggage than perhaps in the past. All too often we tolerate the inappropriate behavior or language of a family member, a friend, a coworker, because we do not want to “start a fuss,” we don’t want to “embarrass them” with a confrontation, privately or otherwise, of their behavior.

It is not helpful to me or another person to be tolerant. People have died -- mentally, emotionally, physically -- because of tolerance of their inappropriate behavior or language. We “put up with” them because, when the person is sober, “he’s a lot of fun. He is really a nice guy. She would be embarrassed if she knew what she did.” And so, we continue the sickness of a secret through our tolerance.

For the life of me, I wonder how people tolerated my behavior; that I celebrated the Eucharist while at least three sheets to the wind and did not remember if I preached or read the gospel. I have been told of many “wonderful services” I celebrated, and I have no memory of them.

As I began to enjoy this life of sobriety and review my past behavior under the influence of alcohol and or other drugs, it fascinated me that my only memory of being confronted was my being told, “Séamus, you’re an alcoholic.” That simple statement, said to me by a person I greatly respected, stuck with me through my drinking and till today. That was the only “confrontation” I can remember. Fortunately, in sobriety, I have learned about aspects of my past negative behavior, and I wonder if I could have been saved some heartache if I had been confronted.

Unfortunately, I have lost those whom I once thought were friends because, out of respect for them, I chose to talk to them about their behavior when they were under the influence of alcohol and or other drugs. They said they appreciated what I told them but said,“it’s none of your business.” It was my business as their behavior was embarrassing to me and others. Out of respect for them I spoke to them in private and they chose, as I probably did, to ignore it.

When I reviewed my fourth step, I felt embarrassed and wondered “Why was nothing said to me at the time? Why was my inappropriate behavior tolerated? Did they not care enough about me to confront me? I also had to consider the possibility of being confronted, and I have no memory of it. Was my behavior and my attitudes tolerated in a way that I would not tolerate in another? When I got around to doing a fourth step, I had not lost a home, a car, or employment, etc. What I came to grips with was that what I had lost was something more valuable - my values. It was sickening to look at that fourth step and wonder how I had gotten away with such behavior. I felt embarrassed at the thought of others being aware of my behavior and remaining silent.

I too am guilty of tolerating inappropriate behavior for a variety of excuses but no good reason. As I see it, I did not have enough respect for myself or the other to have a conversation with the individual and then give then the space to consider what they might choose to do.

When I tolerate inappropriate behavior or language, I put up with it; I endure it; I stomach it (and if I do that long enough, I get ulcers). When I respect another, I admire them; I hold them in esteem, I have a high opinion of them.

Today, I have to take a deeper look at why I may tolerate the behavior of another. Or will I risk losing that person because I respect them and I am willing to lose them by telling them something they may need to hear but do not want to hear it? All of this, to me, gives a new meaning to “I’ll be there for you.”

“Please Help…Homeless…Veteran…God Bless”

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 01:53:53 GMT

Do I give what I can and be done with it? Do I have to believe somehow my gift really might help him? What if he is really disheveled or reeks of alcohol or can barely stand up? Do I just willy-nilly throw away my own hard-earned money to the same beggars every day?

For guidance, I looked at the Program. I know we are called to carry its message of hope and grace. I also know the Program expects us to keep carrying the same message to the same person regardless of whether he stops abusing alcohol. I know from personal experience after carrying the message that I wondered if they really did hear it. They may have said so. They may make all the right signs of deciding to quit. But, deep inside, often as it was with me, they would secretly reserve the right to go back out, playing the game bit by bit – no real surrender. Practicing alcoholics are strange critters!

Are there any limits to the time one spends carrying the message of the Program? Is there a rule that says that if the inmate has more than XXX number of DUI tickets, he can’t leave his cell to again hear about the Program’s good news?

Would the Program shed any light on my question? Of course, I found it did. If I am stuck with a decision about something, I should, but don’t always, seek guidance from my Higher Power. What would He say to that street corner beggar? You bet he would say, “Give, don’t attached strings to your gift. It’s the Grace of the Program, just like the Program was carried to you several times before you really did something about it.”

I believe there is no limit to the time we spend carrying the Message. The offer is always open, no time limit on it. And I believe this is so regardless of the results. We’re not judged on how many people we convert to the ways of the Program. We simply tell them what it has meant to our lives; how we are given tools to better work our way through life’s bump and pits. The Program makes it clear that it is a program of attraction rather than promotion. And we learn from experience that it is only through constant daily contact with the workings of the Program and our Higher Power that we are able to have a chance to maintain the serenity in our lives the Program brings.

So, it is from God’s perspective. For me, the Program’s Higher Power is God manifested to us by Jesus of Nazareth. God is always with the beggar just as He is with us. Always, not now and then, but always. That’s His Grace. Christ teaches us to reach out to the poor, downhearted, prostitutes … and beggars. Just as we continually carry the message of the Program, so too, are we to carry the same message of our Higher Power of hope and Grace by honoring the street corner beggar’s request. Can we turn down Christ who speaks as that beggar and is always of that beggar?

JRA St X Noon

Alcoholics Anonymous, more than a way to deal with our addiction

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 02:00:26 GMT

On January 3, I voluntarily decided to surrender my car-keys and sell my car … this at age 83, and a young 83 I add, and following 67 years of a fairly clean driving. Me, Jim A, St X Noon, decided to do this. I did it myself. I didn’t want any intervention laid on me. I loved to drive, always did. Loved cars and a variety of styles and makes. As a pre-teen kid, I studied the free Standard Oil gas station road maps, so when I started to drive, I was pretty good getting around in a car, even the unlit, dark, rural country roads in England. But on the 1stof January, I was feeling uncomfortable driving. It just wasn’t the fun it used to be, and I was 83 and had had open-heart surgery, my recovery period a bigger trip than I anticipated. Moreover, I wasn’t going to play the “poor-me-bit” which could have arisen with a forced car-key surrender. But that morning, having decided to hang ‘em up, I realized I faced a load of nits & nats to solve, all centered around how much of my “freedom-to-drive anywhere” lifestyle was I going to be able to retain? I certainly didn’t want my wife to become my all-purpose taxi driver, nor did she wish that fate.

To solve this quandary, for some reason, probably my Higher Power’s work, I looked at our 12 Steps that very morning and discovered The Steps had already outlined the very path to do just that. Maybe it takes a bit of fiddling to meld my car-key issues with the Step’s action words, but surely, one can see the Step’s innate spirt and wisdom. So, and without delay, here’s how I used the Steps.

Steps 1, 2 and 3—I decided to quit my addiction (my driving) now and did so avoiding the familiar risks of the half-quit. I’d tried that with my addiction and sooner or later I eased back into the old ways. So, with my driving, I knew I had to “give it up” all at once, not on a test basis, not halfway (day-driving only!). As with any change like this, I am re-learning the importance of a nurturing expansion of my spiritual life. Also, I see that my feelings of aging spill over to the importance of a couple’s daily lives and the changes brought on merely by the inevitable aging process.

Steps 4, 5 and 6—I made “to do” lists. Specifically, what did I have to change to achieve the goal? The list includes all things driving gave me—freedom to meet friends for lunch, regular visits with my somewhat challenged sister, going to St. X Noon meetings, runs to the library for more books, a freedom to continue my charitable activities, just driving around seeing new stuff. My list, however, this time centered on the positives, not addiction’s negatives. For 50 years, I’d developed personal relations with fellow attorneys, and after retiring, expanded the scope of my friends. I wanted all of that to continue. So, with the help of the gadget-oriented world of electronic products, I figured I could do so. And with the assistance of my kids, I am learning all I need to know to get out and see people “on my own” via UBER, ZOOM, GOOGLE, AMAZON, laptops, FACEBOOK, emails, KROGERS, all the new online shopping opportunities, home-delivery food markets, restaurants, and most every commercial operation claims to have this service.

Steps 7, 8, 9 and 10—These were simple steps to follow. I told my family that each new way I was going to follow to get around was going to be subject to review. I wanted to be independent as much as possible, but if a change of mode of transportation didn’t work, following a review thereof by thoughtful face-to-face family discussions and spiritual study, I’d try whatever way came to the surface.

Steps 11 and 12—Yes, none of this would have been possible without developing a spiritual life, cultivated by readings and attendance at Bible study groups and Program meetings—a way of walking with our Higher Power through life’s adventures. Several thought what I was doing was good for my soul, my family’s feelings, and personal friendships. They saw the worth in keeping with the Twelve Step framework. I promised myself, I’d pass along how nicely the Twelve Steps fit my process of giving-up-my-car-keys. I am once again grateful for my Higher Power and the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous. … I kept coming back to it.

JRA St X Noon

Leading by Example

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 01:46:05 GMT

In the Book of Genesis, Joseph is in Egypt and has been placed in charge of the coming famine. The Pharaoh tells the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you.”

When I was in treatment (a century ago), I can still remember the counselor tell the group – and me in particular – “get a sponsor and do what he tells you.” Baloney. Anyone can stay sober. Why do you need a sponsor? I don’t particularly like being told what to do. Now, I don’t have an authority problem. Ahem!

When I told the director I wanted to go to treatment, he phoned the Adult Unit and then told me to go down the street and admit myself. I went home and showed up at the treatment center some four hours later.

I can look back at a history of being told what to do and then either doing the opposite or “doing it my way.” Throughout high school, the rules I kept were those that showed me in a good light. All others I bent or broke – and for some reason, perhaps because of my charm or arrogance or both – I got away with it. And that was long before I took a drink of alcohol or any mood-altering drug.

The arrival of alcohol in my system only solidified my knowledge that I did not need to be told what to do by anyone. Like the child learning to ride the bicycle, I insisted, “I can do it myself.”

I did it my way and spent five weeks in a four-week treatment program. Anyone else might have been asked to leave, but I was also an employee of the hospital that owned the treatment program.

After treatment I was assigned to an Aftercare program in which I thrived on telling the counselor just how good a job I was doing in the program. I was working the steps (my way); I was going to more meetings than anyone in the group – just so I could look good. And yes, I had not one but two sponsors. Well, sort of. You see, there were these two guys who took me under their wing and kept me on the straight and narrow till I finished that year in Aftercare.

I did what they told me to do. I read the Big Book and memorized lines I could then quote at a meeting. I went to meetings two and three times a day and talked so that others could learn from me. Oh yes, I was brilliant!! I did what I was told to do but for all the wrong reasons.

After almost five years of a dry drunk, I had my spiritual awakening. The threat of the possibility of losing everything due to bankruptcy clarified one thing for me – I had something that could not be taken away from me – sobriety. At least I thought I was sober. At any rate, at this point I did not want to go back to drinking. I has smoked in order to fit in; I drank in order to fit-in. God only knows what else I did in order to ‘fit in” But I belonged in A.A. I did not fully understand that, but I belonged there. I didn’t fit in. I belonged.

Talk to God, to your Higher Power, and do what He (She) tells you to do. Do the next right thing. Something had changed in me. I was listening for the first time in my life. I learned to live the program and not just work the steps. Rigorous honesty brought me face to face with myself, my character defects, all of me, warts and all, and I learned to love who I am.

Without being consciously aware of it initially, I was learning to do what I was told to do. The program works if you work (live) it. And that work/life involves doing what the winners told me to do. They told me what to do by word and example, and more often than not, it was their example that spoke the loudest to me. I listened to what I saw and what I saw was what I wanted in life – sobriety, peace of mind, happiness, freedom from fear, freedom from regret, shame and guilt. These were people who were at peace with themselves, at one (atone) because of Amends making, and that was what I wanted.

“Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you.” “Joseph” was, for me, those who took me under their wing; those who told me what to do by word and example; my Greater Power/God, and for all of them I am grateful.

Séamus D.

Greater New Orleans, LA

A New Beginning

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 01:18:14 GMT

I realize the opening day of this New Year was merely a Saturday turning into Sunday, but it really isn’t merely that. It’s the start of a new year—fresh crisp new calendars, maybe a new job or effective date of a promotion, or maybe we view it as an opportunity for a fresh start. Right or wrong, I tend to look at the year’s end as a time of looking back, of answering that old question, “What did I do last year?” Well, our employers may answer that question, but am I not called as a member of our society to look at “what I have done” for our Program this year? Have I “practiced the Twelve Steps in all [my] our affairs?” 2022 will note several years of recovery for me. While looking bank, I’m afraid I have fallen short—blaming the continuation of present difficult medical realities is an easy excuse. But let’s face it, the prevalence of the ZOOM - ing AA meetings doesn’t do the job. The Program works in part, maybe a large part at that, because of the personal daily contact of the meetings themselves with like-minded folks. It’s not just the newly struggling people, those who are fighting present difficulties or seeking some relief from the stress of it all. It’s the chance to look at the faces, for we need to acknowledge that most communication is non-verbal. We miss that important element of our meetings. Some of us, and let’s be honest, the ZOOM process gives us too much of an easy opportunity to block the screening and audio of ourselves—for a quick cup of coffee or answer the telephone or converse with our spouse, even read a newspaper while merely listening to the comments with “half an ear” of attention. So, in typical AA teachings, I must give my attention to the issue of “What am I going to do about it?” Well, we can’t violate the mandates for the gathering of people given the pandemic. I must follow the medical opportunities to insulate myself. I find I must sometimes look for new meetings. Some new ones aren’t scheduled in the “Where and When’s” or located how I wish. Sometimes meetings are cancelled unbeknownst to me closed at the last minute. Maybe you lost an opportunity to meet weekly with persons in a local lock-down recovery hospital.

Before the pandemic, I was in the habit of “It’s noon! Monday through Friday at St. X Church and time for my meeting!” I was usually there and if not there, at the local hospital working with others or just meeting with fellow members of the Fellowship.

Our options are limited. But I can’t let this pandemic with its necessary restrictions dilute my Program. This year, I must re-commit to that Program—specifically to my habit of a more regularized “Alcoholics Anonymous schedule.” I have to find a way to enjoy the richness of it all.

JRA, St. X Noon

Don’t Look Back

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 03:57:15 GMT

Over the Christmas break, I went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. As a big comic book nerd, I had followed all the leaks, teases and news leading up to this new movie’s release. As a teen in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember how I related to Peter Parker. No matter what he did, it always backfired. Peter was a good-hearted guy but, he was ever the outsider.

The plot of the movie revolves around the world learning Spider-Man’s secret identity as Peter Parker. Its response is a mirror of the current state of our culture where we idolize or demonize people and divide into camps of love or hate. There is no gray space in which we may process, breathe, or come into our own truth. As Peter and his friends wrestle with their newfound fame, they must reckon with its fall out. Peter’s girlfriend and best buddy both receive death threats. The final straw for Peter is when all three amigos are rejected by every college for which they applied.

As Peter wrestles with the consequences of being exposed he realizes that he can ask his super-hero buddy, Dr. Strange, to go back in time and change the event that led to his big reveal. As I watched this unfold on the screen, I realized that as a recovering addict, I often imagine a similar scenario. Maybe it’s because it is the end of 2021 and I am looking back, but the temptation to fixate on the ghost of my past feels urgent. I can relate to Peter Parker in his desire to change his past.

The problem is that the past cannot be changed, forgotten, edited, or erased. As I recover, I surrender to the truth that the past must only be accepted.

I do not possess godlike powers to change the past. When I fixate on the past, I pretend to be god. I play the role of a supreme being who can reach back through the past, finesse the mistakes I have made, and in general, make the world a better place. Regretfully, such thoughts are fantasy rooted in selfishness and self-will. Ego run amok.

Like so many people, this past year was a challenge. I started the year with so much hope for a return to normal. I longed for the time when the pandemic was just an afterthought. I dreamt of returning to in-person meetings, being able to worship without a mask and receive the Eucharist. Those dreams were slowly diminished and dismissed as we saw a series of COVID surges and the isolation continued.

Don’t get me wrong, there were incredible moments in this past year. I welcomed a new grandchild into my family and discovered my son and daughter-in-law are expecting my first grandson (the granddaughters still have him out numbered) due in May. There were glimpses of grace, mercy, and love in conversations with dear friends and loved ones. I have so very much for which to be thankful.

I have the wisdom of the steps to address these restless spirits of the past, be they familiar or mournful. In my step work, I try to honestly look at my past. I realize my addiction and co-dependency limited my ability to fully be present in my own body. I denied the very best of myself to those I loved most. I know that sobriety is far better than the illusion of a life which hides powerlessness.

This gift of working the steps sets me free from humiliations of my past failures and the unbearable pressures of achievements. In that space, I am free to give back to others what was so freely given to me. Step Twelve work expects us to lean into that calling. I do it because the community of recovery is stronger by doing so, not out of obligation. It takes the focus off me and puts it on the newcomer. I can’t help but think about paraphrasing Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great recovery comes great responsibility.” That responsibility is a burden I am willing to bear going into 2022. The good news is that I share that burden with my recovering brothers and sisters.

Thanks for helping share the load.

By Shane M

I am “one of them”

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 22:40:23 GMT

“I now realize that my former prejudice against clergymen was blind and wrong. They have kept alive through the centuries a faith which might have been extinguished entirely. They pointed out the road to me, but I did not even look up. ….the man who showed me the truth was a fellow sufferer and a layman. Through him I saw at last, and I stepped from the abyss to solid ground…” *

As I read this text, I realized that, even as a clergyperson, I too was prejudiced against clergymen. I pointed the finger at those whose behavior attracted attention. I avoided those whose deep spiritual life saw through my shallowness. I saw myself as one of the “new breed of priests” who understood how to be “one with the people.” I had no problem having a drink in a bar. At weddings and parties, I had no problem getting up to dance. “I didn’t make a fool of myself in public.”

I had read a lot about spirituality. I could teach classes on it. In treatment I was fascinated by the Chaplin who picked up a small bible, read a paragraph, and then delivered a brief talk that I never would have seen in it. When it came to doing my fifth step, I was informed I was to do it with the chaplain. I wanted to choose the priest I wanted to “confess” to. Then I realize the chaplain’s boss and mine was the same person. I rewrote my fourth step as I did not wish to tell him everything in case he’d tell the boss I was not fit to return to work. On the other hand, in his office, I learned much about him from his library to tell me he was more open minded than I considered him to be.

Going to AA meetings, reading the big book and 12X12, I believed I would be of great help to “these people” given my background as a priest and addictions counselor. I was asked to chair meetings. I was asked to tell my story. I was taken out on twelfth step calls. I make myself believe that this was because I was so good as a speaker, that I was so knowledgeable. I really knew a lot – just like a computer – but I had no idea as to the depth of the program or how the disease had impacted my life. I could recall incidents that I could share and I could shed tears because I did feel ashamed, but it was short lived.

Two men choose to sponsor me and I was unaware of what they were doing . They would not let me go on the Speaker circuit because, as they said, "You have a big ego and it will kill you." I had nothing in common with these two men and yet I found myself listening to them, doing what they told me to do.

After four and a half years I had a Spiritual Awakening that changed my whole life. I came to understand that I am an alcoholic; that I am a drug addict; that I am in recovery. Now the path was open for me to learn. I learned that I did make a fool of myself and in public. I embarrassed my friends and they were too embarrassed to tell me what I did and for that I am grateful. I listened to lay men and women and learned about a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity. I listened to lay men and women and learned about spirituality in a way I never thought of before.

As I listened to the men and women in a variety of groups, I learned I am “one of them” -I belong here - and for this, today, I am grateful. Today, I am grateful for the men and women who have carried this message for many years. I am grateful for the men and women who shared with me their experience, strength, and hope and that I was able to hear it clearly enough to finally appreciate its depth and in so doing made me a better layperson and, today, a better priest.

Jesus did not baptize or ordain anyone. He sent lay men and women out with a message of love, forgiveness, and compassion. As religion became organized, it almost lost the basic story which was saved by a humble clergyperson along with lay men and women who understood it and, when the time was right, created a twelve-step program to highlight the spirituality of living, giving me a way of life to choose life and have it to the fullest.

*AS BILL SEES IT. 119

Séamus D
Greater New Orleans.

The Season to Rejoice!

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 03:42:13 GMT

Our minister last Sunday was talking about our blessings. It reminded me about the nature of our modern-day Christmas and the sometimes excessive gifting of presents. Not everyone gets sucked into that tradition but for all of us, it’s a good reminder. We seem to just slide into the habit of giving “too much.” having promised last Christmas to “control” our buying this year. We try to monitor what we are buying, but it’s fun to give something as a surprise, to the family particularly. Maybe we had a “good year” and feel that we need to share our fortunate situation. Frequently, the “too much” aspect of giving just creeps up on us and isn’t apparent until all the packages are open on Christmas Day. And it is fun to watch the faces of kids and grandkids as they open that really special game or latest model computer they really didn’t expect. I suppose that some of the excess giving is just a mis-step, beyond what you usually give. There are lots of reasons we slip into the area of “excess gifting” and I don’t intend at all to be someone pointing the finger of “shame-on-you.”

One observation our minister made was the importance of trying to balance all this with special efforts at community service. Frequently, churches provide special holiday suppers for the indigent served by parish members. Bringing your children and grandkids to the event is a good way to remind them of the simple needs of others. Then the family opening of gifts is undertaken against this back-drop of those needs.

The homeless pull at our hearts especially hard this time of year. It’s cold now and sometimes we’re in the middle of a hard winter freezing rain and snowstorm. Where do these folks sleep? Do they have tough cold-weather-storm coats? Their kids -- they are aware of the gifting to kids but their own stockings are only half full, or worse, or by perhaps being loaded with cheap plastic jim-cracks. It is a time for parents to teach, to explain, to reach out, to bring to our own families a sense of balance and a joy that we might be able to ease the difficulties, and yes, perhaps, their pain, by simply reaching out and by assuring our families that others don’t “have it as good” as we might and bring a sense of participation by the family in service to others not so fortunate.

Surely, our Program calls us to serve others. There are special needs, always. Several years ago, on Christmas day I was sitting around our son’s home in Denver feeling sorry for myself, grinding away on some issues which could not be solved that day but which could lead me to that slippery slope. So, I spent much of the day at an AA club house. There, I knew I couldn’t get into trouble. I spent most of the time talking to a rancher from Wyoming who drove to the city in his pickup and “just needed a place to talk to people.” Tons of folks were present and that meant a need for folks to bring a lot of coffee and cookies and cakes, to clean up, lead discussion sessions, and talking to that new person who had no other place to go, having lost his family and his self-respect but stumbles into the club house.

Christmas is a joyous time of celebration of the birth of our Savior, but it’s also a time to remember our good fortune and, following the importuning of the Twelve Steps, use it responsibility to reach out to others, including our families.

JRA, ST X Noon, Cincinnati

The Advent of Recovery

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:50:18 GMT

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (The Message)

This past weekend I began to go through the remains of my recently closed-out storage room. In the background of that task, I decided to listen to the audiobook, The Universal Christ, by Father Richard Rohr. I thought I would be in an excellent place to fill my heart with this powerful truth as I emptied the boxes from my past.

As I unpacked my life, so many memories rushed through my brain and emotions flooded my heart. Many of these boxes held the items of a life I had not visited in over 10 years. They included both the remnants of my career as an addicted evangelical pastor and a man who lived in denial of his sexual identity. The boxes contained the ghosts of the past. I was both Scrooge and Marley, rattling the chains that once bound me.

I also remembered the joys of that life. The glimpse of love in the photos of my children ’s eyes. Rediscovering the blessing of grandparents who created a safe space for a kid raised in the home of an alcoholic. I surprisingly discovered an old daily meditation book based on the liturgical calendar and the writings of the early church fathers. Though I had no memory of purchasing this, it hinted at the hunger for rituals and traditions my heart desired.

Like life, the experience was bitter-sweet. I felt these memories, grieved over them, and saw them differently than when they occurred. As these feelings culminated, I heard Rohr discussing the incarnation of Christ. He spoke about three incarnations. First, the coming the Christ within creation. Second, the incarnation of Jesus within Mary’s womb. Finally, he described a time that is coming when injustice and suffering are abolished at the final incarnation. Rohr then made a statement that blew my mind. He stated that Jesus came as the incarnate Word, the “logos,” not to make us pious. He incarnated to show us how to be human.

The following day, our Rector described the advent season as reflection, repentance, reconciliation, and renewal. All my thoughts and feelings from the day before suddenly synced up with the sermon about Advent. Advent, and my recovery journey, is always best experienced as a continuum. Advent does call us to prepare and to look forward. But we cannot do so without an awareness that Christ is presently in us, with us, and through us.

Recovery also exists along a continuum. The new truth I realized this weekend is that while recovery is spiritual, the most profoundly spiritual act in recovery is to be utterly human. Recovery is based upon reflection (steps one - five), repentance (steps six and seven), reconciliation (steps eight and nine), and renewal (steps ten - twelve). All processes we celebrate in the Advent season! Before my recovery journey began ten years ago, there was the indwelling of a Higher Power, the Christ-Spirit. The same Christ-Spirit who indwells my suffering and addiction. The Christ-spirit who indwells the blessings of family and friends. The Christ-Spirit who indwells the heartbreaking humiliation of hitting bottom. The Christ-Spirit who indwells the pink cloud of new sobriety, The Christ-Spirit who indwells the journey through lapse and relapse. The Christ-Spirit who indwells the addict who still struggles.

Suppose recovery is about the manifestation of Christ in each moment, relationship, and experience. Could it be that addiction, then, is about the absence of a power greater than myself in each of those situations? Is it possible that addiction concerns pride and self-will run riot, creating a living hell for the suffering addict? Addiction promises us that we can be like God, yet delivers a bait and switch as old as the Garden. It is the antithesis of indwelling - it is the abandoning.

In this Advent season, I invite you to join me as I attempt to reconnect with the call to incarnation. Allow the presence of Christ to seep deep into your past failures and successes. Acknowledge that the Spirit of your Higher Power resides in your present circumstances and shortcomings. Embrace the future grace of recovery as you surrender to, and work for, the promise of emotional and physical sobriety. In short, let this season be one where we are reminded that the fulfillment of recovery and the Advent season requires both Jesus and us to be human. Let the logos “move into the neighborhood” of our humanity.

After all, He lives there anyway.

Shane Montgomery

**The Message (MSG), Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

The “Scary Thought” Red Door offering of November 17 Continued: “What do I do if that happened to me?"

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 01:18:09 GMT

It’s noon of that “day after” we all have faced when our brain was fuzzy and we found ourselves ashamed of our alcoholic conduct, as usual. We know our son feels the same this morning.

What should you as a solid member of Alcoholics Anonymous say about your son’s repetitive drunken experiences? You certainly don’t want to “fly off the handle” and make your son feel worse and more ashamed. Don’t lose your temper. Remember, he is an addict, he’s sick, and he can’t control his drinking. All he knows is drinking to hide behind his drinking.

Say nothing about his behavior patterns with alcohol and, if at all, not until you have done your homework on the nature and details of that conversation. Why? Because someone else may be “a better first contact” with the Program.

Put yourself in his position when you were showing up drunk. Would you have reacted positively to yet another shaming lecture from your parent? Would you have said, “O.K. Dad, let’s go to a meeting. Thanks for taking me!” No, perhaps he just used your shouting and anger as an excuse: “You’d drink too if you had my Dad …”

No, you the father, and long-term member of the Program, need to stop. There are many ways to deal with this but there is no “one process does it all.” Your quest is to find what works best for him, not you!

So, call your sponsor and discuss what to do. Grab the Big Book and re-read chapter 7, “Working with Others.” Get to a meeting of your home group and bring it up for discussion. Perhaps the first thing is to get to an Al Anon meeting. There you will find people who have been where you are right now -- who observed loved ones drinking excessively and recklessly. Other good steps are having lunch with 2 or 3 old timers and find out what has been their experience. Perhaps your home discussion group includes a young person who relates to what your son is experiencing. Find out how his entry into the Program or first discussions about his disease of alcoholism came about. And there are professional organizations, treatment centers and hospital rehab opportunities.

Why all the caution? Simple. An approach to your son not carefully thought through with the people who know “how to do it” can imprint a horrible event on his mind wrecking any possibility of a decision to deal with his disease until a later date -- “I’ll show em! I’ll quit myself! I’m not an alcoholic or addict.” Then you’ll find the progressive nature of the disease has won again and doing “something about your disease” is put off and off, perhaps to the even worse consequence than is apparent today. It only gets worse. It never gets better or goes away by itself.

So, “What do I say to him the ‘morning after?’ Nothing. Just get to a meeting of your home group and to Al Anon and get the facts and assistance you will need. That way you have a better chance of assisting with saving the life of your son.

Jim A/ St. X Noon, Cincinnati

We Do Recover, Even on Zoom

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 02:58:48 GMT

“Why at this point in history, has God chosen to communicate His healing grace to so many of us? From the beginning, communication in A.A. has been no ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. Because of our kinship in suffering, and because our common means of deliverance are effective for ourselves only when constantly carried to others, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.”

When COVID 19 hit almost two years ago, I was not sure how I would handle not getting to meetings. I am one of those people of a certain age who considers the computer a glorified typewriter. In my years in the program, I have gone a few months without getting to a full meeting for one reason of another and I knew the consequences of missing out on my social/spiritual life in the program.

I had never heard of zoom till about February of last year when I heard that our future meetings would be on zoom. On What? How do you get that? Is it in my computer? What do you mean I can get it on my phone? I’m very open minded until I come across some new-fangled idea that trips me up and I’m in a tizzy till I calm down and then allow myself to be taught what I need to know. I still owe my homegroup some money as I haven’t figured out Venmo and that’s probably a trust issue come to think of it.

So, I got the number and a member to set it up for me and, with that, a whole new world wide web of alcoholics in recovery. One newcomer told me that in one day he had been to meetings in Australia, Germany, England, and Ireland.

In the mental health field, there was talk of the increase of alcohol and drug abuse. I made the assumption it would only get worse as none of those folk could find their way onto zoom. So much for my speed to ass-u-me, Yes, I made an ass of myself and I am owning it. It was as joyful to see and hear a newcomer on zoom as it was to see them in person. They came just as they do to any meeting -- timid, concerned, not knowing, and trusting. (More than I did when I came to A.A.) And they came back.

God chose to communicate Her grace through zoom and without my permission. It was wonderfully awesome and delightful to see these new people take a risk and tell people they could only see as a stamp on a screen that they wanted help. Some broke down and cried. Emotions ran high and participants shared their first day at a meeting. No matter where we were from. And that was another thing. In one meeting, there were Alaskans, Canadians, Americans, Irish (of course they are everywhere) and all of us sharing that common bond of emotional pain and the growth that comes from living the program one day at a time as we keep coming back no matter what.

Alcoholics Anonymous grew through word of mouth, telephone calls, twelve-step calls, articles in a paper, and as the media moved into high gear with the speed of computers and now all the electronic devices, AA has not changed; we still communicate our experience, strength and hope, our pain and joy, our hope and vision even if we are sitting in a room by ourselves talking to someone on the other side of the globe. We all speak the same language of the heart even though it sounds different with a good brogue.

During hurricane IDA I joined the multitude in escaping to wherever. We landed in Birmingham and I found a meeting. I also found more than that. I was shown - of course by one a hundred years younger than I – how to download an app that gives me every meeting around no matter where I am. Now I have no excuse for not being at a meeting, they are literally at my fingertips. Now, it’s not a cup of coffee and a cigarette that brings a meeting to life; it’s an App (??), a zoom number, and the language of the heart comes through loud and clear. Gut Orientated Dialogue. I am not sure if I want to be around when we begin to pass it on telepathically, but then God only knows.

Something Really Scary

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 02:43:14 GMT

You’ll see what was “really scary” as I tell you what happened this weekend. First, let me say I’ve been in the Program for several years, having followed our familiar paths. From my surrender on, I had steadily worked the Program, chaired meetings at the local addiction hospital unit, and so forth.

This particular day was my son’s high school homecoming and following the normal festivities, he returned home and as he entered the living room where we all were watching television, he stumbled and “threw up” seemingly everything he’d had eaten or drank at their several gala parties.

Sadly, this wasn’t the first episode with our son. He’d put on a similar bad show in front of the family after another school event, an end of a semester, or something like that. We sort of passed it off as what you might call “teen-aged nonsense.” There had been other weekend incidents, and, well, actually, if truth be known, it did seem to be a regular situation on weekends. Recently, there were times during a school week when he would appear intoxicated after visiting a friend’s house.

My mind immediately flashed back to my own days of rage – all the horrific examples of an out of control practicing alcoholic and the damages to family, grandparents, and others. I was also aware of how I felt when my parents sat me down the next morning and told me be I shouldn‘t be drinking as it’s “harmful to my health” and “not something our family does, why do you do this, you know it’s wrong.” My reaction to this “sit down” couldn’t have been worse. I was soon off to college and I treated this as an invitation to continue drinking whenever and at what level I decided.

But back to our son; what do I say to my son that next morning? Remember, he’s a good kid, but like most adolescents, he erects various barriers or at least bumpy paths to any parental “sit down talk.”

But isn’t that the most effective way to approach him? Do I sit him down and re-tell him my story the next morning? Do I give him a copy of the Big Book? How about taking him to my regular meeting, a good discussion meeting? It’s not that he’s unaware of my history of alcoholic behavior. He lived through some of it just like the whole family did and I’m pretty sure he is conscious about my work with others in the Program.

I’ll tell you what really scares me – it’s that if I do this incorrectly, it may serve as a hinderance to his doing anything about it himself until he really reaches his destructive bottom with all that implies. We love our son and it scares me that on the one hand I can really be of help to him but I fear just busting into his bedroom and sternly say, “You need to get to a meeting, pronto.”

Author’s Note: I’ll return to the Red Door on December First with some thoughts about suggestions what the next steps might be.

Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati

It Came Back

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 02:19:27 GMT

What did? My discomfort with myself. There was no reason causing me to go back to depression’s old feeling, lack of self-worth, the “poor me’s” of feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes, like today, there’s no warning, just a quiet sadness sneaking over me. And, there is no question in my mind that in the old days, my abuse of substances was used to cover it up, to feel better, to hide my depressive feelings. Of course, back in those thrilling days of yesteryear, many times, round-robin-like, my addiction itself caused and supported my depression.

Today, it’s a different story. I had jumped off that merry-go-round several years ago. I had learned my lesson. Depressed when I came to the Program? You bet! But the Program didn’t leave me hanging. It provided a means to wrestle with that dark cloud and escape unharmed.

It was hard to learn that lesson. But, at discussion meetings I learned that a person in recovery shouldn’t just sit there and do nothing. “Oh no.” I was told to “Do Something, don’t just sit there on your pity-pot, get into action!” ”To do what?” I’d ask, and the groups would say, “Here’s a bundle of action steps:”

“Take your inventory, get to a discussion meeting every day, help set up the meeting, talk to a newcomer, provide service work at the AA clubhouse, give a lead at a private treatment center or a court-supervised program, get outside your own self, take a measure of your gratitude for the Program. You’ re a lucky one. With the right hand of your Higher Power, work on the positive aspects of life.”

Sometimes all of us really do have serious problems made worse by our addiction. There’s no easy answer for those, but there is a Program suggestion. Just get into action with your sponsor or a person who has faced similar issues. How did they work through that stuff? Find a way to rid yourself of the problem, whatever it takes to get a fresh start. Maybe you can’t do it all at once, but make a “to-do” list and set reasonable goals to clean it up, and “start the cleanup.”

Depression and allied mental issues are complicated. Sometimes, recovery requires professional assistance and medication. The problems may be of long duration and it may take a good deal of time and work with a professional to control those feelings. By all means, don’t try the easy road of self-medication of alcoholism.

Above all, don’t drink, go to meetings, reach out to others and don’t feel sorry for yourself. Look for solutions! And don’t despair. Many in the Program have encountered depression and have worked through its effects. And, by all means, Keep Coming Back!

Jim A – St X Noon, Cincinnati, OH

The Liturgy of a Meeting

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 00:36:26 GMT

I never tire of the liturgy. Some may say it could get routine and trite. Quite the opposite. The tradition, the ritual, the muscle memory of kneeling, standing, bowing are quite comforting. I see the same in the meetings. Walking through the Red Door, we begin our confession for all we have done and left undone. Have mercy on us and forgive us.

All someone has to say on a Tuesday night at 7pm is “God…” and everyone joins in with “God, grant me the serenity…” In many cases it’s the meeting’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. During the mass, all it takes is the priest to say “Our Father” and we all join in. In some meetings both the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer are used. It’s hard to see a difference between the meeting and the mass if we’re all saying the Lord’s Prayer, isn’t it?

I remember the first time I heard the commendation that we observe a moment of silence for the “sick and suffering still outside this room.” I couldn’t help but hear “those on our thoughts and minds we remember them silently or aloud.” It was prayer. It was reverence. It was holding our loved ones in the Light in the meeting and in the mass. These were the prayers of the people.

“Someone read from Just for Today” sounds a lot like “A reading from the Book of Bill.” The words might be familiar, we might not be paying full attention and it may be just what our spirits needed to hear. In the church basement we hear supportive, life-giving words just like we do in the sanctuary. They are sacred texts.

The passing of the peace never struggles during the meeting. Mass could learn a thing or two. Even during COVID when we were fist bumping or waving from a comfortable six foot distance during mass, there were hardy, full body contact hugs, often unmasked, all throughout the meeting. The connection to another is a lifeline and can feel and look more genuine than the masked, sometimes sterile nods often shared Sunday mornings at 10:30.

While the celebration of the Eucharist is the highpoint of the mass, the culmination of the meeting is the celebration of “clean time.” At six months or one year, there is a processional to the front of the room. And great celebration. The chip becomes the host. We pause and remember and marvel in the mystery. “We who are many are one body” because we’ve all been on this road and those who get ahead of us in their recovery will be celebrated.

As mass comes to a close, we triumphantly declare “Thanks be to God!” after we are blessed by the priest. After the meeting, we leave with the hope of another day, several phone numbers of people to call if we need support and a greater connection to our Higher Power. Just like mass.

Deborah M, MA, LPC
Lancaster, PA

The Red Pill of Recovery

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 01:15:21 GMT

“Remember...all I'm offering you is the truth: nothing more.”

Morpheus, The Matrix

I recently rewatched the Matrix.

The main character in the movie is Thomas Anderson, played by Keanu Reeves, a mild-mannered programmer by day and computer hacker by night who goes by the name Neo. In the first act, Thomas has two very different interactions that define his struggle. He encounters the mysterious and beautiful Trinity at a rave, who tells him that things are not what they seem and that she too was familiar with the sense that the world was not right. She tells him that if he dares to look for them, he can find the answers to the questions he is asking.

The second conversation he has is with Agent Smith. After being arrested by Smith and his henchmen, Smith unpacks the two lives Neo had been living. Smith, with punctuated clarity, pronounces the day time life of paying taxes, being a good employee, and responsible citizen. Then, with disdain, he describes his life online - a life that involves unsavory activities. Smith bluntly challenges Neo and states, “One of these lives has a future....the other does…not.”

These two interactions paint a fantastic image of addiction and recovery. As an addict in my addiction, I was living a double life. By day I presented as a respectable citizen, loving father, committed husband, and devoted pastor. But my inner life was one of shame, compulsive behavior, and denial. When I hit my bottom, my higher power clearly said, “One of these lives has a future....the other does not.”

It is easy to look back at that event in my recovery journey and let that moment define my future. While there is some validity in doing so in reality, that moment when I hit bottom and looked up was just the beginning. Each day I have to choose to take the correct colored pill offered by my higher power. I can choose the blue pill and go back to my insanity and denial. I could choose the red pill of recovery, and as Morpheus tells Neo, “stay in wonderland...and (discover) just how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Each morning I must choose to work my steps or return to a life lived in rationalization and denial. A life that is no life at all.

The gift of choosing the red pill each morning is that I get to experience reality.

In a recent meeting where our topic was hope, I shared that I have to detach from trying to control the specific outcome of my recovery. I do not hope that if I am in recovery, I will get a better job, make more money, find the right partner, etc. I hope that “I will be returned to sanity daily as I participate in the process of recovery.*” When I am restored to sanity, my circumstances may change. They may be easy or difficult, but I am sane - able to see them for what they are. Not a reason to return to addiction. Not a reason to act out. Just a circumstance. One which will not last forever.

The 12 Step Program of recovery is a path to living in rigorous honesty - in truth. While I may use this program to arrest my sex, love, and pornography addiction, others find freedom from the slavery of alcohol, drugs, gambling, codependency, and other process and chemical addictions. In each case, it works when we choose to live in the real world and not hold on to the unfulfilled promise of escapism offered by our drug of choice. We get to live in the truth. Jesus spoke to this connection between truth and freedom in John 8.

Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.”

John 8:31-32, The Message

Recovery may or may not restore your marriage, may or may not increase your standard of living, but it will set you free. A free man or woman can find peace with little or a lot or in times of partnership and aloneness. This freedom to be present in our bodies for our recovery destroys shame and empowers us to be our true selves. We learn to wake up from the dream of addiction and awaken to the truth of redemption.

Which pill are you going to take today?

Prayer: Redeemer God, may you grant me the courage to embrace truth and honesty today, trusting that in doing so, you shall bring new and deeper levels of freedom to be just as you created me - a child of God who is loved by you into wholeness. Amen.

Shane Montgomery
Conway, AR

*S.L.A.A. Signs of Recovery© 1990 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Message
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

A Beacon on the Road

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 01:17:47 GMT

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people who surrounded me in those early days as I began to emerge from the darkness of active addiction. To be truthful, it’s impossible to remember them all; there were many acts of kindness that I wasn’t able to see and will never know. Yet there they were, a veritable squad of cheerleaders urging me forward into new life. There are those, of course, who remain bright in my mind’s eye. This is a story about one of those beacons.

On one of the darkest days of my life, I was sitting in the local courthouse waiting to meet with a prosecutor. I had hit rock bottom with a resounding and humiliating splat. I was trying to wrap my mind around how I had gotten there. The shame was overpowering, and I had little reason for optimism about what would happen next.

As I waited, I noticed a young girl, maybe 4 or 5 years of age, with cascades of curly brown hair, scampering around the corridor. I recall thinking, “if this was last week, I might have looked for the girl’s parents and asked if I could bless her.” In my early priesthood, a mentor had recommended this as a spiritual practice. And I loved it. But it wasn’t last week. It was now. I had been arrested for possession, removed from my parish, and suspended. No clerical collar today. No blessing of children.

As I sat there, lost in thought, and wrapped in self-pity, I realized that that little girl was now standing in front of me, regarding me with her enormous brown eyes. When I said hello, she solemnly handed me one of those giant paper clips (I remember that it was pink) with as much care as if it were a Fabergé egg. “This is for you,” she said. “Don’t put it in your mouth.” And then she scrambled up and sat beside me to chat. A gift, some advice, and companionship. It sounds a lot like God to me.

That was 7+ years ago. Along the road of recovery, what with moving into and out of rehab, then sober housing, eventually an apartment, and then halfway across the country, some of the souvenirs of my new life have gone astray, that giant pink paperclip among them. Even so, that little girl’s gift to me has remained in my heart.

Recently, I shared part of this story in a sermon. The Gospel was Jesus telling the disciples to learn about the reign of God from children. “Look into the tiniest faces and see God,” I said.

After the service, in one of those lovely ways that the universe sometimes rhymes, the first person to greet me at the door solemnly handed me, you guessed it, a giant pink paperclip. “This is for you,” he said. And then, with a wink, “don’t put it in your mouth.”

This new souvenir now lives in my Prayer Book, and I hope to hold on to it for a long time. But, even if I don’t, I will always treasure, and hope to pass on to others, the gift of that nameless little girl. On that dreadful day, I couldn’t bless her, but she blessed me with a warm, bright beacon illuminating the road of happy destiny, a path that I look forward to trudging for many days to come.

Paul J.
Muncie, IN

Grumble or Grateful

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 00:01:04 GMT

Do you ever complain?

I do!

I was challenged with this recently when my Rector taught through the book of Job in the Lectionary. He described the tendency we have as humans to grumble about just about everything. He recalled the people of Israel in the wilderness. Not long after crossing the Red Sea, they quickly longed to return to Egypt. After all, they had full bellies and excellent mattresses. Ah, the good ol ’ days. They seemed to forget that the return to Egypt was a return to enslavement.

In my recovery, I can identify two types of looking back. The one I am most familiar with is called euphoric recall. Euphoric recall is when I look back at a previous addiction episode in a positive light. I remember doing this when I first began my twelve-step journey. Oh, the adventures! The compulsion would cover up the pain of dealing with challenging emotions. How easy it was to sit in the ashes of my addiction and grumble, “It was better when I was acting out.” Not dealing with my problems, my character defects through acting out in my addiction seemed like bliss compared to the pain I felt as I began to experience withdrawal.

For me, euphoric recall is a form of denial. When I choose to focus on the high from my addiction, I deny the reality of the consequences of acting out. I only get a partial picture of what my addiction does to others and the toll it takes on my spirit, body, and sanity. My program urges me to practice rigorous honesty. Euphoric recall is the opposite of that commitment.

I also find myself recalling the early days of recovery. Lately, this often occurs as I remember the pre-pandemic community of how things used to be. Being able to see each other face-to-face instead of through a video screen, the simple pleasure of setting up chairs in the meeting room, and the personal interaction that doesn’t translate across the internet are things I miss. It is also easy to compare my current level of passion in recovery against those early days.

I must not coast on my past successes in recovery. Thankfully, my friends in the program remind me that doing so is a risky business. There are no laurels upon which to rest. The saying is true when we feel we are doing good in recovery; our addict is out in the parking lot doing push-ups.

Each morning I remind myself that the best position to begin my day is on my knees. It is a reminder that I require a power greater than myself. It is a position of humility. Before recovery, I would pray at my desk, like I was negotiating a business contract. Getting on my knees is a deceleration of surrender to a power greater than myself.

For me, I have to remind myself that the life of acting out is a life I choose to die to each day. Occasionally, I have to remind myself that I must decide that from moment to moment. There is no life in the past, be it by acting out or my early recovery days. Like a partner in a marriage whose honeymoon is in the rearview mirror, I must now lean into the choice to invest in and maintain a spiritual love connection to God. When I look back, I miss the blessing of the now.

I once read that God doesn't live in the past nor the future. God exists in the now, the present moment. While I may want to argue the theology of that statement, experience tells me it is true in my recovery. Realizing that God is present in my life today, this hour, this second that each moment is holy in itself, is a source of immense gratitude.

It ’s sure hard to complain when I am grateful.

How about you?

Shane Montgomery
Conway. AR
October 13, 2021

Imagination

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 23:46:24 GMT

In the book of Nehemiah, we read: “Then I sent to him a message saying, “No such things as you say have been done; you are inventing them out of your own mind.” How often have we told another, or we have been told, “That’s all in your imagination.” To addicts, practicing or in recover, imagination can be a blessing or a curse.

I answered the door knowing that it was a police officer bringing in a teenage girl whom he had picked up around two a.m. She was high and reeked of cheap beer. From experience, I knew I got more information from the kids at this hour of the morning if I cooked a hamburger than just sit and fill out paperwork. She told me she had taken a fifth of whiskey to a party of underage youth. Prior to leaving home, she ground up a handful of pills she found in the medicine cabinet. “Why did you do that?” “I just wanted to see what would happen.”

I remember those days. “If this makes me feel good. How much better would I feel if I had another, and another.” The first night I drank alcohol, I was in my early twenties. I poured myself drinks from every bottle on the table and paid the physical, emotional. and spiritual price for it. This is what happens when our imagination runs wild. A sniff of amyl nitrate and one may begin to imagine how much better it would feel “if we had a few young women around.”

The gift of the imagination brought about much inhuman history from creating a spade, a wheel, a motor, wings, flying in space, flying cars, drones. Most of these are used for the good of the community. Unfortunately, there are those whose anger and hatred will turn these into weapons of war and destruction The imagination has created some wonderful meals and spices to go with them. The imagination has brought about a revolution in clothing, art, movies, etc.

Not all companies appreciate those employees whose imagination goes beyond the status quo. The church encourages one to use their imagination to celebrate the liturgy provided the liturgist stays within certain bounds and sticks with the prescribed texts.

“What would this swirl look like if I breathed life into it?’ asked God of Herself once. Her Spirit breathed, the swirl moved, light came from darkness, gases exploded, rocks flew into the nothingness creating space and the dormant seeds began to evolve to become what they were meant to be and become. [and after twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness, God said to herself, “I’ll call it a day.”]

In his song, “IMAGINE,” John Lennon invites us to imagine - No heaven or hell, people living one day at a time; No countries, no religion, no possessions, no greed or hunger and nothing to kill for; humanity living in peace – a brother/sisterhood of humanity.

In this song Lennon admits he will be called a dreamer; he knows he is not alone, and we are invited to dream the impossible dream of humanity living in peace. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

My imagination went dark and empty as I stood at the door of my boss’s office- “I think I have a drinking problem,” I said, and stated I would never drink again. “Why could I not have waited till Monday” I thought later on. Perhaps my Higher Power was preventing me from another weekend drinking spree.

I threw myself wholeheartedly into the program in order to look good. My imagination had me climbing the corporate ladder as I continued to do over and above what I was asked to do -- except get sober. I stayed on an extended dry drunk.

I think I am afraid of my imagination. I don’t want to be disappointed or disappoint. Never did I imagine myself with a D. Min., never did I imagine myself with two books published (one just arrived today.) And yet, I imagine a novel (finished), a set of short stories for my grandkids (almost finished), a drawer filled with what might pass for poetry. I never imagined myself conducting retreats for those of us in recovery and yet it has happened.

The wonder- full thing about the above (and I may be bragging a little) is that I remember writing it; I remember sharing it with a friend; I remember my nervousness. As long as I stay sober, I can imagine a world filled with wonder. that may or may not become a reality. It’s ok to imagine and take it one day at a time.

Séamus D. Greater New Orleans.

Memories

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 02:02:35 GMT

“Remember this!”
Communion at our church, St. Paul’s of Newport, Kentucky, was moving along smoothly last Sunday. Suddenly, I had a flashback—one of those terrible returns to the past. Maybe it was the slight smell of wine sniffed as I “took the Cup” proffered by our Rector.

I fought the coming recollection but to no avail. Visions started to zoom through my brain and they weren’t visions of comfort and joy or meditation. No, my mind was in the process of pointing out to me one of those twists in our path as we worked the Program. Yes, my mind started to focus on one of those shameful “evenings before & mornings after,” but that morning I had been greeted by words of comfort and joy in the sermon and the beautiful forgiving words of the Book of Common Prayer. With that, this approaching horrific vision of our alcoholic vanished.

Whenever this happens, and it’s rare when it appears, I look at it as if my Higher Power is telling me,

“Now Jim, don’t get all down in the dumps on Me. Remember where you came from and the path you walked as you entered and worked the Program. Those days of rage are long gone.”

But, I believe we need to be reminded of the importance of “remembering those days of rage,” at least a bit of them.

I pause, smile and recall that first AA meeting of others reaching out and offering assistance. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first time I said anything publicly at a discussion meeting, the spirits of joy at those Thanksgiving banquets, and so much more.

When one of these visions rears its ugly head and starts to come back, I acknowledge the past but remember anew that I have been blessed by the Grace of the Program and a feeling of gratitude casts its marvelous cover! These occasional dark reflections of the past are closed off and we receive the wonderful reminder of a message of recovery we are blessed to carry.

JRA/St. X, Noon, Cincinnati.

“Figure it out” is not a slogan.

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 15:19:19 GMT

“Figure it out” is not a slogan.

In the River where I swim, a beaver swims and lives and plays.

I suspect this beaver has a family, yet I see only one beaver ever.

I’ve read that beaver build complex structures with many ways in and out so that they always feel safe yet never feel trapped. Historically, I’ve felt as though I emotionally resemble this all too well.

This beaver never has to figure out where to go or what to do when the people let their dogs off leash. Beaver swims silently, rapidly against the current into its dam.

If a dog (or human) dare follow, Beaver is likely no longer inside and not likely to be found because the way out can’t be figured out.

This morning, while I was swimming in the River, rains poured down.

Not too long ago in such a situation, my amygdala would have signaled fight-flight-freeze-which one?-all three!

Today, the rain poured down on me in the River, and I surfaced, lifted my goggles, and saw Beaver speeding upstream.

Beaver wasn’t flipping her lid; “nothing to figure out here!”

My cell phone, keys, towel sat on a rock across the River. I couldn’t figure out how to get to them, how to save them from the rain.

My car was parked across the River and down the road - windows down. I couldn’t figure out how I would drive home with wet seats or how I’d dry them out.

“Figure it out” is not a slogan.

“For You alone my soul waits in silence;
my hope is from the Beloved.
Enfolding me with strength and steadfast love, My faith shall remain firm.
In the Silence rests my freedom and my guidance; for You are the Heart of my heart,
You speak to me in the Silence.” (Ps. 62, Merrill)

Turning from the drink, turning from the pills—these are second nature to me now, yet the emotions linked lie just beneath the surface.

Today, when I saw the beaver swimming beside me in the River in the rain, I stopped, took a deep breath, observed the beaver and the River and the rain and myself, and proceeded to swim upstream with the beaver.

I left the worries for another time.

“Figure it out” is not a slogan; “In the Silence rests my freedom” might be mine.

Brandon Beck
St Mark’s Episcopal Church, San Marcos TX
22 September 2021

Day One of Confinement in Hospital Alcohol Lock-down Ward

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:51:28 GMT

Not sure how I got there, to St. Smithers Hospital. I recall coming home from a dinner party and found myself leaning on the hospital’s registration desk. The floor seemed slippery ‘cause I had a hard time holding myself upright. A gurney appeared and I was told to “get on” and with a couple of folks holding and pulling me, I sorta fell on this bed-looking thing. Someone was pulling at some straps running over my chest, legs, arms. I was a bit confused, my mind fuzzy so I couldn’t raise any protest. Someone at this desk said, “Go to Rm 3-37” and off we went to Room 37, 3^rd floor. The door looked strange. It was 2 doors, a door in a door. The room was small, a bed and a chair which both were rather large, heavy -- looked like one of those over-sized brown plastic loungers with a lever and cup holder on the side. A nurse handed me one of those sheet-like gowns so popular with the medical profession, “Put this thing on,” she ordered. Still in my suit and my arms and legs belted down, still kinda fuzzy, I eventually wrestled out of my suit and on with the gown. I was handed a pair of grey socks that had rubber cleats on the sole, an IV plugged into my arm. Of course, they had earlier taken my belt, shoe laces, a pen, phone, pencil, calendar and briefcase. Forgot to tell you, but I had a bracelet put on by the people behind that registration desk. They also gave me some stuff to read, a dark blue book whose cover I couldn’t read, a pamphlet with a bunch of dates and times for what looked like meetings. That first night, even drugged by the IV just inserted in my arm, I didn’t sleep very well probably because nurses kept waking me, “How are you,” they’d ask, a different one it seemed each hour, and always checking the IV.
So began a program I had placed myself in to examine whether I needed treatment for alcoholism. I say “I had placed myself. That wasn’t the whole story. Let’s put it this way: my spouse said, ‘It was the Program at St. Smithers or I was out.’“

I remember leaving the hospital in a week and attending my first AA meeting. Actually, I enjoyed the stay in the hospital. Couple AA-ers dropped by and we talked about their Program, what they did, and they made some recommendations for meetings. I had time to consider what was happening to me. I of course wasn’t blind. I knew I was using alcohol to deal with life and alcohol didn’t provide much relief from what I termed my bag of problems. I felt a new focus of what they were saying at St. Smithers. I saw there were other options, that my use of alcohol was a false and dangerous drug that was killing my relations with myself, family and others, an addiction which was pulling me downward and deeper into a dark pit. This awakening didn’t exactly come overnight but my eyes started to open at St. Smithers. This experience finally put me on Recovery Road and I was anxious to get out so I could spend the time working the Program. There were bumps in that road, all was not smooth, there were a couple detours but those were short and painful. I stuck with it. I had almost given up at St. Smithers but people came to reach out to me sharing their experiences with their drug of addiction.

So, I have to remember, there is help available. I was not alone. It seemed as if we joined hands and traveled similar paths. It works but it takes time and work on the elements of the Program. But it is a life-giving experience which “works if you work it.” The Program has been a “life saver” for me and my family. I am grateful.

Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati

Wounded-Healer

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 17:19:22 GMT

In the Yom Kippur confessional, we read: “Before a person is healed, he must acknowledge his illness. Before a person finds light, she must know her own darkness. And before a people is forgiven, it must confess its sins. We confess our sins and those of our fellows for we are responsible, one for another. Heal us Adonai, and lead us through darkness to light.”
Living and working the steps is a journey from darkness to light, from powerlessness to an understanding of that power ‘greater than ourselves” that can restore us to sanity” and we “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for His will for us and the power to carry it out.”

I was four and a half years in the program doing everything right for the wrong reasons and so, when I had my spiritual awakening, I began to acknowledge I am an alcoholic, that my life was unmanageable. I had not lost a job, a home, or transportation. What hit me most was I had lost myself; I had lost my values. Was I sick or what? Yes, I was one sick cookie and I needed to be healed. For this reason, I let people know I am in the program forty-two years but I’m only sober thirty-seven. had to acknowledge my illness. As used to be said in therapy; “You can’t deal with something you don’t own.”

Before I found the light, I had to acknowledge my own darkness. It never ceases to amaze me that, here I was, a priest, a counselor, walking around in darkness and thinking I was a light to the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. Knowledge of an illness does not mean that one can see one’s own illness. Just because I know about the signs and symptoms of an illness does not mean I can recognize them in myself. Denial is an outstanding blindness for victims of this disease. Not only was I blind to the disease, I was spiritually blind. I could not see how my behavior was impacting myself and others. I could not see the goodness of my Higher Power directing me to those who could and would help me if I sought them out. I could not see that my use, abuse, addiction to alcohol and other drugs was killing me slowly.

To be forgiven, I had to confess my failings. This was near to impossible. I had no character defects (Pride!!). I had to be taught. And, I was. I was taught by a gentle and compassionate layperson who did not attend any church but understood spiritually much better than I did. I learned humility and gratitude.

Mentally, Emotionally, Socially, and Physically I was dying. Some weeks after I “graduated” from treatment, I returned to retake some IQ test and, uncomfortably and happily, discovered that my brain was functioning much, much better. Emotionally I came to realize I was functioning on two cells; anger and fear. I had to learn to say “I feel____” without the use of “ think; or, like” in the sentence. I also had to stop saying “You make me feel___” Socially, I realized, I had surrounded myself with people who drank as much if not more than I did. I was Spiritually deceased. I was among the walking dead.

I look back and see that it was those who had already confessed their failings who became wounded-healers for me, helped me see my own failings, own them, and then let myself be healed through confession, forgiveness of self and others, accepting forgiveness and asking for God’s power to be my source of power in the future.

Bill W. said that the steps of AA could be found in any religion and philosophy. Here in this Jewish prayer for the day of atonement (at-one-ment: Becoming whole) is pretty much the steps I and others used to grow from powerlessness to being given the power to carry out the work we are called to do. “Before a person is healed, he must acknowledge his illness. Before a person finds light, she must know her own darkness. And before a people is forgiven, it must confess its sins. We confess our sins and those of our fellows for we are responsible, one for another. Heal us Adonai, and lead us through darkness to light.”

Séamus D.
Greater New Orleans Area

Willingness to Go to Any Lengths

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 01:44:32 GMT

A month ago, I revisited the church where I first walked into my first Twelve-Step meeting. This meeting, held in a local Lutheran church, sets adjacent to the school where I spent years as a teacher. Perhaps I had avoided returning to this particular meeting for years because outside of the meeting room window sat the wreckage of my past and the amends I had been procrastinating for years.

As alcoholism consumed my life, there was little doubt: I had lost the ability to function. The light of passion that once filled my days of teaching was extinguished. It was easy to see my: tardiness and the absent days, and the hallways I had once filled with student work were bare. As hard as my administration tried to compassionately talk to me, I found it baffling to imagine how to escape my self-inflicted hell. I knew the end had come, and I resolved myself to quitting.

The shame of my failure only deepened the darkness of my alcoholism. I was lost and was not sure if there was a God, and if there was a God, I did not feel worthy. I wandered aimlessly like a lost sheep. In desperation I in walked into my first 12-Step meeting, but for several months, fear kept me from coming back. I was desperate, but filled with the fear of what life would be like without the lull of numbness.

It would be several more months of misery before I would walk back into a Twelve-Step meeting and attend outpatient treatment, as a last-ditch effort to not die. Reluctantly, I found a sponsor. If it had not been a requirement of treatment, I am sure I would not have done so. I was steadfast to my self-will. To be frank, willingness and I would not get well acquainted for years to come.

As my half-measure sobriety spiraled and in the midst of the pandemic, I found myself in a dark place again. This time there was no pink cloud filled with the excitement of the naïve new, but rather a prayer I repeated, "Please God, guide me into willingness." Slowly, my prayers were answered. I rigorously worked with my sponsor, I took suggestions, and I attended meetings daily. I continued to pray for willingness.

I became willing to go any lengths for sobriety. Part of those lengths involved attending a meeting at the Lutheran church I had visited years before. Just like I did in the prior visit, I peered out the window and saw the school. I knew it was time to face the wreckage of my past. It was time to make the amends that I had been avoiding. I immediately called my sponsor and told her it was time. I prayed for willingness. I put my trust in God rather than fear.

As I reached out to my former principal, I prayed for willingness, "Thy will be done, not mine." In the arms of God my fears were calmed. The day came to make the amends. The morning was filled with a connection from God that he was in control, and my being was filled with peace.

For years I had allowed fear and shame to dictate the narrative in my mind. The truth, the reality of the amends, could not have been further from the lies I had ingrained. When I arrived to make the amends, I was lovingly embraced with a hug. In that moment all my fears faded. My heart and soul were filled with peace. I sat down and the words of the amends came out of my mouth. I was met words of Godly compassion. When I was told I had been forgiven, I knew those words came from a genuine place of God’s love. The fear and shame could not compete with the abundance of grace I found while making the amends.

In that moment, I understood the beauty in willingness and God's Will, not mine.

A Time of Quiet

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 00:32:59 GMT

As a child and teen and young adult...well until I was almost 40...I fought to be the first and the best.

I was the first and only girl in the Boys’ Little League.

I was the youngest, best girl (child) (person) in Taekwondo.

I was the only bassoonist in the band, and the top contrabassoonist in the state.

I was the first girl to be quartermaster for the band, and I was the girl who wore pants even though the drum major uniform was designed for girls as a skirt and go-go boots.

I was the first transgender person in the PhD program at the institution I attended.

I was tired, worn out, burned out.¹

My commitment to sobriety from alcohol and drugs, begun in 2003 and not yet finished - never finished - always learning and growing and changing - yet to which I’m always committed - had not yet adapted to recognize and encompass my compulsive perfectionist behaviors.

For a time, I chose not to acknowle

As a child and teen and young adult...well until I was almost 40...I fought to be the first and the best.

I was the first and only girl in the Boys’ Little League.

I was the youngest, best girl (child) (person) in Taekwondo.

I was the only bassoonist in the band, and the top contrabassoonist in the state.

I was the first girl to be quartermaster for the band, and I was the girl who wore pants even though the drum major uniform was designed for girls as a skirt and go-go boots.

I was the first transgender person in the PhD program at the institution I attended.

I was tired, worn out, burned out.¹

My commitment to sobriety from alcohol and drugs, begun in 2003 and not yet finished - never finished - always learning and growing and changing - yet to which I’m always committed - had not yet adapted to recognize and encompass my compulsive perfectionist behaviors.

For a time, I chose not to acknowledge my feelings and to bury my head in the proverbial sands of people-pleasing, over-committing, continual hopping from place to place, and grass-is-greener thinking.

Then I met St. Benedict of Nursia.

And St. Benedict called me to what I thought was an entirely different recovery life.

Now, I practice this recovery life in a more integrated body-mind-soul, God-me-you way.

I practice emotional sobriety along with drug and alcohol sobriety.

I ruminate on St. Benedict’s Rule with a dispersed monastic community.

I honor the community charisms of prayer, service, hospitality, surprise, inclusion, safety, community relationship, study, growth, lectio divina, and humility.

I continue in my sobriety from alcohol and drugs as I learn emotional sobriety through daily reflection on my interactions around these charisms from the view of my reading of The Rule of St. Benedict. Have I noticed my emotions? Have I stopped and stepped back from those emotions? Have I proceeded mindfully after I’ve observed my emotions, using all these charisms as led and empowered by grace?

I am in discernment with this community of dispersed monastics. Am I following The Way I to Vowed Life in this Community? Will I commit to Conversion of Life, Ongoing Growth, Change, Stability, Obedience, Trust, Wisdom, Balance, Absolute Faith in the Goodness of God, and Prophetic Witness?

You see, I have. I do. Every day that I commit and re-commit to this life of recovery - this life of reflection and contemplation of what it means to choose life each and every moment of each and every day - to accept obstacles as “what you see when you take your eyes off the goal”² - to choose all these many ways of being a genderfull and open-minded, humble, living child of God - I am choosing to be a vowed Benedictine.

John Edward Crean, Jr. writes in Recovering Benedict: Twelve-Step Living and the Rule of Benedict for 18 August, in his reflection on Chapter 63 (Community Rank) of The Rule,

Seniors in long-term recovery are not unlike monastics who have made a similar lifelong commitment. The addict’s or codependent’s recovery community is the ploughshare taken up but never abandoned. No matter how hard the struggle, with help from my Higher Power I can persist and persevere. (130)

The formal step of taking vows with The New Benedictine Community will come with time on contact, when God, Jesus, Spirit, Community, and I wink together in readiness and awareness. I don’t have to be first or best. I can just be.

For now, my steps have led me to a time of quiet contemplation - a time and place in which I can listen for the “small, clear voice within”³ as She reminds me that I am a recoverer, lifelong, and God loves me. Amen.

1. Matthew 28-30 (MSG)

2. A wallet card I’ve carried since 2008, a gift from an important lateral ancestor, affectionately known as GG John - now 99 years-old and still going strong, penned by his wild and precious Jackie.

3. Chittister, Joan, OSB. (1992). The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages, Crossroad, New York. 22.

Brandon J Beck, MFA, PhD, Genderfull
St. Mark’s, San Marcos, TX
tkdpower1@gmail.com

The Fire of Love Ignited, Yesterday and Today

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:40:34 GMT

In 1936, in his book, Toward the Future, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” We can only wonder if de Chardin was aware that in the previous year a force had been tapped into that would change the twentieth century and centuries to come.

The fire that was ignited was that of two men discussing a common problem over a cup of coffee (and cigarettes) . The fire was the desire to help other alcoholics find a way to live which, up till then, did not exist. True, there was prohibition; the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, and numerous other ways to attempt to attain sobriety with little success.

The fire ignited was a love for living which was ignited by a Spiritual Awakening to see the world in a new way, through “a new pair of glasses” as it were. “This man spoke my language” said Dr. Bob. In other words, the Bible which he knew so well and taught, did not speak the language he needed to hear. The medical profession of which he was a part, did not speak his language. It was Carl Jung’s concept that, what was needed, was a Spiritual Awakening, that created the spark which ignited a chain of events culminating in Bill and Bob becoming the co-founders of this simple program “which is suggested as a program for sobriety.”

There had to be a fire burning in the hearts of these men as they met with opposition in various forms. After all, where did they go to learn about addiction other than their own devastating experiencing? This same heart that cried out for help; this heart that wanted to be better, that could not find a way out of the bottle, was finally released in an image described as “I became acutely conscious of a presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’”

A third man joined, then a fourth, and more. What were they to do but share their experience, strength and hope as they had little to no other programs from which to draw upon? Rising from the death-grip of addiction, these men wanted to breathe, they wanted to live. These men were on fire due to the love they experienced in their new life the likes of which they had not imagined prior to this. The fire, ignited by Carl Jung with Roland H. who carried that torch to Ebby T. and, from there the fire was further ignited through input from Sam Shoemaker, Fr John Ford, Bishop Fulton Sheen, etc.

Today, millions of men, women, and teens attend meetings that use the twelve-step spiritual program to help them live one day at a time. Some, initially, were put off by the fire of loving concern for one another. “Some of us held onto our old ways.” Sooner or later, that fire which we had experienced drew us back like a moth to a flame. We wanted what those others wanted. We might not have been consciously aware of that (I certainly wasn’t as it took me four and a half years of a dry drunk to get the point).

This past eighteen months have been a pain for so many of us and yet, this past eighteen months have been exciting as people reported being at meetings in Ireland, Australia, England, Germany, etc. The whole wide world (www) of Alcoholics Anonymous was and remains connected by Zoom. Newcomers have arrived in a little square box, asked for a virtual chip and received a virtual hug and they stayed. They stayed because they caught the fire that was burning through the screens of phones and computers, giving support, hope, laughter, compassion, and more.

I have no doubt that if de Chardin were here today he would acknowledge that, in Alcoholics Anonymous (and affiliated twelve-step groups), the fire of love has been harnessed and witnessed as millions of men and women are now living sober and serene lives, are experiencing the love and respect they craved, are now loving and caring wounded healers.

Séamus D

Greater New Orleans Area.

“Do I have to attend all these AA meetings - I’ve been sober 12 years?”

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 22:38:07 GMT

I’ll tell you “why,” I had nine years in the “program.” They weren’t really “high quality AA years” but at least I didn’t have a drink during those years. It frankly was “dry drunk” sobriety. But when I quit going to meetings and said to myself that “I understood the Program” and knew where to get help if I needed it or if I felt a slip was coming, soon, I went back out drinking for 6 or 9 months. And it was a hateful time for me. I knew what was going to happen, and yet, I did it.

So, I know and believe that if I don’t go to the meetings and participate in the inner-workings of the Program, I will get drunk.

But the answer is really “no you don’t have to go to meetings” for the rest of your life. You just have to go to a meeting today, for it’s a-day-at-a time Program.

If I can’t get to a meeting, I make certain that I have “an AA moment” or more every day: I can write this meditation. I re-read the Big Book and some of the new stories in the latest edition. I can reach out to my sponsor or someone I’m working with, and of course, with the experiences we have had with the pandemic, I can always ZOOM into any meeting in the world.

If we don’t maintain a “conscious contact” with the Program, we’re really on shaky grounds. It is best to be part of that energy of 20 or 30 people at a meeting to keep our thinking straight.

It’s your call. AA doesn’t take attendance. We don’t evaluate someone who hasn’t attended for a period of time. Working the Program brings an honesty we lost while out in the wilderness. We learned to be honest with ourselves and not play games that lead to a return to those old days. When you might be in doubt about this, get to a meeting for “a conscious contact.” Why chance it!?

And besides, most meetings are a lot of fun -- meeting new people and old friends -- and I’ve learned that no alcoholic drinks are served at AA meetings.

So, see you at Monday’s meeting!

JRA/St. X Noon, Cincinnati

Scraps: or, What I Rediscovered on my Summer Vacation

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 22:47:16 GMT

It’s anniversary time again and, receiving a coin with the Roman numeral VII tells me that it’s also a jubilee year – a time that lends resonance to my reflection on the providence of grace, particularly the gift of grace found in scraps.

Recovery, as we know, works one day at a time. Looking back over these 2,558 days, I find myself asking in wonder “how did I get here?” Ironically, it’s the very same question I asked in agony before I found the rooms of recovery. As a way of wrapping words around my gratitude, I offer some thoughts about scraps and pilgrimage.

Last Sunday, we heard John’s version of the Feeding of the 5,000. It's a story of God’s miraculous plentitude that we know well. But only in John do we hear Jesus’ direction: “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

Only John tells us how Jesus, with exquisite purposefulness, cares for the fragments. He sees the feast that remains within the leftovers. We might think the miracle is that there is enough food for everyone. Yet for Jesus, having enough isn’t the end of the story. There is always more: a meal that depends on paying attention to what is broken and in pieces, what has been tossed aside.

Fragments. Scraps. Crumbs. Leftovers. Lost. Missing. Gone. These are hard words. Do you consider yourself a scrap? During my using life, thinking of myself as a scrap would have been a compliment.

But in Sunday’s Gospel, John tells us that, in Jesus, God takes extraordinary care of the “scraps,” so that none may be lost. God wants to give us what we don't even realize we need. God knows precisely what we need, which is more than we can ask or imagine.

So, let’s think about scraps for a moment. As the son of a quilter, I automatically think of boxes of fabric remnants. I grew up watching my mother carefully gather up scraps from everywhere – childhood clothes (ours and hers), table skirts, Boy Scout neckerchiefs, even old quilt tops – anything that had a thread of life still in it.

These were then sorted by color and type, and carefully stored against the day when they could be lovingly resurrected; pieced and quilted into something of beauty that hadn’t existed before. Now, somewhere in there, she would say, I remember the perfect little bit of yellow. Warmth and beauty created out of what had been cast away. The Kingdom of God can look a lot like a quilt.

A 12-Step meeting is another sort of collection of scraps. Fellow sufferers, who have been beaten down, broken open and, yet with a thread of life still in them, are washed into church basements and other such places, where each one is lovingly resurrected, remade one day at a time into a beautiful humanity that hadn’t existed before. Through the steps and within the fellowship, hope is created in what had been cast away. The Kingdom of God can look a lot like a 12-Step meeting.

+ + +

I’ve just returned from vacation. It’s the first time I’ve taken two weeks of rest since I can’t remember when. It was a splendid time with friends, family, and happy places in a spot I called home decades ago; it remains important to me to this day.

This trip “home” was different. Without intending it to, it became a pilgrimage of sorts, with stops at places I had lived, favorite museums and restaurants, and graves of long dead friends. Maybe it was because I had more time, maybe it was the particular headspace I was in, but there they were again…scraps. Scraps of my life before active chemical addiction took root. Scraps that reminded me of the wonderful life I had once lived, but couldn’t live into.

Leafing through this scrapbook of memories, what stood out was the gift of friendship and hospitality – sometimes extended, and far more often received. A pilgrimage of any sort, especially the journey of recovery, is unthinkable as a solo act. Hospitality, given and received, is essential. Every time someone welcomes you, or gives you a suggestion, or shares a mystical insight or spiritual place with you, scraps that had been gathered long ago are shared and find new life.

That new life is evident at every meeting, in person or online, where the gathered faces show us each day the gracious abundance of God operating in us and through us – we who are scrappy scraps, and holy remnants. Broken, yet never lost. By living the 12 Steps we, together, are nourished, strengthened, re-formed, and transformed by grace, to do the work that God has given us to do…to show to the world that recovery is always possible.

And then, 24 hours later, it all begins again. And again. And again. Scraps of experience, strength, and hope are shared, and the result of our various pilgrimages, each of us trudging the road of happy destiny with our companions, is always, always, more than we can ask or imagine.

Paul J.

Compassion and Integrity

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 02:08:23 GMT

I’ve been thinking about integration a lot—being a person of integrity I mean—as in Eric Erickson’s final stage of human emotional development “Ego integrity v. despair,” that apex of psychic maturity reserved for those of us aged 65+ who have somehow managed to get our acts together as we hit senescence.

One of the best things about the Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church is that we can integrate our faith lives with our recovery lives. We who are bilingual, that is equally familiar with The Big Book and The Book of Common Prayer, find it comforting to be at a gathering (or to read a blog post) where the discussion slides easily from Twelve Steps to Ten Commandments.

When I was still an active alcoholic, I was perplexed by the inconsistency between my profession of faith and my behavior. I longed for integrity, for feeling/being at one with myself. How could a choir-singing, theology-quoting loving mother of two also get drunk regularly and spectacularly? How could my mantra be, “This one doesn’t matter.” I was far from being put together; I was disintegrated.

And then came recovery. I can say without batting an eyelash, “My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk.” More and more my values and my actions have been aligned. By the Grace of God, with respect to picking up a drink or a drug, I have made daily choices that have kept me clean and sober.

And I have not done that by myself. It is only by going to meetings and hearing thousands and thousands of other recovering people talk about how they have made it through life—through unimaginable losses, challenges, and joys—that I have been able to continuously head in the direction of wholeness, peace, and sobriety.

Not alone. On my first sober anniversary, my sponsor gave me a plaque with the Serenity Prayer on the front and her inscription “Alone no more” on the back. I treasure that gift and that truth. The readings at church this past Sunday (July 18, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost) included Psalm 23 (which always makes me cry with its familiarity and its promise of protection) and Mark 6, where Jesus and the disciples go off to a “lonely” (deserted) place” but the crowds were there before them, and Jesus had compassion on them because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.”

We become at one with ourselves, integrated, when we stop trying to do it by ourselves. We recover when our ears are opened and we can hear the voices around us saying, “Alone no more.” One of my hobbies continues to be rumination, relishing all the mistakes I’ve made, all the times in my life (yes, even, and especially since getting sober) when I’ve blundered into foolishness, made terrible choices, or run away from a solution. But the compassion offered to me by Jesus, the structure offered to me by the disciplines of faith and Program, and the fellowship I enjoy both at church services and 12-Step meetings enable me to integrate my okayness and my imperfections and reach out to see if there’s anyone I can help today.

Christine H.

Needy, Desperate, and Shameless

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 03:09:43 GMT

In her book, The RECOVERING Intoxication and its aftermath, Leslie Jamison writes: “The drunk self becomes the self-revealed rather than the self-transformed, an identity that has been lurking inside all along; needy, desperate, shameless.”

How often have we heard it said, ‘in vino veritas” “in wine there is truth.” How I wish I had applied that to myself instead of others while I was active in my addiction. It is fascinating to look back and see how quickly, and, at times, how accurately, I was to spot the problem/addicted drinker/user while I could not see what was happening to myself.

The self-revealed came in emotions spilling out, talking honestly (which I would not do when sober) to acquaintances and a few friends alike usually in the early hours of the morning. Later in that day I would either have forgotten the conversation or, that which I remembered I drowned. I can recall days reading Will the Real Me Please Stand Up by John Powell and knowing exactly who needed to read it. I made notes, so I could quote it in a sermon or talk or in counseling.

How often have we heard it said, or said it ourselves, “S/He would be a lot more fun if s/he had a drink.” I knew that to be true. I was a lot happier (I thought) when I was drinking/using. It wasn’t the drinking self I abhorred it was the self. Drinking gave me a shot at being happy. It was when I got into AA and began to admit I had character defects that I was disgusted at my former self. What I had lost were my values and had lost them so slowly that I had accepted that I didn’t care what others thought of me. Alcohol released the bonds of values instilled and not digested. I was living a lie to the extent that I disliked myself as being “good.” I wanted to be good and be able to drink and I didn’t know that the drink had taken control of me.

I would never have described myself as being “needy, desperate, shameless.” And yet, when I got into recovery, I was able to look back at a life I could hardly recognize and begin to admit to these defects of character which only became more obvious as I spiraled out of control. RECOVERY, SERENITY, and a good moral house-cleaning brought about the self-transformed whom I learned to love and appreciate. I looked back and saw just how distorted my thinking had become and frankly it scared me, embarrassed me, humiliated me.

As an ACOA, I kicked off my addiction to alcohol and drugs at a time when I thought I knew it all, a college student whose brain was just beginning to open while my mind was closing. This needy, desperate, shameless young adult was looking for affirmation in all the wrong places and unaware that that is what I was looking for. I became a loner to avoid those whose company I wanted to be part of but who had boundaries I failed to comprehend. They could take a drink or leave it, they were comfortable in their own skin, I was anything but that.

After five weeks in a four-week treatment program, I spent the next four and a half years on a dry drunk. During this time, I continued to be needy and desperate. I needed people to like me, I needed to be needed as a speaker, as a person willing to go on 12step calls. What I needed was a sponsor, but I didn’t think I needed one. I needed to read the Big Book and apply it to myself, but I read it to quote it at meetings. I needed to go to meetings and listen instead of thinking I had all this information to share.

Today, words can’t express my gratitude for all those who talked to me, shared with me, confronted me about my behavior, and were sufficiently patient that I finally experienced what was needed to get into the program - an admission of powerlessness and a spiritual awakening that led to a self-transformed who I could love and like and become comfortable in my own skin.

Séamus D.

Greater New Orleans area

An Ongoing Personal Inventory

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 01:55:25 GMT

Alcoholics Anonymous is not a “one trick pony” after that Step 4 inventory. But we are called to periodically undertake another inventory and to do so “continuously.

We are humans after all and our lives change, sometimes through drastic changes, but change might be subtle and seemingly appears out of nowhere. We attend meetings and in the discussions we may discover some way we have changed, perhaps a new thought prompts us to ask ourselves the same question this newbie has put on the table. Perhaps we are confronted with a personal problem or sudden family crisis both of which may prompt us to ask, “What’s my role in it?” Then it’s important to sit down, take out a piece of paper and analyze what the issue is all about and map out what you may have said or done that has caused the harm. But just because you haven’t been confronted by one of those “pop-up” crises, you still are on the hook, for Step 10 calls us to “continually” undertake that examination. Who knows, perhaps in doing so you avoid a sudden surprise issue that pops up.

These review efforts provide us with a chance at an honest and complete look-see at ourselves. We’re human beings after all who at one point in our lives were less than honest with ourselves, and with others, perhaps having engaged in a lot of falsehoods especially as to our conduct.

To do this “continuously” is why this Program is such a grand piece of our living a life that is something more than going through the motions. Here is a suggestion along those lines: use your inventory as a means to checkout your spiritual life. Sometimes that responsibility gets lost with the pressure of our lives in today’s busy world. But a spiritual life is one of the keys to a deep understanding of “who we are, what are we doing” and is “my value system on the proper page?” An examination of your spiritual life may be the complete focus of your Step 10 work.

At the heart of Step 10 is your affirmation that you will take responsibility for your conduct, face it, and make amends where necessary. Some have done this at set times of the year, perhaps during the Christmas holidays. Maybe after an important project is completed and the usual “down time” before the next one comes along. Perhaps this is that quiet time to work on Step 10. Of course, religious retreats are a natural place to work through some of these issues especially when the retreat involves a facilitator who is skilled at keeping you headed in the overall best and productive direction, and to “call you” when you get off track or start playing games.

Well, Step 10; is another benefit of being part of the life of the Program.

“Gee, thanks Bill and Dr. Bob!”

Jim A/St X noon, Cincinnati

“This Pandemic Thing”

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 19:46:01 GMT

Am I glad we can see the end of all the restrictions of gatherings of people and especially the standards relating to the wearing of masks. I’m certain there may be situations where we won’t attend some large gathering or situations where the exposure is higher than we might want to chance.

For me, I have enjoyed the ZOOM methods many groups utilized. It took a bit of learning the rules of the drill but when learned, it all worked just fine. These ZOOM sessions of St. X Noon, my home group, usually drew a goodly number, perhaps not as many as the regular sessions. But, it only takes 2 to “have a meeting” so attendance wasn’t an issue. It was interesting to see the number of people from around the country, some were fairly regular attendees.

But of course, I missed the intimate feelings from participation with people of like minds as far as our alcoholism is concerned, and I really look forward to reconvening our “live” discussion meetings.

I felt a problem some days about 30 minutes before a ZOOM meeting started. I felt less disciplined to turn the ZOOM program on. I knew there were hundreds of meetings “on the internet” which would enable me to excuse myself from my regular meeting and pick up a substitute later that day.

But the lesson I re-discovered is that an important part of the Program is the discipline we attach to ourselves that calls us to set a program, a path, a known time we have gone to a certain meeting. We found we always learned a lot, picked up some wisdom and enjoyed the relationships we developed by personal contacts.

I didn’t mind ZOOMing, but I am looking forward to this Fall when I suspect we will shift back to that old platform of physical gatherings to share the message.

“See you at the meeting.”

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati

Our Spiritual Condition

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:25:52 GMT

“Your worth is not what you have, but who you are.” Matshona Dhliwayo.

“Seamus, this man collects the trash at my house every Monday. At a time when I thought I was nothing but trash, he picked me up, brought me here, and has taught me everything I know about alcoholism.” This man, I learned, was a rather wealthy individual but now that made no difference. At the door we checked out our last name, our status in society, etc. and we shared one thing in common ‘I’m_______and I’m an alcoholic.”

Once I accepted that I am an alcoholic – which was about four and a half years in the program – I began to learn more about who I am. There is so much more to me than being an alcoholic and yet, without acknowledging this aspect of who I am, I could, again, lose everything I have gained.

When I came into the fellowship, I believed that because of my educational background I was going to be a great asset to the group- a background in theology and counseling. What I eventually learned was that I had to relearn everything I thought I knew.

I sometimes have a quiet laugh as I find myself in places where one’s status in society, their level of education, etc. are the mark of success and who will spend time with you. The real joy is walking into the fellowship, getting a cup of coffee, introducing myself as “I’m Seamus” and that’s all that is needed to be part of a genuine fellowship.

I’m one of those in the fellowship who, periodically, experiences a brief period of depression; a time when I don’t feel like sharing; when I don’t believe I have anything to share, when my self-worth has suddenly gone down the toilet bowl. It is at a time like this I return to Steps one -three; I am powerless, I need help, God help me.

At times like this I revert to my old ideas of self-worth and look at what I don’t have, what I could have had if only…..; and quickly I have a pity party going on in my head. It’s at times like this I have to remember: “Your worth is not what you have, but who you are.”

A few hundred years ago I remember reading. Will the Real Me Please Stand Up and using the contents of that book to apply to others. None of that talk of “masks” applied to me, I had a healthy self-image, or so I thought. Then God decided she had waited long enough for me to get the message. She pushed me into my boss’s office where I found myself saying, “I think I have a drinking problem.” I didn’t have a drinking problem I knew how to drink. The problem was I had no control over it once I started and the absence of control was due to the absence of self-worth; a hole in my heart that I was attempting to heal with the alcohol and negative behavior which, in a disfigured manner, made me feel good.

Steps four, five, six and seven opened my eyes to my behavior and who I am. That was quite an eye-opener. And even then, I did not get well. I took my sweet time making amends and then I had to live this program on a twenty-four-hour basis seven days a week. ”Seamus, if you’re not living the program you ain’t working the steps” said one of the old timers. It took a while but, in time, I came to realize just how right he was. Learning to live the program on a daily basis and applying it to “all my affairs” opened my eyes to a different me, a ‘me’ I could now live with and enjoy my own company without my companions of Jack, John, Bud, etc.

When I sobered up, I had little to nothing of value. However, I knew I had something no one could take from me – sobriety. That was the turning point for me. Sobriety and serenity was what I unconsciously had been chasing in all the wrong places. Now here it was, a gift, and all I had to do was acknowledge that I am powerless, that my life had become unmanageable, that I need help and ask for it. It is a unique feeling to own nothing and yet to feel I have everything I need – sobriety. That simple and that difficult. Live the program and work the steps.

My worth is no longer based on what I have or had or wish I had. Rather it is based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition- one day at a time. I am sober; I am at peace with self, others and God. What more do I need? Nothing.

Séamus D

Greater New Orleans area

HALT!

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:50:47 GMT

No, this is not a new version of a highway stop sign. For the recovering alcoholic, it’s shorthand reminding us of dangerous points in our recovery program.

H –“You’re hungry.” We start thinking of the good foods and drink we enjoyed fairly regularly—a time for us in a sneaky fashion to “sample” various wines and special bourbons. We can snap back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when out of a smokey grill, a flashback takes us to cold beer, delightful company, and a grand time. Ah, those were The Days—but, we now know, they “weren’t”.

A – “You’re angry.” The Big Book says an alcoholic in recovery can’t afford anger. It’s an irrational approach to a perceived hurt, or disappointment, or aggressive action by someone. We need to always “keep our cool”, and not leap at an irrational reaction—a reaction that removes safeguards of patience, “letting go”, “easy does it” and a host of reminders we pick up at meetings.

L - “Lonely.” We learned we had to change our friendships, maybe of longstanding relations. Our acquaintances now were mostly fellow recovering alcoholics. “I miss the old fun days.” If we admitted it, we’d say that we always drank onto that slippery slope with these former friends. Being with them is taking a risk to our sobriety. Let ‘em go their way. Your new way brings you to a new and positive life of serenity.

T - “Tired.” Being tired, stressed out, and so forth is just a way of saying you’re letting your guard down. In some ways it’s a self-indulgent habit. Get to a meeting, work with a newbie—anything, but don’t continue to indulge your own feelings like the old days and use them as an excuse to “take that first drink.”

There, you see? The Program offers a variety of teachings. Go to a meeting today—and maybe tonight make the coffee.

Jim A, St. X Noon

SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Fri, 28 May 2021 02:24:39 GMT

“When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.”

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 64

In all the things that have unfolded in this past pandemic year, my recovering life has kept on a fairly good path for the most part. When in-person meetings were suspended, online meeting offerings emerged a-plenty to fill the fellowship void. Phone contacts and spiritual walks [masked and at proper distance] with recovery friends continued. My work with others individually beginning a recovering life, as well as working with a team to develop a diocesan recovery ministry program resources have kept this semi-retired priest busy. Life has been good on life’s terms overall. And then …

I was donating blood at the end of April as part of the parish outreach program where I am serving part-time. In preparation for the donation, check-in procedures were conducted – temperature check, the multiple Covid questions to be asked, and blood pressure taken. The intake nurse noted that my BP was rather high by the concerned look on her face. She suggested it might be good to check in with my physician. And then … It was obvious to me that something must have been wrong with her BP measurement! I went to a local pharmacy and used their machine – and it registered higher than the first reading. I tried again a few days later with the same result.

My first reaction was to return to my old patterns of “stinking thinking” as those CD’s [and I don’t mean Compact Discs] subtly emerged again after all these years – All these machines must be wrong … I am in good health, just look in the mirror … They can’t be right! I had taken to steering my old frigate called Rationalization to sail down that River of Denial again. And then …

I remembered what the program has taught me. I stopped, prayed for God’s wisdom and will, and listened. From this place of grounding in the spiritual Presence, I called my doctor for an appointment and check of my blood pressure. No surprise it was still too high, and so I began with medication support and reconfiguring my diet – not that ANYONE’S diet has not been out of sync this past year!! In essence, I grounded in myself in the principles of what the program or a recovering life has taught me – Do the next right thing and the next thing right. And then … on the day of my 24^th AAnniversary, the reading from the Daily Meditations was the title of this offering! Who says there are coincidences in the world? For me, they are only God-incidences for which I am grateful.

Life happens. Our health changes as we grow more “mature” in chronological ways. Thanks be to God for this program of recovering life I have been blessed to live. I am off my frigate called Rationalization, off the river called Denial.

I am responsible. I am grateful.

Paul G.

Newark Delaware

If they only knew…

Fri, 21 May 2021 02:31:59 GMT

“Strange, he thought, the places in yourself that you don’t know about, the deep places inside you that can be weeping all the time that your mouth is talking or laughing.” SEEK THE FAIR LAND, Walter Macken.

Another way of putting the above quotation is “crying on the inside while laughing on the outside.” When I look back at the years of my active addiction, I can now see many of those times when, to all externals, I was the center of attention, having ‘a good old time,’’ and, inside, I was crying, thinking “if they only knew how miserable I feel.” “If they only they knew how stupid I feel.” “If they only …”

The sad part is that I knew, on some level, my life was miserable and yet the only “solution” was to feed the disease that was causing my misery, feed it with alcohol, drugs, anything but an honest discussion.

I was a young seminarian and had recently triggered my disease when I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous, brought to a meeting as a visitor. I sat in the back of that smoke filled, relatively dark room and listened to better confessions than I would hear later on in a confessional-box. That night I chain smoked as I listened to the topic of “Honesty” and wanting to get out of there for a drink. Men and women were being honest with one another as I was getting tied up in knots because, again, on some level I could identify with much of what they were sharing but I could not bring myself to say so, probably not even to myself. I wanted to deny it. After all, I wasn’t “that bad.” I “was different.” But, at some level, I knew I wasn’t. When the meeting ended, I escaped to find some company with whom to have a drink. People who drink alone are alcoholics – so I thought.

While I was talking up a good story, my insides were crying. Crying because I was lying to myself and everyone else. Crying, because I could help others ( I was a counselor) and couldn’t help myself. Crying, because I was so damn lonely and alone even as I pushed away people I admired and wanted to be close to.

As my conscious awareness of my unhappiness increased so too was it just as quickly drowned by the denial of reality. I ‘knew’ I was not living up to the values I professed and minimized my behavior on the grounds that “He’s worse than I am.” Deep inside, in the darkest recesses of my mind, something began to stir, and I didn’t like it and didn’t know what to do about it.

It is said we come to AA via “a nudge from the judge or a nod from god.” I believe my Higher Power got tired of giving me a nod and, one Friday afternoon as I was about to leave work, I felt propelled, and I mean I felt propelled into my boss’s office saying ‘I think I have a drinking problem.” After four-and-a-half years of a dry drunk, I finally began to work the program as it is meant to be lived and I realized that it was my HP who took a more affirmative action and propelled me into the beginning of getting the help I needed to look at where I was crying on the inside.

It is strange “the places in yourself that you don’t know about, the deep places inside you that can be weeping…” Some years after I got into the program, I learned about muscle memory and how the body retains memory of trauma, stress, and negativity and locks it in until such times as we are ready to deal with it.

Louise Doughty wrote: Muscle has memory: the body knows things the mind will not admit.” I can still recall the time I was referred to a therapist trained in the art of Rolfing. The first session was delightful and I looked forward to the next. In the second session, the therapist had barely touched my muscle when I gritted my teeth and muttered something I can’t write. He leaned down and whispered “you have my permission to say what comes to mind.” I did. That experience opened a whole new chapter of emotions long buried and “forgotten” about except in the muscle.

Living the program, working the steps, sharing at meetings, rereading the Big Book, and talking to a sponsor slowly opened my unconscious awareness, made it more conscious, brought it to light and life, and helped bury that which needed to be buried in a healthy wholesome and spiritual manner. Thank God for this program, for Rolfing and good therapists.

Séamus D
Greater New Orleans

Reaching Out to Someone: “What do I do?”

Thu, 06 May 2021 01:57:26 GMT

In response to a Chair’s request for a topic, the following situation was brought up: “Ron, a friend, drinks a lot. I saw it at Holiday functions last year. A lot of people drink a lot but Ron’s drinking habit rears its ugly head a lot. He’s always been a party-hardy guy. I’m fairly certain his wife, Peg, knows I’m in the Program. She asked me if I can help him, take him to lunch.”

Two suggestions:
#1:Get her to Al-Anon!
#2: Plan and think before you act.

Start by re-reading Chapter 7, “Working with Others,” and talk to your sponsor.

Raise it as a topic at a discussion meeting and ask for ways to raise it.

Although sensitive, a talk now with Ron can be a positive opportunity.

Don’t just contact Ron without thinking through issues like:

who contacts him?

what’s the reason for the call?

what’s the role of the spouse to get him to ‘have lunch with you?’

would this be consistent with your relationship with him?

has he had experience with AA before or with some manner of counseling?

If this is a relationship where sensitive topics have been discussed before, it might be appropriate to say something like, “I have been fine, but a bit bumpy with my wife. She has a brother that is fighting a substance problem.” If he says anything like, “Gee, that’s an issue for some,” you then might say, “How have you been … you seem tired or otherwise involved with stuff when we talk. If his is a general noncommittal response, you say, “I went through some stuff a while back and had to reach out.”

He probably doesn’t know his habits will get worse, not better, and won’t go away on its own. Your purpose is to leave an open invitation for you and another AA person to talk with Ron sometime to relay the nature of your problem and what you had to do; your Message is, “It saved my life, my marriage, my job,” and so forth.

Key conclusions: Care, patience and planning are key elements -one size doesn’t fit all. Preaching and judging him in any way is verboten! Put yourself in his shoes – what worked for you? And remember, you are selling something he absolutely, positively does not want. He thinks he is “not that bad,” believes it is none of your business and thinks he is managing it “just fine.” He has no idea what will happen if he continues the same pattern. The disease never stays the same – always gets worse until that final catastrophic end and he loses all self-respect, wife, family and, his job, or worse.

A great idea can be suggested with prior careful thought: “Hey Ron, come with me to a meeting; see if it makes sense, nothing to lose. They’ll tell you what worked for them, maybe it will for you if you find yourself on a slippery slope.“

Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati, Ohio

Bring it to your Home-Group

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:05:37 GMT

In one of my last meditations, I promised to bring some thoughts I had in my own recovery program about the importance of “speaking-out” at discussion meetings. Early in my attendance at my home group, when a “topic for discussion” was sought, I noticed often folks suggested topics touching on personal matters or events impacting their Program. They were seeking advice and counsel from the group about how they might handle similar problems such as: “I have a report date next week and I’m scared,” or “My spouse left me last night,” or “I can’t find a sponsor.” The rest of the group simply supplied how they dealt with the issue and what worked or didn’t work for them. Usually, the main comment was “Yes sir. I went through the same thing. Here’s what I did and it worked for me but may not fit your situation.”

It was an important realization for me that as a recovering alcoholic. I was still subject to the same old troubling incidents I had used to justify use of a substance to assist with my coping with those incidents.

I was learning that when life’s challenges arose in my sobriety, I needed to learn how to cope with those challenges without resorting to drink as I did as a practicing alcoholic.

So, one day, on the way to my regular meeting, I thought I would bring up an incident encountered that morning at work. It certainly wasn’t a serious challenge and certainly didn’t tempt me to turn to alcohol for relief. But, it was simple so I raised it as a topic: “How do we handle challenges like this simple example?”

Boy, did I ever get responses from the group! Everyone had a similar issue at one time or another and everyone had a suggestion: take five, call someone, pull out the Big Book, call your sponsor, bring it up to your next discussion meeting, let go & let God. Almost endless were the suggestions. This was another of those “it made all the difference” action steps learned at an AA Discussion Meeting.

Jim A., St. X Noon, Cincinnati

“Three Old Men.”

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 16:07:57 GMT

“The three were hermits on an island in the Black Sea, very pious and humble and loving to all men, but terribly ignorant. A bishop goes in a steamer to see them and teach them a few prayers but finds them too old and stupid to learn. At last, he gets—or thinks he has got—one brief and simple prayer into their heads and leaves the island, feeling rather contemptuous. When night falls, he sees a bright light advancing swiftly over the sea behind the steamer; it is the old men who have come, walking on the waves, to beg him to be patient with their great stupidity and teach them the prayer again.”—Tolstoy.

My husband sends me this story. He tries to read it to me but is so moved that he cannot speak. Alas, if all of us could be that way when we hear this story. I think of so many people I have talked with, hoping to connect them to their higher power. Instead, I often learn more about my higher power from hearing about their connection to their higher power.

I learn this truth first from recovery meetings, where I hear wisdom from people I would never have previously listened to.

Wisdom comes from those with no education who can barely speak intelligently. Wisdom comes from men and women who have spent a majority of their lives in prison. Wisdom comes from those who have lost their children because of their addiction. Wisdom comes from women who have lived on the streets. Wisdom comes from the homeless.

I also hear this wisdom at our Food Pantry, where people come each week for just enough food to survive. They, like we in recovery, know what a bottom looks like.

Gratitude and blessing are the most frequent words we hear.

They share what they receive with other families.

They teach us about how to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God. They teach us how to live in a community just as we in recovery learn how to be connected to a community. They know what a “we” program is all about instead of an “I” program.

May we continue to keep our ears open to hear wisdom in people at places we least expect.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

An Anniversary Nears

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 23:42:18 GMT

Easter, I “celebrate” several years of sobriety. My surrender came when I was finally ready, when I finally realized I couldn’t get “enough,“ that I was tired of the damage to myself and others. My early months in the Program were filled with work, and study, and prayer—5 noon meetings a week, an evening meeting or two, writing a 365 day-by-day volume of meditations.

The hard part was what preceded that day when I threw in the towel. Since 1974, I’d had a couple long periods of continuous sobriety. But all I’d done was “white-knuckled it.”. I went to one meeting a week (that should be enough), did a bit of service work (that was hard since I knew my tenure in the Program was on very shaky ground). The price I paid for this false action was my anger, depression and self-centeredness “self-shame), and so forth.

This time around, I honestly believed I’d had enough and was willing to follow the necessary action. My noon meeting was a priority. I found a counselor to help with a couple difficulties. I studied the Steps and read and re-read the Big Book and Twelve & Twelve. I participated at discussion meetings. Importantly, I didn’t shout from the roof tops to anyone that I finally “got the Program.” I had more or less done that before, and it hurt them and myself greatly when I had to admit I had “gone back out.”

This time around, I was surprised with the ease with which I buried myself in the Program. I think that one of the key decisions I made was to attend discussion meetings as much as possible, not as I had done before when I only availed myself of lead meetings (about 5 or 6 months passed before I said a word during the discussions). [More about that in later submissions to Red Door.]

In hindsight, I think this concentration on discussion meetings made all the difference. I could hear folks talk about their problems, which I saw were not all that different from mine. I could see progress—they kept “coming back.”

Yes, my anniversary date is a time I give special thought to, not to glorify it, but to quietly recall those times I was learning how to handle sobriety.

So, “Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy...”

Jim A. St X Noon. Cincinnati

Keeping the First Thing the First Thing

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 01:52:58 GMT

When I got sober in January 2007, one of the first things I remember my sponsor telling me is, “Stacey, anything you put before your sobriety, you will lose.” I would look at her incredulously and say things like, “But Karen, I have to put my job first, my friends first, etc.” The list could go on and on, and whatever I said was the thing that had my attention at that moment.” She would look at me and smile and say, “Stacey, anything you put before your sobriety, you will lose.” It is just like what Mark 1:35 says, “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place to pray.” My sponsor Karen and Mark reveal the same message to me: keep the first thing, the first thing. Mark’s passage is a gentle reminder to me that even Jesus needed to spend time with God alone to pray.

Over the fourteen years I have been sober, I am grateful for the daily practices I have developed with my relationship with God. I look back to the early days and remember not being able to sit still to meditate for five minutes or being so rushed in the mornings that I did not have time to read from one of my daily readers. In some ways, I feel as though the person I was fourteen years ago is unrecognizable. And, although things today are radically different than what they were when I first entered sobriety, there are times when I can get lax about the practices that I know bring me peace and serenity. Whether I look at my life as a seminarian or my life in recovery, although it seems like I am eating, breathing, and sleeping God or working the heck out of my twelve-step recovery program, I forget the importance of taking time to fill my cup through quiet time with God.

With the year anniversary of the COVID lockdown and the coming of Holy Week, I find myself so grateful to be a part of the Episcopal Church and a Twelve Step program based on daily practices and rituals that bring me back to keeping the first thing, the first thing.

Stacey C.
Austin, TX

Meditation and the 12 Steps

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:36:36 GMT

In the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions we read: “Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way.” I had no idea I was meditating when, as a teenager, I parked my bicycle next the church at the monastery, sat outside and listened to the monks sing. I did not know they were singing “Vespers”. All I knew was I loved the music, it lifted me to somewhere else and I felt at peace.

I entered seminary after high school and morning meditation happened before we were fully awake at 6 a.m. We stood for fifteen minutes, then knelt. There was no music or choir to lift my spirits. I had no idea as to what I was supposed to do. Think about God, about my vocation, the missions, about Jesus. Whatever entered my head (except for those thoughts I was not supposed to think about – girls – was my morning meditation. Then there were books to enlighten us on the topic. Never did I dream or think I’d be like the folk I read about who had mystical experiences (and still don’t). Perhaps the only mystical experience came from taking what I was not supposed to take. What a trip.

On one of my earliest 12 Step calls, I went with a guy who was head and shoulders taller than I, long hair, tattooed from head to foot, and a former member of a dangerous gang. As we talked about the program, he told me that when he entered treatment some years earlier, “I couldn’t sit still for a second. Now I can sit long enough to watch the grass grow.”

I understood the words he said but I had no idea of the full meaning of them. I was in denial of my own addiction even after spending five weeks in a four-week program and committed to a year of “Aftercare.” Denial of my disease meant that I was still running my life which meant I was not meditating or asking God or anyone else for help. I didn’t need it. Oh, during this time I was quite religious. I went to my RC mass on Sunday morning and then off to “A service” at the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal or some other church. At this point I was a “Former/ex” RC priest and the custodial parent of my two-year-old daughter and interested in finding a mother for her – not a helpmate for myself. As for addiction, I had increased my nicotine, caffeine, and food intake. Of course, I was in denial of that also.

Then came (four and a half years in the program) the spiritual awakening and the admission I am an alcoholic. It would be five more years before I had my last cigarette and I am still fighting the battle of the bulge. (Those of a certain generation or history buffs will understand that last remark.)

Meditation came back into my life on more or less a few days a week and gradually became a way of life. Sometimes with coffee in the morning. Sometimes in the late afternoon. Sometimes while going for a drive.

Meditation grounds me in the moment, reflecting on the day, on a thought, on something I read. Meditation is that connection between my heart/head and the spiritual world outside of me. In meditation I can think, listen and feel the process that is going on. At those times when I can’t shut down the movie in my head, I have a meditation book nearby, a spiritual book, and a few sentences or a paragraph of that is sufficient to bring me back to focus on the here and now.

For those who do not yet believe in God or have not found a Higher Power, meditation grounds them also in the here and now -- how am I living my sobriety, how am I living this program -- how am I to live this step.

With or without God or a Higher Power, meditation is important for us (for me) as it invites me to take time away from the “rat race” of work and lets me ponder my past insanity, be grateful for my sobriety, my peace of mind, allows me to acknowledge my emotions to myself, and brings a smile to my face.

Meditation lets me know I am not alone in this world or in recovery. Meditation lets me open my mind and heart to a world that is bigger and wider and deeper than I ever imagined and increases by gratitude for the sobriety I have to see this beautiful world.

Séamus D.
New Orleans, La.

Pickett’s Brigade Reunion

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 12:39:14 GMT

“And who is my neighbor?” —Luke 10:29.

Ken Burns’ television series on the Civil War describes a remarkable scene that takes place on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1913, when what is left of the two armies stages a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge. The old Union veterans on the ridge take their places among the rocks, and the old Confederate veterans start marching toward them across the field below—and then something extraordinary happens. As the old men among the rocks rush down at the old men coming across the field, a great cry goes up—except that instead of doing battle, as they had a century earlier, this time they throw their arms around each other and embrace and openly weep.

In 1914, during World War I, German, British, Belgian, and French troops in the trenches mingled with each other along the western front during a brief Christmas truce and even sang “Silent Night” and other carols in solidarity. Recently we have observed something similar at World War II memorials such as Normandy, where German, English, French, and American soldiers have wept together and shared their stories. We have seen it also when American soldiers return to Vietnam to share stories with those they once bitterly fought against.

This repeated action of shared love and story can tell us something about war. Many of those who have fought on foreign fields can be our strongest advocates against war. They know what they themselves—and those who once were their enemies—have lost. They share a common life-altering experience that only someone who has been there can understand.

Those in recovery of any kind also know how awful their life of obsession was before their healing from addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, food, etc. They can relate to those who remain trapped in their addiction. Most of all, they can minister to those who are still suffering and offer them hope that their life can be different. They do this by sharing their story of what their life was like in addiction, contrasted to what it is like now in recovery.

Those who have overcome mental illness can become advocates for others who suffer from this common disease as well. People who were once homeless themselves can offer a restorative hope to those on the street. Cancer survivors can encourage and pray for others recently diagnosed and give them strength and support.

This story goes on and on and on. We are healed as we reach out of ourselves and share our story and listen to sufferers in situations we know all too well. We begin to realize “who IS our neighbor.” Some call this becoming wounded healers.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

The Well-to-do First-timer

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 01:39:08 GMT

He came in about 5 minutes before our Serenity Prayer opening. Standing in the doorway, he paused and looked around. Our noon group included the usual recovering alcoholics and druggies, each seeking some good ol’ AA Fellowship. Looking like he was satisfied he’d be OK, he found a seat at the edge of the group, took off his top coat and, carefully folding it and his paisley scarf, putting them on the empty chair next to him. When the group was asked for any first-timers to stand and give “us your name so we can welcome you after the meeting,” he appeared startled, as though he didn’t expect to have to announce to a bunch of drunks and addicts who he was ... but, finally standing, he mumbled his name, “Ron or Jon,” something like that, and quickly sat down and in doing so, knocked his top coat on the floor. He seemed rattled by all of this as he fussed with his coat, checking to see if his car keys were still there, carefully brushing off the coat and paisley scarf.

The Chair asked for a topic for discussion and someone spoke up: “We have a new person. Let’s talk about what brought us here.” “Ron or Jon,” seemed bothered, probably suddenly thinking he would have to address the group. Folks started to talk in response to the topic, sharing their own reactions to their first meeting. Ron/ Jon seemed to be listening.

After the normal close with the Lord’s Prayer, I went over, shook his hand and welcomed him. Very quickly, he mumbled something about a sick wife at home, with that, he turned, put on his top coat, paisley scarf, and left, but he stopped and turned, saying, “Thanks, I’ll be back.”

Driving home, I did feel we might see him again. I thought back to my own “first meeting.” Scared? no, I think a better word was “anxious.” I was hurting and felt little, no that’s not right, no self-respect. My entrance that time came when I’d decided I’d had enough. I’d tried quitting by myself but failed every time. I thought back to a couple folks I had worked with—well-to-do, no loss of job or spouse, no alienation of kids, nice vacations to neat places 2 or 3 times a year. It didn’t seem that Ron/Jon had really felt pressure from those he’d hurt to do something about his drinking. But even so, something inside had invited him to attend a meeting.

Often, it seems before one enters the Program and really makes a “go” of it, he will have suffered more losses and inflicted more pain than necessary. It’s a question of “when” you quit, and in a sense, how much pain do you have to inflict on yourself, family, friends, children, parents, before you seek help. An alcoholic is a selfish person who lives to see how close he can go to the edge of the cliff and the darkness our addiction promises us. Very sad.

Jim A/ Covington, Kentucky: St. X Noon

The Spiritual Journey

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 16:07:07 GMT

I’m writing this on Shrove Tuesday. Tomorrow we will pray Psalm 51 and pray the litany of penitence. I will spend the day turning again to God, doing my best to show up, to own my faults and sins, and to open myself to God’s healing grace. Sounds like a typical day in recovery!

This past weekend I heard a sponsee’s Fifth Step. She shared all the things she didn’t want another to know, didn’t really want to know herself. As she did, we noticed the patterns, the particular potholes into which she has fallen over the years. As we moved through the list of resentments, she’d say, “Yuck. I really don’t want to talk about this one.” But she did. It was a moment for me of watching God’s power and love, as she walked into the places she didn’t want to go.

When she was done, we talked a bit about Step Six. I sent her to our literature to ponder her readiness. Later that day she reported that she was walking on air, so filled with freedom and joy. She had indeed found the “Broad Highway,” and she was “walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe.”

Of course, life keeps coming. The next day she began to allow herself to notice real questions and doubts about her life, things she had avoided through substances. She’s not on a cloud anymore - but she’s not where she used to be.

This is the spiritual journey. We begin by admitting that we need God, we can’t conquer our addictions alone. We turn to God as best we can. We admit our faults, and ask God to remove them. We turn toward others, facing everything that stands in the way of our honest communion. As we go forward, each step feels like death to the ego. “God forbid!” Peter cries to Jesus. “Surely I don’t have to go that far!” I cry to my sponsor. But the answer has been given. This is the path of life.

Lent seems like the season when the rest of Church joins those of us in the basements and parish halls (and Zoom lines and phone lines) in seeking God, cleaning our messes, and turning toward God-knows-what possibility awaits us.

May you, may we, trudge the road of happy destiny, trusting in the promise of new life. God bless us all.
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The Ending Should Be Joined to the Beginning

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 04:15:21 GMT

All things seek to return to their own path, and all things rejoice in coming back to their nature. The only law over things is that the ending should be joined to the beginning making the course of itself stable. Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius (477-524 C.E.), trans by Thomas Powers. PARABOLA Summer 2019. 90.

At age nine I was serving Mass in a village in Northern Ireland and the thought crossed my mind, “I want to be a priest.” I had no idea what a priest did then, nor did any of us have any idea as to the twists and turns social and religious life would take throughout the sixties. I attended catholic school and boarding school. Girls left me alone as the priest told them “he has a vocation.” I didn’t know he did that till much later.

I had no idea that the environment in which I was formed was unhealthy. I didn’t care for the controls but they seemed to be within the norms of other families in the community. While other boys got caught, I learned how to be perceived as “squeeky clean and upright.” I knew that the path I was creating was not the one my soul wished for me to be on and that was why confession was created. Weekly confession made all things right.

Then came college, seminary, my first drink and, simultaneously, my first blackout. Ordination to the priesthood, more blackouts. Some of my students in Religious Ed confided in me about their experiences on LSD. I began to read and learn all I could about drugs even as I kept a few fifths in a drawer “for when friends came by.” It was my belief that alcoholic clergy drank alone. I was given opportunities to take courses in addiction and I felt sorry for those who were addicted and those who were on Methadone. While I was working with these folks, I prided myself that I did not have a problem. Meanwhile, I was in denial that I was at war with self, others and God. God was not fighting with me. God was more like a lifeguard pushing me into calm and shallow waters to get my feet under me. Thus, treatment, aftercare, continued denial and a four and a half year long dry drunk.

Were I to step outside myself and observe my behavior, I would say that I had been crying out for help all my life. St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.” There is no question, I was “Restless, Irritable, and Discontent.”

Then came the day of awakening—the experience of an awareness of sobriety. Something happened and I had a spiritual awakening. I actually felt happy. I felt a feeling that made a difference to me that some thirty -seven years later, remains as fresh in my mind as the day it happened. “All things rejoice in coming back to their nature.” All my life I was taught I was born in/with original sin. No. I was born in/with an original blessing, made in the image and likeness of God. My spiritual awakening was an awareness that I was returning to that place of blessing,

“The only law over things is that the ending should be joined to the beginning making the course of itself stable.” The end of my denial and the beginning of sobriety are joined together. I can’t have one without the other. Darkness and Light. Joy and Sorrow.

My addiction in and my sobriety are joined together and interlocked with my birth in God’s blessings and my return to God’s blessing. With the guidance of my Higher Power I have been returned to the path of blessings and, like the psalmist I can sing, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.” “All things seek to return to their own path, and all things rejoice in coming back to their nature. The only law over things is that the ending should be joined to the beginning making the course of itself stable.”

Séamus D,

New Orleans

Before Lent

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 01:53:39 GMT

The liturgical year is one of the things I like the most about our church. My scattery brain likes the orderly progression of the seasons, reliably anticipated and solemnly marked. Now we are in the last weeks of Epiphany, our expectations met, and we soon move on to Ash Wednesday and then forty days of Lent. We continue on life’s path, one season following another, heading once more to Easter, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, and back to Epiphany.

So it is with our Twelve Steps…we read, study and discuss a step a week (except for Twelve, which is very long and needs two weeks) and then we start again at the beginning with Step One. We admit, come to believe, make a decision and then trudge the road of happy destiny, one day at a time--never alone and never without guidance. Recovery is sequential, predictable…ye gods, did I really just write that?

The seasons of the liturgical year might be certain, the 12 Steps might be numbered, but our progression through them seems more helical than linear or even circular. We are always ascending or descending on this corkscrew of life--spiraling up or down. As we twirl along with the seasons and steps, we notice the same markers greeting us but with different suggestions. Hello Lent, what are you asking of me this year? Hello Step One, what else am I powerless over?

This is my first year of widowhood and I’m going through the seasons and the steps with altered eyes. I’m not alone: the pandemic has made us all the bereaved--Life-as-We-Knew-It is long gone. I was feeling unsettled and very sad the other day and my daughter told me something she has learned from families who have gone through adoption. Not only are anniversaries and birthdays acknowledged, but also trauma-versaries. Our hearts, our souls, our bodies remember and record distress, separation, disruption. Emily Dickinson wrote of how “a certain slant of light” evokes despair--how profound an observation that is--ask anyone with Seasonal Affective Disorder. I was feeling unsettled and sad because my body and my heart, if not my brain, recognized that it was a year ago that my beloved became so very sick in what turned out to be his final illness. My mind knows the date of his death, my soul acknowledges the decline.

The extraordinary thing is that the liturgical calendar and the Twelve Steps are strong enough to carry us through these seasons. Our needs are anticipated before we realize we have them. There are solutions. We can get clean and sober and stay clean and sober no matter what obstacles or situations we meet because we have a strong foundation and experienced guides.

A beautiful long-timer said recently at a meeting that the thing she likes the best about sobriety is congruence: her feelings match what is going on in her life. She can live in reality: when she is happy, she laughs; when she is sad, she cries; when she is mad, she yells. She does not pretend to have no feelings. She does not ignore feelings and have them slam up against her from behind and knock her over. She has the wherewithal to live her life in the present, acknowledging what is actually going on.

And that includes recognizing that trauma-versaries are part of reality. No wonder so many people fear “PMS”--pre-medallion slips. Recognizing and celebrating our sober anniversaries necessitate that we recognize and acknowledge that we hit bottom.

Lent comes before Good Friday comes before Easter. But Easter does come. And every Sunday is a celebration of Easter.

-Christine H.

Our Great Responsibility

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 01:18:43 GMT

In an address to the General Service Conference in 1965, Bill W., said: “Yes, we drunks put A.A. together, but all of the basic components were supplied by others.”* In 1965, I was going into seminary and I was a committed member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (PTAA) and my only idea of a drunk was a neighbor who drank out of a bottle in a brown bag on a wall outside the house, got sick and fell asleep. I did not know A.A. existed. God took care of that three years later as I became involved, even as I drank alcoholically and remained involved on the fringes till God kicked me into the program. The “involvement” was God’s way to prepare me for the program. I came in, reluctantly, and believing I was going to be a great resource to “these people.”

I had much to learn. In time, the one- liners made sense, spirituality began to take hold, the steps began to become a way of life as, slowly, I became “one of us.” Being “one of us”, and being an amateur historian, I began to read any and everything I could get my hands on that was directly or indirectly related to A.A. -- how it came to be, (and I was told some weird stories about that), who and what influenced it -- and, I remain grateful for the time given to me by Sam Shoemaker’s daughters.

Shoemaker was influenced by evangelists like Frank Buchmann (The Oxford Group), who was influenced by men like John R. Mott, Samuel McComb, Dwight Moody, the “new Psychology.” In 1908 there was the Emmanuel Movement in Boston were people suffering from what was then called “Functional Nervous Disorders” were treated at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Emmanuel Church was the headquarters of the Christian Science Movement. The clinic was run by Revs Dr. Samuel McComb (associate rector), Dr. Elwood Worcester (Rector) and Isador H. Coriat M.D. with a Four Step Program – find a higher power, confession, help others, and the power of “suggestion” (from the new Psychology). These steps found their way via Shoemaker to Bill Wilson to the Twelve Steps in terms of Step Two, Steps Four and Five, Step Twelve and” Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program.

On my own, there is no way I could or would have had anything to do with this program. I came into the program with a lot of religious baggage, Shame and Guilt. I believed in God and was scared/angry of and at God. I wanted confession as a “quick fix” and I wanted to help others so I could look good.

When sobriety happened to me, I was fascinated by the idea that God chose an atheist to bring the concept of sobriety to a devout Christian who, in turn, offered him the ‘Absolutes’ of the Oxford Group, and, with guidance they created the greatest social experiment of their century. Someone once summed it up in this way: “The Big Book is the writing of the Ages [Sages] written in Twelve Steps so a bunch of drunks could get sober.” This was put differently by Bill at the 1953 Conference: “Well, when those Twelve Steps were presented in New York, all hell broke loose. I had committed heresy; Why did we have to have twelve steps when six were just as good…We had a big hassle over those Twelve Steps…”*

Even the symbol of our society had deep roots. Bill said: “We had to have some sort of symbol and the circle seemed to indicate the movement or the group. The triangle suggested the three principal aspects: recovery, unity, and service.’ [When they settled on it] “some student of ancient history came up with this very startling announcement: he said that, in times gone by, this identical symbol was used by medicine men, magicians, wise men, whatnot, and every time they wanted to get rid of evil spirits, they just brought up and brandished this circle containing the triangle!”*

I like to think of our program as the confluence of thousands of rivulets from various hillsides and mountains that flowed down and came together to form a river into which I could be baptized, healed, restored to life, and sent off to suggest to others that real living is in becoming vulnerable, jumping in and trusting that the past will be washed clean; that we will continue with renewed energy, and we will live in gratitude for the blessings of rains creating rivulets which created our river of life.

· OUR GREAT RESPONSIBILITY A Selection of Bill General Service Conference Talks. 1951-1970. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. 2019

Séamus D.
New Orleans

The Mustard Seed

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:03:02 GMT

The Daily Lectionary gospel reading for January 21 included these verses from Mark: ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ We can also compare our Recovery to a mustard seed and this parable.

When we start attending meetings, we are small in many ways. We are feeling fearful, less than, shameful, hopeless and helpless. We have feelings of anger and guilt. When we stay where we’ve been planted -- right in the middle of a 12-step fellowship -- we soon start to flourish and grow. Our circle gets larger. As we enlarge our base, our point of freedom rises.

We not only have connections with folks in our home group, but also with our sponsorship sisters and brothers. (There is a little joke in my ‘sponsorship family’ that we are a shrub and not a tall tree because my sponsor and her sponsor, sponsor each other. So, we’re a big bushy shrub with lots or branches… another connection to this gospel reading!) We start out being of service in our group -- welcoming folks, making coffee, setting up the meeting, cleaning up afterwards. Then we branch out and start attending the Area meeting, we hear committee meetings announced, and decide to check those out as well.

Someone answered the helpline when we called. We want to give back and do the same. Someone maintained the website where we found the phone number to call. We volunteer to help out with the website. Someone came to the treatment center we were in and shared a message of recovery and told us about AA, NA, CA, etc. --when we had enough clean time, we wanted to do the same for others. And our branches eventually grow even more. Maybe we ventured to other parts of the state, the region, the zone, or even on a worldwide level.

Many of us, especially reading here, expanded our branches outside of a 12-step program, to our churches, particularly in Recovery Ministries and like me, volunteered right away to join and be a part of this wonderful ministry that blends our recovery and our Episcopal faith.

We carry the message so that those who come after us will have a safe place, a nest if you will, a shelter from the storm that is addiction.

January 21, 1987, was my first day free from alcohol and drugs, which makes 34 years of recovery. 34 years of growing from a tiny mustard seed, to a person with long term recovery. Someone who thrives on carrying the message of recovery far and wide. It all started by getting to meetings early and helping to set up. If I can make it a little easier for another hopeless, scared addict to find this life-saving program and have a safe place to grow, then I will continue to give away to others what I have learned in this program. After all, we can’t keep what we have unless we give it away.

- Lucy O

Going to Any Length

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 01:11:31 GMT

Every year I am part of a New Year’s 12-Step retreat. Usually, we meet from the evening of December 30 through noon on January 1. It’s special to me because we gather people from all the “A” programs, so we get to hear wisdom from many different locations. That retreat was where I first put together that I was eating like I used to drink.

This year was different – of course! We couldn’t gather at the retreat house like we usually do. We met on Zoom instead. And that meant that people who couldn’t afford to come, or couldn’t travel, could attend. There was a wonderful mix of familiar faces and new friends.

Each year there’s a theme, something we can all share. This year the theme was “Going to Any Length” – appropriate for this extraordinary time in all our lives. We traced our histories – what lengths did we go to in order to maintain our addictions? What lengths did we go to in early recovery, or whenever times got hard? And then we considered: what length am I willing to go to this year? What scares me about that? What hopes do I have for this year?

I got some inspiration from someone who told me a slogan I hadn’t heard. This is, again, one of the gifts I get from being with people beyond my normal range of meetings – so many slogans! This year I got “Q-TIP”: Quit Taking It Personally. This spoke right to me. I take so much personally! I assume that everyone is noticing and intending everything they do, so if the woman I live with doesn’t clean the coffee pot, she meant to leave it for me. If any chore is left, anything “obviously” out of place, she must be expecting that I’ll take care of it. There’s a resentment just waiting for an excuse.

Over time, I’m learning how to have conversations that clear things up. I’ve learned that my companion honestly doesn’t see everything I do, and doesn’t particularly care about the coffee pot until the next time it’s needed. It’s not personal.

I don’t need to “protect” myself by fostering a resentment. I need to protect myself by noticing my reactions and assumptions, and asking God to show me a better way.

So now I have a Q-Tip on my desk, in the lap of my little stuffed lamb Agnes Day. As I write this she’s holding it, reminding me that I am loved and I am safe – even if the kitchen is not as neat as I’d like it to be! I don’t have to drink, or eat, or rant about it. I can decide what to do. Sometimes I’ll clean the pot. Sometimes, now, I too let it sit until needed. But if the little voice of resentment starts up, I remember: this coffee pot is not about me. My companion’s difference in temperament and observation is not about me.

This year one of the lengths I’m going to is to keep that Q-tip close. I’ll call my sponsor and other recovering folks if I start to think it’s personal – whatever it is – from the coffee pot to the state of the environment. What’s personal is my thoughts, my actions, my relationship to God. If I pay attention to that, I will bring peace and healing to my corner of the world.

The promises became a reality

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 03:42:49 GMT

In her book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, Leslie Jamison writes: “From the night of my first buzz, I didn’t understand why everyone in the world wasn’t getting drunk every night… Scientists describe addiction as a dysregulation of the neurotransmitter functions of the mesolimbic dopamine system, which basically means your reward pathways get F’d up. “It’s a “pathological usurpation of survival impulses… When my drinking passed a certain threshold… it plunged me into darkness that seemed like honesty. It was as if the bright surfaces of the world were all false and the desperate drunk space underground was where truth lived.”

It’s just over four decades since my last drink and I can still remember my first drink which became a heck of a drunk. It was like I couldn’t get enough of everything on the table. An hour and a half earlier I had been the designated barman and all I drank was Apple Cider. When I was told it contained alcohol, I read the percentage of alcohol – slight – I decided, “I might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb” and began to drink. I tasted every bottle of alcohol on the table, got sick, blamed others for the mess in the bathroom which I proudly acknowledge I cleaned up. The following day I purchased a motorcycle, learned how to ride it, and took myself to the nearest pub to celebrate.

I didn’t drink every night, but when I did drink, I drank alcoholically. I also assumed that everyone in the establishment was enjoying alcohol in the same manner. It would be nearly twenty years before I appreciated the learning by scientists of the destructive consequences of alcohol on my brain and in my body.

From the night of that first drink/drunk, I believed I could handle it. Alcoholics go to meetings and I was helping them find new meeting rooms in the city of Dublin at the time. I went to some open meetings, listened to the stories and knew I was not like them. [Although the first meeting I attended was enough for me to leave and get a drink. They were talking about “Honesty” and I thought they were talking about me.] Alcoholics don’t have jobs. I was a full-time student with reasonably decent grades. Alcoholics, no matter what they did or didn’t do, I was not one of them. After all, I was teaching the students about the danger of drugs and alcohol. I knew what I was talking about.

The problem was I had no idea my brain had been hijacked, rewired, and in relationship to alcohol and other drugs, I was blinded to the negative impact on my thinking, behavior and values. All of this happened without my permission, and clearly, with my permission. I had been told that I was an alcoholic and I blew it off.

“It’s a pathological usurpation of survival impulses.” I would not have gotten into a car with a driver who was blindfolded or blind. And yet, I believed myself to be a safe driver even though, the next morning, I had no recall as to how I got home. I look back now and have a great appreciation for my angel guardian.

I wish I could have gotten into Recovery as suddenly as I got into Addiction. That I was not an alcoholic was so entrenched in my mind, I could not see myself as being “one of them.” Five weeks in a four-week program followed by a year of Aftercare and individual therapy barely made a dent in my denial system.

Today, I thank my Higher Power/God for those men who cared enough about me that they took me under their wing and guided me. Recovery, for me, was a slow process into accepting myself as an alcoholic. Looking back, it seems so strange to admit to inappropriate behavior while under the influence of alcohol and drugs while denying being addicted. But such is the nature of the hijacked rewired brain. Early recovery was a time of confronting memories; listening to others tell me what it was like to be with me when I was under the influence; working and reworking the steps and learning the meaning of “Living the program.” In other words, getting my brain unwired from the alcoholic thinking and rewired to healthy and appropriate thinking based on the spiritual principles of the 12 Step program.

Little did I know I would one day be amazed that the AA “promises” would become for me a reality and I would realize that God did and is doing for me what I could not and cannot do for myself.

Happy, Sober and safe New Year to all.
Séamus D.
New Orleans, La.

Our Old-Time Drinking Friends: What do we do with them?

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:41:27 GMT

You know who they are—the gang that met at The Antlers after work, the neighborhood lush and expert outdoor griller, the brother-in-law, the couple you spent those skiing weekends with, and on and on. They’re the ones who will notice you aren’t drinking. They may ask “why” did you stop? They may really quiz you about this for the unspoken truth is that they fear they may be on the same slippery slope.

This is what I think about all this stuff. When I came in, I decided to cease fraternizing with those with whom I drank—close friends, been through a lot together, maybe a sister or brother, roommate. You spent a good deal of time baring your soul probably with that garbled fuzzy drunken lilt.

Quickly, I learned I should be deciding how to deal with my past “people, places and things.” The Program tells us we need to start looking for new friendships—ones who empathize with your illness, who are not afraid of developing a spiritual life, people who are aware of the trials and tribulations of others. In a word, you want to start associating with those who are interested in developing a higher quality of life whose values aren’t focused essentially on an alcoholic self-destruction. For the truth is that the unchecked alcoholic’s life will be destroyed by his or her alcoholism. There simply no other way out of this quagmire.

Where do you find these new friends and companions? At the thousands of Alcoholic Anonymous meetings. And don’t tell me “they are not like me”—no job or education degree, some don’t have any visual means of support, or an education degree, maybe their spouse just left and took the kids, or they live in a half-way house, I have a “hard time just conversing with them.”

Well, don’t sweat it. They’re drunks just like you. All that sadness is right out there. It’s knocking on the front door about to come in and turn your life upside down. You’ve earned all that grief by your alcoholic abuse of substances.

Just as you found that your drinking habits were easier protected by sticking with others of similar ways of living, so you need to shift your daily routines from folks like yourself who have learned to manage their lives without the haze this addiction provides. No, you need to find a new pack to run with, a sober one, one that is seeking new ways of living, who really do have a desire to grow a spiritual life, whose lives aren’t dominated by that daily endless cocktail “hour.”

So, get rid of that that old life and the people in it and get on with working the Program. Keep coming back for it really does work if you work it.

Jim A/St X Noon, Cincinnati

Year End Thoughts

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:09:06 GMT

This time of year, “Surviving the Holidays” is a frequent and necessary topic at meetings. And with all the family reunions, neighborhood parties and business receptions, the traditional gifts of wine or fine malt whiskey—the traditional Holiday temptations placed before the recovering addict are many and varied and sometimes bring back warm feelings of past celebrations. .

This year is different. The past norms of the Season don’t seem to be appropriate, maybe not even possible. Look, most of us haven’t been to any gathering of folks since mid-March. We have wrestled around and decided to make up for this absenteeism by using computers to speak to one another.

Sort of a gimmicky means of communication, but it’s better than nothing.

One particularly sad fact is the necessary curtailing of family gatherings. We saw plans for Thanksgiving cancelled at the last minute, driven perhaps by an escalation of the number of cases in the hosts’ city, or someone contracts a seasonal cold or youngsters may have been exposed at school. All eyes were focused on aggressive defensive measures to avoid the tragedy of this raging pandemic.

So, what do we say to all this curtailment of the usual past joyous Holiday customs?

Our old reliable prayer gives us this answer. Its answer is avoiding worrying about those things we can’t do anything about.

To meet this, I need to remember the teachings of the Program, “Into action, do something you can do, be grateful for what you still have, reach out to those who have been damaged.”

Here are some additional ideas. Work on the spiritual aspect of your life, take your own inventory and work to correct what needs to be corrected. Look for the fellowship of folks busy searching for the “way, the truth and the light,” read a chapter in the Big Book or 12 and 12, call a troubled new member, chair a program for those confined to jail or an institution, write a meditation for “The Red Door,” spend an extra amount of time with your spouse and children, attend a Holiday Breakfast sponsored by the local general service committee.

But when we do run into that wall, and you’re over-whelmed, what can we do? We get to a meeting, read the Big Book, call our sponsor, work with a newbie, make the coffee, lead the group discussion for a month, talk to that new person.

And remember, “we never give up.” We know that if we keep coming back to the Program, it works for us and we need not suffer those Holiday Blues again!

Jim A/St X Noon, Cincinnati

In the Wilderness

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 01:50:30 GMT

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level…” Isaiah 40:3,4

At this time of the year, we hear a lot of talk about “prepare the way of the Lord.” For those of us who attend church, depending on the church, we are liable to hear about going to confession, about cleaning up our act, etc. Until about eighteen months ago I gave little to no attention to the first part of the phrase, “In the wilderness…”

I was preparing to attend a retreat for those of us in the program and began to reflect on the phrase when it hit me “fair and square” as is said. I first landed in the wilderness the night of my first drink and began drinking alcoholically. From the beginning I experienced blackouts and, as my values deteriorated, the wilderness became increasingly empty and, at times, downright frightening, even as I projected myself to be sound in mind, body, and spirit.

The wilderness, however, which I later appreciated, was the wilderness in which I began to work and live the steps. Preparation for this wilderness was to acknowledge my powerlessness and unmanageability; came to believe in a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity; made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood God.

These three steps were the baptism that opened my heart and mind to hear God saying, “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” It was out of this baptism that I was able to begin the remainder of the steps, the one that took me deep inside myself to look at the wilderness in which I had lived, to write about what I saw, what I remembered, what I heard I had done while under the influence.

I didn’t care for this wilderness. My addiction told me I was a great guy, the life of the party, the center of attention. In the wilderness I was able to see that I was neither the life of the party nor the center of attention. In this wilderness I came to grips with my moral bankruptcy; with my emptiness and the sticks and stones with which I beat myself. I came in contact with my EGO - Easing God Out – attitude of the trinitarian Me, Myself and I.

In this wilderness I dug deep into the commandments, the seven deadly sins, the Ash Wednesday litany from the Book of Common Prayer and came face to face with the behavior and attitudes that resulted from my addiction to alcohol and drugs.

In this wilderness I got off my mountain of pride collapsed and I transferred to the valley of humility. For too long, I had walked on crooked paths. It was time to straighten them out in order to see the road ahead. There was an unevenness about the road. There was a ridge between what I thought of me and, what my sponsor told me was the real me. He had me review a list of positive qualities and identify which one I thought were mine. I picked a few of them and showed it to him. Then he made me aware that, at my core, all of them were who I am. These were activated when I was created in the image and likeness of God. Because of this wilderness experience I learned to say, “I am loving. Sometimes I’m indifferent. I am truthful. Sometimes I lie. I am…..but sometimes I… It was in this process that the uneven ground became level, this was the balance I had been looking for in all the wrong places.

It was in this wilderness that my Higher Power assisted me with the help of good friends and a sponsor to make straight the highway necessary for a life of sobriety. The work in this wilderness gave me the strength to make amends, to forgive and ask for forgiveness, to seek through prayer and meditation what is God’s will for me and ask for the power to carry that out.

Like a sheep I let myself be led astray. Like a sheep, I wandered into the wilderness. And it was there the Shepherd found me and brought me home within myself so I could celebrate the Kingdom of God within me. I could live one day at a time and be at peace.

The Reality of the Promises

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 02:49:39 GMT

This is my first time writing for this blog. I’m excited, and a bit nervous. I’m full of self-centered fear, wondering if you will like it. Fortunately, I have a program that helps me with that.

My name is Shane. I’m in recovery from alcoholism, from compulsive eating, and from my family’s alcoholism. I’m a miracle – and so are you! That’s what I know from the rooms, and my life.

I grew up in an alcoholic home, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know our family was different from any other, so what I learned there I took out into the world. I learned that I couldn’t trust anyone to care for my feelings, that I wouldn’t be believed if I spoke my truth, that I could be shamed for showing weakness. I learned that I should make everyone proud, I should and could impress people, but that I would not be loved.

I was given room to develop my talents, but they weren’t a substitute for safety and love. As my rage built, I began looking for outlets and expressions of that rage. I found alcohol and drugs when I was 13, and I dove into the deep end. I went to all the places that the Big Book predicts – jail (juvenile detention), asylum (mental hospital), plus some that aren’t mentioned. By the time I turned 16 I had done these, I had gotten pregnant and miscarried in silence, I had tried to kill myself. I didn’t know that alcohol and drugs were helping me go to those places – I just thought I was crazy, and I didn’t care.

I got sober in 1985, when I was 28. Someone had me read the Promises at my third meeting. I cried because I couldn’t imagine ever experiencing any of them. It was like the universe inviting me to sing a song I didn’t know how to sing. But I kept coming. I wanted to feel better.

Since then, my life has been an adventure. I went back to school, got a Ph.D., taught for years. Then a new round of step work helped me leave and enter an Episcopal convent. After nine years, another round of work helped me leave there and serve a parish, and eventually found a new community with another woman. Now, eight years later, the community is flourishing and so am I.

When I got sober people told me to eat sugar if I wanted to drink. I did. I ate sugar long after I stopped craving alcohol, long after my weight became a problem. I didn’t get it. I’m an alcoholic, I’d say; food is not my issue. I just like to eat.

Finally, God sent some people into my life who helped me see that I was doing the same thing with food that I had with alcohol. I would try to control it, but it didn’t go so well. I didn’t diet, because that would be vain – and it would be hard. I thought, “I can use the Steps on this too,” but I never did.

Once I got that I had the same reaction to some foods that I have to alcohol, the path was clear. There was a place for me, another place. I could take all that I had gained in one and still learn more. Now I have the same freedom from compulsive eating that I had found from alcohol.

So, here’s the miracle: not that I entered the rooms, not that I stopped drinking and overeating. Those are indeed miracles, but the one I treasure is the hope, the reality of the Promises. If I will work, if you will work, the whole world opens up to us, to become the people God intended and dreamed of.

Whatever you have been through, whatever you’re struggling with, there are others who’ve been there. I’m one of them, waiting for you to reach out. Life is sometimes a struggle for me now, but only because I forget to use the tools offered by the programs. When I pick up the phone, the pen, the prayer book, I return to serenity. A new way opens up in the wilderness. One day at a time, miracles are happening.

Blessings on your journey, all year, every year.

Sobriety and Faith during a Pandemic

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 03:17:58 GMT

In her book The Alchemy of Us, materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez discusses “how humans and matter transformed one another.” The opening chapter is about time, perception of time, clocks, and relativity. Ramirez explains that during intense times of novel experiences--childhood, for instance--the brain stores huge amounts of sensory data, Words, scenes, actions, emotions all become embedded into our brains in vivid detail. As we get older, we store fewer sensory images because not so much is unfamiliar anymore. Monotony creates few lasting impressions and days drag on one after another in a predictable way.

And here, now, today, we all are dealing with a novel coronavirus, a new disease called COVID-19, and an unprecedented pandemic. We are standing six feet away from others, our faces are masked. We don’t gather together; we stay away from our beloved activities and places.

What is this novel monotony doing to us? I’m thinking about images I first saw more than fifty years ago in Sociology 101: of children playing with sticks which were guns, bats or dolls, depending on how they were held. Kids make do with what’s available and do what children do: imagine and play. We adults, also, look at what’s available and cope by using the blessings at hand to do what adults do--live and breathe and have our being.

The first three months of my pandemic were simultaneous with the final illness and death of my beloved John. Now these ongoing days of social distancing are my days of grieving the loss of a love. My mourning is more hidden than it might otherwise be, but friends, family, my church and 12-step communities let me know every day--gently, kindly, lovingly--that I am not alone. Three generations of our extended family--siblings and cousins, children and grandchildren--gather weekly for our weekly Sunday Family Zoom--more interaction than we’ve had for years. Friends who are themselves widowed reach out to me--checking in and assuring me that my feelings of confusion, bewilderment, and exhaustion are “normal.” Incredibly and wonderfully, I live where my neighbors are Saints from our church, and we exchange baked goods and stories from across the COVID chasm.

I am developing new rituals and routines and solidifying others. I attend to my morning devotions and journaling much more faithfully than in the past. I Zoom around the world for 12-Step meetings and have made good friends in Dallas and Vegas and dotted all across the country--folks whom I will travel to meet in person when the world is a safer, gentler place. I am more efficient in my shopping. Our golden retriever BridgetAdams and I walk a couple of miles almost every day. I can continue my work coordinating care for people recovering from substance abuse because of video conferencing.

The novelty of the pandemic is long over and monotony has set in. But I can smile. As a wise woman said to me once, “Look around--there is always something to be grateful for.”

Christine H.
Peterborough NH, December 4, 2020

Advent and 12-Step Recovery

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 21:27:40 GMT

Waiting…for what?

Once again, the old year has rolled ‘round, and we cross the threshold into the new. Advent is my favorite liturgical season: the light at night, the rich colors in church, and the music that gives voice to longing. At my age, one might imagine that I know what to expect. But, every year, I am initially disoriented.

What’s really going on? What am I supposed to pay attention to? The prophecies? The manger? The Second Coming? As an addict, I tend to think in categories of either/or, rather than the confusing and uncomfortable both/and.

I’m often not very good at waiting. Of course, much of it is sheer impatience; here I’m in good company with our ancestors in faith. They, like me, prefer decisiveness…immediately.

Isaiah cries to God, “O that you would rend the heavens and come down.” The Psalmist pleads, “Restore us, O God of hosts; show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” In Mark’s gospel, we hear Jesus speak with urgency, “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come.”

That’s a lot of anxiety. But, if I allow myself to be still, I begin to sense that Advent has a great deal in common with a 12-Step program. It never moves along as quickly as I would like, it goes places I couldn’t have predicted, and there’s a lot of work involved.

Today, when I hear the majestic language of Isaiah, Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, I think about the Ninth Step promises. If I have been diligent in working to level the obstructions, both within myself, and in my relationships, the promises will come true, no matter how far down the scale I had gone.

Did I want all those things to happen immediately? Of course I did. Did they? Of course not. I had stopped using, but I had no idea how to live, as an adult, on life’s terms. Time has given me the space to learn to live.

2020 has had more than its share of “life’s terms”: COVID, the economic devastation that has followed, and the cries for racial justice. It’s tempting to anesthetize the discomfort, to ask God to restore us right now, to wish it all away. But here is where we are, maxed out on waiting for things to “get back to normal”.

Recently, I found myself suggesting that Advent is an invitation for us to pay attention to the here and now, to be where our feet are. After all, we sing, “O come, O come, Emmanuel” – “O come, O come, God-with-us”. Not “God who was with us”, or “God who will be with us”, but “God who is with us”.

This year, in the quiet of these weeks, I will try to wait patiently. And, in the waiting, I hope to become attentive to God’s light peeking through the cracks in my everyday world.

Advent’s a funny time, isn’t it? What exactly are we waiting for? I know that more will be revealed. And I know that God is already with us. How blessed are we!

Paul J.

Canticle: A Song of Ezekiel

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 03:59:05 GMT

Ezekiel 36:24-28

“I will take you from among all nations; *
and gather you from all lands to bring you home.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you; *
and purify you from false gods and uncleanness.
A new heart I will give you *
and a new spirit put within you.
I will take the stone heart from your chest *
and give you a heart of flesh.
I will help you walk in my laws *
and cherish my commandments and do them.
You shall be my people, *
and I will be your God.”

Enriching Our Worship (Church Publishing 1998)

This Song of Ezekiel speaks about our recovery. In recovery, we receive a new heart and a right spirit. Our higher power takes out our stone heart and replaces it with a heart of flesh. We could not do this on our own. God helps us to walk by his laws, and we learn to cherish them and practice them.

I have one friend who has memorized this canticle and sings it every morning in the shower. He is meditating and connecting to his higher power in the shower, no less. When people ask how to start their day, this is one suggestion that keeps coming to mind, especially if the person starts her day with a daily bath or shower. This is an image that has stayed with me for many years.

I am not good at memorizing scripture, but for those who are, I cannot think of a better way to start the day. Even if I cannot memorize the scripture, perhaps I can remember some lines. I am asking God to sprinkle clean water on me, to purify me from false gods. My favorite false gods are fame, recognition, work, and busyness.

I am asking God for a new heart, a fresh way to love, especially to love those who seem unlovable, different, those who seem to punch all my egocentric buttons that become harder and harder to hide, and those I perceive have harmed me. I pray for a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, God’s will, not my own will, to live inside of me and to lead me. I am well acquainted with and dislike the stone heart that quietly and subtly takes over and judges others and myself.

Take that hard, stone heart out of my chest. It is a too heavy and painful burden to carry. I pray for a heart that accepts my humanness and the humanness of others. I will try to follow the guidelines I think God has given me.

Help me not to believe in my hubris that I am better than others and above the laws you have asked us to follow. I want to stay connected today to you, God, even if it is a thin thread.

Perhaps I can remember clean water, no false gods today, a new heart, a new spirit, no stone heart, no hubris, staying connected for just one more day.

Some may have more time to be silent and contemplate in our prayer life during this coronavirus pandemic. We may have been given a gift of time, especially as we shower, to consider how God is sprinkling clean water on us to remove our heart of stone that we so carefully hide.

Joanna Seibert

Yes, This Addiction is an Equal-Opportunity Disease

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 04:17:33 GMT

In an October letter to the faithful in his Diocese, a Bishop of the Episcopal Church admitted he had a “problem with alcohol” and had checked into a rehab facility. He continued, stating that in part for this reason, he was retiring as Bishop of the Diocese effective the end of November.

We ask ourselves, “How can we help?” First of all, we can share our own story, “How did we get here?” For many of us, it was a sudden experience brought about by our alcoholic behavior. Maybe the family or our employer had “had enough” and presented us with an ultimatum.

We can pass along to him that there was so much more: that the Program called us to take our inventory, to seek spiritual support and, where appropriate, make amends for our alcoholic behavior. In some ways, the beauty of the Program is that our assignment didn’t end there; we learned we were charged with a continuing obligation to periodically review our conduct and to change things where necessary. And importantly, we were left with a directive to cultivate our spiritual life.

I remember those first and early days of my surrender experience. I was relieved. A way to recover was freely given me. I felt cleansed. I found a new way of dealing with life’s issues. I saw joy in others when they had taken the same steps, the changes wrought in their lives, their new revived relationships with others. We attend meetings to learn but we also attend to see new lives come into being, new relationships growing, a deeper spiritual growth.

We don’t know how the Bishop entered our rooms or what drew him to seek us out. But we know that something called his attention to his addictive behavior—someone carried a message, a message of hope and a solution and a way to bring all of that about. We are relieved when someone enters our number for, we can hope and pray and in some way by our quiet examples, demonstrate that there really is an “easier and softer way” to respond to the life’s ills. Perhaps most importantly, when we surrendered, we learned we were not alone, we were blessed with our Higher Power to guide us, and yes, the Program was there when we sought it.

Maybe we will have a chance to share with the Bishop what we found once we took that first step of surrendering.

Jim A., St. X Noon

Help, Fix, or Serve?

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 04:49:19 GMT

In an article in Shambhala Sun Magazine in September of 1999, Rachael Naomi Remen M.D., wrote: “Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as a whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.”

When I was in seminary, I had an opportunity to spend part of my summer with youth who were, in one form or another, “handicapped.” On my first day I saw one coming down a flight of stairs in a wheelchair. Feeling scared for him, and not knowing what to do, I reported what I saw and, to my surprise, was told: “He’s really good at that.” I wanted to “help” but didn’t know what was needed of me. I saw a person in a wheelchair and concluded “helplessness.” I quickly learned these youth focus on their gifts and talents, not on their “handicap.” By the end of that summer I saw them as the artist, the writer, the photographer, and not “the handicapped” which is what society had taught me. I learned to ask, “Do you need help with…” instead of saying, “Let me help you with….

A few years later, as a new therapist, my supervisor told me: “Séamus, your role is not to fix or help the clients. Your role is to guide and encourage them to look deeper into themselves and they will find the answer they seek.” Here again, I wanted to be ‘the fixer” the “helper.” No one asked me to help; no one asked me to fix. My self-esteem was tied up in “helping” “fixing” as that is how I perceived the world around me, broken or weak. In my mind, I was, the one to help or fix.

My first few years in A.A. were years in a dry drunk. It was my belief I didn’t need any help or anyone to fix me. I was in denial of my illness. I had to attend AA to keep my job. In those early days I just knew I was going to be a great resource to the people in AA. because I had degrees in theology and counseling. The horse I rode in on was called Pride and very tall. It would be a few years before I fell off this horse and realize I was really a mule - hard headed, stubborn. I went on 12step calls to help “that poor drunk” and his or her family. I just knew if they listened to me, I could help them. As a counselor I was trying “to fix” the clients - I had forgotten what my supervisor had taught me. My attitude had become one of self-service, not other-service. I had forgotten a lot and lost a lot in Blackouts which I finally accepted I experienced.

I had to come to grips with my powerlessness; a deep realization that my life had become unmanageable. My bottom came when I finally realized I was among the walking dead – spiritually dead. It was at this point I was open to listen to others, to being guided by the principles of A.A., really listening at meetings and reading the Big Book and applying it to me.

Coming in early, setting up the room, staying afterward to clean up. - this was and is service. Attending the home group meetings, accepting or offering to serve on committees, was and is a work of service. To serve was and is to set aside my ego and learn to be present to the other, to be there for others. To serve is to do what is necessary without seeking acknowledgement. As Bill said “Our leaders are but trusted servants."

Becoming service orientated took some training. Being of service meant setting aside my ego, my sense of my self-importance and what I could do for others. It meant learning to stand back and see a larger picture. Being of service meant learning to understand that, what is often needed, is a sense of presence, a ministry of presence. Remen writes: “When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time.”

With recovery I came to realize that my tendency to want to fix and help others was preventing them from developing their God-given gifs and talents. Being a servant, is simply doing ‘the next right thing,” staying sober one day at a time, maintaining an attitude of gratitude, and being the hand of AA when someone shows up to begin the road to recovery.

“Being of service meant learning to understand that, what is often needed, is a sense of presence, a ministry of presence.”

Séamus D.
New Orleans

Twelve step recovery: A selfless help program

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 16:03:28 GMT

In his book RECOVERY - the sacred art, Rami Shapiro writes: “Twelve step recovery is not a self-help program, but a selfless help program. We do not change our lives, we allow them to be changed…we allow ourselves to be changed. Allowing this is perhaps all we control, and even here it is more a gift resulting from hitting rock bottom than it is any willful force coming from our ego.”

To tell some folk in recovery that AA is not a self-help program may sound like heresy. Initially, the programed seemed to be to be a self-help program. After all, I had to do the steps, I had to go to meetings; I had to call my sponsor. I had to do all the work. No one did it for me. I had to find where and when the meetings were held and find a way to them.

>After attending the same meeting for some time, I was invited to come early and help set up, stay afterward and clean the ash trays (that was a long time ago). I did, but for selfish reasons. And even as it was for selfish reasons, I was being changed. I was giving up control without realizing it. My Higher Power was working through others to bring me along until such times as I realized that it wasn’t me that was working the program as much as it was my Higher Power guiding me through others to do the next right thing.

Looking back at that time, it was as if I was being carried along in a river of recovery with cliches and acronyms as life-preservers; one day at a time; do the next right thing; let go and let god; stick with the winners, HALT; Don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired; HOW: Honesty Open mindedness, and Willingness.

Bill W. wrote: “What I needed was the humility of self-forgetfulness and the kinship with another human being of my own kind.”* I had no idea I needed that and yet that was what was happening to me. I was not doing this on my own. I was being led by example, patience, compassion, unaware of my being reformed, recreated, restored to health.

In time I got to know that some of the men and women with whom I spent an hour a day were people of influence and affluence in society and yet, when we sat in that room, we were all of one mind. All that I knew of them initially was their first name and that they wanted to get or remain sober, which was more than I wanted at the time. In that room we were all one day or one hour away from a drink. The selflessness of the people around me was inspiring and I wanted to be like these sober individuals, even if it was my selfish intention. I was one of those individuals for whom my Higher Power works overtime. I had to be guided, sometimes pushed, into the straight and narrow road not only in doing what was the next right thing but, more importantly, for me, having the right attitude about what was being done.

Becoming selfless was a process and, for me, a long slow process. There are times when I look back at those early days and wish I could have ‘got it” much earlier. And yet, because I was a slow learner, hard headed (hearted), I can now appreciate the journey to sobriety. Sobriety is a gift given to me by my Higher Power. I had little to nothing to do with it beyond letting myself be picked up and carried till I was strong enough to become a wounded healer.
I did not change my life. From the example of those who lived the program and worked the steps I saw what selflessness was about. Like a selfish child who does not want a particular present but still opens it, I did not want sobriety but it was presented in such a manner that I could not help but want it, then accept it.

Four and a half years into the program I declared bankruptcy I laughed and laughed. If the government came, they could take everything but my sobriety. That was when it hit me. “I am sober.” I had hit rock bottom spiritually and was given this gift of freedom. I had nothing to do with it beyond letting myself be carried, even when I didn’t want to. I accepted it grudgingly until I realized I was a danger to myself and others. As a result of living this program and working the steps I was gifted with a new life for which I am daily and eternally grateful.

Séamus D.
New Orleans

Hospitalized

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 23:50:10 GMT

I am fortunate in that I have not been hospitalized for any period of time. But with age moving us on its never-ending path of deterioration of body parts, at age 82 it doesn’t seem all that surprising that I just came off a 10-day hospital stay to correct a leaky valve, stabilize my heart rate, and install a pacemaker to monitor all this. The recuperation has been slower than I wished. But I know I’m on the right track. I also know that the recovery probably would be a lot more comfortable (especially to my family caregivers) if I just “let go and let God.” And I know from a medical standpoint, that my progress of recovery would be faster.

This alcoholic has always fought delays (defined as not getting something done as fast as I want it). It’s that old demand: “I want it done ... now.” It doesn’t matter that there are unavoidable delays or that others may have projects with more important shorter timelines than mine.

I think this behavior of mine is just another reflection of my ego always seeking to “run the show, that I can complete an assignment faster and better than others.” We forget that life’s normal traps catch us. We must remember that those traps can produce self-pity and resentments and pretty soon we recall that in the past, we resorted to the only remedy we had. We found a phony comfort and solace in that alcoholic behavior. We covered-up our feelings and didn’t seek real life positive remedies for this cycle which always ended in our dark pit of alcoholism and its familiar consequences.

Yes, I was in the hospital and now I am learning to walk with a walker, to regain 20 pounds, and accept the wonderful kindnesses of friends and family. I think I have learned another lessen and accept (most days) other ramifications.

But, I need to constantly remember to let go and let God, “easy does it”, to take it “a day at a time,” and all the other teachings of the Big Book and working our way through the Twelve Steps.

Jim A/St. X Noon<</p>

P.S. There are many lessons experienced during a period of complicated medical treatment. I’ll pass along a couple in future writings. JRA

"Whatever you say, say nothing.” Title of a poem by Séamus Heaney

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:49:36 GMT

I remember attending an A.A. conference where the speaker told a rather detailed story of his life leaving precious little to the imagination: robbery, sex addiction, jail/prison; drugs other than alcohol. His sharing of “what happened, and what it is like now” was minimal. Afterward, I learned from others I was not the only one uncomfortable with the “tell all” aspect of his sharing. For some, it was “embarrassing to listen to.” As one individual put it, “If I were a newbie and thought I’d have to share my guts like that, I’d go and get another drink.”

Oldtimers knew there was a healthy balance in the triangular framework of sharing “Experience, Strength, and Hope:” “What we used to be like; what happened and what we are like now.” Even when the sharing of ‘What we used to be like” was raw, it was raw “in a general way” and the “Strength and Hope” left the listener with a sense that this program works and could work for them. One could see the pain but also was left with hope and joy that, despite the past, there was a life after drinking. Periodically one might hear the sharing of a “Drunk-a-log” – forty-five minutes about the speaker’s drinking history and five minutes of strength and hope.

Oldtimers in the program did not take kindly to Treatment programs, especially those that said “a month in treatment is as good as a year in AA.” Treatment programs were seen as: “Hand holding.” “Taking care of your inner child.” “Talking about your damn feelings.” I am one of those who benefitted from a treatment program having spent five weeks in a four-week program followed by Aftercare and individual and group counseling. I thank my Higher Power for every bit of that help. And yet, I was one of those who lived by a statement I heard very often in my formative years; “whatever you say, say nothing.”

To “say nothing” was a way of hiding behind one or other of the many masks behind which I hid, or thought I was hiding.” I thought I was giving the impression of “I’m not that bad.” That, however, was what I wanted to believe. By “saying nothing” I was deluding myself into thinking I was “alright.” When asked to share, I would say something to the effect: “My name is Séamus, I’m an alcoholic, I grew up in a good family, I started to drink at age ___ I certainly did not think I was an alcoholic. I’m grateful I didn’t have any accidents, blackouts, nor was I ever in jail. I’m really glad to be here. Thank you for asking me to share.”

While what I said was true, I had still “said nothing.” I covered a multitude of ‘sins’ with my superficiality. In my mind I was thinking, “There’s no way I’m going to tell these people I did…” I felt scared. I didn’t want to admit it to myself. The philosophy of “say nothing” allowed me to be superficial even to myself.

One afternoon, a few of us were playing a game of cards and the conversation turned into an unofficial meeting. In that relaxed atmosphere, I found myself opening up, admitting I had drunk alone; I acknowledged I had had blackouts, and, internally, I was beginning to feel remorse for my past behavior. I was becoming human, a fellow human being with character defects and a disease over which I had no control.

“Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now” wrote Bill W in the Big Book. There is a difference between public confession and “saying nothing.”

Today, I know I have something to say; something to share – in a general way – that allows others to say to themselves, “I know what he’s talking about” or “I feel like that too.” Sharing my experience, strength, and hope has helped me grow up in this program in ways I never expected. Sharing and listening has helped me remember things I had blocked, that I had suppressed, and which I now needed to confront within myself, with my sponsor and sometimes with a counselor.

While I never did “tell all,” I grew up and discovered that my experience; strength and hope are important to me and to some others. I’m still not going to “tell all” but I have come a long way from the mentality of “Whatever you say, say nothing.”

Séamus D.

New Orleans, La.

The Wedding Banquet

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 20:29:14 GMT

Amy Jill Levine¹ calls the parables, Jesus’ Short Stories. Well, this one for Sunday about the wedding banquet and the guest thrown out for not wearing the right clothes, is a doozy! This does not sound like the God of our understanding to throw out this second invited guest because of what she is wearing. One interpretation of this story is that it is an elaborate allegory where everything has a deeper meaning.² Perhaps the under-dressed wedding guest gets bounced because she refuses to CHANGE. And the storyteller may not be talking about changing into different clothes either.

Like everything else in this story, the wedding garment has a deeper meaning. It is not a white linen suit lined with silk. It is a whole new way of life. For us, it is an invitation to a life in recovery, in sobriety, in a relationship with our higher power, a change where our life no longer centers on alcohol but on the God of our understanding.

This parable also reminds us of God's countless, daily invitations to come into our lives, opportunities for us to change. I remember so many chances I had to change but refused to act on them. I was driving after having too much to drink with my children in the back seat, and I heard a message in my head, “This is not right.” But I drove on. We often do not pay attention to those constant invitations, the moments of clarity, because our minds are deadened by drugs or alcohol.

We receive this invitation daily. Hourly we are invited to celebrate a new life with the God of our understanding. Our life before recovery was a constant refusal to CHANGE, refusing to believe that we needed help, thinking we could control our life, refusing to put our life into the care of God. We had become too comfortable wearing the old clothes of our old life, denying that a new life with tailor-made clothes was a possibility if we only sought help from others. I can remember walking through my kitchen and thinking, “I know I am an alcoholic, but I simply cannot live life on life’s terms without alcohol.”

Paul describes the wedding garment as "putting on the mind of Christ." Putting on God means surrendering, laying ourselves open to being made new. It means staying connected to God and being in relationship with each other. Most of all, it means living in the promise that we will know God and that God will indeed change us. My moment of clarity came when I had a realization that I could lose my job if I did not stop drinking. Then when I heard that the answer to staying sober was connecting to a higher power, I knew it was hopeless, for I had a relationship with God whom I called my higher power. In recovery, I learned that God was my copilot, but I was the pilot, petitioning to God to get done the things I thought should be accomplished.

God constantly is looking and reaching out and calling us truly to a banquet where we become happy, joyous and free, where we change into wedding robes sewn from patterns God has given us since the world began: patterns of surrender, of making an inventory, praying to God with another in recovery to turn our life and our will over to God, making amends, meditation, silence, forgiveness, caring about others, loving-kindness to those around us, especially to those still suffering from our disease. When we stitch these new clothes up and put them on, we are GORGEOUS, absolutely GORGEOUS. I DON'T KNOW WHY WE WOULD BE CAUGHT DEAD IN ANYTHING ELSE.

1 Amy Jill Levine in The Short Stories of Jesus.

2 Barbara Brown Taylor in "Wedding Dress," Home By Another Way, 192-196.

Joanna S.

Change

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 02:04:04 GMT

In his book, Recovery—The Sacred Art: The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice, Rami Shapiro writes: “When you see yourself in hurtful behavior “snap the photograph” freeze that action, and look at it. Literally stop for a moment and take in what you are doing. The “photograph” captures the pain, shock, or hurt on the other’s face or in her body language, and you can look at it objectively… and this moment is your opportunity to do something different, beginning with making amends.”

“You don’t remember doing that. You scared the life out of us.” I sat there with my stomach churning. A few years earlier this would have been an occasion for a drink. But now, thanks to the program, I was learning how my attitude and behavior affected others.

Shapiro’s idea of taking a picture of the other at the time we are inappropriate is a wonderful idea. It gives me an ‘on the spot’ look at what my attitudes and behavior is doing to another. Looking through that lens I see a person with a look of concern, a look of bewilderment; a look of pain and hurt; and I understand that I am the cause of that expression. It is in seeing this more clearly, I now know I have to make amends promptly.

This is a program based on progress not perfection. Early in the program I continued to say and do things which I should not have said or done and which I regretted. I justified my behavior as I was not yet living the program and barely working the steps.

With recovery, reading the big book, the 12X12, talking to a sponsor and others in recovery, going to meetings and listening to others, I finally got the message that there is much more to sobriety than not drinking. Sobriety is a way of life and that meant changing my attitudes and behavior.

In order to change I had to gather evidence of my behavior. Taking in that mental picture of the concern, the fear, the pain, of the other was not an easy thing to do. I did not like looking at the concern, the fear, the pain I was causing another just because I wanted things to go my way. Looking at a picture of the negative result of my negative attitude and behavior was painful and I did not need a trigger to another drink. Amends is the cure.

As I slowly made progress, I realized I was taking fewer and fewer pictures. I had gotten tired not only of taking them, but also of remembering them. “That was what I did to …” I had to remind myself. Those pictures which stayed with me were the evidence I needed that I had to make change. Those pictures were the catalyst for the change.

One of the joys of recovery is taking fewer and fewer pictures of what I do to others because the program has taught me to be a better human being, to be the person I was born to be and become. As I grew into the program, I came to realize that my annual “chip” was my camera. Holding that chip in my pocket, silently reciting the serenity prayer, I changed my attitude about the situation in which I found myself and about which I would otherwise have had a lot to say.

Promptly making amends is like developing a picture. At first its blurry, then it comes into focus and then there it is in black and white or full color and it can’t be denied. It reminds me of Monday mornings when individuals arrived at the court house demanding justice for being wrongly stopped, that they were not drinking. Then they sit and watch the video with their lawyer and there is silence. They don’t have to say anything – except- yes sir, that’s me.

I still have to make amends. I am not nor will I be perfect. However, progress in this daily program has taught me to, as the children at taught at school, Stop, Look, listen. Stop my mouth, look at the other, listen to what my gut and my mind is telling me “Be quiet; It’s not the end of the world; It’s no big deal; This too shall pass.” But, when my ego overrides my brain then I have to develop the picture, take a look at the pain and concern I caused – however slight – and make amends and go on living one day at a time.

Séamus D
New Orleans

All Shall Be Well

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 02:33:52 GMT

I remember Frankie, the main character in Carson McCullers’s Member of the Wedding, saying, “the world is a sudden and dangerous place…,” but when I googled the quote to verify it, I found that she says only, “the world is a sudden place…” When did the danger come in?

Actually, in my corner of the world—rural New Hampshire—the world right now doesn’t seem all that dangerous. As long as I don’t turn on the TV or radio, as long as I don’t look at any newspaper or magazine, and as long as I don’t talk with anyone except BridgetAdams (my golden retriever) or Freckles (the cat,) then I can just bask in the clear New England sky, the crisp late-summer air, the trees just getting their first blush of fall color. I can listen to recordings of my favorite music, re-read books that I’ve loved for decades or watch movies that I’ve already viewed (so there are no unhappy or dangerous surprises.) I can even knit patterns I’ve used before. My world can be predictable and safe, not sudden and dangerous.

There are problems with thinking that my cotton-batting swathed bubble is the world. One of the biggest problems is that I am an alcoholic and I can’t stay sober alone. I need other people to tell my story to so I remember who and what I am. I need to listen to tales that other people tell of the redemption of their regrettable pasts so my soul expands. Truth to tell, it’s not only staying sober that I can’t do alone. I can’t live my life alone. There’s not a whole lot of fun. Conversation with a dog and a cat gets tedious.

Their opinions tend to mimic mine and there’s no stimulating banter.

I try to tell myself that the world—the big world out there—has always been fraught with danger and uncertainty. Even if Kurt Vonnegut and certain mystical scientists are correct and past, present, and future are all swirling around us simultaneously, in my linear perception of existence, there is “before,” “now” and “sometime sooner or later.”

My friend Marcia and I were talking recently (this will get dangerous) and we each said in our own way, “Oh, I wish things were simple and good the way they were when we were in fifth grade.” But then we looked at each other with our white-privileged eyes and said, “Hmm…things really weren’t all that great, were they…?” We muttered to each other… “Oh, right…polio…discrimination…hunger…”

So even if the world out there has always been…difficult…and even if the idyllic childhoods of our memory were really not heavenly havens of protected comfort, it seems that now things are worse than ever. We are all together going through a “rough patch.” There’s a whole lot of unhappiness, turmoil and grief happening. There’s more overt social antagonism than ever before in my personal memory, although history certainly has repetitious tales to tell of similar antics by our human forebears.

So I calm myself down and I think of two things:

1.   I am an alcoholic in recovery. I can attest (to anyone who listens) that it is possible to be an alcoholic who chooses not to use alcohol for years on end. My mind is filled with words and images that sustain me. A grateful heart never drinks. One day (moment, minute, second) at a time I can not drink, no matter what I or the people I love are suffering through.

2.   I am a Beloved Child of God. I am an Episcopalian. I am a church goer. I pray daily. I know all the words to lots of hymns. I have been baptized and confirmed. I receive communion regularly. I can tell Jesus anything and am convinced that he still likes me and wants to reassure me.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold your horses (I can hear my mother saying that) —isn’t there a third thing that will calm you down?

Oh yes, I think of this, the most important: as Cassius said in his brilliant August sermon, “With all humility, persistence and strength (the church) can inoculate a fearful world with the blessing of hope.” ¹

3.   In our faith and in our recovery, we have received a promise: we are not alone. God is with us. God will see us through this. We—the church—the recovery community—we have work to do. We are, each of us, important and needed and we have been given gifts to share, to use, to help ease the travails of those with whom we are trudging along this path.

It is ours to give the world a shot in the arm—a vaccination against despair—we have been given the blessing of hope. The blessing of promises that come true. That blessing, the promise that all shall be well. That all is well.

–Christine A. H.

1. With all humility, persistence and strength (the church) can inoculate a fearful world with the blessing of hope. The Rev. Cassius Webb, sermon videotaped at All Saints’ Church Peterborough NH. 8/23/20

A Drunk Dream

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 00:58:47 GMT

Last night, I had one of those drunk dreams. You know the kind I’m talking about. You thought you were at a party and suddenly you realized you had a “bit too much,” as we used to say. Maybe a recollection was thrown in of an old extra-curricular activity, a car wreck, or a run-in with your spouse or employer, or the sheriff. I couldn’t work my way out of this parade of sleepy nightmare horribles. It felt like a real drunk, but suddenly, it ended. An overwhelming feeling of relief came over me. I awoke. It was all a dream! I was still “clean and sober!” But it was disturbing, and the recollections of those past horrific days prompted by my nightmare stuck with me the whole morning.

I don’t keep track of these “drunk dreams,” but I seem to pick up one of these nightmares every couple years or so. They aren’t tied to any event or number of meetings I’d made that month, or some incident that reminded me of one of my more notorious drunks. However it came about, it was just an overwhelming embarrassment of “the old days” -- before those moments of surrender and the early days of the Program, and the emergence of a strong belief that this time I was going to work it -- a resolute belief in that old saying, “It works if you work it.”

I guess we reluctantly should remember those “thrilling” days of yester-year replayed in these dreary drunk dreams.

The Big Book promises in our recovery our lives will be “happy, joyous and free” and reminds us of that healing Grace of our Higher Power.

It is important for us to remember above all else, that by adhering to the Program, the future is indeed bright, that our past is the past and need not be repeated if we but go to meetings, read the Big Book, and reach out to those still suffering.

So, it’s just a dream; sleep well tonight and wake up free and go to a meeting.

Jim A/St. X Noon, Cincinnati

To drink is to die

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 01:53:51 GMT

In the Big Book in the section, “How it Works”, Bill W writes: “And, with us, to drink is to die.” I missed that point in my first few readings of this section. I missed that for the first few years of my life on a dry drunk. Not drinking did not mean serenity and peace. Not drinking was like drinking in a sense. I was, as I looked back later, a walking corpse when I entered treatment and for a few years afterwards.

I clearly remember one night, and I was angry, the car stopped outside a bar. The music from the bar, the music in my car, and my attitude seemed to gel. I opened the door, one foot on the pavement and sat there. I have no idea how long I saw or why, but I did, and I am grateful to my higher power I did not drink. However, I maintained the attitude of one who was drinking.

“To drink is to die.” I finally understood that at the point I crossed over into alcoholic drinking – which for me, my first drink – part of my brain latched onto that substance which give me a good feeling. I drank from a variety of bottles that night, but I kept returning to whiskey. Whiskey did for me what I could not do for myself – made me feel good, worthwhile, part of the group. Such is insanity. Such thinking was the beginning of the tolling of the death bell. “I need this. I like what it does for me. In fact, I like what it does to me.” I did not say that, however, I might as well have said it. I was off the mountain and skiing with no idea where I was heading or what I was to face.

Mistakes, like bumps on the ride down the mountain, some larger than others. I laughed, picked myself up and kept going. Guilt and Shame caught up with me and drink killed them quickly. Death to emotions. Who needs them? Bury them quickly and they won’t bother you. Again, I didn’t say that, but I might as well have. Another death in the spiritual system.

“I have a better memory when I’m drinking” I proclaimed. And yet, when I began to make amends, I discovered I had no memory of much of what I was told and some of it was quite frightening. Then I began to recall times when I “Came to” and thought I was just tired. I needed more rest. My brain was dying, and my values seemed to have died a long time ago.

I believed if I drank with others, I could not become an alcoholic. I told the staff in the treatment center that I never drank alone. Weeks went by and, in one or another conversation, I had glimpses of pouring myself a drink – at least one – right? Yes. I said I would never drink on my own and I did so many times – alone in an airplane, alone in a crowd.

Mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, I was dying. I was spiritually dead. “And with us, to drink is to die.”

For me, sobriety came slowly. I learned to work the steps and live the program. I learned to go to meetings and listen to what others have to say. Go to meetings and share if it is appropriate. Talk to my sponsor about what is going on inside of me. Read the Big Book and apply it to myself.

A therapist brought me back to redo some of the IQ testing and I discovered just how bad I had done on it eight weeks earlier. Mentally I began to think about one day at a time; think about others; think about what is really important in my life. Emotionally I learned to say “I was wrong. I am sorry. Can you forgive me?” I learned to say “When you said that, I felt angry. When you did that, I felt embarrassed.” No one makes me feel anything but myself. Physically, I began to go to the doctor; the dentist; to other therapists, exercise, watched what I ate and finally stopped smoking. Socially, I learned to be comfortable in a variety of settings and not drink and not let the drinking of others bother me.

“And with us, to drink is to die.” At the end of How It Works, Bill could have added “And to work and live the program is to come alive mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and spiritually.”

Séamus D.

New Orleans

Beware of thirstiness lest your wishes become your desires, and desire binds you.

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 02:42:17 GMT

Do your thoughts trouble you? Does passion disturb you? Beware of thirstiness lest your wishes become your desires, and desire binds you. Dhammapada 24.

Two and a half thousand years ago the above was written by Siddhartha Gautama, better known as The Buddha (The awakened one). During my active drinking I not only read the Dhammapada, but I quoted it in talks and sermons. It was quite good advice to give to others and tell them how to be more moderate in their life. The problem was, I was an active alcoholic. There was no troubling thought that Jack Daniels could not erase. There was no passion which John Jameson would object to my following either in fantasy or reality. I was thirsty. My wishes became desires and I became blind to how I was hurting others. I became numb to the hurt I was causing myself.

I have been active in the program now for several years and it never ceases to amaze me, when I listen to those still actively using or who are in and out of the program, how they justify their behavior. I want to tell them – live the program and you will be happy; work the steps and you will find a greater peace than you can imagine. Sadly, I heard all those words in my early years of the program and paid no attention to it. I did not want to be there. It took me four and a half years before I began to understand a glimmer of the depth of the program.

“Beware of thirstiness lest your wishes become your desires, and desire binds you.” In other words, “Admit you are powerless, and your life has become unmanageable.” Early in recovery I was thirsty for the limelight. I was thirsty for what I saw was the glamour of being on the Speaker Circuit. I was thirsty for the attention given to those who came and shared their story to a packed hall on a Saturday or Sunday night. I was thirsty for the attention I was not giving myself. And, at times, I was thirsty for a drink. Thanks to my Higher Power/God, there were those individuals who knew me better than myself who told me the truth about myself and helped keep me on the narrow path to sobriety and sanity. Today, I know I am powerless over people, places, and things. There are those I would love to control. There are those in whose presence my anger begins to rise. There are those around whom I feel jealous of their gifts and talents. But, today, I can put my hand in my pocket, hold my recent “chip,” say the Serenity Prayer, and laugh at myself. Working the steps, living the program really works.

“Do your thoughts trouble you?” Not today. Today I am free to change my thought process thereby changing my behavior. And, if I slip, I can and do make Amends. “Does passion disturb you?” My passion today is for Peace and Justice and doing what I can to make it a reality in the world around me. My passion is to be the best I can with my God-given gifts and talents.

“Beware of thirstiness lest your wishes become your desires, and desire binds you.” Today, my thirstiness is tempered by working and living steps ten and eleven: “Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.” My desire today is to live joyous, happy and free and in working and living these steps I have achieved this desire the majority of my days thanks to the program and the good example of the men and women who live it one day at a time.

Séamus D.

New Orleans

Trying vs Doing

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:24:15 GMT

I’d like to add a couple thoughts about the familiar problems of the addict who cries, usually just as he or she leaves rehab, “This time I’m really gonna’ try.”

It seems sometimes relapses are encouraged by merely “trying” to work the program. Oh, I suspect there will be the normal period of involvement with the Program. But not too long after release from rehab, the good news is followed by bad news — our lives seem to become out of control for our life returns to “same old, same old.”

Why does this seem to occur more often than we’d like? “Why did it happen to me? Is it really necessary?”

No, it’s not “necessary” to the Program; it just sometimes seems that way. When we really “do” the deal, it becomes our life changing decision. We need to sign-on each day. It’s not the old shilly-shallying around when we merely “tried.”

Maybe, I have to post a sign I will see every day,

“This day, I mean it, and “Yes, Sir,” I know I have to re-up. Yes, I’m going to a meeting today, and maybe 2 or 3, as needed. I'll stick with my sponsor will not let me lie, alibi or “forget” to do it. I will study hard – not merely read - but study hard - the Big Book, the 12/12 and all the other literature. I will not let an issue or problem eat-me-up but will talk to my sponsor about it and maybe raise it as a discussion topic at a meeting. I will search for a spirit-filled life and I will carry this message to the still suffering addict.”

With “doing” the Program, in turning it over to our Higher Power, I find a joy and comfort — “we will know peace.” Happy serene days have come.

Jim St X Noon

Came to Believe

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 23:27:30 GMT

As one enters the treatment center, the chapel is on the immediate left.

Once inside the quiet and dimly lit space, the eye is immediately drawn to the front of the room, where the words “Came to Believe” emerge from the rock wall in raised metal letters.

Came to believe.

Those words, of course, are borrowed from Step 2 of the 12: “(We) came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

During my 26-day stay in 2018 at this particular treatment center, I would learn to draw great comfort from those words as I sat in the chapel for closing meditations on gratitude each day. Or, if I simply happened to be in the neighborhood of the chapel on other matters, I found myself drawn to the space or even to its glass entry doors, simply to look again at those words.

Came to believe.

As a priest with 12 years of parish experience, I thought I had this “belief” business down cold. And, in truth, I did. But not as it is envisioned by the church or the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I came to believe that a drink could fix anything. That was especially true in the last three months before I entered treatment, when my drinking was at its worst.<</p>

I came to believe that if I woke up bleary of mind and shaky of hand, a drink or two was a perfectly acceptable way of righting the ship.

I came to believe that if my chronic anxiety disorder was especially severe, several swallows of bourbon and water was a quick, easy and harmless way to steady my nerves.

I came to believe that as a “sophisticated social drinker,” I couldn’t very well live my best life without observing cocktail hour, which began promptly at 5 p.m.

Except, of course, when it started at 4. Or 2. Or 12:30.

I came to believe, all right, and believe strongly in a power greater than myself. It was a power so strong that it pushed aside other aspects of my life of any importance: the recitation of the Daily Office, meaningful sermon preparation, pleasure reading, even my social life.

With regard to the latter, at some point I began finding it necessary to drink a substantial amount before get-togethers with my friends, so I could get through the evening with only drink or two, or perhaps even a couple soft drinks, so as not to arouse any suspicion. Never mind how much I must have reeked of whiskey.

I came to believe I was fooling people.

But now, more than two years and probably a thousand AA meetings later, I have now come to believe other things, different things, better things. I am once again faithful to the Daily Office. I read much and often for the sheer pleasure of it. Around 5 p.m. these days I can usually be found with a big glass of iced tea.

And even though I’m no longer working in a parish, I have come to believe I’m a better priest and that I’ve learned more about my vocation through being an alcoholic than I did in seminary.

And I came to believe in myself again, a priceless gift of God’s mercy and grace.

Laird M.+
Lawrence, KS

“I will never forget where I came from.”

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 01:54:09 GMT

Recently I came across a piece of paper on which was written, The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage." It begins like this: “I will always be thankful for any amount of good health I have. I will always be grateful to wake up to a new day. …I will not let the good or the bad of the past own me, but I will let it teach me...I will never forget those who have helped me along the way, and I will endeavor to forgive those who tried to hinder me…..”

I have read this more than once since I first got it and it fascinates me in terms of my own recovery. In the beginning I was neither thankful nor grateful. Also, as time passed and I slowly began to come out of the fog and into recovery, I learned from others about my old behavior and attitudes which brought to my attention just “where I came from.” Initially, I had the attitude and belief that “I’m not that bad.” “I never did that .” “No matter how drunk or high I would never have…” "Oh yeah?”

I have not been nice about a few of my acquaintances who have forgotten just where they came from. To listen to them one would think they arrived in this world with a silver spoon in their mouth. Just because I remember where I came from physically is not the same as where did I come from in terms of my sobriety and my addiction.

I did not like my first A.A. meeting because they were sharing stories that hit home to me and I did not want to hear it. In fact, it took another ten to twelve years before I was able to hear about where I had come from.

As I grew into the program, I realized more and more that my initial attempts at the steps were a farce, were completely superficial as I attempted to just ‘look good” and get away with superficiality. My superficiality was like a banana peel on which I slipped and fell into the darkness of a dry drunk for a few years. Trying to forget or ignore where I came from was keeping me from growing, keeping me from taking a daily inventory, keeping me from the ‘maintenance of my spiritual condition.”

“You really want me to tell you what you did?” asked a friend to whom I had gone to make some amends. I was not prepared for his honesty nor his compassion. I listened. Then I had to remember there were others who told me things I denied but they never quite went away. As I became willing to entertain the possibility that I did XY& Z then my mind was open to hear what else I may have done, what other amends did I have to make?

In the sayings of the Buddha I read, “Do not make light of your failings, saying, “What are they to me?” A jug fills drop by drop, so the fool becomes brimful of folly.” How often in my early years had I participated in a drunkalogue, “Let me tell you…” and we laughed. Yes, I remembered the past only as a way of having a better story than the other person. Then, as I really remembered where I came from, those stories had to be put away; the stories that I could no longer verify their truthfulness I stopped telling. Instead, I began to remember where I came from with a deeper sense of humility, a sense of connection to others, an awareness of my humanity. Where I came from was that place many of us have been, dark and empty.

“It’s Okay. I’ve been there, done that. Hang in with us and you will be okay.” This is the importance of “I will never forget where I came from.” Remembering where I came from is the place where I can intersect with the newcomer who is still in the dark and I can be there to bring the message of hope that others brought to me. Now, I remember.

Seeds of Sobriety

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:57:13 GMT

One of the reasons I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this blog is that doing so allows me to consider the whole of my life as a priest in recovery. There are times in meetings when my reflections are too “churchified” to be a suitable share. Likewise, sermons are not the appropriate arena for program talk. For me, then, these occasional musings occupy the intersection of these two worlds.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been listening to Jesus describing the kingdom of heaven with agricultural images. Having just moved from the East Coast to the Midwest to take up a new call, the parable of the sower, and that of the wheat and the tares, have a new resonance.

I think back about my first couple of months in the rooms. There was wisdom being scattered everywhere: slogans on the walls, the literature, the old-timers. But I was so broken and fearful that I poo-pooed much of that wisdom. I knew that they just didn’t understand me, I thought the slogans were simplistic, and on and on and on. I was the hardened path and the rocky soil and the thorny thicket – all at the same time.

Still, my yet-to-be friends kept at it. “Keep coming,” they said. And then one day, without my noticing it, some of those seeds of wisdom found a little sliver of good soil. And something took root and began to grow.

My now-new-friends taught me how to care for that new shoot, and rejoiced with me at my growth, telling me that it was now my turn to help someone else. My new life was off to a good start, but it wasn’t as smooth a road as I would have liked. “Oh,” I thought, “that’s what they mean by people, places and things.” Well, there’s a parable for that, too.

We are told that the kingdom of heaven is like someone who has sowed good seed, yet an enemy comes and sows weeds among the wheat. This is not good news, right? I identify with the household servants, and squirm at the messiness. My fear-driven sense of control wants to fix it. I want the world to make sense to me. I want that to happen now.

But Jesus says, “no.” Actually, Jesus says “no” and “wait.” Hmm. Why insist on patience and restraint? Why are we told to accept his timing instead of ours?

And then I picture myself as a triumphant toddler, standing in a big pile of flowers, having “helped” in grandma’s garden. Then slogans like “easy does it” “live and let live” “clean up your own side of the street” and “let go and let God” echo in my mind, and the “why” becomes clearer.

I have to be reminded constantly that it's not my job to remove anyone from the power of God’s redemptive love by taking the work of judgment into my own hands. The good news is, if I can manage to leave the judgment bit up to God, I am freed to take up the responsibility for caring for my little corner of creation. It is God’s job to defeat evil and death. But I can do the work that God has given me to do. I can care for my neighbor, I can speak out against injustice, I can support those in need.

In other words, I can do exactly what I learned to do in my first months. I can surrender the fear that used to drive every aspect of my life. I can work to maintain my spiritual condition. I can offer to someone what was given to me without cost, a testimony that God wants to restore us to sanity.

Just think, it all started with a little seed. Come, ye thankful people, come!

Paul J.

Achieving that Spirit-Based Life

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 01:54:42 GMT

One of the newer attendees brought up this topic. Lots of good comments, each from a different perspective and many good ways each achieved that status.

I’ve come to believe that a spirit-based manner of living is simply another way of describing the surrender experience. When we surrender, we turn our will and our lives over to the care of a Higher Power who in my case I call God. What are we to mean when we “turn it over”? We give up the feeling that we were in charge and when we were, we got into trouble. We couldn’t manage our lives 100% the way we wanted. We became anxious, fearful, and sought escape in our abuse of substances. What does it mean to “turn it over”? Perhaps a lot of things, but it certainly means that when we’re in a situation we can’t manage or change to our liking, we ask: ”What is God’s will for us in this situation?” We don’t give God a list of options. The issue is how do we react to what we have learned from the message of the Program. What’s the next right thing to do when we can identify that. We meditate and look for His will for us and the power to carry that out. We quietly ask God.

How do we reach the stage when we can come to know we found His will for us? Ah, the $64 dollar question: Takes time to see His will. We can’t clutter up the search with suggesting our own options. We have to shut-up and listen. It’s a “letting go” experience. We can bring it to our sponsor or to the group as a topic for discussion. We can sit and read the Big Book and think of what this passage is calling us to do. It’s finding and implementing that “next right thing.” It takes practice but it will come to you. Keep at it. It is after all the only option we addicts have available for we messed up when we thought we were in charge.

Jim A, Covington, Kentucky – St. X Noon

Nothing will be able to separate us…

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 02:03:45 GMT

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

On June 18 at 10:45 pm the love of my life, my partner, my mate, my best friend and confidant John A., a priest of the church and a recovering alcoholic, died of a chronic condition while I was asleep in the recliner next to his hospital bed. John always listened to my TtRD blogs as they were in process, offering occasional suggestions and unfailing encouragement. John supported me in whatever I chose to do – write blogs or sermonettes, play the piano, sing, work extra hours at my paying job, drive hours to visit grandchildren for an afternoon or try once again to establish an exercise routine. How can I manage without his support?

Because it’s crazy COVID-19 time, for the first half of his three-month hospice sojourn it was just him and me and the visiting hospice angels here inside the condo – I was afraid to let anyone else into the house for fear that the coronavirus would make John’s last days even worse and would take me down also.

We had planned a trip to Florence and Rome that we canceled in February after one of his hospitalizations, knowing he wouldn’t be strong enough to travel. So we took some of our travel money and poured it into our front garden. We worked with a designer and bought many mature perennials that John could enjoy as soon as they were in the ground.

Finally, after many weeks of tears and prayers, confessions of concerns and conversations with allies, I was able to let go of my fears and so family started to visit inside. Sometimes I would get away to walk the dog with friends wearing masks. Once or twice I went into the guest room and just slept for a few hours. I wanted to let John and his kids be alone together without my hovering presence. The day came, though, when it became apparent that home hospice and I, along with some amazing 24-hour friends and family members, couldn’t provide enough care for John and so he had to move to the hospital. That was hard.

The afternoon before John died, he crashed and it was touch-and-go, but his medical team finally got him stabilized. I was away visiting the kids, but Jamie, the rector of our church, was there with him. She had brought communion and made an altar out of the bedside table, moving aside IV kits and nasal cannulas and basins. Jamie started the service but John stopped her and whispered, “Invite them all in…” and so in came the doctors, in came the nurses, in came the LNAs and they encircled John’s bed and they communed.

And so it was evening and it was morning, another day. John was awake and agitated part of the time, but then became comfortable enough to sleep. Our golden retriever was allowed to come in to say good-bye and John moved his fingers when Bridget licked his hand, trying to scritch her on the head the way he always did.

So John died when I was asleep on the recliner next to his hospital bed. I think I woke up just as he entered the gates of larger life...

And now I’m writing my Red Door blog and trying to figure out how I can do this without my greatest encourager and advocate proofing my manuscript and praising a phrase or asking for an example.

But my point is – nothing can separate us – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Loss and loneliness aren’t the only things I’m feeling today. It’s not even two weeks since John died so there’s also a lot of numbness, a lot of not feeling at all. But I am becoming aware of a deep well of gratitude. I’ve had many, many years of training in Alcoholics Anonymous in how to live one day, one moment, at a time without drink or drug. I’ve had the support and the example of thousands sober people who have shown me that there is nothing, nothing in the world…that can separate us from the love of God. And that love is made manifest in our Fellowship. You have shown me and taught me how to recognize God’s love all around me. An old-timer – was it John? – said to me recently that sobriety is growing to recognize that God is everywhere. Love is everywhere. Gratitude is everywhere.

So I’ll end with a list: I am grateful for the sober years that John and I had together. I am grateful for the easy sober laughter we shared. I am grateful for the sober spats and the sober reconciliations. I am grateful for going sober to church and for going sober to meetings together. I am grateful for our sober dinner parties. I am grateful for our sober symphony concerts and sober Red Sox games. I am grateful for the garden, a gift of our sobriety.

And most of all, I am so grateful for sobriety, for recognizing that God is here with me now, and that God always has always been with me--has always been with us.

Nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Christine A. H.

Freedom

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 01:31:01 GMT

Saturday we will celebrate July 4^th, the passing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia by fifty-six delegates of the Second Continental Congress in 1776. The cry was freedom from being repressed by a power that had become foreign and was now interfering with their lives. The fourth of July is a day to honor those who decided “enough.” It was “a moment of clarity.” The delegates heard a call to an alternative life where they could become the people God had created them to be.

I suspect the delegates did not have all the pure motives for breaking away from England as we hear about in the orations in the days to come. Some motivations must have been financial.

This commemoration is beginning to sound unusually familiar to us in recovery. By some miracle, we have a “moment of clarity,” a moment of truth that gives us courage to make a decision for change. My experience also is that even when our motives are not pure, we are still led to a change that will save our lives and the lives of so many others.

I think about my moment of clarity. It was not because I was driving with small children in the back seat of our car after I had had too much to drink. Rather, it was because I feared I might lose the career I had worked so hard to accomplish. Others also come to recovery not to seek help for themselves but because of a relationship with a spouse or child or employer or a court. They had not yet realized how they are captive to a disease that is unrelenting and will only get worse.

I remember when I first came to recovery that the promises spoke most clearly to me. I give thanks for the person who put the promises on the wall of our recovery room. “We will know a new freedom and happiness.” (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 83) NEW FREEDOM. NEW FREEDOM. Freedom to become the person God created us to be. Freedom from hiding alcohol. Freedom from carrying alcohol hidden in a suitcase on every trip in case there was none there. Freedom to speak and not fear that my speech would speak to my inability to speak. Freedom not to drink before a party so I could drink “socially” there. Freedom to be an alert, awake, and conscious part of my family’s life.

As we all celebrate the birth of our nation, this fourth of July, I hope we also will celebrate the birth of an alternative life of freedom for each of us. It is truly a milestone to honor and give thanksgiving for our higher power who led us to “the moment of clarity” and for more people than we can number who carried us with them along the way. It is indeed a historical event.

Joanna Seibert

Another kind of surrender

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 01:13:15 GMT

I've noticed lately that something in my ego bristles at the word “surrender.” I can't shake off the military connotations, and that throws my whole relationship with my Higher Power into an adversarial mode. Then, when I try to soften my heart and become willing to let go of my way, my will, I stubbornly don't want HP to have Her way, either.

But reframing the story in my mind, I feel the release and relief of a different kind of surrender. I can imagine being lost in a dark forest. Thorns and clinging vines block my passage, the sun's bright face is obscured by tall trees. I don't know what wild beasts or poisonous creatures are stirring, to my right and to my left. Darkness is coming and I am cold, hungry and afraid. In this situation, I would gladly surrender to anyone who could tell me which direction I needed to go. Thrashing around in an unknown place filled with hidden dangers doesn't usually lead to good outcomes.

If I was turning myself over to someone I know and trust, it would be an even easier decision. And I do know this Higher Power who demands my surrender. She is the one who fills my life with the tender love and care of my friends and family. My Higher Power offers me birdsong and flowers, sunshine and dramatic, sweeping storms. The third step invites me to turn my will and my life over to God's care, not to an indifferent commander of an opposing army.

Surrender itself is not the cause of my pain or discomfort. It's the resistance to surrender that makes every decision seem a burden, every step a hard slog. Giving up on having things my own way means difficulties begin to melt away and choices become more clear. When I let go of the idea that I am the sole keeper of life's answers, it is humbling – but it feels infinitely better than forcing my way alone through a hostile landscape.

Surrendering my own will and waiting for an understanding of what my Higher Power wants for me often seems an impossible task, especially when I view it over a period of weeks and months. On the days I have managed it with any kind of success, I have moved minute-by-minute in a careful dance of “do the next right thing.” Do the dishes. Call the doctor. Pay the bills. Take a nap. When I am able to trust my actions moment-by-moment, I build hours and then days on a foundation of God's will.

But moving forward, I can't always know that I am surrendered to HP. It is only looking backwards in time that I see how those “next right thing” moments stack up and offer me direction. It takes perspective to see the long-term fruits of the program. When I am surrendered, with a moment-by-moment dependence upon a kind and loving H.P., my program promises me a life filled with God's “ease, balance and grace.” That's something worth surrendering for.
-Karyn Zweifel

“That Pandemic Quarantine” - Our Gratitude

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:27:39 GMT

Our regular weekly noon discussion meeting of “St X. Noon” occurred this year on Memorial Day. We had finished the usual readings of the Steps and so forth and then the search for a topic raised its head. Identification of a topic is usually not a problem. Recovering alcoholics, it seems, don’t have any hesitation speaking out in an AA Discussion Meeting but for some reason the request for a topic this time fell on deaf ears. I’ve always thought that “Gratitude” was the final safety net for identification of a topic for discussion. So, I suggested it and we were “good to go.”

I had a couple recent occurrences for which I was very grateful: my brother-in-law reporting that just before Memorial Day he had been declared clean, if that is the right term, from the usually deadly onslaught of brain cancer. It has been several years since he started treatment which proved successful.

Another thing for which I was grateful was remembering on Memorial Day those in the Program who were the “old-timers”, those who were there when we finally showed up, usually last resort for us. They were there to provide aid, comfort, to keep us on the straight and narrow path — in some ways these folks were as important to us as the troops who paid the full price of a defense of our country. The old-timers assisted the resurrection of our being from that death spiral we were or would have been riding had we not walked in those church basement doors.

Bill and Dr. Bob told us that the Program was merely one drunk talking to another. That’s what we did at meetings. And so we moved from a selfish attitude toward life in general to one of empathy, a realization that the universe didn’t need us that much, that we weren’t the most important people in the scheme of things. We learned to appreciate our differences and to build strength on those differences. We learned others had trod the same path as ourselves. We also learned to emphasize with and remember those who didn’t make it. We ourselves had probably failed before so it’s no great surprise that others have stumbled. We don’t defile them, we comforted them — perhaps with some tough love, but at least with empathy and a hearty reminder that all of us had already played games with the Program at various levels of intensity.

We have to remember that the Program tells us that the Steps describe us to take positive action on a variety of human levels — from our souls to our relations with others — and with ourselves.

So, next year, when Memorial Day rolls around, I’ll recall Bob, the Plasted Plasterer, Dr. Father Scanlon, Ladder Bob, and all the gang that was present when I finally decided to walk down those steps into the basement of the First National Bank for the regular Tuesday East One gathering of those seeking life’s comforts through the Program and sharing with newcomers what we had learned.

Jim A/ St. X Noon

Finding Sanctuary

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 11:45:27 GMT

How are Pentecost, the Birthday of the Church, and June 10, The Birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous alike?

They both begin a season of sanctuary. A time of love, acceptance, understanding and peace.

The message of Pentecost is very, very clear: speak in a language clear enough so that everyone can hear the message. The message? God is love. You are a beloved child of God.

The message of Alcoholics Anonymous is equally clear: speak your truth out loud so that someone else might hear the story. The story? You don’t have to drink: you can talk to me instead.

On the day of Pentecost the Good News of God’s love was spoken so people could hear it in their own language. They understood. They got it. They were safe, among friends.

How many times have we gone to an AA meeting and left with wonder, saying “That speaker tonight told my story…I am not alone…there is a way…”

AA is a practical guide to living a life of love. Recovery starts out with acceptance of who and what we are: alcoholics, unable to manage even our own lives. But through the power of AA, through the fellowship and the program, we learn to love ourselves. And then that love can spill out and we can start to love other people. We take responsibility for our actions. We learn that we matter. We learn that what we do and say and think affects other people and we decide what we want that effect to be. We have choices. We are free.

So what do I mean, “season of sanctuary?” What season? What sanctuary? The season is now. Now is the time when things are happening. Right now. This is the season of love.

What sanctuary? The halls of AA--the undercrofts and basements, the upstairs rooms and Serenity Clubs--the halls of AA are safe places. People can come and be accepted. People can come with all their sadness and anger, their restless, irritable discontented selves and they will be listened to. And they will learn to listen to someone else and in doing so, they will become human.

What sanctuary? The chambers of our hearts that are open to love. The real, tough love of accepting other people as they are, knowing that in God’s kingdom they are doing okay.

We work very, very hard to offer sanctuary--acceptance, love, peace, understanding--to whomever we meet, wherever we are. We respect the dignity and worth of every human being.

And we show that by listening. We listen. We honor. We accept.

We are sanctuary.

Christine H.

Came to believe

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 23:11:00 GMT

When I came into the program some forty years ago, I heard the then old timers say, “First, I came to the meetings; then “I came to believe in the program,” and then. “ I came to believe in a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity.” How cute! Oh, did I have a lot to learn.

I came into this program thinking I had so much to offer giving my background of having been a minister, a counselor. Yes, I had a lot to learn and a lot more to unlearn.

I sat in meetings judging people for what they were saying, the cheap clichés, the jokes, the drunkalogues. What was I doing with “these people?”

Thanks to my Higher Power and my arrogance I stayed around long enough to get sober. Initially I wanted to show my boss that I could stop drinking as well as show my Aftercare Counselor I was doing more work than those in our Friday evening group. In fact, all I was doing was going to meetings. When I look back at that time I realize, “I came” to the meetings and, what I heard was sinking into and changing my stinking thinking.

For almost five years “I came” to the meetings and that was it. Oh, I did “Do” the steps. In fact, “I finished them.” Then I had an experience that got my attention, that I needed help. Doing the steps, superficial as I was, was getting to me and finally brought me to the realization of my powerlessness

“I came to believe” in the program. Yes, no one could explain to me how or why it worked. It just worked. Go to meetings. Read the Big Book. Talk to your sponsor.

Then someone said to me that when I go to meetings, I needed to listen to what “those folk” shared and ignore the differences. I needed to Read the Big Book and apply it to myself. I needed to talk to my sponsor and also listen to him.

“I came to believe in a Power greater than myself.” Yes. I believed in God but, the God in which I believed was a vengeful one. My God was “out to get me.” I lived in fear of the God in whom I believed and prayed to. I knew there was a loving God and I talked about him/her. And then I read “create your own image of God.” This brought me far outside my comfort zone. Now, I needed to talk to my sponsor. I needed to talk to those who not only thought as I once did but also to those who thought differently from me and who could challenge me and my belief system; take a good look at step one again and ask myself, “Would a healthy person do what you did?” “Do normal ethical people do what you did?” The answer was staring me in the face; hit me on the back of the head like a hammer. My behavior was that of one who not only had lost his values but also insane. I had a difficult time in accepting that kind of insanity. “It wasn’t my fault. I just drank too much.” “I don’t remember that. I can’t imagine me doing that.” “I can’t imagine me saying that.”

“I came to believe in a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity.”

That Higher Power helped me accept myself as a human being; as one with a disease called addiction; that I made, can, and will make, mistakes and I can now go on living. Sanity is accepting that I am not perfect in any form. Sanity is to be responsible. To be responsible is to be able to respond and not always react. To be sane is to have peace of mind even when I make mistakes. To be sane is to enjoy the here and now of living in the present.

In returning to Steps one and two I finally understood the process as I came to believe I had to work and live steps one and two before I could learn to trust self, others and the God I would call my Higher Power, and a Higher Power I can call God.

“Hey, Siri, tell me a joke.”

Thu, 28 May 2020 00:20:59 GMT

Sometimes before I turn out the light I ask Siri to tell me a joke. A part of my mind sneers at this, that I would turn to an artificial intelligence for company or solace. But the better part of me defends my little habit. It’s a random bit of self-care, virtual company as I whistle past the graveyard. Being alone at the close of the day brings up a sort of primordial fear in me: perhaps I’m afraid of being unconscious, unaware and undefended. That fear is something shadowy, lurking around the edges of my consciousness and nibbling at my sanity. It’s almost embarrassing to think about, but I am afraid of going to sleep. Or perhaps I fear the release that precedes slumber, the letting go of all the day’s plans and hopes and little failings.

Letting go means looking hard at the illusion of control. Although I may believe I have some control over other people, places and things, that’s usually false. I really only control what’s inside my hula hoop. When I do a tenth step at bedtime, it helps me sort out what bits of my day I actually had under my control. I have health problems, and sometimes those twist my day out of shape. But I have no control over my cancer, its symptoms and the side effects of my treatment. When I continue “...to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it,” it gives me a way to catalog my day, accept responsibility for my shortcomings, and let go of the rest.

Maybe it’s my expectations deviling me at bedtime. Perhaps I’m just clinging onto every day, unsure that there will be another. These are more manifestations of my inability – or unwillingness – to let go of what is not mine. Yet I have placed my prayer life and my recovery as the linchpin of each day; since I have been sincere in my efforts to pray for God’s will for me, then I can relax into the knowledge that She has never failed me yet. And if, in my stubbornness, I need proof, it is near. I have a safe place to live, the wind outside stirs the trees with an invisible hand, the birds sing, I am loved.

Remembering that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, that HP and I have been in good contact and I am actively working to stay in Her will, not my own – perhaps I need to remind myself of that at the end of the day. Or maybe I should let go of my sleep difficulties altogether. What does it matter if I sleep till noon? As long as I do not fill those damnable hours of midnight to dawn with recriminations, anxiety and fear. As long as my waking hours are productive (or mostly not counter productive) then what does it matter what time I sleep?

Today, I said my “morning” prayers at 4 in the afternoon. It will be dark soon. While that fear may return, I don’t need to know the origins of it, or know its shape or volume in order to contain it. I can simply give it away, ask my Higher Power to remove it. And while that removal is taking place, Siri can keep telling me jokes.

“Letting go means looking hard at the illusion of control.”
Karyn Zweife

Vigorous Action

Fri, 22 May 2020 01:02:18 GMT

“Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action…” page 63, The Big Book

It was Saturday, March 14. I was preparing to lead a day retreat the following Saturday with a local Matt Talbot group around the theme of page 63 from The Big Book. It was perfect timing for my recovering journey! I felt tired from the work I had committed to do as an interim minister and the people I was serving for the past 18 months. Every attempt to move forward with changes needed for them to become the change-makers seemed fraught with excuses and refusals. While attending my home group meeting early most mornings, my regularity had faded to 2 or 3 times a week, maybe. The group, a solid part of my recovering life the past 12 years, was becoming usual, predictable, and frankly I was bored … NOT a healthy place for this alcoholic to be! So, this retreat day would be the perfect foundation for completing another Step 4 and 5. And then …

COVID-19 changed everything! The retreat I was to lead was cancelled. Our diocese suspended all public worship, and I was plunged into the world of “virtual” worship each Sunday. Like all other gatherings, daily AA meetings were put on ice as well. Sure, I could reach out to my sponsor and other friends along the happy road. Sure, I could connect with one or more of the “virtual” AA meetings that quickly appeared. Sure, I could do SOMETHING about this needed step work. Sure I could, but getting traction on this was not happening. And then …

A friend from the rooms, who I also shared time with as spiritual director, began having spikes of fever, a general flu-like weakness, and then THE COUGH. He was referred for testing for the Corona Virus. The first was negative, then the second showed positive, and then the third returned negative. Since the medical world could not figure out what to do, they sent him home and said if it got worse, go to the ER. He called me immediately, feeling the need to work through his Step 4 & 5 in the case that he … The gift of his sense of life urgency cleaning his life and spiritual house gave energy for me to do the same. We covenanted to complete what we could in a week, and then meet on his deck at appropriate space with masks to share these steps with each other. By the time we met, his physical manifestations had settled, the coughing disappeared, and he was on the mend. He went first, I followed. Tears, laughter, comfort, and inspiration to move on to Step 8 and 9, to move forward in a time when nothing else was moving forward. It was truly grace, nothing else but grace. I hold this truth from writer and recovering companion Anne Lamott -- “I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” And then …

I received a text from the chair of our home group. He wanted me to know that the group was still meeting with appropriate limits. When a member anniversary was to be celebrated the group conscience agreed that the anniversary person would be specifically invited in these unusual times. So, on Saturday, May 23, I’ll be present at my home group with mask of face, a smaller group of my recovering friends, to give thanks for 23 years of recovering life. I could not do this without the grace of God, and the living, loving presence of my recovering friends in all the places I have traveled. And for this, I am grateful.

Paul G.

Newark, Delaware

Many Dwelling Places

Fri, 15 May 2020 14:10:18 GMT

In the first days of sheltering in place, I was an early if reluctant adopter of online 12 Step meetings. It took some time to iron out the kinks: finding the precise link, making sure your private chat comment was, in fact, private and, unsurprisingly, learning all over again how to raise your hand. Soon enough, like when I first came into the (in-person) rooms, my comfort level grew, and I looked forward to seeing my home group buddies in their little Brady Bunch boxes on my computer screen.

At some point in preparing to preach last Sunday, I began to hear the well-trod story from John 14 in a new way: in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. Many, if not most, of us associate this lesson with funerals. Some of the commentators wrote something to the effect of “come on, lectionary, we’re in Easter. Why drag us back to the Last Supper? Bummer.”

Bummer, indeed. As these days of pandemic grind on, watching the news suggests a medieval text that lives still in the burial service of the BCP: In the midst of life we are in death. We are surrounded by death in a manner few have known. The mounting numbers are too much to wrap my brain around. Some days I’m just numb.

Then a colleague pointed out that the Greek noun for dwelling place is related to one of John’s favorite words, the verb for abide. Abide. Dwell. Stay. Remain. Abiding is profoundly relational. For those of us who deal with a disease of isolation, abiding with is essential. How often are we told that “this is a we program?” Our sponsors remind us that we are not alone, to stay in the middle of the pack. Recovery necessitates abiding with, staying connected to, each other, our sponsors, our Higher Power.

The number of deaths is still appalling and tragic, yet how blessed are we to have been offered new dwelling places in which to be faithful to our programs. For this addict, abiding with my precious companions in the Brady Bunch rooms of online meetings, I begin to see the promise of the Resurrection in new ways, that even in the midst of death we are in life.

Abide. Hang out. Hang on.

Paul J.

May 2020

The Stranger’s Voice Might Be Our Own

Thu, 07 May 2020 02:35:50 GMT

Maybe it’s because of my work as a drug and alcohol therapist or maybe it’s in there, but I couldn’t help but read the gospel in this week’s lectionary and not hear the voice of someone in the pre-contemplative stage of change denying their need for help from their addiction. Allow me to expound on this. How many times have we heard (or said ourselves) to our spouse, to our parent, to ourselves: I’m ok, I’ve got this? I can do recovery on my own terms. Meetings, therapy, detox isn’t for me. I can do this.

Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.

So what if trying to get in the sheepfold by climbing in another way is a sure fire way to set ourselves up for another relapse? What if the sponsor or the therapist or the certified recovery specialist is the shepherd? The shepherd is already in the fold (maybe has been in our shoes before) and if we follow the sound of their voice it’s possible they may lead us where we didn’t even know we needed to go. Because left to our own devices… Well, I think we all know how it ends when we are left to our own devices.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Because life on life’s terms, right? And maybe not by using in order to cope for the first time ever. And realizing that we may have been our own worst enemy and going in the back door we miss unpacking all the junk that got us here in the first place. Because the junk has to get unpacked and we have been unable to do it on our own this whole time. Why should this time be any different? So maybe we admit our powerlessness, make the appointment and go to the meeting through the front door.

They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

And then this verse right in the middle of the gospel lesson…Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.Yep, this definitely sounds like someone in the pre-contemplative stage of change. Or any stage of change. Or anyone at all!

Then a whole lot of hope begins to emerge.<</p>

We stop letting our emotions make our decisions. We get a 30 day chip. We begin to build up enough muscle and have enough tools in our tool belt, when we drive past the place where we used to shoot up or see our dealer’s car in town, we don’t even recognize it. If we’ve done enough work and spent enough time with the shepherd. We turn from the voice of the stranger even though it might be our own. We are led into the sheepfold. We are on our way to a meeting. We are on our way to having life and having it abundantly.

So again Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

Now doesn’t that sound like a good place to be?

Deborah M, LPC
Lancaster, PA

Surrender v Submission

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 02:20:24 GMT

“The moment you surrender to love and allow it to lead you to exactly where your soul wants to go, you will have no difficulty.” Neale Donald Walsch

I often hear the slogans “Fake it until you make it” and “Acting as if” in the rooms of 12 Step fellowships. The idea behind these slogans is to develop a pattern of behavior that mirrors a recovered lifestyle. I think of it as a way to develop spiritual muscle memory by repeating the actions of a person in recovery.

While the intentions of these slogans are admirable, it is always good to see these slogans as mere placeholders on our recovery journey. They are stand ins until we begin the process of surrender. In reality, it is possible to not act out with our drug of choice and still not be sober. That is the difference between surrender and submission for those of us in recovery.

Surrender involves acceptance of the reality that life as we have lived it has only resulted in our own self destruction. We can’t lie any more to ourselves, to others, or to our Higher Power. Surrender always erupts from the fountain of rigorous honesty. It requires the rejection of denial and a commitment to reality at all cost. Surrender requires making peace with our character defects. When we surrender we realize that our addiction, be it to alcohol, drugs, sex, compulsive lying or whatever are just symptoms of a spiritual dis-ease of our egos. Surrender is the foundation upon which true recovery is built.

Submission however, allows us to do the right thing with the wrong motives. Submission is best illustrated by the imagery of a Prisoner of War. Someone in compliance with the orders of their captors who follows the rules of the overlord while inwardly plotting his escape from captivity. Some of us in recovery see the program as a burden, we are sober but by God we are not happy about it! I always laugh when someone who is in submission to the program reads the sentence“…if you want what we have…” Thank you but I will pass.

Artist and creative Sissy Gavrilaki reminds us, “Sometimes, it ’s not the times you decide to fight, but the times you decide to surrender, that makes all the difference.” How true this is in recovery. When we not only decide to give up fighting but also make peace with our enemy (ourselves) we absolutely experience freedom from our addiction, find release from the shame which motivates us, and undermines our negative core beliefs. The result is true peace and serenity and the gratefulness both for my recovery and my addiction.
That is something I will go to any length to experience.
Digging Deeper

1.      How would you describe the difference between surrender and submission?

2.      In what ways have you ever been resentful of your sobriety or recovery?

3.      Why do some people in recovery talk about being grateful for their addiction? How are you grateful for your own addiction? What gift has it given you?

4.      What role does denial play in understanding the difference between surrender and submission?

5.      Matthew 5:3 (The Message) tells us, “You ’re blessed when you ’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” How can being at the end of your rope (hitting bottom) result in the type of surrender being discussed here?

6.      Describe a time when you reached the end of your rope and we able to surrender. How did that feel? What was different? How has that impacted your relationship with your drug of choice?

-Shane M

Living One Day At a Time

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 13:49:26 GMT

“Now with the pandemic, everyone is having to live like an alcoholic in recovery: one day at a time,” said a wise woman at a meeting last week.

So what does it mean, to live one day at a time? It means not getting too hepped up about what might happen or what should happen or even what has happened. It means stopping and breathing, looking around, and saying, “Oh, okay, my Higher Power and I can handle this.”

I want to be perfectly clear that I do not always remember that.

I found myself two weeks ago not getting anything completed, not remembering what I had started, not remembering what came next. I was busy-busy-busy all the time, but I was frenzied. I had stacks of things to read, reports to write, laundry to fold, letters to answer. No stack ever reduced in size. And other stacks were born. And multiplied.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I was sober. I was grateful. I read my morning pages. I wrote in my journal. I attended one or two Zoom meetings a day. I chatted with my partner and FaceTimed with my children and grandchildren. I said my prayers and offered to help.

But I was running around in circles and I knew it. I was chasing my tail.

And then a friend said, “That’s anxiety, Chris. You’re anxious.”

I gasped. I caught my breath and I stopped. It all made sense. I was anxious.

I thought I was just disorganized.

I had been refusing to admit that this pandemic, this COVID, this social distancing, this uncertainty—on top of dealing with my beloved’s serious illness—had really really been stressing me out.

I had thought that I was protected by my (many) years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous--my working the steps with sponsees, my calling my own sponsor, my Twelve Step life, the Promises--and my Episcopalianism--attending virtual services at the National Cathedral and in my own parish and diocese, my prayers and supplications and creeds and spiritual communions.

But I am human. And I can be sober and stressed. I can be a faithful communicant and anxious. I can have faith and fear at the same time.

So what does that mean? Our rector said in a sermon recently that the opposite of faith is not doubt—the opposite is certainty. Faith means believing in something you can’t quite define, you can’t quite label, you can’t quite grasp. Faith is a deep knowing, an ineffable relationship. And like all knowing, it comes with unknowing. With all relationships, there are times of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Nothing—no amount of faith, churchiness, sobriety or 12-stepping—can stop me from being human. From forgetting that I am connected and held and cherished.

I would be out of touch with reality if I didn’t admit that uncertainty and global change is scary. I was out of touch with reality when I was convinced that my frenetic busy-ness was just an attempt to get myself organized and not a desperate shield to keep my worries buried.

Fear: Face Everything and Recover.

By labeling what I was feeling—anxiety—I could then look it in the eye and say, “Oh, you! I know you. We have been together before. You better come out in the open and get some light on you so I can see you clearly. Here, let’s invite our friend Faith in and the three of us can chat.”

Christine H.

Just Some Thoughts

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 02:21:01 GMT

Shane M in his posting of March 27 on Episcopal Church Red Door, said a great deal. I have it in my file and will periodically dig it out for another reading.

What is one to say about all this COVID stuff? “Who would ‘a thought?” It does seem strange not to be able to personally drop in on a meeting, but the internet sure provides plenty of opportunities to “stay tuned to the Program”.

With all the admonitions and orders and rulings to stay indoors and “don’t travel” my wife pointed something out to me I haven’t considered. “Say, we may not see our kids until the New Year.” Our kids live in New York City, Chicago and Denver - nice lovely places to visit, that’s for sure. But with things as they are, it will certainly be Fall, if then, before we are able to visit. The computer brings new opportunities to stay “in touch” that is for sure. But it isn’t the same.

That’s why Shane’s comment about gratitude is so relevant amid this pandemic: “[Gratitude is] the last resort in our tool-box [and] is probably the most powerful.”

The Program as a whole sustains me in these times. It is a way of thought, of looking at and solving problems. It tells us to periodically look ourselves anew and take the measure of our lives and day-to-day habits.

Shane’s discussion of stress, concern, and worry is something we in the Program are well familiar with. We can “make a mountain out of a mole hill,” only this time, perhaps this COVID really is that mountain. One trait I formerly carried was the ego-centered feeling I was the center of solving all problems. By serious entry into the Program, I was reminded I couldn’t even solve my own addiction problem. I’d tried over the years and failed. It was only when I surrendered to that Higher Power, the one “greater than ourselves” and worked the Steps, that I found sobriety and serenity. I really couldn’t “do it all” and finally found serenity in leaving it all to my God.

Solving this COVID problem is in the hands of those who know how to look for a way to curtail its effect on our lives. This time we have been thrown into the middle of it by the forced personal isolations, closures of businesses, and an inaccessibility of people, places, and things we relied on in our daily lives to sustain our well-being. We need to remember to let them - the first-responders and the medical personnel and research persons - do their jobs. We can be a part of their efforts by our support of those efforts, financially and otherwise.

We need to remember those whose businesses have collapsed, the clerks in stores and waitresses and servers in restaurants, the college kids and others that cannot even look for jobs (if the jobs are there), or anyone whose income is either gone or greatly reduced because of the widespread shut-downs of our former open lives.

We have to reflect an empathy to those worse off who may not have the resources to cope. We in the Program do have those resources. In the Program itself, and our relationships with all the rest of us who every day work the Steps, we lend a hand to a newcomer, make the coffee and cleanup the meeting room - for by doing so, we are not part of the problem but are trying to do our bit.

Oh, we are so lucky to have the Program to provide a way to accept the things we cannot change but maintain the courage to change that which we can, and the comfort and serenity to know the difference.

Jim A, Covington, KY

The Penitent Thief at the Back Gate

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 03:28:21 GMT

Freddie* stopped me as I unloaded my groceries. Do you have a second, he asked, just outside my backyard gate. I’m sincerely sorry from the bottom of my heart. I want to apologize to you and your husband. I said some mean things to him last night. Freddie was wearing a black t-shirt and baggie jeans. He was wearing a silver cross necklace and he smelled like wintergreen mouthwash. He had several multi-colored earring studs in both ears and his bald scalp and neck were covered in tattoos. You are my friends and I love you guys.

The night before, just before dinner, we heard Freddie. The sounds were coming from his efficiency apartment just beyond our backyard. He was yelling and breaking things. We heard a woman, his girlfriend, Sylvia*, crying. At first we watched and then when we saw the window breaking, my husband fled out the back door and over to Freddie’s apartment. As soon as Freddie saw him he yelled at him, Get the f**k outta here! My husband retreated and returned home not wanting to aggravate the situation. Other neighbors tried to intervene and calm him down by yelling at him, shaming him, trying to reason with him, swearing at him. He was highly intoxicated. Sylvia gathered up a few belongings and left. The police were called. He was compliant and respectful and they left after telling him to cool off for several hours. We heard very little the rest of the night except for his door slamming every time he threw another plate or beer bottle or more of Sylvia’s things out of his apartment and into the alley.

Inside the safety of our home, less than 100 feet away, our hearts broke for Freddie. Just a few months prior he had gifted me with a broken lava lamp from his apartment when he learned it was my birthday. He had helped my husband mulch our small urban backyard. On occasion, he had cooked us arroz con gandules. Now we could hear him sobbing. All night he wept.

Standing by my car, I put down my groceries and let him finish. Then I slowly and quietly said, We knew you were hurting last night. We knew that was not the Freddie we know and love. He paused letting the words sink in. There was no shaming. There was no corrective action. There was only love. His eyes filled up with tears and the dark, faded neck tattoo on the skin over his Adam’s apple rippled as he swallowed hard. He wiped the tears from his eyes and in a barely audible whisper said, Thank you. I wasn’t right in the head last night and that will not happen again. He leaned in for a full hug and I threw my arms around him.

He walked back to his apartment. And I finished unloading my groceries. I carried the ingredients to make haroset into the house. In a few hours I would take it to the Bible Foods dinner we have every year at church during Holy Week. Haroset represents the mortar the Jewish slaves used while in captivity in Egypt. It is served during Passover which was two days away. And I thought about Freddie’s slavery to alcohol and the violence and pain it causes him and others.

And I thought about foot washing and how Jesus spent his last days on earth with his betrayer. What would Jesus say the morning after to the neighborhood drunk who broke windows and screamed at his girlfriend if he accosted Him as he unloaded His groceries? I considered Freddie’s repentance and earnest apology. His tears running down his tattooed neck.

It was Maundy Thursday.

And I chose to hope Freddie would be my neighbor a little longer. I hoped he would play his reggaeton until late into the night this summer. I hoped he would help my husband mulch again and chat by the back gate. And maybe, just maybe, he could be with me someday in paradise. Forgiven. And free from the slavery of his addiction.

*names have been changed

Deborah M., LPC
Lancaster, PA

Overcoming Fear in the Age of COVID-19

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 02:18:29 GMT

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. -John Lennon

How is your anxiety level?

As I write this the nation is at the early stages of addressing the COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants are either closed or have gone to offering drive thru or curb side services and have closed their dining rooms. Schools and institutes of higher education have stopped having classes on campus and transitioned to virtual education models. The news reports are warning of the stress that could be placed on our health care system should the virus impact us as it has Europe and Asia. Don’t even think about buying a roll of toilet paper or a bottle of Purell!

As people in recovery, we have to take this situation seriously. In addition to the concerns about our health we have the reality that times of fear and stress are huge triggers that could impact our recovery. Where the danger occurs at this time is that we may be triggered both externally and internally.

Internal triggers are emotions, false core beliefs, thoughts or self-talk. External triggers are people, events, relationships, information and environments. Both internal and external triggers move us closer to lapse or relapse, both of which are currently bombarding us. Something diabolical happens when our external triggers spark internal fear and anxiety. While the opportunity is there to act out in our addiction, the opportunity also exist to deepen our recovery. But it may require some effort. Here are a few thoughts…

Extremes are not our Friends. People tend to be focused on extremes and either have over or under reacted. Ask your self if this describes you. One of the slogans I embrace in my recovery is “I am cautiously optimistic.” Remember that extreme or all or none thinking is a sign we are slipping into addiction.

Focus on Facts not Fiction. Nothing helps us in recovery as much as truth telling. Talk to a doctor or health care professional about both how you feel and what is true about this pandemic. You cannot make a solid decision without educating yourself on the truth.

Feel Your Feelings. Consider journalling your feelings during this time. Simply begin with the sentence, “Today I feel…” and finish it with everything that comes to mind. It is easier to deal with the emotional triggers once we actually write them down and recognize them. Download a Feelings Inventory if you have trouble getting a grip on what you actually feel. After seven years of recovery I still have to look at a handout of cartoon faces to figure out that ache in my gut is actually anger or loneliness.

Remember your Program Tools. When we are activated we have a slew resources which can defuse our addictive energy. 12 Steppers can do a 4th and 5th Step. Those in Buddhist Recovery programs may choose to meditate. Religious based recoverees may pray or attend a virtual religious service. Each program of recovery provides tools and connections to manage our compulsive behaviors, now is a great time to use them!

Stay Connected. Regardless of length in a recovery program, the simple tool of picking up the phone is one most of us can use to arrest feelings of anxiety. Others may be able to log into a virtual meeting recovery meeting offered by our programs. One surprise that has come from this event is the increase in online meetings! A friend told me, “It was reported that the hits to our website of people looking for online meetings has jumped from 800-1100/day to almost 12,000/day in the past week and is climbing.” Isolation does not have to mean we limit our interaction with others, it just means we have to be intentional and choose to exercise some muscles we never use.

The last resource in our tool box is probably the most powerful. A recovering person who get this and lets it motivate his or her recovery will remain sober. It is the atom bomb that disarms anxiety and fear. It is a sure deterrent to the hopelessness we feel when the world is closing in. What is this weapon?

Gratitude.

As someone once told me, “Grateful addicts don’t use.” How true! Gratitude is the ultimate act of right sizing our lives, our thinking, and our perceptions. Everything around us may be going to hell in a hand basket, yet simply finding one thing to be grateful for can reorient our perspective. When we choose to be grateful we are choosing courage over fear and acting out of humility instead of ego. While I do not believe that everything happens in our life for a reason, gratitude allows us to bring purpose to even the most difficult circumstance.

Even if that circumstance is a global pandemic.

Gratefully in your service,

Shane M

Digging Deeper

1.      Find a quiet place and take a few minutes to center yourself spiritually in a way that works for you. Now use a journal to finish the sentence, “Right now I feel…”

2.      Highlight any emotion that may be triggering. Follow up by journalling about what is behind that emotion. Be specific. (example. Right now I feel fearful because I do not know what I will do if I lose my job over this virus outbreak.)

3.      Try to identify any destructive or erroneous thoughts and record them in your journal. (example: Catastrophic Thinking - I am imagining that I know the out come of this and I do not. I am future projecting.)

4.      Get honest by journalling what is driving that emotion and belief. (example: I wish I could control this and I can. I am struggling with letting go over something I have no control over whatsoever.)

5.      Create an affirmation to replace that false belief with a better one. (example: I am choosing to not panic or give into fear. Instead I choose gratitude and surrender. I am not in control.)

6.      Take time to journal a gratitude list. Go into detail about what, who and why you are thankful. (example: I am grateful for my daughter and son because they love me and support me in my effort to recover.)

7.      Close your journaling time with a prayer or meditation expressing gratefulness for three things which enrich your life at this time.

Gratitude

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 16:26:42 GMT

I met a man named Scott* early in my 12-step program. He swore, a wicked-looking knife scar bisected his cheek, his arms were tattooed with some scary-looking ink, and he slouched, his dirty work boots stretched way too close to my personal space. Scott was a double winner, working programs on both sides of the hall. One program kept him alive, he claimed, while the second made him want to be alive. Scott went to more meetings than anybody I'd known before, and he joked about a special dislike for one particular topic: gratitude.

The topic seemed to follow him. “I've been to two meetings on gratitude already this week,” he'd grumble. I know why he grumbled. Being grateful takes hard work and a willingness to see things differently. From him, and from others in my program, I've learned just how powerful gratitude can be.

Making the effort to practice gratitude boosts my ability to identify and choose joy. I have to work at it, because my disease sometimes colors my perceptions and makes it difficult to see what's positive. It's almost magical: the circumstances causing me difficulty point the way to happiness. I may fuss and worry when my car breaks down, but the fact that I own a car is something for which I am very grateful. I love the freedom of riding down the road with the wind in my hair. As I learn to recognize joy, and welcome it into my life, everything improves.

Gratitude also teaches me acceptance, and acceptance is the foundation of my serenity. Before I worked a program, I spent a lot of energy on denial. I believed if people would just do things my way, I'd be happy and successful. Accepting my inability to control people, places and things means I don't spin my wheels trying to force solutions. When I am grateful for what's in front of me, I'm accepting what's real and finding beauty and meaning in every corner of my life.

When I am restless, irritated and discontent, gratitude is hard. I don't want the solution to my bad mood to be something easy and self-initiated. I get so wrapped up in my self-will, so attached to an external solution for what's bugging me. For some dark reason I don't fully understand, I sometimes reject the wisdom of this program and choose to be unhappy instead. But Scott knew: a scrawled list of gratitude, sometimes as simple as listing clean air to breathe and a roof over my head, turns that unhappiness upside-down. It never fails; I only have to make the choice. Gratitude is self-care, even when I do it without enthusiasm.

The practice of gratitude is also a tool to improve my conscious contact with my HP. When I count my blessings, I see God at work in my life. I'm in relationship with my HP, secure in my place, aware of the care and comfort so freely offered. I'm so grateful for my friend Scott, and for the rooms where I learn how to live a better life.

*not his real name

Sobriety Coins

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 02:36:39 GMT

The season of Lent calls for an emphasis on strengthening and a renewal of the spirit-filled life and the call to seek the Will of God in all we do.

I was talking recently with a person who found the Program about the time I did and daily attended the same meeting, “St. X Noon.” We both remembered the faces which meant so much to both of us – Rob, Mike, Dick, David, and so forth – without their words, and depth of their feelings, we both acknowledged we may not have “made it.”

Some time ago, a friend jokingly poked me, “Do you still go to ‘those meetings?’ to which I, who suffered the pain of a couple long-ago relapses, said, “If I don’t renew my AA Experiences each day, I weaken my Program and may find myself asking, ‘Gee, it’s been a long time, one won’t hurt. I don’t want to forget how close we all are to slipping back onto that merry-go-round called “addiction.’

This is a harsh reality we all face. We must continue to search for an experience with the Program each day – go to a meeting or two, a re-reading of a chapter in the Big Book, calling your sponsor and reaching out to someone looking for a sponsor, an active regular time for meditation, a time of quiet contemplation, or writing a hopefully enlightening meditation for a Program newsletter.

This is the Christian time of Lent. We strive to find a bit more quietness – a time for meditation. Perhaps we attend services or special study gatherings at our church or parish.

So, here’s to a happy Sobriety Date, remembering that each day we must quietly recognize our path to recovery and renew our commitment to the Program’s path.

Jim A/Covington, Kentucky

My New Strategy

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 01:42:28 GMT

In my primary recovery program, we have a list of 12 Signs of Recovery. I am always drawn to the third sign which reads…

“We surrender, one day at a time, our whole life strategy of, and our obsession with the pursuit of romantic and sexual intrigue and emotional dependency.”*

My struggle with sex, love and pornography addiction was at a base level, a life strategy that never delivered on its promises. I truly believed that by drinking in the images on my computer, searching for the “right” person to be intimate with, and becoming emotionally involved with people who were emotionally unavailable, I would find the right formula to be happy. It was my life strategy and everything I did was designed to accommodate this. My addiction became a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. Regretfully the promised goal of happiness and validation was a mirage. Addiction promises paradise but delivers pain.

Recovery has taught me that a new strategy of living is required to experience the serenity for which I was desperately looking. My new strategy involves a rigorous commitment to reality. I can no longer build my life around or upon an escape from reality. My recovery life/mental health is re-established when I am committed to reality at all costs.

One way I do this is to frequently ask myself, what is my current reality? I find the answer is most easily uncovered as I inventory my feelings. After almost seven years of recovery, I still rely on a written list of feelings to help me identify the ones I am experiencing. Writing down my feelings of anger, shame, fear, loneliness, and others which are less toxic point me in the direction of reality. I am able to breathe, examine these feelings, sit with them and move through them…not avoid them, not numb them, not sit in them as a victim…move through them.

When was the last time you inventoried your feelings? Grateful people in recovery are honest about their feelings, their character defects and as my friend says, “lean into the sharp edges of what makes them uncomfortable.” Only by embracing our pain can we truly make a commitment to reality at all costs. That strategy is the antithesis of the illusion my addiction promises. But it is one that delivers on its promise of being restored to wholeness and sanity.

This way of living reminds me of the words of the Apostle Paul that call me to embrace my “humanness” as a pathway to strength.

“My grace is enough; it ’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.”**

When I return to my old way of living I deny the reality of grace at work in my life. It is the purest way to distance myself from the reality that is God. Denying God ’s grace is not a good strategy for living. Setting aside my ego, my pride, my plans, my self-promotion, my self-propulsion, my, my, my is the path to recovery.

Just for today, I can get behind that strategy.

Maybe you can too.

Shane M

Conway, Arkansas

* S.L.A.A. Signs of Recovery © 1990 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

** 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Taking Responsibility for Your Actions:” Trying” vs. “Doing

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 02:06:25 GMT

It’s a fundamental problem caused by our addiction. I might call it the excuse barrier. It’s a shifter – a shifter of blame, a shifter of fessing up, always blaming something else, or denying our perhaps long-term history of drunkenness. Did we really give the family or our kids or our employer our best? Some say the most damage is done to ourselves. We ignore honesty with ourselves. Oh, we may see some difficulties the morning-after. We may even cry and ask ourselves “Why do I continue riding this merry-go-round?” But that temporary immature childish self-pity is temporary. With the first reach for the bottle or the drug, poof, any slight vestige of responsibility disappears. We become children again. All we wish for is the silence of those around us who may once in a while “call us” on our alcoholic conduct and we respond with the usual: “I’m stressed. It was a mistake. I couldn’t sleep last night and that one drink threw me back into that old “Substance Briar Patch.” The worst excuse we may use is, “I don’t know what happened – been going to an AA meeting but it doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not as bad as some of those people. This time I’ll really try”

The addict has developed over the years his or her own defenses and usually has a protective “think skin.” He has been through this before and knows what defense works. Often, the family contributes to the problem – covering up and enabling you to continue, not forcing you to take responsibility until an ultimatum is presented. There’s no progress until the family takes responsibility for its non-actions or its silence or its cover-up. It’s a poison stew overcooking a bit more each day the conduct continues, and the family can’t take it anymore and the stew boils over. In some sense, the addict is a coward, pure and simple. Perhaps so is the family or the employer. Everyone avoids facing the addiction, erecting their own barriers to block it out. Each member of the family retreats into their own self for maybe each has found a way to ignore or block-out or forget or excuse the addict’s conduct. Learning to get away from the fear of the worst happening to the addict, or the embarrassment suffered from the drunken conduct of the alcoholic, who in desperation cries out: “I’m really going to try this time to take responsibility and work the Steps ... I really mean it.”

The result is sadly usually the same if that is the only commitment the alcoholic makes.

“There’s no trying, only doing”.

Jim A./Covington, KY

We Are Not Alone

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 17:36:33 GMT

What combination of sobriety, scripture and liturgy am I going to write about for this blogpost?

A new guy showed up at a meeting last week. The newcomer, a mechanic who had just gotten off work and who had half-moons of embedded grease under his fingernails and a patina of dust and sweat on his skin, had no idea what to expect. He knew he drank a pint of liquor and a dozen beers every night. He knew he had gotten into trouble with his family and with his boss, but he wasn’t in trouble with the law: he hadn’t lost his license or been arrested or ever been court-ordered to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. This was his first experience stepping into the halls.

Up to the podium came the next speaker—a big guy, a larger-than-life biker—a scraggly-bearded forty-something man, all leather and tattoos and Harley logos. This speaker talked about what it had been like, what happened, and what it was like now. He talked about promises coming true. He wept when he spoke of his gratitude to Alcoholics Anonymous for giving him a “life second to none.”

The newcomer turned to the stranger next to him and said, “I never knew there were other people who feel exactly the way I do.”

And so the conversation began.

At a retreat years ago, the priest said to those of us gathered there, “Conversion is gathering up the fragments of your life.”

That is what sobriety is: it is conversion to a totally new way of life. Leaving nothing behind, being ashamed of no part of our story but accepting each misstep and each bad choice as essential, we speak—we tell the story that will someday save the life of another alcoholic as we speak from whatever podium we are standing at.

And we are saved.

We learn we are not alone. We learn to value ourselves and bring honor back into our lives. By acknowledging—not judging—our stories and ourselves, we learn to accept responsibility for our actions and for their consequences.

As James writes in his epistle, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Although in our apostolic, Episcopal tradition only a priest can confer absolution, James clearly states that the confession and the praying bring about the healing.

Our Twelve Step fellowships are oases of healing in our sin-parched world.

By speaking out loud and listening intently, we hear exactly what that newcomer heard: there are other people who feel exactly the way we do. More than anything, at meetings and through the wisdom of the program, each of us learns the truth that we are not alone. Not ever. Being sober means having our eyes opened more and more. Each day, each experience reveals to us another moment where we can see God within ourselves and in everyone else we meet along the way.

Thanks be to God.

An ever-growing understanding of God

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 01:26:56 GMT

My understanding of my Higher Power can be as flexible as I want it to be. This idea made me acutely uncomfortable when I first encountered it. But it helps to place it within the framework of the story of the elephant and the blind men. One, touching the creature's tail, said “It's a rope-like beast, frayed at the end.” Another, catching hold of the elephant's trunk, cried “No, it's a thick snake.” A third, touching a tusk, declared the animal was smooth and hard, much like a spear.

I am blind to all the wide world, with only a thimbleful of awareness about my own self at best. With my limited, all-too-human perceptions, I will never know the extent of my Higher Power, if I were to spend every day of the rest of my life trying. I still believe even to imagine I can fully comprehend Her is awfully presumptuous. But within the loving guidance of my twelve-step recovery group, I am encouraged to explore my understanding of the force I choose to call “God.”

When I was new to the program, my sponsor told me I could borrow her Higher Power if I didn't have one already. If my own HP wasn't working for me, why not try another source? She also made an assignment that seemed remarkably forward: define the God of my understanding. The exercise was difficult and revealing. I discovered that the God I called on was all-loving, and all-knowing. But I didn't really believe this entity was all-powerful. My perceptions of the world's great pain and its effects on all living beings made it impossible to believe God had the power to end suffering.

With my sponsor's help, and through the alchemy of the group's experience, strength and hope, I began to see how God's power permeates all of existence. A word in a meeting, a chance phone call, a stray beam of light: just the right thing, at the time I needed it most. I witnessed HP's strength lifting and sustaining my fellow 12-step members. I am beginning to see, dimly still, how pain and suffering differ: pain is a human condition and inescapable, but I can choose whether or not I suffer.

Now, I have an ever-growing understanding of God, and I often envision myself as a simple electric plug. All I need to do to experience the power of God's grace is push the prongs into the outlet and the power flows through me, along with HP's limitless love and unbounded wisdom. But when that analogy fails me, as it probably will at some point, there is another perspective, another way to look at it that will carry me through the pain and relieve my suffering. My HP is all-powerful, and my life is touched by grace every moment I allow it to be so.

My eyes have seen Your salvation

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 01:22:24 GMT

The gospel reading last Sunday was from Luke 2: the Presentation of Our Lord. Joseph and Mary present Jesus in the temple and there are two devout Wise Ones who bear witness to the event. They have each waited a long time, in their own ways, for this day. It has a profound, life changing impact on them.

How many of us in our recovery have felt like Anna and Simeon waiting to see the Promised One? Anna, the aging widow prophetess, is in the temple the day Jesus is presented and declares this is the Child that will bring redemption. Simeon believed he would see the Lord’s Messiah before he died and, when he does, breaks into his own Magnificat. He affirms God’s dismissal of him in peace and declares his eyes have seen salvation.

It feels like Anna and Simeon have been in recovery and have finally tasted sobriety.

After the fourth time in detox. After three years of sobriety. After the second DUI. After 84 years of age, never leaving the temple and fasting and praying night and day. After waiting and waiting for the consolation of Israel, the Baby is placed in Simeon’s arms and he sees the light for revelation to the Gentiles! And sometimes the tremors stop and the drug dreams stop and we get a 30 day coin and then a 90 day coin and we, too, find glory!

It would be easy to dismiss the hard work Anna and Simeon had to endure to see the redemption for Jerusalem. It would be easy to focus on the happy day in the temple when all is well and everyone goes home happy. But Anna is a widow and has endured loss and grief and it would be probable to assume Simeon is near death. And recovery isn’t about the end, is it?

It’s about the process. Along the way things get messed up and a sword pierces your own soul. There are jobs lost and relationships destroyed and hospitalizations. And there are fallings and risings of many. There are fallings and risings of way too many.

And there are late night phone calls to our sponsor and endless group sessions. We start keeping a gratitude journal and admitting our helplessness. We learn to breathe and trust a therapist. We make the 7am meeting. And another. And another.

And, over time, the child within us grows and becomes strong. Sometimes we get moments of wisdom and the favor of God. Until one day…our eyes begin to see our own salvation.

Deborah M. MA, LPC
Lancaster, PA

And they left for their country by another route.

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 01:29:30 GMT

“And they left for their country by another route.” This is a quotation from a gospel in which we are told the story of three wise men who came to seek the Messiah and afterwards they returned to their country by a different path.

What has this got to do with AA and Recovery? A lot. At least from my viewpoint. I came into this program with all kind of opinions and “facts.” In my ignorance I believed I knew what I was letting myself into. After all, any idiot can stop drinking. It’s no big deal.

What I learned was information I already knew but I did not understand it. And because I was too busy being a ‘big shot” I was missing everything I should have been learning. I had to begin a journey on a different route. What I needed was a “metanoia” a “change of heart.” It took almost five years of a dry drunk to get to this new road home.

Coming into the tent of Alcoholics Anonymous led me to one group of 12 Steps and then I realized that I needed to visit another program – Alanon. If this was not enough, by the middle of my fourth year I was presented with the book Adult Children of Alcoholics and all of it applied to me.

Over the years I have been active in A.A. I have, where appropriate, encouraged individuals to work an Alanon program. However, what I have come to realize is that the majority of us in A.A. grew up in homes where there was active addiction of one kind or another. We are literally adult children of alcoholics.

Like the Wise Men, I was looking for something outstanding, something that was different. What I found was something simple; Go to meetings, Read the Big Book and Talk to your Sponsor (and don’t drink). It’s that simple- like a little child.

As the child grew, his parents and others discovered his knowledge was such that it turned a religion on its head with simplicity; he made it make a difference, not in the world of politics or international relations, but rather within oneself.

Bill Wilson discovered that by talking to other drunks he did not drink. Then he met one who believed him and then another. Over the next few years, others joined them from around the country. Sharing their experience, strength and hope they discovered that this included “house-cleaning,” making amends, learning humility, finding a Higher Power, helping others. And as the numbers grew and the program grew like an Irish family, there was needed Traditions and modes of operation.

“Keep it simple” became the mode of operation. The road I had been looking for was one in which “I” would be center stage; one in which “I” would not only be important but also indispensable.

The road by which I returned was one of humility. I needed to learn to ask for directions. I learned to ask for help. This was a much different road than the selfish and self-centered road I had walked most of my life, even long before I picked up that first drink.

The road by which I returned to find myself was filled with wounded-healers who knew how I felt, knew how I thought, accepted me long before I accepted myself, forgave myself or loved myself.

The road by which I returned was not religious but spiritual, filled with life and love, compassion and understanding.

I came looking for a Bonfire and found a match that lit a fire within me; it slowly burned till it ignited and let me see the light that was already there. Such was the joy I discovered and wanted to sing “Go tell it on the mountain” but all that was needed was to say “I’ve been there. I know how you feel. Tell me how I can help you.”

Séamus D. is an Episcopal priest in the Greater New Orleans area.

Not Faking It

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 01:19:24 GMT

I knew I was an alcoholic pretty early, I think. I started young and I loved alcohol from the first taste. It was very hard to drink without eventually blacking out. I knew I couldn’t drink like other people, though I could pretend pretty well in public because I got quiet once I was drunk. I usually drank at home, though, and I drank a heck of a lot. The upside of this was that I never got myself a bad reputation as a sloppy, reckless drunk. The problem with this was that, once I went into recovery, many people in my life looked at me like I was a melodramatic teenager.

“Oh please,” they said. “You don’t even know what a real alcoholic looks like. Just have a damned glass of wine already.” Or “Don’t you think you’re going a little overboard with this stuff? It’s not like you lost your job or anything. I think you’re just being a little oversensitive.” Best yet was the eye roll coupled with, “You don’t go to those meetings do you?”

Well, those meetings were the only place where I was truly understood and believed. People like me sat in those basements with cups of coffee passing out coins and putting dollar bills in a basket. They shared stories like mine. I could share my story and people would know that alcohol is poison to me and that I have a disease just like they do. They told me time and time again not to drink and to stick to my program. I felt heard.

I was drinking myself into oblivion when I first stopped. I had visited a psychiatrist and told him that I was drinking a liter and a half a night and had consumed about 25 drinks at a party the night before- I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, this is what people do, isn’t it? Well he did think something of it. I was diagnosed with Alcohol Dependence and sent to AA.

I have bipolar disorder which was part of what I was numbing with my alcohol use. After I quit the first time, I later relapsed and attempted suicide... two separate times while impaired. Some people in my life still aren’t convinced that drinking is deadly for me. Eye rolls and sighs. “Just have a drink already.”

I have wondered if I make these folks uncomfortable on some level. Part of me feels badly about that, but part of me knows I can’t take responsibility for their feelings if that’s what’s going on. I don’t stand on a table and preach about the dangers of alcohol. I don’t lecture anyone. I don’t ask anyone else to not drink. I just quietly ask for a Diet Coke with lime and carry on with my life.

If I’m going to keep this up, I need these rooms and I need my fellow alcoholics. We understand each other. I know that I’m never going to be seen as a drama queen for walking through those doors. I’ll be welcomed with open arms.

After sobriety, what’s next?

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 02:58:33 GMT

“Serenity”, in a word. We came into the Program angry, beaten down, having alienated family, friends and employers. We were ashamed of our conduct. We’d probably tried several times to quit by ourselves – all resulting in failure. Maybe our early weeks of sobriety didn’t impress anyone. They all made it clear they were just awaiting your failure, your fall backwards into those usual alcoholic and drug nightmares. Even in recovery, depression can be a wet blanket over our comfort level.

There is sort of a surprise in the Steps. The Steps aim for us to “let go,” to ease up, to remember that there is a joy in successfully walking the Steps. We learn that Step Eleven takes us someplace we may not have known was present – the reliance on a Higher Power and his Will for us – we cease traveling alone, wired to our own resources. Now we have a steady companion who will respond to our calls to identify his Will for us. It may be hard to see it. It may take us on a path we least expected. We may not like the direction you perceive as God’s Will.

We came to the Program admitting there was a being more powerful than our own humanness. As we worked the Steps, perhaps the role of our Higher Power slipped from our attention as we undertook our inventories, amends and all the rest.

We may forget that by working “to improve” our “conscious contact,” the door opens our lives to true serenity. That door accepts life’s bumps and grind – but at the same time rids us of over-reaching, of merely descending into a morass of self-pit – if we meet these intrusions without assistance. That door calls us to look to our Higher Power to seek guidance – “His will for us” together with the power to carry it out.

And, we know that sometimes that Will for us” is difficult to discern. Sometimes it takes more meditation than we’d like – steady meditation. Quiet listening is needed. Meditation takes us away from ourselves. We rid ourselves of self-management. We ask only for his Will to solve a problem. That saves a lot of mental energy and avoids our reaching for the substance that seemingly provided a solution, a temporary solution that at the same time continued our addiction.

At my best, when encountering one of these problems and I turn to my Higher Power for assistance, I do find His Way. Sometimes it takes time. We have to be patient. It’s not always what I alone wanted. It’s something that we haven’t done for years and years and look where that failure got us. I need to get outside myself and at least for a period come to believe that it isn’t all about me. I’m not the general contractor. Sometimes it’s a partial answer, one we have to work with and grow with His support.

Sometimes we forget that our Higher Power is always available if we but seek Him. That’s why the Eleventh Step is there. We are to “continue to seek” to remind us. It reminds us to forget the old ways of “me, me, me” and move to a higher plane of sobriety.

The Program is not a “one-trick-pony.” Certainly we need to work the Steps to free us of addiction’s grasp. But don’t forget the Program also gives us a tool to continue living an addiction-free and serene life through meditation, seeking ”His Will for us and the Power to carry it out.”

Jim A/Covington, KY

Getting Past the Bull

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 03:41:39 GMT

When I was in elementary school, we used to spend part of the summer at a house in the country owned by my grandmother and aunt. It had a wide porch for playing house, and a huge tree with a rope swing. The best part of that time, though, was swimming in the brook. It was clear and cold and generations of kids had piled up rocks to make a dam for a swimming hole. It was heaven on a hot day.

There was one problem with the brook, though. We crossed the corner of a pasture in order to get there, and the pasture was inhabited by a bull. We had long debates about how to get by him. Run fast, creep slowly, wait until it was really hot and hope he was asleep, or go early in the morning. It never occurred to us to just stay on the other side of the fence.

I dealt with my addiction the way we dealt with the bull. Only drink on weekends, drink the first drink really slowly, alternate with water or soda, wait until just before bed... it never occurred to me to just not drink.

Now I use the fellowship and the steps to get me past the bull. A good fence is strong, with closely spaced posts and rails between them. If I only get to one or two meetings a week, the posts are too far apart and my addiction starts looking at me over the fence. If I don’t pray regularly, talk to my sponsor and other alcoholics and addicts, and pass along what I’ve learned, the rails aren’t strong enough to keep the bull away from me.

Sometimes the bull is sleeping at the other end of the pasture, but if he’s riled up, I want a strong fence between us. Sometimes my addiction feels dormant, but I know that on any given day the stresses of life can upset my balance and make me vulnerable. When that happens, I don’t want to be standing alone in the field. I want to have the steps, the fellowship and my higher power between me and the danger.

The Answer to Prayers

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 03:50:26 GMT

At my Wednesday 7 AM meeting last week a person said, “The answer to your prayers is not going to come through your head…pay attention to the people you encounter and listen to what they talk about.”

Wow. I’ve been sober in AA for a long time—decades--and I’ve never heard that bit of wisdom put just that way before. (That observation could very easily set me off on a tangent about why I believe going to meetings is as important today as it was when I was just beginning my sober life…but that will be a different blogpost.)

I try to have a daily spiritual practice of reading the day’s page in one 12-Step book or another and then writing/reflecting on it. Today’s reading was about how meditation can open the doors to God’s solution…

So here are two messages—the answer to prayers comes through other people and the answer to prayers comes through meditation. I notice that ruminating, list-making, and brainstorming are not included. How are attending to others and attending to meditation alike—and how are they different from worrying? They are alike in what they both are not: attention to others and meditation are not trying to figure things out. They are both from the heart and not from the head.

I have no problem at all with head stuff. I love discussion. I love reading opinion columns, 19th century novels and post-modern literature. I have never liked any of the AA slogans that suggest that intelligence, intellect and education are in any way a handicap in recovery. “Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth” and “Keep it simple, stupid,” are, to my way of thinking, abusive and denigrating. There is nothing wrong with pondering the meaning of life and searching for answers to life’s deep questions.

But I also know that recovery does not include denial. We are not to shut off one part of our selves in order to enhance another part. Recovery means integration. Recovery means reconciling body, mind and spirit. Intellect and emotion are the obverse and reverse of the same coin and the coin is the individual. What paying attention to others and paying attention to meditation have in common is that they are acts of love, generosity, and respect.

The best way I know how to meditate is to count my breaths. Just to notice my breathing in and breathing out. Maybe consciously extending the exhale a little bit. Not making a big deal out of posture, distraction, time of day, number of minutes, mantra. Just breathing in and out and noticing our own breath (our spirit) keeping us alive and connecting us to something outside ourselves.

Basil Pennington, the great teacher of Centering Prayer, said in one of his recordings, “Pray as you can and not as you can’t.” We beseech, we praise, we honor, we implore, we listen, we meditate—we pray as we can.

As we learn to listen—to other people—to God’s quiet voice—to our own breathing—we recover. One day at a time.

Happy New Year.

Unwrapped: The Greatest Christmas Give You Could Give

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 01:21:24 GMT

Merry Christmas!

Hopefully, you woke up sober, grateful and fully present on this special morning. Recovery, be it from alcohol, drugs, codependency, pornography, gambling or any other soul-stealing addiction, robs us of our ability to be fully present on days like today, Personally, once I became sober and then began my recovery journey, my experience around holidays changed for the better.

You may be blessed to spend time with family today, gathering with the people you love to open gifts. One of my greatest joys was to watch my children open their gifts on Christmas morning. It was so amazing to see the wonder and awe in their eyes as they awoke to find what Santa had delivered while they slept. Then the joy as they unwrapped gifts. Oh, the faith of children!

I wonder if it is possible to transfer the promises of recovery into our Christmas experience? Most 12 Step Programs have some version of the Promises of Recovery. These twelve promises appeared in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous on pages 83 and 84, describing the result of working the program of AA. Is it possible that the promises, as they are being fulfilled in each of us, are worth unwrapping this Christmas morning?

Tradition and scripture tell us that hundreds of years ago wise men from the East brought gifts to the Christ child to celebrate his arrival. The fulfillment of a promise. Their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are often referred to symbolically in our faith tradition, each one representing an aspect of the work and personhood of Jesus. There seems to be a natural association with these gifts and the gifts we receive as we recover.

The Gift of Surrender - Gold is most often symbolic of kingship or associated with a ruler. In recovery, we accept that there is a Higher Power and it is not us. The act of surrender initially brings relief from the pressure so many of us in recovery feel to be perfect, to control everything and manage our image. As we deepen our recovery, surrender becomes a daily if not moment by moment gift of partnership - the most valuable weapon in our battle against our shadow self.

Just as gold is expensive and valuable, our ability to daily surrender to our Higher Power becomes an indispensable asset which releases the power to transform our lives. Surrender ensures our path to freedom from our addiction, lays the groundwork for our happiness, puts our past in a proper perspective, and serenity becomes a present reality. What an amazing gift!

The Gift of Gratitude - Frankincense was used as a perfume in Jesus ’ time. As I am around people in recovery I find myself grateful for them and the role they play in my life. Just as the Magi brought a beautiful aromatic perfume to the Christ child, the lives of those of us in recovery become increasingly pleasing and attractive to the people who, perhaps, once could not stand to see us.

As we lose the desire to be self-seeking, we become less inclined to experience self-pity, we begin to love others from a place of mutual respect and dignity, and our attitude on life begins to brighten. We suddenly look around us and realize our fears of being alone have been replaced with a community of people who love and accept us for who we are - character defects and all.

The Gift of Purpose - Finally, myrrh is often seen to symbolize suffering and many believe it to be a foreshadowing of Jesus ’ death. The ultimate promise of recovery is that our old way of life, ruled so often by chaos, lies, and self-inflicted wounds will begin to painfully die off. It will be replaced with a new life rooted in sanity, common sense, gratitude, and an appreciation that our Higher power is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus himself doubled down on this concept so beautifully in the Message translation from Matthew 16: 24-26.

“Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You ’re not in the driver ’s seat; I am. Don ’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I ’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?”

This Christmas may you be reminded that the greatest gift we could give ourselves and our loved ones is our restored, recovered life. May we look back at our past and realize what it cost us. However, may we also realize what our recovery has provided - we have regained what makes us most alive, our souls.

I would unwrap that gift each morning.

Wouldn ’t you?

Shane M.
Conway, Arkansas

The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

This time I’m really gonna’ try...

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 02:27:27 GMT

Sometimes, we needed several trips to rehab centers. There we were told what we would have to do to develop an effective program to rid ourselves of our addictive habits and their consequences ... and during our final conferences each time we left rehab we solemnly promised to “really try this time.”

But “trying” is the WRONG promise. “Trying” doesn’t cut it. We’ve proved that following other rehab discharges. It’s not an “all-in” commitment. We’re holding back and reserving an option to “go back out,” to escape to the old ways. When “we try,” we did things like this:

I feel good. “One won’t hurt. I know what to do.”

I’ll try by dropping martinis, and switch to scotch and water. But soon, water dropped as part of that recipe.

Didn’t work, so I’ll try some wine, but wine just made me sick. Anyway, “sip sip sip,” hardly what I was looking for.

Still looking to try something, anything, we might remember our old stand-by. “Beer! That’s it. Everyone drinks a lot of beer. I can’t get as out of control as I did with gin or scotch.”

I even sought my Higher Power’s Grace at Communion, asking humbly and with head bowed ... “Please teach me drink normally, just one or two, just a normal drinking regimen.”

So much for “trying.” Trying only left us in the old similar deplorable position - out of options, at that crossroads of seeking help and surrendering, OR continuing on that downward slide to our inevitable destruction. I finally was serious about the program and saw this as an issue and simply sought help (i.e., ‘I surrendered’). But I couldn’t shout from the roof-tops that “this time I really meant it!” Been there, done that, double-crossing folks that actually believed that I was going to “try.”

So this time, before I came out of my rehab program, I spent a goodly amount of planning time looking at the local “where and when” - searching for meetings convenient as to time and place. I stuck with discussion meetings (and still do) - all the better to learn to speak up about issues I was to encounter. I quickly narrowed the search as I found a meeting at noon, five days a week, a block and a half from my office and attended, and because they told me to do so - “90 in 90.” I found a sponsor right away and kept busy between meetings by reading and studying the Big Book. I studied and worked the Steps. It wasn’t too long before my sponsor asked if I would be interested in helping to lead a meeting at a Court-ordered lock-down rehab program for persons with several police citations for driving while intoxicated. That was just what I was looking for. I also sought a non-AA counselor who helped me talk through some related issues - very helpful and I highly recommend this specific commitment.

I’m now in my 20th year - by not “trying” but “doing” the Program which with my ever-loving gratitude, provided a way to deal with an addiction enabling me to deal with life without seeking my drug of choice, a serene happy life.

So, the key point of all this is: Don’t tell your rehab counselor or your family or your employer you will “try” this time. For sobriety’s sake - JUST DO IT!

Jim A./ Covington Kentucky

Feast of St. Nicholas

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:44:00 GMT

Feast of St. Nicholas, St. Mark’s 12 step Eucharist, December 4, 2019

If you have been at this 12 step Eucharist previously on the first Wednesday in December, you have heard a homily about St. Nikolas. I apologize right now because you are going to hear about him now for the third time. I am powerless when it comes to St. Nikolas. He has just been a too important figure in my life. You might say that in December, I replace my addiction to alcohol for an addiction for St. Nikolas.

Very little is known of the life of Nicholas, bishop of Myra who lived in Asia Minor around 342. He is the patron of seafarers, sailors and more especially of children. As a bearer of gifts to children, his name was brought to America by the Dutch colonists in New York where he popularly became known as Santa Claus.

The feast day of St. Nicholas has been celebrated in our family as a major holiday since my sobriety. We have a big family meal together. My husband dresses up as Bishop Nicholas with a beard, a miter, and crozier and long red stole and comes to visit our grandchildren after dinner. He speaks Greek to the children and the adults. Speaking Greek is my husband’s favorite pastime, and of course you know that Nikolas was Greek. Nike the Greek! Then our grandchildren go into the bedrooms and leave their shoes outside the doors and Bishop Nicholas leaves chocolate coins and presents in their shoes. I won’t bore you with our pictures of this family event, but they are stunning.

Why am I sharing with you our family story? For the last several years on this feast day, I sit and watch this pageant and am filled with so much gratitude, for my sobriety date is close to the feast day of St. Nicholas. Each year I know that if someone had not led me to a recovery program, I would not be alive tonight. I would not be witnessing this wonderful blessing of seeing my children and grandchildren giggle with glee as they try to respond to a beautiful old man with a fake beard speaking Greek to them and secretly giving them candy in their shoes. For me it is a yearly reminder to keep working these 12 steps so I can be around for another feast day of St. Nicholas.

This is just a suggestion. Look at the calendar of saints. Find one close to your sobriety date. Learn about that saint. Observe that saint’s day in your home, in your life. You may just consider that saint as your patron saint. This is just one more way to remember how our lives have been transformed by our sobriety. Spend that saint’s day giving thanks for those before you who loved you before you were born with a love that only comes from the love of the God of our understanding. St. Nikolas reminds us that God uses every possible tool to keep us clean and sober. Give Thanks and Enjoy.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Connecting

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 04:27:44 GMT

Thanksgiving Day, 2019

Today is Thanksgiving, a good day for me to express gratitude for the blessings of recovery. A couple of weeks ago, at the last minute, I was asked to speak on a Wednesday night in my home group; it’d been a couple of years since I’d told my story in that room. In my head, I had reviewed the high points and contours of what I wanted to say. Then, during the opening business, I got nervous, wondering “how am I going to get this thing started?” I said a quick prayer for guidance.

When the chair introduced me, she simply said, “telling his story tonight is our Paul.” It was one of those God moments, and everything fell into place. Because, if I was “our Paul” to them, then they surely were “my people” to me. We belonged together. And in those few seconds, my story that night became a story about connectivity.

When I was active, having a connection was the name of the game. Eventually, it was the only thing that mattered. Any generosity of heart or sense of sharing that may have been present in the early days had vanished. I was leading a selfish life in almost complete isolation. Even if I managed to have a connection, I wasn’t connected…to anything or anyone. Through the grace of God, that was then, and this is now.

Today is Thanksgiving, and one of my companions in recovery died this morning. Paul was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia about a year ago. The chemotherapy that flooded his body knocked his immune system for a loop, making it impossible for him to be around a lot of people. When his health allowed, his sponsor arranged for a small group of us to bring a meeting to him.

We were a small and relatively consistent group. As we gathered around our friend whose own sense of joy in his recovery was undimmed, despite unimaginable trails, things began to change. We came to know each other in profound ways.

Guys in those meetings took risks in their shares. I trusted them enough to step up my game, too. I didn’t think that I had many judgments or barriers, but how wrong I was! By learning to see others more clearly and allow myself to be seen more fully, I found myself connected in a new way, part of a band of brothers who knew and trusted each other.

I saw Paul about a week before he died. I thanked him for his generosity of spirit in sharing so much of his suffering and hope with us, showing me how to become more comfortable in my own skin and connected more deeply to those around me. It was our last conversation.

Today is Thanksgiving, and among the flurry of text messages after Paul’s death, one of our number wrote “Thanks to all of you, for showing me how to love, succeed, fail and suffer with other people, all the while being a part of.”

Today is Thanksgiving, and I am more grateful than I can say for Paul, and for being a part of this group of faithful friends with whom God has connected me.

Paul J.

Be a Miracle

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 03:21:59 GMT

“If you’re looking for a miracle now Buddy, you better be one All alone, on your own.” Kris Kirstofferson.

How often have we heard that phrase “If you want to see a miracle, be one.” I had no idea what it meant when I first heard it. When I listened, really listened to the words of Kirstofferson’s song “Let the walls come down” and then it made sense. “Let the walls come down, Let the love come through, when it all comes down, It’s up to me and you.”

I remember complaining about an AA member who visited our group regularly and told his story. I made the comment that I was tired of listening to him talk about his feelings. The person to whom I complained got to the point: “Seamus, he is more free in jail than you are walking the streets.” I was the one locked up within myself.

Despite all the therapy I’d been through, there was still that wall, that distance that protected me from others. Then, bit by bit the walls came tumbling down. They had to. I was dying of loneliness and aloneness even in a crowd.

I could talk a good talk about being powerless over alcohol, over people, places and things. I admitted I needed a H.P. and I found one. I worked the steps but something was missing. The message had not been transmitted from my head to my heart. There was a wall there that was porous and feelings were beginning to eek through and I was uncomfortable.

The issues of being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic -- Don’t think, Don’t talk, Don’t feel, Don’t trust -- were deeply imbedded in me. Don’t think about what’s going on inside the house; don’t talk about what you see or hear (family secrets); don’t feel (and you won’t hurt); don’t trust (anyone but yourself).

I was about three in the program when I first read a book on ACOA issues. I read the signs and identified with nineteen of the twenty signs. Yes, I was not only an alcoholic, I was an ACOA. In my situation, a parent who did not drink – a hardworking, church going, alcohol hating person who had a great sense of humor.

“Let the walls come down. Let the Love come through.” To be the miracle I had to do the work I told and taught others to do. I feigned emotion and got away with it but I was the one who got hurt by the pretending.

When dawn broke this morning, I felt grateful for another good night of peaceful sleep. I felt grateful for another day of wonderment and awe. I pulled back the curtains and looked out into what I now call “God’s art gallery” and watched God’s handiwork in motion. I took a handful of nuts and spread them along the fence for my sentient brother- a squirrel - who has taken to visit in the early morning and late afternoon.

“Let the love come through.” This was not always easy. Love was, I thought at one time, a rather fickle emotion. Then I came to understand it as a decision, a commitment to love myself – warts and all; love other people, places, and things. Love opened my heart to forgiving self and others as I revisited the steps and discovered what I missed the first couple of times. Love was the spiritual awakening that assisted my seeing the world through a kaleidoscope, an awe inspiring view of colors; a world that was no longer black and white.

“Don’t leave till the miracle happens” an old guy once said. Then I heard another say “Don’t leave after the miracle happens.” Today, the miracle happens each morning, afternoon, evening and night as I keep the walls level with the ground, keep my heart and mind open to new insights, increase my hope and trust in self, others and my Higher Power. The miracle is that I did not do this on my own. The miracle for me is that I responded to my Higher Power prodding me into the light and love I had always sought but could not find on my own. My H.P. gave me the wisdom to respond and I am grateful to have done so.

“And you can’t free nobody else if you can’t be true to yourself. If you’re looking for a miracle now buddy, you better be one, all alone, on your own.” Kristofferson wrote a wonderful song. It could have been great if he had realized we are not alone when we respond to the call,“Let the walls come down, Let the Love come through.”

Whatever we hold on to, that’s what we’ve got - only that much. Maezumi Roshi

“Alcoholics Anonymous - Really? No way! Not possible.”

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 03:43:10 GMT

At first, this anonymous stuff carries a negative connotation, sorta’ “I’m so ashamed of myself.” Some of us see ourselves as bad persons and we have to hide our efforts to clean up our act and accept that we are addicted to substances that have come close to ruining our lives. So, we may wish to claim secrecy (anonymity) as we struggle down our path of recovery. For the brand-new person, this anonymity may be just what is needed - period of quiet reflection, and meditation if you will, to understand and accept the essence of the Program, to replace those “people, places and things” that contributed to our addiction and whose continued allegiance by the addict will only serve as threats to our sobriety and perhaps to our new found serenity. It’s also a good time to quietly take the first steps toward searching and strengthening our relations with our Higher Power.

The addict is undergoing a real restructuring of his or her life - habits, friends, ways of thinking, one’s value structure, our spiritual lives - it’s all under our microscope. We are fundamentally changing the proposition that we are the most important people in the room. We have to learn that “it’s not all about me” and this doesn’t come about by the wave of a hand. It takes practice - conversations with our sponsor, our home group, our families. It takes work on our relationships we have harmed.

But all this ignores something that is frequently present at our moments of surrender. Many already knew of our malady. They may have been embarrassed by it. Some may have guessed an addiction of some kind was causing our aberrant behavior and it’s generally true that those folks will be happy that you have seen your problem and are stepping up to do something about it. They are thankful.

In fact, in today’s social scene, it is not surprising that a conversation might go like this: Friend says, “Notice you aren’t drinking, how come?” You say, “Well, frankly, it was becoming a problem.” Friend, after reflective pauses, “Really? Good for you! What have you done to deal with it?” You then might provide a very brief summary of the steps of your program. But, your friend interrupts, and says, “Say, I have a sister who seems to have a problem” You, “Well it is a major problem today , ‘specially when it gets all tied-up with drugs.” More contemplative pauses from Friend, who then says, “Could we talk over lunch about all this?

There! See how you can find yourself in the middle of “carrying the message?” And, frankly, with advice from one’s sponsor, it’s possible an early arriver to the Program can have that conversation.

So, “Anonymous”? ... Yes, but there may be exceptions in some situations.

There is another reason our founders insisted on anonymity. Somehow some knew of the failed efforts of a group in the middle of the nineteenth century who had made good progress developing a program that was providing an effective regimen for the addict. Known as the Washingtonians, after some degree of success, the members decided to publicize their successes and ride the public speakers’ circuit preaching the gospel of recovery by following Washington‘s methodology.

Many returned to their addiction and the organization failed.

Why? There probably were several reasons but the AA Old Timers saw the collapse as a return to the ego, a glorification by the speakers of themselves: “Look what I have done, look at me, I tell you to follow me and, you will succeed!” This ego thing always is raising its head of importance.

Our surrender process cuts to the heart of our addiction. We always tried to cure our addiction ourselves, uninterested in any outside assistance. We learned we couldn’t solve the problem to please someone else. Our whole outlook was dominated by ego’s bloat ... ME FIRST!”

So, we have found that with the “Anonymous” approach, we have a chance for success.

Jim A./Covington, Kentucky

The Embrace of Surrender

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 01:39:53 GMT

Surrender results in a change in perception. We realize that our selfish, self-centered addictions, afflictions and compulsive behaviors have cut us off from God and have left us in a dark, lonely prison of hopelessness and despair. -Wally P., Back to the Basics of Recovery, 1999

For most of my life the biggest road block to my recovery from sex, love, and pornography addiction was looking me straight in the mirror. In the height of my acting out, my life centered around what I wanted, when I wanted it, and with whom I wanted it. I had little concern over the consequences of my actions or the emotional impact such behaviors might have on others. All I remember is the powerful sense of urgency - yes hunger - to fill that void deep within. A longing inevitably followed by the cycle of shame, guilt, and self hatred.

My recovery began once my perspective changed.

I went from looking in the mirror to looking inside. What a frightening and beautiful exploration! When I came to see myself for who I really was - a flawed, imperfect human being - it became much easier to surrender to the reality that there is a God and I am not He, She or It! I began to realize, as I worked the 12 Step Program of Recovery, that my self will and ego resulted in a bottleneck of spiritual power. The inner work required by my program allowed me to move out of denial and into reality. I could no longer pretend to be something I was not.

Steps One, Two and Three required me to not only admit I was powerless but to embrace it as well. Those are two very different things. One was a mental exercise (which I had conducted each time I quit my addiction) and the other was an act of the heart. It was the desperate surrender of a drowning man who had to accept that continuing to do things my way would not end well.

As I recover, I choose to lean into my powerlessness, knowing that the more I embrace it, the stronger my recovery grows. Embracing my powerlessness is surrendering to the reality that my best effort to manage my life endangered my family, brought about my divorce, left me unemployed, arrested, and publicly shamed. But in doing so I exercised the courage to reclaim the power which I allowed my addiction to steal from me. As strange as it may seem, accepting my limitations laid a foundation upon which to build my new recovery life.

The embrace of powerlessness brought the gift of faith into the life of a once life-long evangelical. Surrender allowed a shift from “hunger” to “hope” to occur and has become a day by day (minute by minute) work of the spirit. Today I am able to see that surrender does not imply that I am a loser. Rather, as one person in recovery once said, “Surrender just means you are smart enough to join the winning team.” -Shane M.

Feelings of the First Months of the Program

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 02:30:40 GMT

A couple newcomers to our fellowship brought this topic for discussion. Those early days and months can be confusing. I felt there was so much to learn and then one had to figure out how to bring this life-changing knowledge into his or her daily life. Progress appeared to be slow. Sometimes it seemed I should take notes when I observed some making notes in a journal – maybe keeping a journal wasn’t a bad idea.

Some said that the early days were tough for we may have still felt guilty, ashamed, broken in spirit, deeply remorseful, in fact, maybe genuine appropriate feelings. The answer to this was always, “don’t dwell on the past.” Some didn’t arrive at our rooms easily – it may have been court-ordered or prompted by a non-negotiable ultimatum from an employer or family member.

What I learned, and this was just my reaction, is that the Program’s map of the journey to sobriety and serenity was a path of some length, with twists and turns, failures here and there, and constant attention to the Program ‘s teachings. I heard at one early meeting that as we worked the Steps, we in essence would be changing our social mores and practices, probably dropping personal relationships with some friends, even reevaluating one’s life values.

But of course, sometimes there is a feeling of disbelief that you found yourself at an AA meeting at all:

“I’m not as bad as some of these folks here – still have my job, wife and kids, no DUI, auto accidents. My goodness, all I need to learn is a few ways to drink normally, just one or maybe two at a party.”

And, as I continued my attendance, I found much relief: Everyone said that we needed to “let go and let God,” “easy does it," “keep it simple,” and a whole raft of other seemingly over-simplifications of my feelings and frustrations in these early days. One thought that meant a lot was the idea that the Program sought to remove that feeling of concentration solely on myself – I was not the most important person in life, they said saving my inflated ego was not life’s number one priority.

Then they starting discussing the importance of a spirit-based life. Take prayer for example: the Big Book talks about our seeking God’s will for us and the courage to follow that will – removing our ego as the author of God’s Will, rather – “Thy Will, not mine.” Then they said the group can serve as our “Higher Power.” Talk about confusion!

The successful ones made one thing absolutely clear. Never give up. Keep at it. Go to a lot of meetings, not one or two a week – 90 in 90 –and not just lead meetings but mostly discussion meetings where you can learn as did Bill and Dr. Bob that the purpose of these meetings is for one alcoholic to talk to another alcoholic and to learn from other alcoholics how they successfully found sobriety and serenity.

Yes, go to meetings, especially when you don’t want to go. Call your sponsor, read the Big Book, reach out to others especially newcomers, for you are going through the same thicket of ideas... and remember the Big Book’s promise: “Sobriety and serenity will always materialize if we but work for it”

Jim A., Covington, Kentucky

Humility …is living the question without settling on an answer.

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 00:23:10 GMT

“The humility generated in recovery is the ability to admit that when it comes to the core questions about who you are and why you are here on this planet the only honest answer is, “I don’t know.” “Humility…is living the question without settling on an answer.”(1)

“Can you tell me…?” That was sufficient for me to get into a history lesson. If the question was “Is it going to rain today?” The answer might be a lesson on condensation or climate change. The deeper I got into my addiction, the surer I was of who I was, what I wanted, what I knew. Sadly, that was only on the outside. On the inside I lived in fear of the answer being wrong; of people discovering I didn’t know what I was talking about; was stupid, a con-artist. I can still remember being told: “You don’t have to give a lecture in order to answer a question.” I had no idea I was doing that either. I was just so afraid, I had to talk.

I live in so much doubt about self, others, God, I had to have an answer; I had to let others see that I knew what was going on; why things were, etc. I had to have some kind of an answer in order to look good, to seem intelligent.

My fears caused me to read a lot (something I didn’t learn to do till I was a senior in High School. That’s another story.) I was driven by fear; fear of God, fear of being seen as a con-artist, as being stupid, fear of “not knowing” the correct answer.

In early recovery I highlighted and memorized lines in the Big Book in order to quote them at the next meeting so that I could be seen as being intelligent; “with it,” “committed to recovery.” I read as much as I could get about the history of A.A., its spirituality, etc. All head knowledge.

One day I was told, “You know you don’t have to know everything.” I responded, “that’s true.” But I told myself: “If you only knew me, you’d know I have to have the right answer.”

And then came the time, a few years into the program, I finally could relax and say, “I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue.” Freedom. Breathe deep and relax. The world didn’t come to an end and lightening didn’t strike. It’s okay not to know (and I think it’s okay to say, “I don’t know” in order to let another answer the question. I don’t have to be the one to answer the questions. There are times it feels good to say; “You ought to ask….”

“Humility…is living the question without settling on an answer.” I once read that “the only true answer is another question.” That made perfect sense. Each answer leads me to something bigger, something deeper, something greater.

“Why is God not mentioned in step two?” The answer to this led to me find an answer that made sense for me which, in turn, helped me turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Her. “Why can’t I go to confession to a priest?” This led to a deeper understanding of step four and a real healing in step five.

And then there were the questions I have to live with: “I’m an alcoholic because?” “Why me, not my sister?” “Why is it that some people relapse, or relapse and die after years of sobriety?” “Why is there not a cure for this disease?” “Why do people…..”

So many questions for which, as yet, there are no answers or even partial answers. With sobriety I have learned to live with questions and be comfortable in not only not knowing answers but that I don’t have to have an answer. Sobriety brought me peace of mind.

(1) RECOVERY- the sacred art. Rami Shapiro. 43

Thoughts about Gratitude

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 23:55:07 GMT

We carry thoughts of Gratitude all day, every day of our recovery, and that’s as it should be.

Sometimes our Gratitude comes to the front of our memory at a meeting as someone expresses relief from past conduct and its shame and sorrow, its black cloud. It’s that relief we receive, free of charge from our Higher Power’s Grace.

Sometimes it came on a holiday, such as a July Fourth celebration, or the distant echoing of “TAPS” at a service for a fallen police officer or firefighter and we are grateful for the selflessness of their bravery and devotion to those they protect.

Days of a religious nature also seem to call on us to remember and we see that the Grace we receive from our Higher Power is exactly that – it’s “free,” no strings attached, and it seems to arise just at the moment when we might have a need for it.

I see Gratitude when newcomers appear and take that first step of commitment. They feel as we all did – a relief, something taken off our shoulders, we see light ahead and the privilege of literally starting our lives over without baggage and even including a plan to grow that feeling, to grow in our spiritual being and to undertake regular Twelve Step work.

Our kids and grand-kids prompt a swelling of our hearts. Running through life seemingly without a care in the world, their growth as they move through the teens and early adult-hood – and doing so with that same joy they encountered as a kid running and playing.

I have a Gratitude for the Traditions – we come to meetings and don’t vote on agendas, motions, approval of minutes or election of officers. We can listen to others speaking without a “hidden agenda,” all of us seeking only a “happy, joyous and free life” way of life.

That brings to mind the Gratitude I see in the range and timing of our meetings. Any time, any day, any city or village, county, state, country – one can find a meeting. When we try other meetings, we see the Gratitude of others we don’t see in our usual home group.

I think of Bill and Dr. Bob, the “Old-timers” – those who came before us and carved out of whole cloth a way of life without relying on any additive substances to get us through life’s sudden hurt. They are Saints.

And our loved ones and those that stood behind us during our dark days of pain and rage – spouses, family, friends, employers. It’s a journey to sobriety, sometimes scared by a return to the “old ways” but they joined our journey and shared in its joys and trials.

... and we are Grateful for all this and more, especially for the serenity we gain as we work the program day-by-day.

Jim A. – Covington, Kentucky

I am enough

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 23:09:46 GMT

Jonah 2:5-7
New Revised Standard Version
(NRSV)

⁵       The waters closed in over me;
          the deep surrounded me;
        weeds were wrapped around my head
⁶          at the roots of the mountains.
        I went down to the land
          whose bars closed upon me forever;
        yet you brought up my life from the Pit,
          O Lord my God.
⁷       As my life was ebbing away,
          I remembered the Lord;
        and my prayer came to you,
          into your holy temple.

This past Sunday, one of our beloved seminarians brought a sermon about being, feeling, believing that we are enough. She, of course, drew from the day’s lectionary – especially the epistle (2 Timothy 1:1-14) and the Gospel (Luke 17:5-10). Her words resonated with me as a person in long-term recovery. I often feel as if I need more or as if I am not enough.

This never enough feeling tries to keep me trapped in my addictions. I may presently be free from alcohol and drugs, but I tend to seek my sense of worth and well-being from approval from others and perfection and the illusion of control – all things for me which are as personally dangerous as my substance addictions were because they draw me away from self, God, and authenticity.

Feeling that I am not enough is filled by what therapists call cognitive distortions or automatic negative thoughts. For me, mind reading, fortune telling, catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, personalization, magnifying, overgeneralization, discounting the positive, filtering, labeling, emotional reasoning, always being right, fallacy of change, and control fallacy are very common in my thought life. These addictive thought patterns connect closely to my feelings that I am not enough and that I need more things, people, education, time, money, therapy, etc.

The disciples, in Luke, asked, “Increase our faith.” Paul says to Timothy, “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God.” As our beloved seminarian shared in this past Sunday’s sermon, these are each an example of learning that you are enough. The disciples want more, but, in fact, everything they need is within them already; they need not doubt. Jesus' parable of the mustard seed illustrates this. Paul reminds Timothy that he has what it takes to start the God-fire – re -kindle – the ember is already there – you are enough.

So, when I am underwater and need to get out of a negative thought cycle, to recognize that I am enough, that I have enough, I try to remember Jonah – I remember God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, and I pray. Sometimes that prayer looks like reading Forward Day by Day; sometimes it looks like writing morning pages. Sometimes that prayer looks like getting to a meeting, and sometimes it looks like this: I am not ashamed. I have faith. You brought me up from the pit. I am enough. Amen.

Brandon B.
San Marcos TX

National Recovery Month 2019

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 02:45:22 GMT

The following is an article written for our parish newsletter designed to heighten recovery during September, National Recovery Month. May it encourage you to see your own faith community as a vital part of your recovery.

Hello, my name is Shane and I am a grateful person in recovery.

In January 2016 I walked into Saint Peter’s after a very dark four years. I was broken, discouraged, fearful, and attempting to rebuild my life after the choices I made in addiction had paid off in destructive ways. Coming from an evangelical background, I did not know what to expect when I shared my story with Teri, the previous Rector. I remember crying over my choices and her listening and taking it all in. After she heard all the gory details, she looked me in the eye and told me something I will never forget.

“You are welcome here Shane.” She said.

Now, over three years later I can not imagine my life without Saint Peter’s. I have discovered that my church life is a key component to my recovery and being at Saint Peter’s empowers me to walk out my recovery in the context of a loving, caring, and Christlike community. In my time here I have had the privilege of meeting other people in our congregation who are recovering as well. Some from alcoholism, others from drugs, and still others from the pain of being co-dependent or having a loved one who is an addict. While the impact of addiction is a common experience we share, it is the belief that this family of choice helps us recover which really connects us.

If you are struggling with any type of addiction and you come to Saint Peter’s, you are in the right place. I invite you to begin your own recovery story by reaching out to someone – a friend, a staff member – and take the first step back toward sanity. It begins with asking for help. Visit the website for the Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church, and read about the resources available to you. Contact one of the 12 Step Meetings help in our area, a few of which actually meet at Saint Peter’s! There is hope available, all you must do is reach out for it.

September is National Recovery Month. If you have been impacted by addiction in someway, will you join me during this month in three activities?

First, let us pray. The Book of Common Prayer has a wonderful prayer for those who are struggling with addiction. It is a great way to turn spiritual energy toward a difficult challenge that affects hurting people.

Secondly, if you know someone who is struggling with alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, gambling, or any other compulsive behavior, would you love them enough to express your care and concern? We never know how our willingness to be honest can sync up with God’s timing and be the catalyst that jump starts someone’s recovery

Finally, will you join me in making sure that Saint Peter’s continues to be a place where hurting people can be made whole? Isn’t that the promise of the gospel? When you meet someone in our congregation who is struggling, will you continue to be open and available to them? Can we join together and love the struggling as Jesus loves us, extend our arms and say, “You are welcome here.”?

Thank you for the incarnational love that permeates this place. It is changing lives.

Sincerely,
Shane

September 2019

Slippery Slope

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 03:19:01 GMT

Nearly three years ago, our rector asked if she might refer a parishioner to me whose spouse is incessantly drunk, hiding the booze, but unable to hide the mumbling, stumbling muddle, the bruises and the breaks. I agreed, but when the phone rang again, it was the alcoholic on the line, saying “I drink uncontrollably”.

It’s been a bumpy ride for my friends: recycling through detoxes and rehabs, lying near death on a hospital gurney and roiling in the codependent turmoil that is integral to all addictions. Now, a measure of hope is taking hold for this unhappy family to find sobriety and tranquility. It also has been, I must add, awkward for the couple within the parish. Church communities are uncomfortable and, at times, clumsy in respecting the privacy dignity of members in dire straits.

The mission of our diocesan Recovery Advocates Network is to “support all who are affected by rampant substance use disorders. RAN is a diocese-wide network that fosters awareness, prevention, intervention, treatment and support, it envisions a safe community within the church. RAN enables recovery, expels shame and celebrates God’s grace outpouring a abundant life in recovery.”

We are not agents, interventionists, counselors or therapists. We are, ourselves, in recovery or intimately associated with someone who is. We offer our experience, strength, love and faith to the extent it is invited, welcome and helpful. As a “network” constituted by the diocese, we have experimented with programs and events to bring light to our readiness to address issues of addiction. Two constraints hinder our success: our lack of resources to mobilize and deliver needed activities; the existing overload that burdens clergy, parish staff and volunteers, and our families in their ordinary (manic) 21^st century lives. What to do? How do we bring the hand of twelve-step, spiritually based recovery “whenever anyone, anywhere reaches out for help and hope”?

There are many answers, but one in particular seems promising – the existing programs within our parishes address pastoral care, outreach, wellness and spiritual growth offer stunning varieties of activities and services that engage the interest and skills of our members. Grace brings its own structure.

The key to tapping the potential of these extant resources is to meet people where they are. Until full-blown calamity parts the veil, denial reigns; few are ready to expose their own or their loved one’s travail: the disorder and disease of addiction. Our role as “good Episcopalians” is to care for the “least of these”, not be one of ‘em. Perhaps, we simply lower the bar. Strikes me there’s a reference to that in Step One in the text of AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises cultivate detachment as foundational to spiritual life. Vinita Hampton Wright recently blogged:

“Disordered attachments are habits, patterns and addictions that inhibit authentic engagement with God and stifle honest reflection, deep listening with others, and constructive action. Beyond balanced attachments toward people, possessions, money or power, we prayerfully consider the relationships within our own selves – with our feelings, our bodies, our view of life. An attitude toward life that is neither dour pessimism nor blind optimism helps us recognize and prayerfully reconcile our emotional and physical habits. We are called to listen to God, reflect on our lives in view of God’s love, and put that love into action.”

Adapted from “What Is an Unhealthy Attachment?” www.ignatianspirituality.com

It is clear to me and others actively involved in helping the Episcopal Church engage our fellow congregants, our families and communities that our parish life offers many opportunities for conversation about the role of detachment in the stewardship of our souls. Everyone can occupy the top edge of the slippery slope, practicing the sacrament of presence. From that vantage point, we who have experienced the ride to the bottom of that precarious ridge can engage prayerfully, responsibly and effectively as grace and suffering summon us.

Hospitality in Recovery

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 01:38:33 GMT

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:1-2).

In his book REACHING Out*, Henri Nouwen wrote “…hospitality…is one of the richest biblical terms that can deepen and broaden our insight in our relationships to our fellow human beings.”

We don’t talk much about hospitality in Recovery and yet it is a way of life for us as recovering addicts. We have learned to turn from selfishness and self-centeredness to reaching out, being present, being compassionate to those on the journey and those who are still suffering.

Nouwen goes on to write: “To fully appreciate what hospitality can mean, we possibly have to be become first a stranger ourselves.” Nowhere did I feel more a stranger than my fist meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t identify with “those people”. I told my boss I’d stop drinking and go to A.A. but had no idea as to what I was letting myself into. A stranger! I sat there judging everyone around me. I smoked like a chimney on fire. The music from the bar next door was much more inviting.

I had left a friend’s house where he had poured me a glass of whiskey. Why didn’t I have my last drink? Now I remember the last drink I didn’t get to drink. “Hi, my name is…..” Friendly strangers shook hands with me, welcomed me, got me coffee. Emotionally I was a million miles away. They were not just strangers to me. I was a stranger to myself. I told my boss I thought I might have a drinking problem. I wasn’t an alcoholic. Now I felt like a stranger in a strange land and “those people” were most hospitable to me.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” I hated myself. As I listened to the stories, I felt inadequate. On one level I identified with them and, on the other, I was denying it as fast as I could. I was a stranger even to myself.

Nouwen writes: “When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then, in fact the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the new found unity.”

I put on a brave face. Acted as if. Got involved. Still, there was a wall I could not breach. No matter how nice, how good, “those people” were, I did not want to get close to them. I was not one of them.

For almost five years I treaded water and then something happened. I was no longer a stranger to myself. I was beginning to like this person I looked at in the mirror. “I am an addict” Period. I’ve experienced blackouts. I reached a point in life when I knew and admitted to myself that, while I had not lost a job, home, etc, I had lost all my values, I had become “morally bankrupt.” I was looking at myself with compassion.

The years of coming in early, setting up the room, cleaning ashtrays, making and serving coffee, had all paid off. These simple acts of hospitality had torn down my walls and I was able to see the people who had been hospitable to me, a stranger to myself and them. They had taken a risk, opened their hearts and minds, listened, and were patient with me and all my blunders and arrogance.

As Nouwen wrote;”…the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the newfound unity.” Through atonement (at-one-ment)-steps 6-9, I had become at-one with myself and in so doing had become at-one with those I considered strangers. The inner hostility had evaporated and I was welcoming myself as much as I was welcoming others into my new found life.

Living our Twelve Step way of life is a life of hospitality to the stranger within and the stranger without. We live the biblical message of being kind ‘to the stranger in your midst.”

*REACHING OUT: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. Henri Nouwen. 66-67.

Slowing down, Interconnectedness , and Listening

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 23:25:40 GMT

“Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last”

I've been thinking about these words with which Paul Simon opened his 1966 classic, recorded with Art Garfunkel, 59^th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy).

When I was young, my dad and I would play a game in which we would see how long, with meaning and understanding, we could converse using only Paul Simon lyrics, and my dad often spoke these two lines to me as guidance, advice, correction, hope, and love.

As a child, my thoughts on those lines differed so from my thoughts now. Then, I most often responded with lines from the song I Know What I Know from Paul Simon's 1986 Graceland album:

“I know what I know
I'll sing what I said
We come and we go
That's a thing that I keep
In the back of my head”

Now my response to the 59^th Street Bridge Song urging to slow down is more like the words of Paul’s (Simon) more recent song Quiet from the 2000 You're the One album:

“I am heading for a time of quiet
When my restlessness is past
And I can lie down on my blanket
And release my fists at last

I am heading for a time of solitude
Of peace without illusions
When the perfect circle
Marries all beginnings and conclusions”

As I was sitting today in the AA open share meeting that I attend these days, the words of a friend sharing on why AA has worked for him led me back to these Paul Simon lyrics and also to the ways that I have admitted my own powerlessness time and again and continually turn my life and will over to God. I've gone from a devotion and proclaiming of my own knowing and toward peace without illusions. And the path for me is the one where I slow down, where I listen to what others have to say. I lean not on my own understanding, one might say. (Proverbs 3:5)

As I move slower intentionally, I see beautiful connections all around. In a class at church, we are studying through Acts and today read Acts 5. I can think of no word better to describe the beginning of the ministry of The Apostles than slow. And they were intentional about their ministry. All the negative happenings in their time toward them – the persecution, e.g. – yet they persisted – slowly and with the ears of their hearts always to God.

This sentiment of slowing down, of resting, ties to one of my heart verses and then back to a gift for which I am ever thankful – Paul Simon and his music. My continued, sustained recovery has come to rely on these:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV)

“When you're weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all (all)
I'm on your side” (Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, 1970)

We are safe in the palm of God’s hand, and God gives us opportunities to slow down, so we must take them. I'm on your side, friends, so together let's slow down when called so that we are equipped to work more effectively in our covenant relationships, as is described in my favorite prayer:

“Friends, our life on Earth is short, and we have too little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind….and may the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, be with you now and always.”

Brandon B.

Scarcity v Abundance

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 01:45:09 GMT

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”- Lao Tzu

Is my recovery one of scarcity or abundance?

How I answer that question determines the quality of my recovery journey while revealing what I truly believe about my Higher Power. In the past, I was guilty of transferring my worldview of scarcity into my program. This happened with the best intentions. Early on I was deeply aware of the absence of my drug of choice. I defined my program by the number of days I stayed sober and what I was not allowed to do. Honestly, that was all I needed or could handle at the time.

Now, years later, I sense the breath and width sobriety brings. I sense that recovery is inherently spiritual, and intimately connected to my Higher Power. That connection allows access to an unlimited supply of love, acceptance, grace, creativity and beauty. My focus has gone from just surviving to really living. I have realized that my life consists of mind, body, and spirit. I feel it when one is out of balance. When all three are being serviced, my whole world opens up! I am alive and healthy!

I define abundant recovery by the words "can" and “shall.” While I am always aware of my limitations, my character defects, and bottom-lines, they never serve as an excuse to adopt a victim stance or become bitter. My focus is on becoming the best and most honest version of me possible, not my restrictions or limitations in sobriety. It also means that my Higher Power has been working, is working, and will be working to empower my recovery!

Surely it is this view about which Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 1:20?

“Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.”*

Working my program has taught me that scarcity is no way to live. In doing so I deny the very power of my creator to do what he promised - say yes to restoring me to life, reestablishing my sanity and blessing me more than I can imagine. It requires both surrendering to that yes and cooperating with the power it releases. When it occurs it opens up new dimensions of integrity, joy, confidence and humility. Theologically this is called sanctification.

I just call it abundant recovery.

Shane M.
Conway, AR

“Just a sip couldn’t hurt.” Consequences of a Relapse

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 02:23:42 GMT

This is Part 3 of a series centered on fears that one really can’t stop, even with years working the program. There is some sadness in this. We did a lot of work with the help of our Higher Power to get all that sobriety under our belt; worked through some really bad problems -- deaths of friends, forced early retirement, and the divorce of our daughter after many years and 3 lovely children. The program was there when you needed it.

But for some reason, after a goodly amount of sobriety, you sense an uneasiness. You seem nervous and anxious around old beloved friends who are enjoying an actively social time. One way to look at this is to remember the stories you heard at meetings of folks who suffered through a relapse after time in the Program. What did they say about awakening to the realization they are in the middle of a relapse and are going to have to “come back” and deal with those feelings?

I was a relapser after a period of sobriety and I can tell you it took a good deal of guts to come back and fess up to my old home group. I felt ashamed, depressed. I felt I had become this year’s Alcoholics Anonymous Relapser poster child. But what happened? Most didn’t say anything, or if they did it was -- “happened to me,” “welcome back,” “Let’s figure this out” (spoken by your sponsor). I hate to say it, but a relapse seems to be so common that it seems to be a part of the medical and psychological traits of this disease we are a victim of.

Of course, not everyone falls victim to the relapse. They are fortunate. But what happened to others really isn’t relevant to your situation, is it. All that is relevant is the steps they took to safely arrive back into the graces of the program through their new start at working the program. Spending a lot of time trying to figure out how it happened is often counter-productive. The question is: “how do you react to your slip and what is it you will do about it”.

Usually, the cause of a relapse is a declining interest in working the program because of “time served,” a reduction of enthusiasm for the Big Book, the 12/ 12, leads, working with others, and most importantly a disengagement from “going to meetings” for that is the place we receive a daily intake of communications from the program. Surely we remember that very often a discussion topic or a lead will appear to come from you and your daily experiences. You’re not alone, nor are you unique when it comes to dealing with this addiction. “Many of us all been there, and here’s what we did about it.”

So, if you’ve “fallen off the wagon” (in that old expression), get to a meeting, work with a newcomer, present a lead and topics for discussion, increase your number and places of meetings, seek outside counsel if necessary. But whatever you do, remember -- our addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. We need a solid quality infusion of the AA program every day, whether it’s a meeting, meditation with the Big Book, working with someone or, whatever will work to keep the fires of commitment to the ways of the Program burning in your life.

When you first came in, you learned that it’s not the end of the world. But it is if you don’t do something about your disease. Just remember that help is available and all you have to do is ask. The grace of the Program will reach out and help. It won’t condemn you, or mock you for failing. It will always supply helpful grace just as our Higher Power does for us every day. But ... never ... ever give up!”

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

“I can’t stop” Part 2: Finding ways to avoid temptation

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 00:43:12 GMT

I posted a commentary in July about the fear expressed by someone who relapsed after many years of being able to successfully work the program. Newly returned to our rooms, she expressed a fear of “not being able to stop” … she like the taste of alcohol, the ambience of happy party goers, the options of all the new micro-breweries. How can she successfully confront her genuine fears?

Can’t tell if these ideas will work but it is what I practiced to avoid temptation:

Don’t go into bars amid all that fun, gaiety, good spirits. Think of the smells, the source for which you probably wish you didn’t know. The boiled eggs in a large jar ageing in that cloudy green water. The noise. The quizzical looks of the habitual patrons as you enter. Find a place more conducive to your Program that has excellent burgers. The food at the bar wasn’t that good, really.
Avoid liquor stores. Don’t browse to kill time. Have a reason to be there. If you must, “Get in and get out, asap.” Leave if it’s too much. Take your spouse, or your legal-aged kids.
Avoid wine & cheese receptions. Certainly, don’t succumb to “this is a great wine, try it.” If you must, get in, make your round to shake hands and kiss the air, and get out.
There’s always a new gimmick -- now its bourbon browsing -- don’t do it.
Stopping to gas up? You’re there to get gas and buy a lottery ticket. You’re not there to browse in the Beer Cave and its seductive collection of all those micro-breweries with the cute names.
Don’t linger over those sexy beer and liquor advertisements, or spend time watching YouTube’s collection of hilarious football beer commercials or that Christmas ad for Bud of the sleigh ride merrily jingling through that snowy Vermont terrain to that tune, “I’ll be home for Christmas ...”
Watch your trips to the “ol fishing hole” and that spot you got that deer. Both are excellent covers for a rip-roaring drunk. Isn’t that the real reason you went and sat in a shaking seat attached to a tree 30 feet off the ground, or sat in a canoe in the rain with a darkening sky, having had no luck fishing, with the temperature’s dropping as fast as the setting of the sun?
Sherry sauces -- be careful. Yes, the alcohol may be gone but the wonderful appetizing smell is intended to enhance the main course. And, the smell of sherry or the wonderful smells of the liquor sauces may be a prelude to entry on a path you shouldn’t be walking.
Weddings are classic places to tie one on -- free booze, everyone in hilarious moods, youngsters dancing to a throbbing beat. Remedy? Easy -- arrive late, leave early. Your excuse: “We have a long-standing commitment to attend a neighborhood open house.”

Everyone has their own tricks to “get in and get out.” When in doubt, ask your sponsor or someone what to do in the particular situation. It’s important. Everyone faces this in today’s often intense social calendar.

Next time ......... a short reminder of the consequences of a relapse.........

Jim A./Covington, Kentucky

REBOOT: The Power of Self-Examination

Fri, 16 Aug 2019 00:25:09 GMT

“A man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does.” — MARCUS AURELIUS

I get frustrated with my computer. Occasionally I sit down, begin to write or pay bills, only to find it slow or unresponsive. When this happens, I resort to rebooting the thing and starting over. It seems the act of just restarting solves many of the bugs that cause the machine to slow down and not function as it was intended.

In recovery, we call this an inventory.

The practice of inventory (or self-examination) is essential to sustainable recovery. It is often a “sobering” experience when we look at how our addictive behaviors have impacted ourselves and others. Having a regular, standing appointment to press our restart button will help break through any thinking errors which may be present and ground us in reality.

Here are three things to consider when you hit reboot.

Self-Examination begins with external behaviors. This implies we have clear bottom lines. We are more likely to achieve our goals in recovery if we write them down and compare them with our behavior. If not drinking is a bottom line, then asking the question, “Did I drink today?” will be a powerful way to reset any flirtation we may be having with leaving reality. I call this Level One Recovery, but it is only the beginning.

Self-Examination includes both liabilities and assets. Miserable is the recoveree who only dwells on his or her character liabilities. A balanced, spiritual program of recovery must include a sense of gratitude for what we have to offer to the universe! A commitment to honesty should include the ability to not apologize for being a faithful partner, a good employee, or a strong leader. Inventories help prevent these positive traits from turning negative.

Self-Examination is most effective when it includes things that are not easily seen. Like an iceberg, our motives, emotions, inappropriate pride, and self-will are only seen when we look beyond our behaviors. We should ask ourselves about these icebergs regularly and adjust course when our radar exposes the hidden dangers below the water's surface.

I am often asked what inventory tool is best. I always respond, “The one you use.” Just as our bodies lapse into atrophy, so does our recovery when it is absent of self-examination. Inventories, self-assessments, and other resources are great as long as we use them! The point is to develop the muscle memory of being present in our mind, emotions, and thoughts and apply that experience to our recovery.

-Shane Montgomery

Manage the Noise, Master Ourselves

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 22:37:56 GMT

“I am grateful to be a recovering alcoholic” can sound preposterous, ironic, self-righteous, if not self-serving. Yet many cursed with chronic illnesses discover that their afflictions reveal profound insights, deliver unexpected opportunities, and bestow unimaginable peace.

Why so? When disease or calamity strike, we are thrown off course. Devastated and powerless, we may sink, rebound or reset. Once in recovery via the steps, clinical therapies, spiritual quests, and (not to be dismissed) personal resolve, we wrestle with the weight of our woes (sink), our desire to restore our lost selves (rebound), or divine higher meanings for our lives (reset). The process is erratic, taxing and inspired; it ends only with our last breath.

Recovery resides in the spirit, yet we live in the din of a crowded, fraught world. Our society, technology, culture and economy pack howling hurricane winds – all of us grasp frantically for footing, squint for our bearings. As my alcoholism peaked, my grip failed and the tempests destroyed me.

I am grateful to have lost valued totems and prized assets.
I am grateful to have lost esteemed rank.
I am grateful to have lost grand aspirations.
I am grateful to have lost cherished loves.
I am grateful to have lost hope.

These damages silenced my life, stripped me of self-assurance, shattered my false self. I treasure the quiet. When I strive to manage the noise within and around me, the quiet arrives, and in the quiet comes grace. With grace comes patience, then wisdom, followed by a spirit of generosity that impels action, igniting the virtuous cycle of recovery.

I cannot be grateful for my recovery without first being grateful for the devastation that stifled me. Thank you, Lord, for loving me to my last reserve.

Martin

“I can’t stop and I don’t know what to do. Help me!” - Part 1

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 03:12:32 GMT

At a recent meeting, a new person brought this to the assembled group for discussion. Perhaps most of us have felt this way during our early days in the Program. Didn’t seem so unusual. But the more we discussed it, the more ambiguous our fears seemed. Perhaps it was the particular situation of this person. She had been sober for 23 years and for some reason had returned to her old ways and had relapsed and stayed out a couple of years. At first, we felt it was the normal feelings of a person coming off her return. It seemed to be a deep-felt truth for her. She just couldn’t stop - a considerable period in the program, yet, “out she goes.” Perhaps her statement reflected a deep-seated fear of a lack of self-worth. Who knows.

Of course, we aren’t aware of all the details of the nature of her sobriety, or what prompted her to “go out. Maybe she encountered a really deep hole in the road, or maybe she didn’t stay aware of the nature of our disease and wasn’t going to meetings with as much enthusiasm she previously had. Maybe she found it was just too difficult to appear to be the only one in her circle of friends with this “addiction problem” or someone might have called her attention to a “new and really good drink… try just one.” Her guard might have been down.

I think people who do not suffer from an addiction to alcohol don’t appreciate the depths of our obsessive desire for these substances. We just plain old “like the taste and the buzz.”

For us, alcohol just simply tastes good, it emits powerful pleasant smells, a happy crowd around you, all experiencing these new brands, a powerful relaxing agent from life’s challenges, selecting just the right one from those new small breweries, we’re even attracted by the creative shapes of the bottles. And yet, if we are paying attention at all, we know the familiar path our once pleasant habit will take.

But let’s not pretend that we will be able to stop on our own, even if we sense trouble ahead. We may know and remember that troubles will be encountered if we continue our habit. Maybe we’re too proud to seek that assistance.

We seem to be driving a car as fast as we can toward the edge of a cliff testing how close we can come to that edge and be able to stop before disaster. For us, that edge is that perilous drop which may destroy us and all our relationships.

So, how do we forget that good vodka, the aroma of a freshly prepared martini, that special bouquet of a newly opened bottle of wine?

Next time: some ideas to avoid going over that edge ... to be continued

JRA/Covington, Kentucky

How to Give a Lead

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 01:05:28 GMT

I was encouraged to give the lead at my home group. It is a rite of passage, I was told, a part of the Twelfth Step. I said I would think about it.

I am a lousy speaker. Sometimes I forget to breathe and in the middle of a sentence I have to gulp for air or turn blue. Sometimes saliva runs down the corners of my mouth like the spittle on an old man. No. No way.

But it happened anyway.

My lead had to be perfect—one that rocks the rafters and leaves the listeners awestruck. I would outline my lead, write it down, transfer it to index cards, memorize and practice, and know when to throw in a little humor to lighten my deep thoughts. I built imagined hurdles to jump over that I couldn’t jump even if I were bourbon-reinforced.

I was embarrassed by my story. It was dull. In the first Steps of recovery, as I took personal and moral inventory and made amends, even I was bored. I was just a drunk who drank too much and did not care. I knew that drinking was a slow death, but I was in no hurry.

I didn’t start drinking at the age of ten, was never beaten or molested, never jailed, never stole a police car and drove 110 miles

an hour on the wrong side of the expressway, never got naked on Main Street or kissed the pastor’s wife or peed in someone’s aquarium, and never had locks changed by wife or parents. These

were the kinds of leads I heard, and they were fun and exciting. (Well, at least I’m not that bad.) I had never done anything under the influence no listener had not heard before. Somebody’s boring and I think it’s me.

One evening the guest lead speaker couldn’t make the meeting. The chair looked around the room, asking if there was anyone who had never given a lead. No matter how small I shrank in my chair and stared at the ceiling, I couldn’t hide.

Okay. Since my Higher Power got me to A.A., certainly he wouldn’t let me down now. He didn’t,

I stumbled, I rambled, I hemmed and hawed. I said, “Oh, I forgot to tell the part about . . ..” and wiped the spit from my mouth.

Then God came through. I wasn’t giving a speech to a crowd. I was talking to my friends in my living room. They were listening to me! They were interested in me and they cared. I was so excited at being helpful, knowing that if only one person walked away a little closer to sobriety or staying sober, I was a success. I forgot to be frightened and was just myself.

At the end there was applause. An old-timer came up to me and said, “I’ve never heard a lead given just that way.”

I took it as a compliment.

-Ron B

Emotional Sobriety

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 01:22:47 GMT

“Not drinking is just the beginning.” These are the words that my sponsor told me when I first came into the program of recovery.

What was presented to me as a way of living was often counterintuitive for me. I was so accustomed to managing the world around me to fit my way of thinking that it was hard for me to trust anyone but myself for the longest time, including God. But the truth of the matter was that most of the time I was simply holding my breath, trying to manage a low level of anxiety that was my constant companion in life, often causing highs and lows that felt completely out of my control.

Many of us in recovery, myself included, started using alcohol and other substances at a young age. I think it’s safe to say that my emotional development, what maturity I may have developed as I moved from adolescence to adulthood, was short circuited by the progression of my disease. It was certainly true for me that I developed a multitude of ineffective ways of getting my core needs met. Those coping mechanisms did not miraculously transform into healthy, helpful responses simply because I had put down a drink, as astonishing a blessing as that was.

In the January 1953 edition of the Grapevine, AA founder Bill Wilson talked about his own challenges in developing emotional sobriety, “I think that many oldsters who have put our “booze cure” to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.”

Daily, when I petition God with the words, “relieve me of the bondage of self”, I have this very real sense of being bound by scraps of cloth, like Lazarus emerging from the burial cave, newly born, given another chance at living, but still wrapped in the clothing of the grave. It’s so significant for me to notice that Jesus does not tell Lazarus to remove the scraps of cloth from his limbs. He tells the crowd of stunned onlookers, “Unbind him”. There always remains work for me to do in recovery, but I must remember I never need do it alone.

Through trusting in the process of the Twelve Steps, taking suggestions from people whose sobriety I admire, and learning to listen, in other words, doing the work, I become open to the possibility that I can let go and grow. I needed to learn how to breathe deeply again. Prayer and meditation and practicing mindfulness helps me to develop self-awareness. More than talking the talk…walking the walk in all my affairs.

A favorite poet, Mary Oliver, once wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Today, I trust that my Higher Power has the best of intentions for me, leading me toward the life I was meant to be living and uncovering the person I was created to be.

When Failure Happens: A Flooding Analogy (Part Two)

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 01:44:29 GMT

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." -Colin Powell

I recently wrote about the pending flood which could have impacted my home. I used the flood as a metaphor for my recovery, stating that preparing for the rise of the waters around my home as a symbol of using our tools to ward off lapse or relapse. I discussed how I had help placing sandbags around my home and moving things out to prevent damage. I was sure that my home was safe.

I was wrong.

All the preparation could not prevent the flood water from seeping in and damaging my home. That has caused me to reflect a bit on my own recovery and my struggles with addiction. Is it possible that even with all the tools of recovery, I could experience lapse or relapse?

The answer, “Well duh!?!”

Toward the end of my stay in treatment, I was warned that relapse or lapse is a part of everyone’s recovery journey. I denied that possibility adamantly. There was no way that I was going to return to my addiction! After all, I had 90 plus days of treatment! In a few weeks after my return home, I had relapsed.

They were right.

As I walk through my home, studs exposed because the dry wall, paneling, and insulation has been removed, I can not help but see the similarities. Left unaddressed (and covered up), the internal damage of this flooding is deadly. Creeping black mold which could slowly infect my lungs and cause disease to take root. Exposing the studs to the open air, setting up dehumidifiers, and fans to dry things out, and treating the area with chemicals which kill mold will ensure that being in my home will not kill me.

When we experience lapse or relapse, we initiate the same process when we move back into the values that are associated with a recovered life - honesty, humility, amends and service. We need to get current and expose the specific way we acted out. We must open our lives to be restored through sharing, honesty, gentleness, and surrender. We must realize that we have failed while we take comfort in understanding we are not failures. A lapse or relapse provides us with the opportunity to start over and make better choices.

Something we cannot do that until we are willing to admit we fell short.

Shane M.
Conway, AR

Powerlessness and Prayer

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 04:04:48 GMT

Powerlessness is not hopelessness. To admit I am powerless is the exact opposite of admitting I am hopeless. By acknowledging that I am not in control of people (those I love and those I can’t stand), places (even this fragile earth, our island home), things (situations in the world and anxieties within myself,) then I am free to find the real source of power.

The real source of power is our Higher Power. God. Love. The Ground of Being. Jesus Christ.

By admitting my powerlessness, God’s power can open my heart to the hope—and the certainty—that God will take over.

How do I actually make the trade? How do I actually swap my powerlessness for God’s power?

When I was worried about a loved one who was drinking himself to death I wailed to my sponsor, “And there’s nothing I can do!” she replied, “Of course there’s something you can do: you can always pray.”

So it comes down to prayer.

And how does one pray? When the disciples asked Jesus, he taught them the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven…,”a simple, beautiful, complete prayer of praise, petition and thanksgiving.

Then there is the Jesus Prayer from the Orthodox tradition: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Or the Third Step prayer, “God, I offer myself to thee…”; the Seventh Step prayer, “I pray that you now remove from me…”; the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace…”

There are Anne Lamott’s three essential prayers: “Help! Thanks! Wow!”

And then there is the continuous living prayer, the breathing in and out of God’s mercy and love into us and out of us. There is prayer in the recognition of beauty or kindness and the gratitude that comes with it. There are the foxhole prayers and promises.

There are the under-breath muttered conversations with God. “Here I go again, God, please get me out of this selfish place…” and “God help me, I have to clean the smelly litter box again…oh that’s right, thank you for the joy that the kitty brings to us.”

When I was newly sober, I stood at water’s edge and shouted out over the lake and to the woods beyond, “God, I don’t know what you’re saying. I can’t understand your messages. Please give me sky-writing!” And later when I told my sponsor what I had done, she replied, “Yes! That’s how to pray! Open your mouth and tell God what’s on your mind. Use as much emotion as you need to. God can take it! And then, do the next right thing. And if you’re unsure what that is, just do nothing and breathe. That’s enough.” And I can picture those words written in clouds and read them again and again.

So by admitting my powerlessness, I open my heart to the power of God, of love, of eternal goodness. I am not alone. I know what my next step is. I am filled with hope.

-Christine H.

The Second Six Steps to solve life’s problems without our addictive substance *

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 01:06:46 GMT

Step Seven – Seek comfort from your Higher Power

Ofttimes we have talked to our sponsor, attended more meetings … all the familiar and usually effective steps. But sometimes, it is going to take more to successfully manage your anxiety of the impact of the problem on your serenity. In that case (or before) consult your Higher Power through prayer and meditation. What is that Power saying, what is the next right thing to do.

Step Eight – Identify persons involved and decide if an amend from you will aid the anxiety.

Often, there are a number of people involved and it may be a situation where through no fault of your own, they view you a cause of all or part of the problem. Make a list and ask, “What if anything can I do to lessen their antagonism toward me?” … or to bring relief to those involved?… and be willing to undertake that action.

Step Nine – But plan what the amend will be or what is said and review it with your sponsor.

Perhaps above all, you don’t want to make an amend or correct a situation if your action will hurt them or other innocent persons. …. Don’t make an amend which merely seeks to shift responsibility but be frank and assume responsibility for your actions. Honesty is always the best policy.

Step ten – Review your plan.

Sometimes it will take time to relieve your anxiety or to solve the problem that has been haunting you. This is not a seldom occurrence for you are dealing with really difficult situations. So, review its status and effectiveness of your plan with your sponsor. Watch out for surprise reactions to what you are undertaking and make the adjustment if needed … and watch out for those awkward unintended consequences.

Step Eleven – Stay in touch with your Higher Power and exercise your spiritual life.

We need to be aware of the health of our spiritual life, that “constant contact.” Remember that you are searching for the right answer, the Will of your Higher Power in the matter, and the power to carry it out. New facts emerge or become more important than what you anticipated.

Step Twelve – Keep a journal and share it with discretion.

Others may be struggling. Share your process. Be grateful for the Program and its Steps.

*Once again, with humble apologies to Bill W. and Dr. Bob and to the millions who use the Steps to recovery from their addiction.
-Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

Only the Lonely

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 02:40:47 GMT

“Only the lonely, know the way I feel tonight.”¹

Not word in nearly three years; then his text bloomed on my screen: “Hi, it’s me. How are you doing?” “Very, well, full plate. How are you?” “I’ve been better. I’ve been drinking for a little over a year. I’m fed up and need help. …” For two years, she’s been recycling through rehabs and detoxes. Near death on a gurney in the local ER, to a 42-day stint in a posh rehab, she retired with her husband to the upper reaches of coastal New England (his call, not hers). “It’s awful here. I have no one. These are not my people.” She has no people; never has. Bystanders, cast members, leading actors, but no costars… the price of intimacy is transparency and she lacks the currency.

Alcoholics die of loneliness. Clinically, booze is fatal, but our addiction is fermented in loneliness, the heaven-sent antidote to “I’m not enough.”, to “I don’t fit in.”, to “I’m a failure, a loser.”, to “Nobody cares about me anyway.” Alcohol fuels “Look at me now!”, and “I’ll show them.”, and “I’m fine.”

Late Sunday morning, a group of forty or so fans adorned in home-team swag shuffle toward the bus door, chattering, smiling, happy. A few fidget, glancing warily around, but others draw them into the banter. Their big-league home team is on a roll and a trip to a ball game is what sober people do. Together they are safe, together they are happy, learning, perhaps for the first time, ordinary social life, to be just a face in the crowd. For these few hours, they’re all fans rooting for their slugging heroes. This is what “not lonely” feels like.

Two recent articles in the nation’s newspaper of record touted the crucial importance of casual relationships.^{2, 3} They assert that engaging the people around us, connecting in the simplest of ways with colleagues, family, neighbors, clerks, mechanics, passers-by grounds us. These low-stakes drumrolls give us the beat for high-note, big-stakes relationships. Like crowd-sourcing love. In classic Hebrew, the biblical “neighbor” is contextual, a linguistic shape-shifter: our “neighbor” extends beyond the family next door; he or she is the person at hand, and importantly, the person who invests in others’ presence, their dignity, their humanity, just like the Good Samaritan. In our intense, desensitized world, we are surrounded by neighbors who are beaten and left for dead, acutely and metaphorically. Sometimes, a nod their way can work a miracle.

A dozen or more years ago, I was overcome by the many relationships, parents, siblings, marriages, children, friendships, colleagues I had failed to a degree my occasional heroics could not offset. I failed them because… no clue. Not that I didn’t understand why/how I failed. I literally had no grasp on relationships – what they are, how they work, how to behave – what responsibilities one has and what one can reasonably expect from a relationship.

December 12, 2006, I emailed my friend who was struggling to get sober that I had no answers for his travail, but our talk that afternoon spurred me “to build relationships with family and friends that provide an infrastructure of love to sustain me in any intimate relationship that might unfold.” I had finally wearied of I searching for a “someone” and began to clearly see, be with and respond to the people around me, hour by hour, day by day. Slowly the arc of my life rose and even now, accelerates.

Jesus, it turns out, was a connector. He saw people, saw into and through them. He was present, listening and conversing. We devote great attention to his extravagant miracles and to his rich parables, but I often wonder if there are unrevealed lessons from the “certain ruler” who went away sad. Did he return? Did the nine lepers who departed Jesus without expressing their gratitude rush to rejoice with their families and friends? Was that thanks enough? The folks Christ touched had backstories and futures. Presumably, all Jesus’s followers, devotees and disciples connected with each other to share their experience, strength and hope. Love compounds. That’s a lesson for us.

My brother died a couple of months ago. He succeeded in everything – marriage, family, career. A mobbed funeral, but the few testimonials were spare. All anybody came up with was that he was “there for them”. Made them feel… less lonely.

So, if you’re new or just coming back, or feeling stale and stuck in “the program”, AA practices fellowship first. We listen and learn about each other’s loneliness, then shed it together. The stories are pathetic, the advice isn’t always sage, the jokes often are not funny, the snacks are stale and forgettable, but the love is real. So, if you are lonely, you know where to go.

¹ Only the Lonely by Joe Melson / Roy Orbison © Barbara Orbison Music Company, Roy Orbison Music Company, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., BMG Rights Management

² “Why You Need a Network of Low-Stakes, Casual Friendships” Allie Volpe, New York Times, Smarter Living, May 6, 2019

³ Invest in Relationships, The Payoff Is Immense”, Tim Herrera, New York Times, Smarter Living Newsletter, May 12, 2019

Dealing with Disappointment

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 03:27:43 GMT

“I am clay and I am water
Falling forward in this order
While the world spins 'round so fast
Slowly I'm becoming who I am”
Margaret Becker, Clay and Water

I recently I had a series of very emotional conversations that generated disappointment and a short bout of depression. In my recovery journey, it often seems that two steps forward is followed by not by just three steps back, but a kick in the gut, a blow to the nether regions and a crowbar to the cranium. I found myself struggling to believe that my efforts in recovery and my sense of calling were not worth my effort.

The danger of such thinking is that when I focus on one or two events, I fail to see the overall trajectory of my life. I mistakenly believe that one set back is a black mark on any progress I may have made. I realize that much of this is because I have expectations in my life, recovery and work that can both be appropriate and naive. Unmet expectations are the playgrounds from where my addictive thinking refuses to come in for dinner when mom calls.

Perspective on these things comes from pausing long enough to get in touch with my feelings and motives. This is what is referred to in my program as a tenth step. While my feelings do not determine my reality, they do indicate what is really going on - inside me. Never a fun journey but always a necessary one. I discovered I had to own some of my personality traits which often come across in a way I do not intend. I also had to be open to push back from my spiritual mentor, my coach, and a few trusted fellows who love me enough to speak the truth, even if it hurts.

The more I work my recovery, the more I am convinced that I have to be honest with myself that on any given day, my motives are mixed. Much of my tension exists in that space where the mix occurs. In recovery circles it seems that we often strive for transparency, humility and surrender yet value discretion, mistake confidence for ego and ignore that recovery (and life) requires effort. I am convinced that there needs to be a new movement in recovery circles where we talk honestly about such things and stop pretending that we must live under a burden of defeatism. We must also be willing to see the joy others have as they recover and not become killers of God’s new work of grace.

The spiritual life of recovery, for me, acknowledges my shortcomings while remaining focused on the journey of becoming. I have benefited from the gift of honesty with myself about who I am, how I think, my selfish desires, and mixed motives. Being honest about these things does not mean I have to exercise them. Rather, it means that I can only address them as I recognize them. I cannot heal from something I cannot name.

As I examine my motives and feelings I have to take care of what is on my side of the street, and if necessary offer an amends to those offended. I also have to choose to not pick up any item on someone else’s side of the street in an effort change their perceptions of my character. Basically I cannot enable them nor be the victim of their projections. I am, at best, imperfect in my efforts. I am reminded of the promise in the lyric above that I am a created being who is prone to mistakes and falling short. But I can rest in the promise that as I recognize that and cooperate with God, I can become who I was meant to be.

That will break the back of depression every day.

How Big Is Our God?

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 03:13:15 GMT

How great is our God who gives us peace, grace, and recovery? How large is our God?

I have always felt that God, being omnipotent, can reveal himself to different people and cultures in different ways. Our Higher Power may not look like someone else’s and in the 12 steps we speak of God as we understand God.

Like many of us, I am eternally grateful for the Twelve Steps and the various programs into which they have been incorporated. I have however, discovered over the years, that there are cultures for whom the steps do not work as well as they do for other cultures, but that there is always a spiritual path to recovery. God speaks to us all in a way we can comprehend, and it may not be in the language of the 12 steps.

As a Deacon in Recovery I am frequently the “go to” person for those who are struggling, and for those whose loved one is struggling. I must walk a fine line between guiding them spiritually and becoming a “cheerleader” for the 12 steps, although I always say that the 12 steps were my path to recovery.

We, the church, need to acknowledge, I think, that God is big enough to give healing to those who seek it, through whatever channel works best. God is big enough to meet us where we are, in a language we understand, and in the cultural context in which we live. Just how big is our God?

I remember the moment when my Higher Power and the God I knew in church merged. I was lying on a gurney about to go into surgery. My priest and my sponsor were present and the three of us held hands and said the Lord’s Prayer. That merger may not happen for everyone, in that way, but in a different way and with a different prayer.

And may we always remember that 12 step programs are not allied with any sect, (originally the word “faith” was used) denomination, politics or institution, and that includes the Church. 12 step groups that meet in the church are part of the church’s outreach, but not part of the church.

May we always be ready to spread the word of God’s loving mercy, forgiveness and healing power, and help those who are seeking a way to recovery to find the path to God that works for them.

-Lisa K

The First Six Steps to solve life’s problems without our addictive substance *

Thu, 30 May 2019 16:32:46 GMT

Step One – Powerlessness and unmanageability.

The First Step calls us to ask if the problem is one we are powerless to solve and if its manageability is causing us anxiety, uneasiness, fear, or if it is of such a nature that it has prompted you to “solve” it by returning to your drug of choice …at least to bury it.

Step Two – You’ve fussed with it and found various ways to solve it, but decided you needed help.

We’ve all had serious problems. We’ve tried to work them out. A good start with solving any problem. But a good and right thing to do doesn’t emerge. Our ego may stand in the way of seeking help. You tried to work it out but failed … suddenly it sounds like your self-help reaction to your addiction: “I’ve tried everything but I need help.”

Step Three – You turned to your Higher Power and sought His counsel and courage to carry out His Will.

Let’s be honest. Some problems are beyond us. Others know more about the issue than you. We need to suppress our ego at this point for it’s like our drug of choice … the old “cunning, baffling and powerful” wearing a different set of clothes. It seems to want to break us down and bring us back to the old ways.

Step Four – At this point we need to take a “fearless” inventory of the problem.

Some questions you’ll have: Who did what to whom. What third parties might be involved in any solution? What are the various positions of those involved? What are the possible solutions? Are these possible to bring about? Can some but not all of the facts and issues be resolved? Do you fear surprises? What’s the worst that can happen?

Step Five – Who is morally, ethical or legally responsible for creating, aggravating the mess?

Depending on the depth of your involvement, did you create this mess, or did you aggravate it? Did you see an improper motive in the involvement of others? Do you understand what people’s motives are at this point? Can you identify what folks want out of this mess?

Step Six – Keep looking for your Higher Power’s Will for you in the connection with the mess.

Even if you can’t solve the problem completely, look for guidance from your Higher Power, attendance at meetings, discussions with your sponsor. If appropriate, make certain you consult with “outside” experts and square their counsel with what you are hearing within the Program.

*With humble apologies to Bill W. and Dr. Bob and to the millions who use the Steps to recover from their addiction.

To be continued to June 26^th

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

Consequences of Recovery

Fri, 24 May 2019 11:19:30 GMT

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule." —Matthew 5:3, The Message

In recovery, it is common to focus on the consequences of our addiction. If we are in a 12 Step program, we do this during our steps one, two and three as we identify how our lives had become unmanageable and we were powerless to stop our acting out. We look at the fallout of our addiction when we go to people we have harmed and offer amends, taking responsibility for our choices and the impact they have had on others’ lives. Some of us have legal consequences that may limit our opportunities and restrict our freedoms. Addiction has consequences.

So does recovery.

I am always excited to attend a speaker meeting where the majority of the share is about life in recovery and the blessings (consequences) that follow. The sad truth is that the behaviors that lead us to recovery are seemingly much more dramatic than the blessings of a recovered life. But oh, how we need to focus on the promises that have been delivered! Recently I have had the opportunity to consider the consequences of my own recovery journey and three things stood out.

1. Recovery restores relationships - My recovery has given me the chance to be a part of the lives of people I love. In the past, while I was in my addiction, even when I was physically present, I was quite often mentally, emotionally, and spiritually absent. I felt this blessing recently when I was able to be present for the birth of my third grandchild. Addiction prevented me from being present for the birth of my first two grandchildren. However, working my program of recovery allowed me to be fully present - emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I was able to celebrate this joyful arrival and invest in my son and daughter-in-law, making life long memories.

2. Recovery brings unexpected opportunities - I was recently asked by the pastoral staff of the church I attend to present a sermon during our holy week services. After my moral failure, I surrendered the hope to ever fill the pulpit again. Instead, God gave me the chance to share a message about the need for death before resurrection, a message that is at its very heart about recovery. As I presented the message, I was aware of the blessing of recovery, being able to be who I really am for the first time in the pulpit of a church. What an amazing blessing.

3. Recovery grounds us in gratitude - Recovery has given me the gift of accurately seeing my world. Regardless of the negative consequences of my addictive behavior, living, in reality, stems from the gratitude I have as a result of the healing recovery has introduced into my life. Life can be difficult, but on its worst day, I have more to be grateful about as a sober person than I ever had in my addiction.

Page 83 and 84 of The Big Book of AA tells us that the consequences of recovery are measurable! Here are a few promises: A new freedom; new happiness; lack of regret; possession of serenity and peace; a realization that our shortcomings are the key to helping others; we become of use to God and our fellow man; we see others as important; we become increasingly selfless; we gain a better outlook on life; we lose our focus on material wealth; and we gain the ability to make decisions easily even in the most confusing situations. Most of all, we have a sense that a higher power is at work in all of these transformations! That passage concludes like this…

"Are these extravagant promises (consequences)? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them."

Those are consequences for which I can be grateful!

Affirmation: I am grateful that recovery is restoring my sanity, helping me live again and teaching me what it truly means to be happy.

Submitted gratefully by Shane M. from Conway, AR

Using the Steps to solve life’s problems without resorting to your drug of choice *

Sun, 19 May 2019 18:42:48 GMT

In the April 10th piece, I asked how we were to deal with life’s problems without relapsing back to our addiction and I wondered how the Steps would look rewritten and outlining a way to solve real perhaps life-changing problems. So, you are confronted with a problem, maybe a big one. It’s causing an uncomfortable anxiousness that escaped what the usual remedies failed to solve. So, for what it’s worth, maybe this will help us work through a solution for the really tough ones … here goes …

1. Ask yourself if you are powerless over the problem, the solution is beyond you, maybe your life is in a paralyzing spot.

2. Remember that help is available: get to a meeting and see if that helps.

3. If that is of minimal help and we can’t solve it, and its outcome is in someone else’s hands, consult with your Higher Power seeking His way, not yours.

4. Make sure you have all the facts and confirm what facts have to be changed to solve it.

5. Identify any part of the problem you can assist with solving in whole or in part.

6. After seeking counsel from your sponsor or at meetings, meditate – don’t tell Him how to solve it and get His OK.

7. After making contact with your sponsor, a meeting and meditation, and find you have obsessed about the problem too much and created an anxiety in your day-to-day life, seek comfort from your Higher Power and increase your “meeting schedule.”

8. List those persons you have to work with to solve it.

9. Plan to contact those persons and review your plan to do so with your sponsor.

10. Re-read your plan regularly to make certain it is still “the next right step.”

11. Stay in touch with your Higher Power and exercise your spiritual life.

12. Report appropriate pieces of your steps to those who encounter similar anxiety-producing problems and add this to your regular gratitude list.

Well, maybe this version of the Steps isn’t as helpful as it might be, but who knows? What I had been doing wasn’t working so let’s try a new idea to get to the bottom of this.

…to be continued to May 29th

-Jim A/ Covington,

* With humble apologies to Bill W. and Dr. Bob and the millions who have worked the Steps to recover from their addiction.

Goodbye Letters to Alcohol

Mon, 06 May 2019 15:05:32 GMT

It was suggested to me to write a break-up letter to alcohol and lay out my feelings, thoughts and memories on my relationship with alcohol. As putting pen to paper makes things a lot more real in deeply personal work like this I sat on it for a long time. The next step after writing it was to read it out loud and share it with someone else. In our episode entitled "Why is for It's so hard to say goodbye to alcohol" we did just that. What follows are those letters.

Dear Alcohol,

I am writing this letter to you because, I do a podcast with John about our experiences coping with breaking up with you, and trying to live life without relying on you… The other reason I’m writing this letter is because John is really into making this podcast seem “professional” and we should probably “plan them out beforehand” and also John loves homework (this is just one of the passive aggressive portions of this letter).

You were like most relationships I had in the past. You started like a grease fire in the kitchen and quickly grew out of control. Once it started going badly, I knew it in the very core of me, but chose to deny the obvious. (it was like ten elephants in the room, and I acted like it was just Wednesday). I would trudge through it completely miserable and in pain. But it was routine and ritual. This is who I am and this is what I do. This defines me and shapes me.

But, unlike every relationship I’ve had, I ghosted you. I cut off contact and caspered my way out this, and I haven’t reached out for you since. But true to form, I obsessed over you and came up with countless scenarios in which we could work it out, maybe something bad would happen and I could turn to you and we could move back into that coffin we shared. That would be rad (insert dripping Gen-X sarcasm here).

I came to the conclusion (one of many, just like the passive aggressive parts of this letter) that pursuing any relationship with you would be actively seeking my own death.

I also concluded that although you were the around for and caused many of my hardships, you were only a catalyst and not the true root of my disease. I believe this infirmity has existed in me before i met you. You just amplified the symptoms (you crazy little minx). Just like a physical debility, you must be treated in order for me regain health. So I sought a remedy.

I found my remedy in church basements around other people who dumped you -- people who got used up, chewed up, and spit out by you. We drink rough coffee, we tell stories about you, and we laugh. We share the turbulent parts of our lives with you and we cope. I COPE, because you’re always there, lingering around like a vampire expecting and invitation in. The wild part is that you’re an element of me. You live in me. I hate that. I resent that. But you’re there, so I have to accept it or be damned. Damned to be walking wounded and back in my disease without taking a drink.

All that being said (or written as it were), EVERYTHING IS SO MUCH BETTER WITHOUT YOU! None of my problems went away, some even got harder for a while (hear me out though); they finally became manageable. The unsolvable became easily solved. What was insurmountable became surmounted effortlessly (is surmounted a word?), contentment was achievable, my sense of entitlement has started to dissipate, and gratitude has become a genuine feeling. Not just something I would say in the rooms to other drunks to make it seem like I had it together. I still don’t have it together, but I believe I can achieve it! Trip out, right?

In all honesty I’m glad I rode with you, and I’m glad I got messed over by you. Because if I didn’t, I would have never realized that life is a good thing. That it doesn’t have to be chaotic and unmanageable. So in a way, thanks for that. I owe you my gratitude.

Now, if you could kindly get lost on this good night, that would be great.

Jerry

*****************************************************************************

Dear Alcohol,

In the beginning there seemed to be so much promise with you and I. I was lost and hurt and young. I had already endured so much trauma at such a young age. Pain, anxiety, and fear were daily. Raised with mistrust and abuse, always being on guard was just a way of life.

I remember the first time you shared yourself with me. You spilled your secrets and poured your promises in my glass. We ditched class together and went to a friend's house. We sang the Beatles, "Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life. You were only waiting for this moment to arise."

Your first taste was foreign and jarring but your feeling was sweet and warming. You calmed my mind and relaxed my body in a way nothing else ever did. From that day on I knew it was meant to be.

Those promises and feelings stayed true for a while. But little by little things started falling apart.

Some mornings you would leave me feeling battered and bruised always coming back to say, "I'm sorry, baby, I didn't mean it. Take me back, I promise it'll be different this time." This cliche went on and on and on. I kept thinking things would change. You kept on being you and doing the same damn thing every single time. Things got worse. You hurt me more and more. You took my money. You yelled at my friends. You hurt people I cared deeply about and led me into situations where I was nearly arrested. Some, where I certainly should have been killed.

And still the:
"I'm sorry baby. It'll be different this time."
Which turned into
"You need me.
"You won't leave me."
"You are nothing without me.
"You disgust me."
"You disgust yourself.
"I'm the only thing that will make you feel better." And that was true for a while or at least I believed it.

And on and on it went for so many years. Broken promises lead to failed attempts to make it work. So many people were hurt by our toxic relationship. So much time wasted and money spent chasing a dream, a high, an ideal state of being that, with you, was never going to exist, ever. I tried to make room for you in my life but you wanted every part of it. All my mornings spent cursing you in sickening physical, mental, and emotional pain. All my nights in foggy vagaries of distraction leading to numbness and always ending in darkness. Both literal and figurative.

The level of destruction overshadows the fun, good, and memorable times we had. And there were some and I will cherish those memories

I have changed. Three years on since we last spoke. that last night after our last fling even I was unsure if it was our final kiss but I knew that I couldn't trust you ever again and that, in fact, it was me, not you. Truly. You were always the same. Never changing. I heard what I wanted to hear and lied to myself time and time again.

In the first months after our break up I still wanted you back. Thought about you constantly. Had vivid dreams about you. It was so hard to let you go. We had been together for decades but it wasn't hard to remember how much I hated myself when I was with you.

In the years since we split I have discovered other things that have made me happy. Helping others, connection and relationships based on self-esteem, exercise, eating better, and creating art. All the things you used to tell me we didn't need as long as we were together. More lies.

Now when I think about you the moments of missing are overshadowed by the lessons learned, memories of the pain and loss and hurt I caused and endured because of you. So today I stand in the truth, experience and knowledge I have gained by letting you go and say emphatically...

Goodbye.
John

One of Us

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 23:38:50 GMT

The contemptuous passer-by, the priests, elders, rulers jeered: “…come down from the cross and save yourself!” ^{Mark 15: 30} ; and bellowed: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” ^{Matthew 27: 42} The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar ³⁷ and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” Even “…one of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” ^{Luke 23:38-39}

Jesus, as “God made man” doesn’t merely feel for us; he is not simply among us, he is one of us. Repeatedly, Jesus says he does all things by the authority, the grace, the power, the love of the Father. He does not trade on his own divinity; his power is derived. If he has the power to save himself, were he actually to do so, he negates his humanity and then, Jesus most definitely would not be one of us. Jesus’s death on the cross is the apex of God’s complete union with us… like us, he is damaged goods, and he is mortal.

“God [through Jesus] has entered into our suffering through his own suffering… What God offers… the promise that he is with us in our suffering; that he can bring good out of it (life out of death, forgiveness out of sin); and that one day he will put a stop to it and redeem it.¹

“I am Jesus, I am an alcoholic.” Preposterous? Being human, injustice, pain, resentment, addiction, disease are all within his sway – yet his communion with the Father never falters, never fails him, even in his despair at the moment of death. But Jesus could not save himself. It wasn’t a choice… Jesus powerless on the cross. One of us. Yet his faith prevails.

When we idealize Jesus (or for that matter, solons with long-term sobriety) we purge him of his humanity, the very core of God’s presence as one of us. That includes wrestling with character defects along with graces and gifts. He engages us – talking, listening, questioning, learning in relationship with us, his brothers and sisters. All those conversations with Nicodemus in the night; with Mary, while Martha seethed; with John, the beloved; and what are the bonds that tie him to Lazarus, for whom he wept? Living in real time as one of us.

Tortured, humiliated, scorned and slaughtered, his sheep scattered, his ministry in tatters, dying, Jesus: one of us. Powerless, he turns his will and his life over to care of the Father: one of us. Triumphant, alive: one with the Father, one of us.

-Martin McE

1 Peter Wehner What It Means to Worship a Man Crucified as a Criminal
NYT 4/19/19, quoting Scott Dudley, Sr. Pastor, Bellevue Presbyterian Church, Bellevue WA
“Jesus, as “God made man” doesn’t merely feel for us; he is not simply among us, he is one of us.”

I am not alone

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 01:11:03 GMT

¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:15-25, NRSV)

In today’s passage from Twenty-four Hours a Day (April 6), the author asks, “Was my personality problem ever solved by going on the wagon or taking the pledge?”

My addictions served to hide me from myself. I practice sobriety in order to be authentic and to live a liberated life of love of self and others.

When I first sought sobriety, I began with Celebrate Recovery (CR), and I quickly realized that alcohol and drugs were not the only addictions over which I was powerless. In CR, each of the 12 steps is paired with a Biblical principle (Scripture). Step 1 is important to us all, but, in these many years, the CR paired Bible passage for Step 1 has had a more profound influence on me than so many other parts of my spiritual recovery journey.

In CR, Step 1 and its Biblical comparison read as follows:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. (Romans 7:18)

I must be bold, now, and share with you that I am not a fan of St. Paul, and I am quite sure that were he and I to meet on the road today, sit together in prayer and conversation, spend time studying the Law, we would have very different interpretations of what sin is and how God through Christ responds to me missing the mark in my journey toward a fuller life with Christ.

Nonetheless, the words of Romans 7:18 meant much more to me, all those years ago when I first set out to get clean, than the words of step 1. And this was at a time when I was not yet baptized or proclaiming faith. I was, as it were, Saul. I recognized in myself this sense that I very much wanted to stop drinking and drugging, stop lashing out in anger, stop lying, stop spending into debt, stop hurting myself, stop promiscuous living. But the desire didn’t seem to be enough. I had a hole in my heart. I had a gap in my knowledge. I had no impulse control. And these words of Paul were saying that it was ok, that I was not alone, that people from all times and places and walks of life struggled in these ways, too.

Over the years, I learned about myself and my God-ness. I grew in faith and recovery. My doctrine changed, and I moved from one denomination to another. I am an Episcopalian now, and I am proud to be part of Integrity and TransEpiscopal. I have left my days with CR behind, but I still meditate on those Biblical principles CR compared to their adaptation of the 12 steps. I especially meditate on that passage from Romans. And not just Romans 7:18 – Romans 7:15-25. After getting sober, opening up to Christ and Christians, accepting Christ as my life guide, coming out as queer and trans, realizing that queer trans Christians DO exist and are LOVED, I found that I needed recovery more than I ever had because I still wasn’t doing what I wanted but was doing what I hate.

I was judgmental. I was a gossip. I was angry. I was controlling. I was afraid. I wanted to run away. I sought love through approval and praise for perfection, and I expected perfection from others.

I was hospitalized for decompensating into a psychotic state. What else does one do when one demands perfection and control of themselves and others and continually falls short but has no was to forgive themselves or others and also judges/condemns themselves because this thought/behavior pattern is incompatible with their worldview/faith/rule of life?

How closely I felt a connection to Paul.

Coming out of the hospital, I let go and let God. I put Christ first, myself second, and my family and church third. I turned taking my medication and attending therapy and letting people know when I needed help and accountability into daily offices (Rev. Mary Earle). I made a rule of life that included daily work and prayer and service related to mental health and recovery.

As I continue to learn and change, I know that Christ was there in the beginning, is here now, and will be with me always. In the valleys, on the mountains, and all the elevations in between. So, my personality problem wasn’t solved by going on the wagon or taking the pledge, but I’m glad that it wasn’t. Those defects of character challenge me every day to seek Christ more, and they have driven me to listen to others carefully and critically in order to discern who I am in Christ and what paths I might take to get closer.

Brandon B.

Opening Doors

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 01:37:00 GMT

For me, the Steps open doors for us. Each brings something important to the Program: a call for the assembly of a moral inventory of one’s life, making amends, developing a spirit-filled life. Each calls us to continuously check our progress and changing and making amends where we have erred, and carrying the message of hope to others who are still suffering.

My path to addiction accelerated when I discovered that alcohol was a means to rectify a personal shortfall which had always troubled me forestalling any growth to maturity. I discovered that my addiction released my inhibitions enabling me to strive to become well-liked, part of a group and accepted. I discovered that this addiction partially blanked out moral standards, enabling me to recklessly live for what I wanted. I discovered that alcohol was my safety line, a means to erase feelings of inadequacy, fear, loneliness, inferiority, and failure. It permitted me to live in that black pit of “woe is me, you’d become an addict also if you had my job, my stuttering, my family.” Self-pity was my mantra permitting me to remain addicted far too long.

Early in the Program and having to confront a serious issue, I had to ask, “But how was I going to deal with all that life threw at me – the really tough serious stuff – without my drug of choice?”

The difficult problems certainly weren’t going away just because I wasn’t using my drug of choice to manage them. Some problems are really serious, life-threatening even. Was I deluding myself about future encounters with issues that in the past had “compelled” me to continue my addiction? Was I to become a hermit and live in a cave or some safe monastery?

I thought a lot about this. Then at a meeting, I seemed to have what I guess I would call a “flash of light.” To me it did seem to be somewhat of an “aha moment.” Specifically, I saw that…

It’s the Steps, stupid. I saw the Steps as “right there” enabling us to face life’s terribleness and securing a tranquil, happy, joyous, and free existence. Sure, they guided us to clean up our act and deal with the bare fact of our addiction. But with the Steps, I now understand that at least for me, we can deal with life’s biggest problems by simply working the Steps as they applied to my problem de jour -the serious issues worse than the run of the mill bumps in the road. You usually can deal with those by going to meetings, mixing up the meetings attended, drawing on spiritual reserves, working with others, undertaking new service work, and so forth.

So, what would the Twelve Steps look like if we phrased them as steps specially outlining a path of recovery from the really bad issues, the ones that cause you all that anxiety you’re suffering right now.

To be continued May 15^th Red Door
Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

Community

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 01:38:31 GMT

Hebrews 10:24-25

²⁴And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

I remember the first few days of my stay in a rehab center. To say the least, I was overwhelmed. “What am I doing in this place with all these losers.” How could I possibly benefit from being ‘exposed to them’.” Didn’t take me long to realize that these “losers” had truck-loads of wisdom to share with me if I would just listen. Their stories--their amazing experiences, their heart-breaking lives--were amazing. I was so “blown away” to realize that in spite of their struggles, they survived. After peeling back their stories and getting to the core I found me. Yes, I had found my story in their stories. We may not look the same, talk the same, or dress the same; but at the core of our being, we are brothers and sisters whose hearts were the same, our pain was the same, our desires were the same, our longings were the same. It was then that I began to understand what this 12-step program was trying to teach me when it spoke of community.

I pastored a church for over 30 years before retiring. In one of my last sermons to my church family I shared insight into what church should look like. I told them that if they wanted to know what church should look like, they should attend a 12-step meeting. A place where everyone is accepted just as they are. A place where there is no one at the door with “registration forms” which will determine whether they qualify to become members. A place where no one asks: “What do you do for living?” “What’s your yearly income?” etc., etc. A place where everyone is equal and the newest member is just as much a part of the community as those who have been present for multiple years. That is what church should be like. The 12-step program has given me a new perspective on what family is all about. After 33 years of clean time, thanks to my God and this ongoing experience, I look at people in a different way. If I look at them through the eyes of my God, I always see someone who is a survivor, someone whose story I will be blessed to hear, someone who is a warrior. And yes, in the midst of all these beautiful broken losers --- I found me.

Rambling thoughts about our egos - Part 2

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 01:54:27 GMT

I mentioned in “Ego-Part One” that we have to watch out when we wonder if our egos are perhaps becoming too aggressive; we need to be aware of the fact that there are “good egos” and “bad” ones, but which is which?

I sought to dump the “bad” ones when I took the first Steps of turning over a new leaf of humility, gratitude, and comfort with ourselves. We dumped the arrogant and selfish parts of our beings. Ultimately, we found our Higher Power’s grace for us, if we but seek it through the Program.

Not all egos are bad, sometimes good ones emerge. The medical profession is a good place to look at the difference. Take a surgeon who is extremely technically skilled. Does he project a self-righteous feeling of superiority over you? “Bombastic” is a good word that usually fits him or her. But we certainly need surgeons who feel and project confidence that he/she can undertake the operation and complete it successfully and accompanied by a positive recovery cycle

But we have to be on our guard. These “positive” good egos can morph into something else; something that we wrestled with during our times of addiction. If a person in the Program has worked the Steps, found recovery, and feels the Grace of the Higher Power, he or she is entitled to a little bit of positive feelings. “I did it and I’m proud of that! … with the help of the Program and others.” We deserve to be proud, but our gratitude and humility are always needed to trump ego’s emerging selfish, self-centered outlooks. After all, each of us is only one drink from a new descent into that pit of addiction.

One spot we need to keep careful track of our egos is our Twelve Step work. We need to remember that we aren’t telling anyone what they should do (“follow me for I have achieved sobriety!”). We pass along only what worked for us and it may or may not work for them. Grandiosity isn’t welcome at this point. Humbleness is the watchword.

The line we draw here can be slippery for like our alcoholic addiction, the way and extent we assert our ego can be one of those spots. We realize our ego, like our drug of choice, is cunning, baffling, and powerful. If we ignore that fact, humility may drop from the picture, and we risk a relapse back into the old feelings of superiority and ego-centric behavior.

“Good ego” is akin to feelings of self-worth but we don’t go around broadcasting and pointing out our self-worth with a cunning, baffling, and powerful aura of how good we feel about ourselves—for we are one drink away from…

It’s another piece of life that calls for balance—the old Greek “Golden Mean.” We lost this “ability to balance” our alcohol intake and we descended to the depths of addiction.

So, “good” or “bad” ego is our choice. We need to be alert to the fork in the road and seek “His Will for Us and the Power to Carry it Out.”

Jim A., Covington, Kentucky

Objects in Motion

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 18:42:39 GMT

“A lie is not an object at rest.”

“Bred to Be a Superstar - Learning To Be Human Again” [Todd Marinovich], Michael Rosenberg, Sports Illustrated, 1/11/19

“The Saromsker Rebbe had lied, directly and by omission and with dreadful, unholy serpentines. Lying was an unsolicited insult to the divine order. … One uncourageous lie destroys the core of the imagination. “ “Perfection” a short story by Mark Helprin in The Pacific and Other Stories, 2004

“Those who do not recover are …, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” “How It Works”, Chapter 5, page 58, Alcoholics Anonymous [Big Book]

“How do I lie to thee? Let me count the ways.” Variation on Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Deceive, distort, exaggerate, con, obfuscate, deny, mislead, distract, camouflage, dupe, pretend, prevaricate, fake, equivocate, quibble, pose, fib, invent … and on, and on…

to myself, especially and intensely to myself, and to my family, my friends, colleagues, acquaintances… people barely met … and more…

about affairs that are heartfelt and incidental, grand and trivial, on matters big and small …

by “dreadful, unholy serpentines” and stark assertions …

for any and every reason and for no reason …

Willfully and unwittingly, I was “constitutionally incapable” of reckoning with reality. So it was last week, mired in boredom in a doctor’s waiting room, grabbing a random magazine, reading an arbitrary piece about a half-remembered, failed wannabe in a sport that holds only a fragment of interest for me, I was arrested by the revelation that according to Newton’s First Law “a lie is not an object at rest.”

Where do my lies lead me? What contortions are required by my distortions, my licenses and liberties with facts as I know them, forces as I encounter them, compressing my life into an ever-shrinking coffer of my dwindling capacities to control the acceleration of my escalating fear? The panic that I can no longer heft the fronts that hide the horror I know myself to be – lies shielding the lie of my own existence.

How then, how now, to consider all the harms the energy of my lies in motion inflicted upon those I would have loved, could I have loved, more or better, or at least faithfully?

“… an object in motion stays in motion… .” There’s more, yes? … with the same speed and direction until acted upon by an unbalanced force that upsets the equilibrium of the forces acting upon it. A Higher Power, perhaps.

My lies rose in layers like tiles for nearly forty years, from my earliest childhood to the end of my drinking. They were not quickly reconciled, and even yet are not resolved, not fully. Happily, truth is grace, a face of God that illuminates our lives and diminishes our deceptions. By grace, we can face ourselves, account for our behaviors, repent of the wreckage we strew across the landscape of our relationships. Truth too, comes in many guises and in serendipitous ways to save us.

Each day, a new beginning. We are objects in motion encountering life forces, experiencing powerful graces, uplifted by powers greater than ourselves, pulled forward by a Love our most extravagant imaginings could never conceive. Life in Truth.

Lent 1987

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:10:44 GMT

On Ash Wednesday a few years back, I decided I was going to give up drinking for Lent. Somehow I knew that I couldn’t do it by willpower alone, and I really wanted it to work.

I figured that if I could surrender my whole self - my life - to God on my knees back in the Cathedral ten years earlier and not turn into a Jesus freak, I could surrender to the power of alcohol and turn it over to God for the forty days of Lent until Easter.

I always remembered a little sign that I saw in a Christian bookstore, it said something like … “Nothing is going to happen today that you and God can’t handle together.”

I thought to myself, “If I put aside the masculine - ‘I can do it by myself’ - part of my ego, and let God help me, it might work.”

I’m an optimist. To me the glass is half full, not half empty. Maybe that’s why I’ve loved the saying, “When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.”

Well, that was like my plan to abstain from alcohol until Easter.

Here’s what I did: Every time I had a fleeting thought about that next beer or glass of wine, it would be like a signal that God was tapping me on the shoulder. The Holy Spirit enabled me to turn cravings for alcohol into a chance to pray. Turn lemons into lemonade. Turn dependence on alcohol into dependence on God.

Also part of my plan - what I didn’t know was a Lenten Devotion - was to drive the half hour to work in the morning with the radio off - (that was a toughie) - and use that time to pray. But day after day my mind would wander when I ran out of word prayers, even though my intention was to spend that whole drive to work praying. But every day when I pulled into the parking lot and look back at that half hour ride in silence, I’d kick myself for only giving God the first four minutes - and then the monkey chatter would begin and I’d be thinking about earthly trivialities that my self-centered ego generated. I hoped God wasn’t timing me.

Well, I did make it to Easter without drinking that Lent. My Lord and I did it together.

God and I worked together to forestall and prevent so many tragic outcomes that would have ensued if I had continued drinking. He and I had preserved my cherished marriage, my fathership, my family, my job, my financial security, my friends, my faith, my life, my sanity, my self-worth, my self-pride, etc, etc.

That Ash Wednesday, the disease of alcoholism had not progressed to a crisis. My drinking had not caused legal or marital, or employment or medical problems. So why would I quit? I can only explain that it had a lot to do with what God laid out for me to follow:

Lent in the church calendar calls me, every single year, to deny some particular worldly pleasure that takes my eye off my intended relationship with God.

Prayer called upon God’s outreached hand to help me. In my life in 1987, it was to resist alcohol. I can only thank God for this affliction. It led me to a closer walk with Him, strengthened my faith, and blessed me with a spiritual healing.

Thanks be to God, Ash Wednesday this year will be 32 years since I have had any alcohol except the blood of Jesus from the chalice at Eucharist.

Think about using this Lent, and God’s help to give yourself a cherished gift at Easter, and get to know Him better.

Jim Fox
St. Mary’s Church, Bonita Springs, FL
2/11/2018

More will be revealed – A Meditation on the 11th Step

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 02:08:05 GMT

One of the gifts of the spiritual program outlined in the Twelve Steps, is the possibility of constant renewal, peeling away layer after layer of my personal onion. This is one such story.

I have long had an ambivalent relationship with the Blessed Apostle, my sainted namesake. In Sunday School, if the teacher mentioned Paul’s letter to, say, the Romans, the other kids would point and giggle, “You don’t know any Romans!” And I would flush with shame.

As an adolescent struggling to understand my sexuality, the religious milieu of Pauline purity codes and predestination created an enormous amount of inner conflict and anxiety. This combination caused me to pursue a long list of accomplishments, hoping to prove my worth as a person while distracting the eyes of the world…and of God.

So, fast forward to January 25^th of this year, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It’s a day that I have observed but had never really celebrated. This year was different.

Several months ago, a friend had introduced me to a prayer app that takes the form of a guided meditation; it is produced by British Jesuits. The reading is heard twice, with questions offered as points of meditation during the musical interludes. I’ve grown attached to this method, adding it to my morning routine of readings from program literature.

The reading was the familiar story from Acts 9 about Paul on the Road to Damascus. After the first hearing, the guide talked about Paul and his credentials of being righteous before God.

Then the guide said something like, “Are there moments when you feel the need to get beyond those ‘externals;’ and deal with the real person behind them? How might doing that change my life and my attitude to other people?”

And suddenly that morning, what felt like a thick layer of my onion was peeled away, and I heard myself thinking, “Paul’s credentials are important – until they’re not. Maybe they kept him looking in the wrong direction. The horse, the brilliant light, the bottom, the blindness, the help of others.” For the first time, I was able to stop comparing. This was a story I knew in my own body.

I listened with different ears to the second reading. Then, the guide asked, “Is there a direct and personal dialogue that you want to have with Jesus, right now?”

And the words that popped out of my mouth were, “Thank you for saving my ass!” And I took a deep breath, thinking that was that. But it wasn’t over. The conversation between Jesus and me continued.

“Why are you persecuting me?”

“Who was I persecuting?”

“You were persecuting me -the one who made you to be who you are. Stop hiding behind all those walls of credentials. Just be you.”

That’s a lot for 12 minutes of a Friday morning! What does it all mean? How might learning to deal with the real me, so long laden with externals, be? How might it continue to change my life and how I see those around me? Today, I don’t know. But I do have faith that, if I continue to listen with the ears of my heart, more will be revealed.

Paul Jacobson
February 20, 2019

Ego – Part One

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 00:35:37 GMT

After eighty years of life, and almost 19 years of continuous serene sobriety, I have a few observations about my ego.

I don’t claim a unique path of any growth or fall-backs. Here are some random thoughts:

First, let me tell you what my ego is and how it reveals itself. Sometimes it comes when I am stressed out, under a lot of pressure, over-scheduled, tied up in the old “should-ought-musts,” or just plain worn-out. I think it is accompanied in my case by the “poor me’s.” That is, “I’m so burdened, I have to think of JIM to the exclusion of others and I deserve [ …something …]. And, in the old days that “something” was always that old addictive substance.

Second, it also seems to come about when I have not been able to complete some personal tasks that have been postponed, partly by over-scheduling. For example, when I have made a commitment to write an article, or attend a meeting, or just plain trying to take an hour or two so I can quietly read a new library book.

Third, I believe that when we took the first 3 Steps we were essentially our old worn ego, the old “me-first” attitude. That feeling that we could control everything, that we were so important and others got in our way to stop us from doing important stuff. Like our addiction, that seemingly sudden re-emergence of our ego as our guiding light reflects our ego’s own essence – it’s “cunning, baffling, powerful.”

Fourth, when I sense my ego’s call I have to stop and ask the question, “Is this a result of a return of the old ‘me-first” attitude?”

Fifth, I think the curtailing or abandonment of our ego is life’s guiding light. Essentially, it is surrendering to the Will of God. It’s quite simple, actually: “my will or God’s Will for us.” Have we prayed about our over-scheduled lives and asked for His Will for us in that regard? Are we the only ones that can do a particular assignment we have assumed responsibility for? Are we really in charge of life’s activities or do we ask for divine guidance? Are we just looking for lots of praise?

Sixth, this last point is for some the center of the problem, for many of us trace our own personalities back to the teen years of inferiority complexes, lack of self-esteem, always seeking the praise of others, using an over-schedule to achieve a degree of prominence based on our excessive work for the group.

Seventh, we need to be aware that the stresses of this attitude, of “I can do it all,” leads sometimes to frustrations, stress, self-pity, anger, resentments. And then, at some point may turn into a relapse--an escape from the chaos we have created.

So, check that old “ego-meter” periodically. If it’s somewhat out-of-balance, get to a meeting, call your sponsor. Refresh yourself again about your abandonment of that “me-first” command and stick with all you have learned and worked through in the Program. Ask what God’s Will is for you and the power to carry it out. That will keep you centered and in the right direction.

BUT, there’s always a” but” in life, and I’ve run out of space. So watch for future sections of “EGO.” The teaser is that we will discuss in Part 2 “the good ego” in all of us.

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

The Gift of Prayer

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 02:09:22 GMT

Not long ago, a friend of mine, I’ll call her Susan, went on a trip and brought home a gift for me (she does stuff like that). It was a pair of work gloves—I had mentioned my gardening hobby to her. The gloves are white and sturdy and on the back of one of the gloves, stenciled in large, black capital letters, is the word PRAY. I will never use the gloves.

I put the gloves on the top shelf of my gardening rack. It stands on the front porch and I pass the glove several times a day in my comings and goings.

Each time I pass the glove I pause and see that word, I pray. I don’t have a prepared prayer I read somewhere in a book. I don’t pray for my friends, for good weather, for world peace.

I do this. I alert myself to the presence and responsiveness of my Higher Power and all creation.

Now that cold weather has come and gardening chores are few, I have brought the glove indoors. It sits on a small table near the front door. I pass it several times a day and think a little prayer. I have two: “Thank you for keeping me sober today” and “Help me get through the day.”

I am reminded what it is not: my Higher Power is far, far away someplace up there and I am just down here tied to the ground. We are not separate. We are the singer and the song.

I will never stop using Susan’s glove and it will never wear out.

—Ron B.

12 Step Work

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 02:18:34 GMT

Step Twelve charges us with the responsibility of “carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” It is easier to do so sometimes, but not so easy other times. When the alcoholic is a friend or relative or spouse, or when someone simply seeks us out and inquires, usually, but not always, we can have a positive constructive conversation passing along our experiences with the disease and our recovery.

But sometimes we are carrying the message in a hospital lock-down psyche ward or a jail-like facility for repeat DUI offenders, any compulsory confinement. It appears that when the person is being held against his or her will, they’re not interested in much of anything, especially comments causing them to look at their own addiction; they may be only hoping to find ways to game the system. They may simply have overdosed and need to be locked-up for a few days for a medical evaluation. It may not be their first encounter with a lock-down ward—or, they are attending the weekly meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous you are chairing merely to gain favorable reports for their parole officer.

You find that “yes,” you are carrying the message—perhaps very effectively. But the reality is that your meeting attendees will probably continue their addictive behavior. After all, what should we expect? Most of us didn’t show any interest in the Program until we were good and ready and had fallen to the depths of our spiritual well-being.

Of course, the state of our egos drives our reactions to this “stone-wall.” We may wish for a more positive reaction. There may be a messianic aspect to our work—we may feel as we enter the rooms that we will “save” them from themselves and deserve credit somewhere for doing so.

Stop this self-pity! … this “self-aggrandizement”. Step Twelve calls on us to “carry the message,” not to save their souls or their lives. Look at us—our ego rears its cunning, baffling and powerful head once again maybe where and when we don’t expect it. It’s our addiction in a different costume. Your job is to open the door. If they don’t want to enter, that’s their decision. Who are we anyway to assume the power or seek to think we might wave a wand over the addict releasing him from his malady? This is the stuff that really caused us so much of a problem.We couldn’t do it for ourselves. We’d tried and failed. Do we believe we now can wave that wand over someone else, someone else who may not want to have anything to do with us or anything else to achieve that “desire to stop drinking?”

But, look… never give up! You are a product of a miracle. Your higher power carried you through the early dark days. Maintain contact with your higher power as you embark on Twelve Step work like this. But don’t give up … “carry the message.” Who knows, you may even see one of these souls at your next meeting.

Jim A., Covington, Kentucky

Take and read.

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:57:40 GMT

Somewhere in his biography CONFESSIONS St. Augustine wrote that he heard a voice from a nearby home of a boy or girl that sang, “Take and read. Take and read.” When I was early in recovery, I remember a meeting at which I quoted from a book that I had been reading (showing off my intelligence!!). I can still see that tall husky man from across the table, stand, slap his hand on the table, and say, “We don’t read anything that is not in the Big Book.” That, thank God, was some thirty-nine years ago.

Since then, I have read everything I could get my hands on about this allergy/ disease or sick relationship or whatever it is that one wants to call alcoholism. I totally and entirely believe that being alive today depends on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. The maintenance of my spiritual condition requires me to, “take and read.”

What set me off on this reading spree some years ago was that somewhere I heard or read that Bill Wilson said something to the effect that everything in Alcoholics Anonymous could be found in various religions and philosophies. If that were true, I wanted to know more about it since I came into this program pretty much a fundamentalist in my beliefs.

When I was in high school I could not remember much of what I read, so I was considered to be a slow learner/stupid. Then, one night, I was reading a novel, and I could “hear” the author read to me. From then on, I wanted to read everything I could. So, when I was told, “we do not read…,” my reaction/response was to ‘take and read.”

Since then, I have enjoyed the spiritual/philosophical underpinnings of what came to us in the 12 steps. In The Upanishads I read, “Forgetting our divine origin, we become ensnared in the world of change and bewail our helplessness.” In The Bhagavad Gita, I read, “Even sinners become holy when they take refuge in me alone." I had already read the Jewish/Christian Scriptures.

Early philosophers discussed the question of how one should live his/her life. It was Aristotle’s view that the happiest people were those who lived a virtuous life. The discussion continued throughout the centuries as to how we should live. It can be concluded that those of us with addiction issues are philosophers since we are all discussing the issue of how to live a good life.

Charismatic leaders created programs to help people mediate in order to find God; study groups to lean the scriptures; prayer groups to help fight their character defects. For those for whom alcohol and other drugs were an issue there was the drunk tank/hospitalization; abstinence programs, religious programs etc.

Then came a Wall Street atheist who couldn’t get sober, and someone told him he could pick his own description of God. One day something happened, he had a spiritual awakening and that was the beginning of our recovery program.

Someone once said at a meeting that the 12 Step program was created to keep our life simple; that the Big Book was written for a bunch of drunks to understand their sickness. Bill W. may or may not have been aware of the beliefs of the religions or the philosophies he said were the background of this program. Sam Shoemaker, who Bill frequently cited as being a great influence on him, was an avid reader and had travelled in China and the Middle East. Bill did not know of St Ignatius until Fr. Ed Dowling showed him the parallel between the 12 Steps and the Ignatian Spirituality.

Today, my gratitude is for the gifts and talents of the early founders who were able to take traditions and philosophies and formulate them into a simple program that is suggested as a program of recovery.

I am grateful to Bill W. for pointing out that the roots of our program run deep and wide. Everyone, everywhere, regardless of their religious or non-religious beliefs or their philosophy, can take the Big Book and the 12 Step program and there find a distillation of religions/philosophical beliefs that provide a program for a life of sobriety and serenity. “Take and Read.”

Relapses – Life without our alcohol crutch, Part 2

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 18:25:22 GMT

We have dealt a bit with relapses, in many ways not a pleasant subject. From the prospective of the addict, a relapse represents failure yet again. Strange, because sometimes the effort to work the Program seemed destined to success—Big Book, Sponsor, Steps 4 and 5, even a bit of service work like chairing a meeting, and so forth. I brought it up at a discussion meeting the other day and everyone had something to say—some concentrating on “the why” it happened, others on “what to do” about a relapse. A couple talked about the “cunning, powerful, baffling “aspects of our disease. A few spoke to our usual question: “How does one deal with life’s bumps and grinds without alcohol as a crutch?”

I think all of us have experienced to some degree a relapse or a complete discouragement with the Program or a feeling of uselessness – a lapse about our ability to deal with the disease.

The answer is clear to most—keep working the Program. There is no holiday from our disease. Go to meetings, read the Big Book, do some service work and so forth. This litany of “working the Program” has been shown by most of us as an effective way to prevent a relapse and, for that matter, what to do when working his or her way out of the feelings of their relapse.

Those generalizations work for life’s normal bumps and grinds. But what about catastrophic occurrences—your spouse develops Stage 4 breast cancer, a child is in a coma following a bicycle accident, your spouse asks for a divorce. The worst kind of problem you encounter may be one that has an extended life with an unknown path of resolution and fearful possible outcomes, a problem impacting the entire family – a genuine life-altering matter.

A feeling of “entitlement” may raise its ugly head: “By God, I have 3 months to live and screw AA!” or “I’m going out with a bang” or “No one is going to prevent me from tying one on.” or, “They’d do it, if they were in my shoes.” “Besides, after all this time, I know enough about the Program so that I can come back if I need to.”

The thought that made the most sense to me was, ”There isn’t a situation extant that can’t be made worse by continuing or resuming our active alcoholism.” Solutions we come up with while intoxicated make no sense, assuming we can remember the ideas or read our handwriting. We have layered over the problems with our addictions, masked so we didn’t have to meet their challenge.

Sometimes in some cases like a divorce or long-term medical issues, we face a likewise long-term remediation outlook, issues associated with medical problems, divorce and the confrontation of new marriages and new families and limited accessibility to your kids. It can be just like a scab. We mentally pick at the scab until its gone and we conclude we have no options.

But, cheer up. Going to meetings, working the Steps, a gratitude list once in a while—it’s all there for you to utilize in the real long term of life’s encountered roadblocks. But never, ever, give up!

Jim A., Covington, Kentucky

My Story

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:33:14 GMT

My name is Shane, and I am a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. By the grace of my higher power and the power of the twelve steps I have been sober from acting on my bottom lines since February 20, 2013. My journey to addiction began when my adopted father, an alcoholic and sex addict, introduced me to pornography at the age of six. I now realize that exposing a six-year-old boy to pornography is a form of sexual abuse. As a child, I lacked the maturity to deal with the feelings I began to associate with these images. My secret activities continued into adolescence, where they collided with my struggle with same-sex attraction. About the time I hit puberty, I became a born-again Christian. Over my teenage years, I repeated a cycle of being attracted to boys my own age, looking at pornography, sex with self, experimenting with same-sex peers, and then drowning in a sea of religious guilt and shame. By age sixteen pornography and sex with self became my drug of choice to medicate my shame, guilt, confusion, and fear of being gay.

After High School I entered the clergy and was married, mistakenly believing doing so would cure me of my struggles. How wrong I was! These issues persisted despite prayer, fasting, and faith. It left me convinced that I was unworthy of God’s intervention. Regretfully, my need to control everything (so the real me would never be revealed) drove a wedge between my wife and I and we divorced. I eventually married again with an honest commitment to do the right thing. However, I quickly returned to my addiction, this time discovering the internet. Addiction is progressive and debilitating, and every barrier I said I would never cross I did. In the 15 months I was acting out I had scores of sexual encounters, one of which was with a young man I met on line who was under age. Sex addiction is a sure pathway to insanity. How else can I explain the perfect sense it made (to me) to imagine that an emotional and sexual relationship with a teenager would be acceptable? I had so detached from the reality of my life that I was trying to maintain the public persona of a faithful husband, respected religious leader and member of the community while hooking up with men at the risk of my freedom, my family, my career, and my sanity.

Eventually I was found out and arrested. I seriously considered suicide when the police came to my door, but the thought of my children or wife finding my body stopped me from doing the deed. After a 93 day stay in sex rehab I was able to admit that I was an addict and came out to my family as a gay man. While there I was introduced to SLAA and made a half-hearted attempt at recovery. After rehab I did a one-year stint in state prison. I left state prison in 2012 thinking I had everything under control.

Within six months I had relapsed. I did not believe the stories I heard about relapse being worse than the first go around with our disease, but I became a believer. I rationalized that I could handle a little pornography. That thinking error began a journey that led me back to prison for four years. During that time, I missed my grandfather and uncle’s deaths/funerals, the birth of my two grandchildren, and so much time that can never be regained. It took that second arrest and imprisonment to wake me up and get serious about recovery.

I wrote SLAA’s office asking for a correspondent sponsor who would work with me while I was in prison. My higher power sent me just what I needed in my sponsor! He had been in prison as well and had an almost identical background. While inside, I began to work the steps, set my bottom, caution, and top lines, developed a daily spiritual routine that includes prayer, meditation, and affirmations. For a brief time, I actually met with other inmates for SLAA Meetings in our dorm. It has been said that suffering is a pathway to peace. Those four years were the most difficult days I have ever experienced – so much violence, darkness, isolation, and despair. Working the steps, the support of my sponsor, my family, a small group of fellow inmates whom I trusted, and my Higher Power were how I got through it. On December 20, 2016 I began my recovery journey in the “free” world.

Since my release I have continued that work by seeing a licensed sex offender therapist, regularly attending our local SLAA meetings where I serve by setting up chairs, leading meetings, and serving as the chairperson for our Intergroup. I am beginning work on my ninth steps and have one sponsee. I have been able to find work and have a recovery job as a restaurant manager. I recently led a discussion group at my church that discussed the connection between the Twelve Step and the Gospel as Jesus lived out. An opportunity I never imagined I would every again have.

I have built recovery friendships and meet regularly with a ground of men in recovery. I am actually developing healthy, intimate same sex friendships! I have a close friend who serves as my spiritual advisor and mentor who is well versed in recovery. I have surrendered my right to have sex anytime I want, with anyone I want, and have made peace with abstinence unless I am in a committed relationship.

Almost five years of sobriety has restored much of my sanity and empowered me to begin to love myself. I am now fully present for my family and friends. My spiritual life is exactly where it needs to be, utterly human yet touched by the grace of my Higher Power. Now when I feel those familiar triggers creeping in, I call a trusted recovery partner or my sponsor. My biggest struggle is with loneliness and much to my surprise, feeling lonely does not kill me. Each day I do not act out is a step back to restoring my reputation as an honorable man.

I now pray for an opportunity to live out this hope by carrying this message to others trapped in their own struggle with sex and love addiction, especially those who are in vocational religious ministry. In that regard, I am now a certified Recovery Coach who focuses on helping recovering clergy stop living out a pattern of sex, love and pornography addiction. My recovery has not been perfect, but it has been the recovery I needed, including my prison sentence. I am thankful for the pain it brought and the hope I discovered behind those bars through the twelve steps of SLAA.

Shane M. Conway, Arkansas

Graft in our hearts the love of your Name

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 03:43:40 GMT

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

In this gospel reading Jesus reminds us that it is not what we put into our bodies that causes us to sin. Now we alcoholics and addicts know well that Jesus is not talking about physical food or drink because that is certainly what finally got us into trouble. Jesus is referring to spiritual and intellectual food that we take in. It is what happens to the words, thoughts, actions that we hear and see and allow to penetrate our body and reach our heart, and then how our heart reacts to them can cause us to sin, to develop character defects. Someone harms us. We want to hurt them right back. Someone does not treat us with the respect due. We make sure they are put in their place. Our children act out. We throw up our hands and scream at them.

Ours is a God of love and I love all the ways scripture and sacred writings give us images to pray and meditate on about changing our heart. The collect for this passage from Mark talks about “Graft in our hearts the love of your Name.” Some of you master gardeners know more about grafting than I do, but I hope you can identify with the personification of the word heart. Graft in our hearts the love of your Name. Graft meaning to insert, implant, transplant into our hearts God’s heart of love.

There are many other personifications of our hearts.

In Lent in Morning Prayer we often read the Prayer of Manasseh (BCP pp. 90-91) where we appeal to God for forgiveness as we “Bend the knee of my heart.” Our image is bowing our body and especially our heart as we ask on the bended knee of our heart for forgiveness for the harmful things we have done to others. Another great prayer image.

In the marriage ceremony if the Song of Solomon (8:6) is read, we will hear, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, .. for love is stronger than death.” A seal upon our heart..a seal is a substance joining two together. It can be a substance with something stamped on it or a badge saying that this document comes from the sender. If we view this in our relationship to God we are asking to be stuck to God like glue and marked as at baptism, “marked as Christ’s own forever.”

Again, in a Morning Prayer Canticle, the Song of Ezekiel (36:26), God says, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” What a great image for our prayers: asking God to take away our heart of stone.

My favorite image of our heart is in the Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict. The founder of the Benedictine monastic tradition’s very first words to us are, “Listen with the ear of your heart.” What an image for our relationship to God and our neighbors. Listening to God, listening to those we meet with not just the outer part or pinna or lobe of our ear, but with the middle and especially the inner part of our ear and connect what we hear to our heart that no longer is a heart of stone but has been tightly grafted to the love of God.

Hold on to these images of our hearts in this new year. They could be resolutions that could change our lives.
Listen with the ear of your heart.
Graft in our hearts the love of your Name.
Set me as a seal upon your heart.
Bend the knee of my heart.
Remove from me my heart of stone.
We will review them on February 14^th

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

This Christmas

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 15:12:00 GMT

Seeing that we can’t go it alone, God delivered a Higher Power to restore us to sanity. Born of Mary into the House of David, He came to live among us to suffer with us and for us (Isaiah 53).

Now and still, we can’t go it alone. Richard Rohr says that when God looks at us, he sees Christ – so completely does his love align with our need for love. And when we look at each other, whom do we see? If not Christ, do we at least see ourselves in one another, in our addictions, our confusion and fear, our loneliness, our aspirations, our insights, our courage, our hope and joy? There is so much to apprehend in one another and so much power within and among us. Other’s gifts and graces needn’t be “higher” – only present. Our presence for each other is our hope and our salvation.

Sober holidays and holy days invite us to recast traditions (especially those we may have defiled in the throes of our addiction) and invent rituals that enshrine our venerable principles and natures. The best of these celebrate the truth that we are no longer condemned to go it alone. We are not condemned by our addictions, by our failings, by our weakness. Christ is born. He is with us and in us.

Christmas cards are a fading custom, but for me a ritual filled with luminous memories. This year, I am greeting stalwarts who have sustained me through trials and numbing losses and unexpected triumphs. Their heroic generosity and genius buttress me. As I compose, sign and address the cards, I recall how these dear people, some barely acquaintances, by intense exertions and inspired gestures lighten my labors, lessen my load and lift my outlook. How wonderful they are!

I have adorned the face of this this special card with an iconic Botticelli madonna, and draped the backside with a verse sprung from the crannies of my soul:

This Christmas

My dear brothers and sisters,

All you viscounts, vagabonds and visionaries,

This year, let us celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We’ll sing in tune with the angels,

Rejoice in delight with the shepherds,

Pray in accord with the sages,

Let’s exclaim uproarious, unbounded, unanimous love for all.

Let’s adorn every greeting with fond wishes and wrap every gift with affection.

Let’s shed rancor and rage, and be mellow, light-hearted and merry.

On Christmas morn, let’s rise as happy children,

And on Christmas night go to our beds forgiving and forgiven,

Hearts bursting with newborn love for one another,

In the name of the child

Whose love conveys us all from creche to cross to eternity. Amen.

Martin McElroy, 2018, from Shattered, Anthems of Healing and Rejoicing

“People, Places, Things” – Part #3

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 01:48:56 GMT

In Parts 1 and 2, we spoke about having to consider our relationships with “people, places and things,” usually stating or implying that the frequency of those relationships may have to be reduced or eliminated, or at least at first seriously curtail the frequency of those relations, i.e., you may have to skip the traditional nineteenth hole gathering, or cut the time spent with the family at the traditional Fourth of July Grill-out or find an eatery with a burger just as fine at “Thelma and Harold’s Good Time Bar & Grill”.

Early in the program it’s important to reduce those places where you always consumed more alcohol than appropriate and embarrassed yourself and family before the gathered crowd.

You thought that everyone in attendance consumed just as much as you, but such is not usually the case. They–the normal drinkers–can actually stop at a given point, at the point “they’ve had enough.” So, your behavior is not the norm, and looking back, if we are honest, we had to admit that usually in any form of relaxation and socializing–the 19^th hole or Labor Day grill-outs–you always seemed to have a whole lot more to drink than everyone else. Be honest with yourself. If you can, listen to their conversations. They actually make sense. They aren’t garbled or slurred. They haven’t spilled a glass of beer on the picnic table, or loudly passed along the latest “out-of-place” racial insult.

But, enough about the negativity of the excessive drinking. Look at the bright side. You’ll be able to remember conversations, what article or book title you promised to send to the person. You were cold sober when you said, “let’s have lunch” and really meant it and will remember that you said you’d call to set something up. Political and religious discussions may even be coherent and remembered. You may actually be persuaded by a contrary discussion. You’ll understand and remember a good joke or story. You probably will find that sooner or later you will find new friends.

The benefit doesn’t include those good old feelings of being in control of your person. You’ll have positive feelings about the evening–that “feel good” attitude. Shame of that evening, or tomorrow, won’t haunt you. Instead you will realize you are making progress, you are changing your abusive ways of the past. Your spouse might even comment, “I like/love you more when you aren’t drinking, like those days of yesteryear before alcohol dominated your behavior.”

You may even find material benefits as a result of your demonstrated sobriety: a new sales lead, being asked to make a contact, and you may find a new ability of remembering what your profession or employment is all about.

What’s not to like about sobriety–in part gained by changing those alcoholic people, places and things that did so much to enable you to go to the depths of your addiction?

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

The Light is Shining

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 02:25:26 GMT

My name is Brandon. I'm an alcoholic and an addict, and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ.

That is how the meetings I first attended opened.

The 12 steps and 8 principles had scriptures attached to them, and we recited them each meeting.

In this Advent season, I am reminded of the Light. I am always trying to open a crack through which the Light may shine.

Last night, I "pulled an all-nighter." I did this knowing it's a potentially risky behavior for my recovery. I did this for the love of my daughter. My daughter is autistic and hasn't been sleeping through the night. Often, she can self-soothe when she can't sleep, but last night she couldn't. So I was there for her.

She and I talked for several hours about skills we each use to communicate with ourselves... To find the calm in the storm of our minds. We went to IHOP at Midnight and ate Grinch-themed pancakes. We returned home and played video games.

After she fell asleep around 5am, I had a clear memory of those early meetings so many years ago. The Light was shining.

My name is Brandon. I am an alcoholic and an addict, and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ.

The truth is I don't attend those meetings anymore because they preached a particularly homophobic doctrine, and I am queer and trans.

But those meetings and the people there still reside in my heart and are part of my recovery team in the way their stories and words live in my memory.

Every time I hear "11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and power to carry that out," I can't help saying, "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly" (Colossians 3:16a) and thinking of my first sponsor all those years ago.

As I stayed awake with my daughter last night and helped her use her self-soothe skills, I worked on my own self-soothe skills and remembered why the Light is so beautiful this time of year. It is when family, friends, communities, and even people with whom we disagree come together in a Spirit of giving. We all share in making things new.

This Advent I celebrate my daughter's growth; my sobriety which continues to draw me nearer to God, myself, my wife, my child, and others; and the new groups I've found which support my continuing recovery where I now say, "My name is Brandon. I'm a queer, trans Christian in lifelong recovery from alcohol and drugs, and I'm open to new ideas and language to help me on the way."

Peace,
Brandon

Advent and AA: Grateful, Sober Episcopalians

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 18:22:48 GMT

Our hope is that when this chip of a book is launched on the world tide of alcoholism, defeated drinkers will seize upon it, to follow its suggestions. Many, we are sure, will rise to their feet and march on. They will approach still other sick ones and fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous may spring up in each city and hamlet, havens for those who must find a way out. Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 153*

Advent is a time of anticipation, expectation and preparation. How does the forward-thinking impetus of Advent fit in with the “no expectations, no resentments” philosophy of AA? Easily. The “Promises” tell us that God will do for us what we could not do for ourselves, just as Advent tells us that God is near. AA is a light in the darkness. The Program and Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous promise us the path to a life of freedom and happiness.

An AA old-timer said at a meeting last week that Alcoholics Anonymous had brought him from a life of self-centered fear to a life of gratitude. Gratitude is the key. No matter what is going on in ourselves, our family or the world, there is always something to be grateful for. The AA tradition of November being Gratitude Month is a perfect lead-in to the Christian tradition of Advent. With grateful hearts, we begin the new year with anticipation and assurance.

So what does this mean in practical terms? How does being a grateful, sober Episcopalian affect my day-to-day life during the Holiday Season? First of all, I can be assured that the joy of the season is not dependent on my purchases. I bring the gift of sobriety to my life, to my family, friends and neighbors. The gift of sobriety includes the gifts of acceptance, thankfulness and encouragement. It includes reliability, stability and joyfulness. Anything I can buy can’t measure up to the inestimable worth of what I already bring to those I love. I can be relieved of the anxieties that who I am or what I bring or what I give aren’t good enough.

Second, being a grateful, sober Episcopalian means that I am not alone. I never have to go anywhere alone, I never have to face a family or office function alone, I never have to make a decision alone. Fellowships of AA are nearby. Meetings abound—and their numbers increase during the holidays. Many meetings supply lists of members’ phone numbers and we are all encouraged to make use of the phone. If you do make a call, you are giving that person the gift of your trust in their sobriety and their ability to help you.

And finally, being a grateful, sober Episcopalian means that I know about the cycle of the seasons. I know that Advent brings each of us renewal and promise. I know that the light overcomes the darkness. I know that despite the struggles and confusion of the modern age, God’s promises in Advent and God’s promises in the Big Book come true. We have been called, each of us, to bear witness to the Good News of sobriety, in fellowship and in hope.

-Christine H.

* The AA Bible, Alcoholics Anonymous, was published in 1939 when there were almost 1400 people in dozens of groups who had together to obtain sobriety. Today there are over two million people who meet in over 120,000 groups worldwide. There is hope for us all.

People, Places and Things – Part # 2, “Things”

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 01:56:00 GMT

Family Holidays, Weddings, Graduations and other gala Family events. Naturally, a topic which frequently arises at discussion meetings is this problem of how we handle family or neighborhood gatherings, or picnics featuring ribs and all the fixin’s and ice-cold beer, birthday celebrations and family graduations and anniversaries, baptisms, first communions and confirmations, national holidays. Some are long-time family and neighborhood traditions, sometimes reflecting a “must attend” modality. And maybe you’re new in the Program and still developing your confidence levels. You may be threatened by “publicly” refusing the offering of a ”cold one,” the pitchers of freshly-made margaritas and ice-cold sangrias. You think, “What will they say?” “Gee, don’t you like what I made for my guests?” “You used to really pig-out on this? Are you sick?”

Yes, you are sick. You developed the disease of alcoholism and when you imbibe to excess (because you can’t drink any other way), your personality abruptly changes. So, upon entry to the party, tell ‘em “I have a cold and don’t feel well”, or “I’ll take care of it, you take care of your other guests.” Anything is OK and since the object is to simply get a glass in your hand: “No, not yet, I need to get a glass of water, or soft-drink," or, "Not yet, I have to check with the baby-sitter, one of the kids has a cold.”

These gatherings, so personal in nature, usually will feel endless and maybe animated raising your anxiety level. What to do? Easy, use your cell, go off in a corner and call/text your sponsor or a fellow “Program member.” Sometimes you can help the hostess by cleaning up, washing dishes, carrying more chairs outside, and so forth. You’re just physically separating yourself from the gala activity going on around you.

Here are some suggestions for those gatherings “you must attend:”

Always have a cell phone and use it
Never go without having a car to escape
Arrive close to dinner being served and leave after desert
Use the excuse that “We have a neighborhood annual picnic we must make an appearance at”
Look for opportunities to remove yourself from the action … wash dishes, help with serving/clearing the tables.

The point is to reflect your new personality and way of living. No need to be ashamed. If you’re obviously not drinking, they probably will ignore you anyway.

TO BE CONTINUED, Jim A./Covington, Kentucky

Praise the Lord

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 04:32:14 GMT

“Today I am sober… hours/days.” It is wonderful to see more and more individuals post on Facebook that they are sober even if they are struggling to stay so. What I see missing in many of those postings is an acknowledgement about how they got sober. Their A.A. chip implies they are in a 12-step recovery program which implies they acknowledge their sobriety came from a Power greater than themselves but they do not say this.

In psalm 150 the psalmist writes, “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary… for his mighty deeds… according to his greatness… with trumpet… lute and harp... tambourine and Dance… with strings and pipe... clanging cymbals… let everything that breathes praise the Lord.”

When I first came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn’t need to get sober. I told my boss I would not drink and it was no big deal. Any fool can stop drinking. And this fool stopped drinking. I never picked up another drink. I never picked up another drug. But I was not sober and I was not happy about being seen in these rooms.

God was good to me. (S)he nudged me into the program and nudged me to listen to a couple of individuals who saw through my façade, my fear, and stubbornness at not wanting to have a sponsor. They sponsored me into sobriety, Praise the Lord.

With my seminary background I thought I knew all about God. What goodness I knew about God applied to others. The god I believed in I saw through clouded thinking and negative emotions—the baggage that prevented me from seeing God with twenty- twenty vision. My understanding of god was skewed with my low self-esteem issues—anger; resentments, etc. It is difficult to praise God when God is seen as the source of one’s problems.

Sobriety came slowly to this alcoholic. Gratitude for being an alcoholic in recovery came slowly. The trinitarian basis of the program began to unfold in all its simplicity and depth. Go to meetings to listen to what was shared and identifying with others was an eye-opener. Read the Big Book and underline identified emotions to help me identify with those “old folk” who wrote this book some 40 years earlier. Talk to a sponsor about what I had for breakfast, about my boss, about what I am grateful for, about my anger, and why I chose to be angry without blaming others (a new behavior). Praise the Lord.

When I say, “Praise the Lord,” I am not identifying with any particular denomination or Faith community. “Praise the Lord” was (is) the language used by a person filled with the joy of his/her awareness of a Power greater than him/her self. That power was seen in all of nature and s/he wanted to give praise with every instrument available (not just a Hammond Organ).

Today I can identify with those who seem to think they are sobering up on their own while they hold the chip that says “God, grant me the serenity…” Today I pray that they stay with the program, go to meetings, read the Big Book and talk to their sponsor until such time as the cloud lifts and they can experience the joy of sobriety.

Today, like a child, I want to make a joyful noise to the Lord with a loud sound, with the simplicity of a pot and spoon, Praise the Lord for my sobriety and serenity. Praise the Lord for a joy filled heart. Praise the Lord as we pray in our own understanding of God: “Our Father…”

-Seamus D

Retreat

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 03:39:04 GMT

“Recovery… is dependent upon [our] relationship with God.”¹

“Wretched” perfectly fits this can’t-pass-too-soon-year, 2018. Yes, our political/societal quakes from daybreak to dark. My spouse’s political outrage, fitting and just, incites my own shadowy fears. The death of my best friend, the woeful derelictions of my boss, and recurring sibling savagery between my sister (cardiac crises) and brother (terminal leukemia) have sapped my reserves of energy, patience and hope. Enduring civic and parish commitments, family duties and social doings consume the dregs. Over the full span of the sodden, fetid summer I barely put my toes in the waves and rarely gripped the dingy’s helm.

Beyond the dim likelihood that they’ll be answered as asked, there’s good reason to steer our prayers away from… “unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon other and upon god.”² Pope Francis warns against blocking our access to God’s creativity with our pleas. The idea that God “answers” our prayers, tweaking the life events of seven billion replicas of his image and likeness (is there a more self-serving notion?) may be untenable. Regardless, the Word that was “in the beginning”, the Word with God and Word that is God”³ echoes within each of us and all of us, summoning our full attention to realize His creative energy at work in everyone we perceive, engage and embrace.

In this harrowing hour, I desperately long to experience “each day’s most quiet moments, by sun and candlelight.”³ I need more such moments and long to draw more from them. A retreat beckons… my former, longstanding Chicago home group gathers as the leaves’ colors peak. The twelve-hour drive each way from Philadelphia gives me pleasure. Arrive a day early; linger a day longer. Gather my journal notes and favorite texts, plan to listen during the talks, and listen harder during the silences.

Silence. Silence, to hear the Word within me, within us.

How do I love thee [O my God]? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if [You, O] God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death. ³

—Martin

1 Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), p 100, AA World Services, Fourth Edition, 2002
2 Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), p 76, AA World Services, Fourth Edition, 2002
3 Sonnets from the Portuguese, “Sonnet 43”, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Joseph of Arimathaea and the Election

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 00:58:24 GMT

As we read this, all of us will know the results of this mid- term election. Our prayers should be with those who win the election, for those who lose, and for those who voted for both of them.

For some reason I am hoping to remember Joseph of Arimathaea after this election. “He was a good and righteous man… and had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathaea and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 23:50-56) That’s us!! I think we all are waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God and are hoping to find some part of it in all the people we voted for as well as in all the places we worship and all the places we attend 12 step meetings, those thin places, filled with the prayers of thousands before us. We have much in common with Joseph of Arimathaea.

“He did not agree to their plan and action.” But what did he do about it? Did he speak up for Jesus? There is no record that anyone testified on Jesus’ behalf. We have sometimes been like Joseph of Arimathaea. We sometimes see injustice and wrongdoings in the lives of others and ourselves, but we do not speak up against them. We fear what might happen to us. We fear the consequences of speaking out. We fear what we do or say might be offensive and hurt someone, or heaven forbid, we would become unpopular. We fear that our voice will not make a difference.

But then a transformation occurs in Joseph, what we might call, a moment of clarity. Joseph personally goes to Pilate. What bravery. He asks for Jesus’ body, personally and compassionately takes the nails out of Jesus’ hands and feet, washes off the blood from his head, his hands, his feet, his side, his back, wraps the body in a linen cloth and lays it presumably in his own tomb.

Are we Joseph of Arimathaea? Is there a point where we can no longer live our lives with a mask? We no longer pretend to go along with the old crowd inside and outside of ourselves. We look deep inside ourselves and speak our truth and act on it. This happened with our recovery. This also may be how we experienced voting yesterday. No matter the results of the election, we voted and let our voice be heard.

A fictional modern-day Joseph might be Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer in 1932 Alabama in To Kill a Mockingbird. He unsuccessfully defends Tom Robinson the black man accused of raping a white woman.

Another modern-day Joseph of Arimathaea is Rosa Parks, the black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, who decides one day she is too tired to walk to the back of the bus and changes the course of civil rights.

And of course, there are those of us in 12 step Recovery who one day decide we can no longer live our old way and take off our masks of perfection and a secret lifestyle and admit we have a problem and seek help and in turn help others. Think about it. We who are gathered today through the internet know what it is like to be Joseph of Arimathea.

I think there is a Joseph of Arimathaea inside each of us, finally making a stand, changing the way we have been relating to ourselves, to God, and to the world.

Remember the quiet, compassionate, loving courage of Joseph of Arimathea that is in each of us, the courage to change, the courage that led us to recovery, the courage to bring healing to ourselves and others, and now the courage to bring compassionate healing to our country especially in the days ahead.

Joseph provided the tomb for resurrection to take place. That is now our job. We have learned about resurrection and compassion for others in our 12 step groups. We are called now to be that same vessel for compassion outside in the world today.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

It really is a “Big Book”

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 02:11:01 GMT

Published in 1939, it’s sold 20 million copies, been through 4 editions, distributed world-wide. TIME placed it on its list of 100 best and most influential books, the Library of Congress designated it as one of 88 books that “shaped America.” It’s wording and style of writing hasn’t been substantially changed since 1939. The stories have been edited some and some have been dropped but new ones always added. We speak of “writing style.” It was written by-and-large by Bill Wilson; he requested and received comments in mass from the early recovering alcoholics. Its strength is that it was written by alcoholics for alcoholics. Absent is fuzzy medical terminology and ambiguities.

The Twelve Steps were first published in the First Edition. Maybe apocryphal, but after a first or second draft, someone pointed out that the Book didn’t contain any quick summary of the Program, so, Bill dictated the Twelve Steps.

I read the Steps and marvel. It’s all there! Step by Step we rebuild our lives, refocus our attitudes, values and hopes for our well-being. We enter a deep personal and spiritual cleansing and embark on a life style absent from our ego (but always we claim progress in all matters, not perfection). Frankly, I find Bill’s Twelve Steps to be a statement of Christian precepts, much more to the point, simple to understand, and pointed in the right direction: that (at least “my” Higher Power) gives me the Grace to accept this Program and to seek that Power’s will for me for the future … His Will, not mine …” letting go and letting God.”

Careful study of the Steps readily shows the extent to which we are completely changing our lives:

new values,
spiritual-filled lives,
prayer,
seeking His Will for us and the power to carry it out,
a constant review of our lives and processes to correct shortfalls,
resetting of priorities,
thinking first of “the other person,”
in all matters seeking to do “the next right thing,”
an abandonment of self-will and selfish mindsets,
how we might speak through prayer with our Higher Power,
and much, much more.

We take care to never underestimate the Program or take it for granted. Before, particularly in those instances of crisis, we grabbed a drink to calm ourselves.

Today, in those moments of panic we now pick from a variety of helpful options, or maybe we pick all of them - we “get to a meeting,” read the Big Book, call our sponsor, seek a quiet corner and meditate, drive to the nearest clubhouse, and look for a new person seeking release from alcohol’s bondage, work with our sponsees.

We find it all in the Big Book. Thanks heavens! Blessed be those who assembled its nuggets of wisdom.

Jim A., Covington, Kentucky

The Community of the Shipwrecked

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 01:52:10 GMT

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“We dare not get rid of our pain before we find out what it has to teach us.” - Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and mystic

I served for two years as a chaplain in a community hospital. I recall one homeless patient in the ICU who was struggling with addiction. He was in the hospital because he had downed a half a bottle of rubbing alcohol. The physicians were frankly surprised it hadn’t killed him. I saw him just an hour before he was to be transferred to a local psychiatric hospital for observation. My guess is that his physician did this because he assumed that anyone who would do such an extreme thing must be a danger to himself. But, speaking as a recovering addict, I completely understand how a person can become totally, utterly desperate – desperate for anything, ANYTHING, to numb the pain of existence, even briefly. I vividly remember counting the minutes until the liquor store opened each morning; I could hardly bear to wait. Alcohol was my escape from the horrible reality my life had become. I found myself wondering, too, about this particular patient. What private hells was he going through? What had driven him to such a desperate act? He didn’t have much to say; only stared straight ahead and kept saying over and over, “I gotta get somebody to help me…I gotta get somebody to help me…”

You don’t have to be a homeless end-stage alcoholic to experience suffering like that. Life is irony. And suffering, I think, may be the ultimate irony. We tell ourselves: I’ve done all the right things, I’ve been good. I’ve gone to church, believed all the right stuff, eaten lots of green vegetables and whole grains, got good grades, and now…I have cancer. Or, now I’ve become an alcoholic or addict. Why? And what of the irony that there are those who live for themselves and scoff at those who have faith, yet experience long and full lives? Irony in its most basic definition is “when things turn out contrary to what one expects.” Irony is paradox, and it is a paradox people of faith must continually hold in tension. Perhaps another important question we must struggle with is this one: “What does it mean for us that we serve a God who suffered?”

For many years the Christians I hung out with worked very hard to banish irony from their lives; they lived in what I jokingly call an “irony-free zone,” sort of like Disneyland, or perhaps Branson, Missouri. A place where all turns out as is expected, where there are no unpleasant surprises. A universe where cause and effect rule the day. A place where bad people get punished, and get what they ultimately deserve: Judgment, Pain, and Suffering. And God’s faithful people in turn get what THEY deserve; the good life. Proverbs 3:1-2 was often quoted to me:

“My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity.”

But that’s not the way life is - right? So how to resolve this? We can’t, period. We’re unfortunately stuck with living in this tension, between “the now and the not yet.” We must somehow find ways to balance this paradox and allow our suffering to redeem us. Perhaps in the midst of doing so we will get a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

Some may say we suffer because of our sin. There may be some truth there, I think. And I am well aware that there are significant passages in the scriptures that speak of God’s holiness and righteousness, that God hates sin and the terrible effects it has, and that we will all someday stand before God and give account for our lives. I acknowledge these truths. But I am grateful this is not the ONLY, or even the PRIMARY message of the Bible. For every verse that talks about God’s judgment there are ten more that remind us of his mercy, compassion and grace. May my life and ministry consistently reflect what I would call this ‘bias’ on the part of God toward mercy and grace! I have experienced this divine mercy many times in my life. As an addict, I felt, in the words of the prophet Jonah, like “the cords of hell had entangled me” and that, as the psalmist commented, “darkness was my only companion.” But God, in his mercy, rescued me, he saved me. I like that word, “saved.” Some Christians these days shy away from that word “SAVED” because it has negative connotations and has been used as a doctrinal ‘hammer’ in some instances to determine who is in and who is out. But I do feel like I was saved from a shipwreck. The shipwreck of my addicted life. In fact, recovering Catholic priest Father Richard Rohr refers to us addicts as “the community of the shipwrecked.” Indeed. I’m thankful to be a part of that community. May I never forget.

Fr. Richard +

“People, Places and Things” – Part #1

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 02:56:32 GMT

People. This word meant a lot to me the first time it was discussed in a meeting. It seemed to encompass all the reasons I started my “alcoholic habit” when I was 18 years old in the back room of a popular crowded and typically dirty college bar—lots of hilarity and pushing and shoving at the bar itself. “Hey, Mable, “Black label,” please, 3.2—hurry—need to get back on time.” I wanted to be one of “the in-crowd”.

Move many years forward. After my dark days and lost weekends, and after I had surrendered, I knew that if I hung around my friends—the ones that spent much too much time, money and energy drinking—I’d fail once again. If I was going to have any chance with the Program, I’d have to fire my old friends and find new ones. Not an easy choice. I’d known them for years. Together, we’d moved into our 30s and 40s and shared experiences with life’s bumps and grinds. Took vacations with several.

Places. Early on in my sobriety, I recognized that the bars themselves presented a challenge to my sobriety. Again, in college, the “Bigs” touted certain places. “Antlers” when doing laundry next door, “Dugway” for that case of Black Label to take back to our abodes, the hotel on the square if you wished a “high-end” saloon. Later, usually we had a regular spot—one for those “on the way home from work” places, or when out and about with Saturday’s errand-runs, and usually a fancy-dancy place we found for those special times.

But, we alcoholics have to remember that not every one of our friends and families are allergic to alcohol as are we. So, occasionally we have to provide alcohol to guests. I can’t hang around liquor stores—or wineries—it all looks too good, so why spend any more time than absolutely necessary to accommodate our families and friends.

“The “places” issue represented another adjustment for this new-comer. Bar food, “best burgers” in town, or “best pizza,” the quietest and darkest for seemingly our “serious” maybe secret rendezvous.

So, bars, liquor stores and wineries also became off-limits. No more church wine tasting gatherings with everyone in their Harris Tweed jackets and standing around muttering: “Its bite is too harsh, too sweet, dry, sharp, dull, smooth.” Gone, off-limits. The bars were particularly obviously so—the smells, well-aged boiled eggs in some sort of green water, a friendly bar-keep, lots of atmosphere i.e., peanut shells, popcorn, other unidentified scum on the floor and in the “johns.” I just don’t go into them, and if asked, I usually say, “Isn’t there a better place or are we simply pretending to be back in college?”

Things. You know—like holidays, family July 4^th keg parties, country clubs, the 19^th hole, hunting, fishing, New Year’s Eve parties, college reunions—just the whole social scene we had carefully constructed to make the best convenient use of alcohol. And no more expensive and “rare” scotch, bourbon, wine, sherry, expensive vodka in the ice box, bar accessories, cute bottle openers, imported gin...

Part # 2 to follow soon

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

A Star Is Sober

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 02:12:40 GMT

Elizabeth Kemp, Bradley Cooper’s inspiring teacher at the Actor’s Studio, told him that “All that stuff you’ve always been ashamed of, you’re now going to turn that into your art, and it’s going to heal you, and also make it meaningful, and a productive thing.’”¹

Cooper is an auteur – a filmmaker distinguished by an uncompromising artistic vision and style. Without using the word, Taffy Brodesser-Akner framed her NY Time s profile interview of Cooper on the vision and the craft behind “A Star Is Born”² around his refusal to discuss his choices, and thus allow her to interpret them or to “speak for” and about him, since the film itself is his statement. He was not ungenerous, or unkind, not at all a jerk, but Cooper’s personal and professional boundaries, his discipline and principles are a way of life.

Cooper is a sober 12-stepper. We too know about making all that “stuff”, all that shame meaningful. The Time’s writer’s narrative describes a man living in a state of grace: gifted, diligent and discerning. Cooper may be a control freak, but his controlling behavior derives from a sense of duty toward the vision, the work and his collaborators. Early on, he reminded his mentor Kemp of Elia Kazan who only wanted to work with people who make their work the most important thing in their lives. Same goes for people who do the work of recovery.

“If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it…”³ I’m a fan of Bradley Cooper. I want to be like him. I want to take myself seriously, because as a child of God, I’ve been given life in birth, in baptism, in recovery. Family, friends, colleagues, and fellow recoverers all enrich my life, widen my range and raise my game.

Pedro Arrupe, S.J. famously wrote that “nothing is more important than finding God, that is, falling in love… so, fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.”⁴

Bradley Cooper is sober and in love. Of course he’s a mega-star, shining in graced sobriety. Yeah.

1 “Bradley Cooper Is Not Really Into This Profile”, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, New York Times, 9/27/2018
2 “A Star Is Born” 2018, Warner Bros. and MGM Bradley Cooper Producer/Director/Screenwriter/Actor
3 Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), p 58, AA World Services, Fourth Edition, 2002
4 Pedro Arrupe Finding God, Finding God in All Things: A Marquette Prayer Book © 2009 Marquette University Press.

Finding God

Nothing is more practical than finding God,

that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination

will affect everything.

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,

what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends,

what you read,

whom you know,

what breaks your heart,

what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love

and it will

decide everything.

Pedro Arrupe, SJ

The Chain Saw (Part 2)

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 02:11:14 GMT

You may remember a few weeks ago we left me standing on the top step of a ladder, chain saw in hand roaring its little heart out as only a chain saw can do, when, out of the fog of my brain, a voice broke through, and, well, I don’t want to say it had a sharp edge, but let’s just leave it as a voice intended to communicate a certain disapproval for my standing on that ladder’s top step, a roaring chain saw in hand.

The voice clearly conveying the harsh judgement that whatever I was about to do was about the dumbest, stupidest, most unsafe action a person could undertake.

Yet, it made all the sense in the world to me. For, you see, my friends, while the chain saw was powered by gasoline, I was fueled and powered by several cans of my own special fuel.

I mention this absolutely stupid action on my part because it was near the end of my days of regularly refueling with my intake of alcohol-powered soft-drinks during yard-work chores. It was just before I realized I was an alcoholic … one prone to stupid life-threatening actions but which I and many of us survived only by the Grace of God. I guess I like to think this episode prompted me to, well, at least consider dealing with my problem drinking.

Actually, that’s not the timing of the issue I remember. I knew I was an alcoholic much before this awakening moment. I just didn’t have the courage to surrender and do something about my addiction, and besides, I admit now I hadn’t had enough as yet of my drug of choice. This little episode caused me to rethink what I was doing with my life and my addiction - to begin taking measure of my conduct, life style, and alcoholic pattern drinking.

What I’m trying to say is that sometimes it takes a life-threatening action to bring us to that point of the real surrender-- that moment when we admit we have lost control and have tried everything except giving up our addiction. I had no more available options.

Oh, sure, I did. I could continue my erratic out-of-control conduct and take the chance my family and employer wouldn’t abandon me.

I knew about the Program. I had a close friend who’d been involved for several years. I called him and we soon talked. He didn’t ask me to sign anything or promise I wouldn’t drink forever. All he said was that he had also felt helpless about the nature of his use of alcohol to manage his life and its ups-and-downs. He told me about the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous and how it had provided a way for him to get ahold of his life and to seek and find a better way of living. He kept saying that AA wants all of us to come to believe that use of the Program will provide us “happiness, joy and freedom” from our addiction.

It seemed to me that he was on to something and I decided to do something about my addiction and go with him to a meeting and check it out.

Jim A., Covington, KY

Finding God

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 17:27:00 GMT

John 15:14-16
¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

Throughout my 12-step journey, God has had to use strange moments to “wake me up to His presence.” I entered drug rehab while I was in seminary. And with that, I was thoroughly convinced that I knew all there was to know about God and that this “rehab experience” was not going to enlighten me in any way. So, I entered with a huge ego—so large it had its own zip code. I remember my counselors and fellow residence talking endlessly about this “God of our own understanding.” It fell on deaf ears.

One day, when I was feeling quite self-assured, I decided to take a walk on the hospital grounds. Seems innocent enough … right? Well, it was November, the ground was thick with ice and snow and the rule was—no venturing out without permission. Being unique and beyond “the rules,” I took a walk. Got to the lake and it was frozen, so I decided I was going to do the “Jesus thing” and walk on water. Got about 10 feet out when ice began to break and went I straight down into freezing water. I made my way back to the hospital and was, to say the least, busted. Because of this, I was given the privilege of cleaning bathrooms for three days.

It was on the third day and I was “elbow deep” in toilets and was frustrated with the stupidity of this whole “rehab thing.” I had decided to pack my bags and leave and then three fellow residence walked into the bathroom and began cleaning. Couldn’t understand what was going on … so I asked, “why are you doing this and what’s in it for you?” They said, “nothing, we just wanted to work a good program today and help those in need —isn’t that what God would have us do?” I was unable to respond (which was unusual for me). And then it dawned on me that they were right. This is what God would have us do. These three guys were the God model for me. I don’t remember their names and I’ve forgotten what they look like; but I will never forget the lesson they taught me. I will forever remember the day I found God as I cleaned toilets with three fellow 12-steppers.

The Program, the Fellowship and Service

Thu, 13 Sep 2018 01:38:37 GMT

I was talking with my partner, who is also in recovery, about what we love about Alcoholics Anonymous. We agree that the three things are the Program, the Fellowship and Service. That is our Three-Legged Stool of Recovery.

The Program gives structure to our lives. One of my favorite AA slogans is “No matter how far into the woods you find yourself, it is only Twelve Steps out!” At one of the first meetings I ever went to, a brilliant guy named Joe said, “My dishwasher came with an instruction manual, but I didn’t…and then I found the Big Book and the 12 & 12.”

When I call my sponsor in distress about anything (from an unexpected illness…to worrying about a child…to running out of money...to relationship troubles) she will say to me, “Which Step do you have to work on now?”

At first telling me to look to the steps drove me nuts and I wanted to scream, “I’m not like everyone else. There is no simple cookie-cutter solution to MY problem! Nowhere in the steps does it say anything about…(fill in the blank.)” But then I started to do what she said and review the steps. They seem to work in any and every situation.

What am I powerless over that I am trying to control? Who has more knowledge or expertise than I in this situation? Should I ask for help? What have I done to make the situation what it is? What habit or behavior of mine is playing into this? Can I let it go? Do I owe someone an apology or do I have to amend a counterproductive habit of my own? Am I taking time to stop, breathe, and ask HP for help? Am I practicing an attitude of gratitude and service?

Then I go to a meeting and discover in The Fellowship that I am not alone. Others have faced and handled situations just like the one I find myself in. I listen to their stories in speaker meetings and comments in discussion or literature meetings. I learn from those who know what works and what doesn’t. I do not have to solve problems that others have already solved if I am open and willing enough to listen. I can choose to be happy rather than right. I can relax and enjoy myself, not taking myself so seriously but instead enjoying this walk along the path of happy destiny.

And then we come to the best part: Service. By staying sober through the Program and staying centered through the Fellowship, I can be present for others. I can be a gift instead of a problem in the lives of others. John and I were practically shedding tears of gratitude when we were talking about this a couple of nights ago: Is there anything more wonderful than being there for someone else? For having relationships that are filled with trust and respect instead of rancor and tumult? Isn’t it an honor to be approached by a newcomer who, nervously and in fear of rejection, asks you to be their sponsor? Isn’t it fun to share your hobby with someone else, realizing that you do have expertise?

Not drinking or using is the foundation. And upon that, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous, we build lives of meaning, fellowship and service.

Hibbs: Jesus Prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me a sinner.”

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 17:41:40 GMT

We are at Camp Allen in Texas for the first time at a Community of Hope International with Mary Earle as the keynote speaker. As I look over her books I find this newly published 20^th anniversary edition of An Altar in Your Heart, Meditations on the Jesus Prayer by Bishop Robert Hibbs with a Foreword by Mary Earle. The Jesus Prayer has been my mantra in the early morning and at evening as I go to sleep and during any time of anxiety or fear or temptation during the day or night especially during medical tests for me and my family. It is my feeble attempt at praying without ceasing.

I have known Bishop Hibbs for years through work with the Episcopal Recovery Community, but never knew about his work on the Jesus Prayer. As I share with Mary my connections with Bishop Hibbs, I find out he died a year ago in April, and Mary preached the homily at his service. I want to thank and honor him for the support he gave me and so many others in recovery by sharing this book with you. Also included is an audio CD of his lectures at a retreat producing the book, which the Cajuns would call a lagniappe, a little something extra. For years Bob Hibbs was the major voice for recovery in the Episcopal House of Bishops.

Saying the Jesus Prayer is like using a prayer rope or beads in our heads. Bishop Hibbs relates the story of Cardinal Mindzenty and Father Eschmann, who survived torture and solitary imprisonment by staying connected to God with the Jesus Prayer.

The first words of the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” remind us of both Jesus’ divinity and his humanity which Hibbs believes is an important constant message in keeping us in relationship with Jesus. These first words of the prayer with Jesus’ name express Easter, the Alleluia part of the prayer. The last phrase about mercy expresses Good Friday. Sister Carol Perry at this same conference reminds us that in this request for mercy, we are making the choice to ask for God’s mercy in our lives rather than God’s justice for how we have lived our lives. Hibbs believes we always live in the tension between being in Easter and always connected to Good Friday.

Bishop Hibbs reminds us that this is an oral prayer to be said out loud as much as possible especially as we begin to make the Jesus Prayer a part of our being. He cautions us not to be discouraged as we become distracted while we say it. We are gently to return to the prayer without judgment on ourselves. We might consider treating distractions similar to those we encounter them in centering prayer. We might see them as barges moving down the Mississippi or any favorite river. We are to let them pass on down without interacting with them.

Eventually the prayer develops a rhythm in our lives and becomes a gift from God closely related to the beating of our heart, a constant, habitual recollection or awareness of God’s presence. Hibbs also reminds us that when we pray the Jesus prayer, we are attempting to connect to Jesus, God, the Trinity above and beyond us but also to the Christ, the God of our understanding, in our neighbor and in ourselves.

For people in 12 step recovery this is where the steps intersect with the Jesus Prayer as we “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.” (Step 11, Chapter 5, “How it Works,” Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2016, p. 85)

Sometimes I modify the prayer to be similar to what is called Agnus Dei, the fraction anthem said or sung after breaking the bread in the Eucharist. “Lord God, Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on me.”

While we meet with people in 12 step recovery, especially when we tell our story or listen to theirs, or when we talk to our sponsor or those we sponsor, we give them our utmost attention, but having the Jesus Prayer running through our mind and body is a way for us to stay connected to the Spirit speaking to the God of our understanding in both of us.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

A Spiritual life: Moving to a zone of comfort in tough situations

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 00:50:37 GMT

I wrote recently about the early days of sobriety—the feelings of comfort we were beginning to feel from our working the Steps, attending meetings, and so forth. For many of us, these were feelings that we were blessed to have found through the Program and embraced them before we really sank to the lower depths of the disease.

Gradually, you became aware of the need to strengthen your spiritual life. You concluded that you needed to undertake some Eleven Step work: “…to improve [your] conscious contact with God as (you) understood him…”

One of the best teachings of the Program is its call to action—now. “Into action,” we say.

That happened to me one Fall. I was wrestling with a problem. I saw it as one carrying possible uncomfortable outcomes. I struggled to find a solution, but couldn’t pull it off. That old demeaning feeling of anxiety moved into my mind and was starting to become an obsession.

I realized I needed to turn my will over to God, again. I’d done that in the early Steps, but I now realized the Eleventh Step reminds me to keep working on that—to sharpen my conscious contact with God and make him more of a part of my everyday life. The Step says pretty clearly, “Sought through prayer and meditation…” to do so.

So, the first thing I did was to re-read and study all the Big Book’s references to prayer and to put these into practice.. Of course, I felt that since this was a complex matter, I foolishly felt that God may not be able to put the pieces together to point me in the right direction. So, in my prayers, I needed to direct God as I was asking for his help.

But, fortunately, I realized that by doing so, I was falling back into my same old desires to control life and all of its twists and turns—actually the same fault which got me in so much trouble in the first place with my disease.

I’d forgotten one of those sayings—let go and let god—which by the way is frequently posted on the wall of perhaps every Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse. How to find this comfortable relationship and be guided by it was all set out in the Big Book. It was all there all along.

I started praying with a difference: “your will, not mine” but give me the grace and courage to follow that will. I didn’t need to explain the problem to him—how naïve of me to even suggest that. I had to learn to “be quiet,” to be silent through meditations. Let him speak. You sure can’t hear him when you’re talking. I started attending a church prayer group which was seeking ways to ask for and follow the will of god for them. I started to study books which spoke of ways to do this. I’m not certain that our surrender of First, Second and Third Steps is one event. I now believe that it is a process, over time, through contemplative quiet meditation on our part … “Be silent and know that I am God.”

Jim A.
Covington, Kentucky

Take, O Lord

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 22:29:13 GMT

By my purely personal estimation, the seven verses of John Bell’s modern classic, “Take, O Take Me As I Am”¹, lack the intimacy, the hope, the power of the refrain:

“Take, O take me as I am, summon out what I shall be, set your seal upon my heart, and live in me.”

The hymn conveys Christian faith in a conventional, arguably flaccid recitation of sacramental devotion that marks the redemption of a flawed and failed people by a loving God. It is lovely and, quibbles aside, a devotional favorite.

Yet, my friend died of brain cancer two days shy of his 31^st sobriety anniversary. For him, the vaunted AA promises fell short and his quest for a robust faith, an animating, energizing “Higher Power” was unrewarded. His attempts at prayer brought him only to a place of “spiritual aridity”, as my mother would say. Take, O take me as I am… summon out what I shall be… was your seal upon my heart?... could you have lived in me?

My Alanon sponsee just called to say his spouse is in detox again, six months after the six-week rehab last winter, the stint that followed the six-week rehab last summer. He is frustrated and angry; she is sick and resentful. Take, O take me as I am… summon out what I shall be… is your seal upon my heart?... will you live in me?

This morning, lingering in bed, unable to doze and unready to fully waken, I longed for my children, who were born in the flush of my early sobriety, and from whom I am long estranged, even as I advance in my fourth decade of recovery, praying for release from selfish resentments, theirs and mine. Take, O take me as I am… summon out what I shall be… set your seal upon my heart… please, dwell in me, O Lord, I beg of you.

As we grudgingly, imperfectly, even futilely “work” the steps and “practice” our faith, Christ’s promise that eclipses all others is that he already takes us as we are. It’s why he came. However, even he can only summon what we shall be when we, like Magdalen, like Peter, and unlike that “certain young ruler” surrender our stuff, our status, our selves. Only then, do we have the desire and the capacity to receive all that redeeming Love, to meet I Am, to be in communion with the Source of Unconditional Love.

O Lord, awaken me, anoint me, animate me, abide in me… for

We, the broken and ashamed,

we in chaos live untamed,

we can hardly speak your name,

But, you, O Lord:

               Take, O take us as we are

               By your grace we come alive

               Mark us as your saints to thrive

               Within your love.

-Martin McE.

¹ John L. Bell, Copyright, 1995 Wild Goose Resource Group, Iona Community GIA Publications, Inc. agent.

The Wonder of Sobriety

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 00:00:01 GMT

At an A.A. meeting awhile back, Andy, a young man with a handsome handle-bar moustache, was speaking. The general topic for the evening was how we can stay clean and sober, avoiding relapse.

Trying to keep his hands quiet, Andy said, “I wake up every morning and I am excited. I am clean and sober and excited. Next week my son will celebrate his seventh birthday. For the first time I will be sober and remember the gift I got for him and won’t be afraid of what I might do to make Timmy ashamed of me. That gets me excited. I can’t wait.” Andy’s voice was smiling.

I sat back in my chair and thought, he’s right. I need a little of that. I need to get the wonder back: that same childlike wonder to look at something—a puppy, a bubble, rainbows, clouds— and laugh aloud, “Wow!”

Too many of us can’t say that. I’m sober, but I don’t appreciate the winning. I am not alone. I am one in eight American adults who is an alcoholic. One study shows that roughly 90% of people with alcoholic disease relapse within four years of completing treatment. I was one of the 90%.

Now, sometimes when I wash dishes I remember my drinking days when I took whatever plate was on top of the heap, maybe rinse it off, eat, and put it back on top. And laundry. If the shirt or pants in the dirty clothes basket didn’t smell too bad, I put them on. One autumn I didn’t rake the leaves, and in the spring wondered why the grass was dead.

Today, as ridiculous as it is, sometimes I take a moment and pat myself on the back and say what a big boy I am with clean dishes and clean clothes and green grass and a sober day ahead of me.

It’s time for us to stand in front of a mirror, tall and proud and grinning, shouting, “Damn, I’m good! And Happy Birthday, Timmy. People like you help me stay sober.”

Frederick Buechner and The Fall and Us

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 22:59:28 GMT

Frederick Buechner reminds us that “the biblical view of the history of humankind and of each individual man or woman is contained in the first three chapters of Genesis. We are created to serve God by loving God and each other in freedom and joy, but we invariably choose bondage and woe instead as prices not too high/ to pay for independence. To say that God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden is apparently a euphemism for saying that Adam and Eve, like the rest of us, made a break for it as soon as God happened to look the other way.”

We seem to be hardwired to try to take over control, to be God. This is the direction of most of my sins. As I think of all my offences, the evil I have done, the harm I have done consciously or unconsciously, the friends, the family members I have hurt. I make amends when I can for the harm I have done, but mostly I try to make living amends. I want to let others know how I have been loved even when I felt unlovable or did unlovable things. I want to hold closely the Christ in others and let them know what a treasure they are. I want to be able to see the Christ in others. This is what spiritual friends and those in 12 step recovery are called to do for each other. We affirm, stand by each other.

More often now I am paying it forward. For many reasons I cannot make amends to the person I have harmed but instead I try to show the love I wish I could now give to them to someone else. Paying forward is showing love to someone else that has done nothing for me, especially someone we do not know and often someone who feels loveless.

I try, I judge, I make mistakes, I mess up, I hurt others, I make amends, I try to show love that has been so often unconditionally given to me, and the cycle invariably seems to start all over again. It is a circular path. I try, I mess up, I make amends. It is the human condition. I try to stay connected to this circular pathway of others who know more than I know how to love so that I can learn from them. I try to stick with the winners, /those whom I can so easily see Christ in them, and occasionally they can see the Christ in me which guides me back onto the path of love. Today I now learn most about how to love from my six grandchildren. What a circular life, for I first learned about love from my four grandparents many years ago.

I return to Buechner who so beautifully reminds us that “if God really wanted to get rid of us, (to kick us out of Eden), the chances are/ God wouldn't keep hounding us every step of the way ever since.”

(Frederick, Buechner, Humankind, Frederick Buchner Quote of the Day, May 28, 2018. Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words)

-Joanna

Robert D, RIP

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 01:16:16 GMT

Matthew 23: Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and his disciples, “The legal experts and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. Therefore, you must take care to do everything they say. But don’t do what they do. For they tie together heavy packs that are impossible to carry. They put them on the shoulders of others, but are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do, they do to be noticed by others. They make extra-wide prayer bands for their arms and long tassels for their clothes. They love to sit in places of honor at banquets and in the synagogues. They love to be greeted with honor in the markets and to be addressed as ‘Rabbi.’

“But you shouldn’t be called Rabbi, because you have one teacher, and all of you are brothers and sisters. Don’t call anybody on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is heavenly. Don’t be called teacher, because Christ is your one teacher. But the one who is greatest among you will be your servant. All who lift themselves up will be brought low. But all who make themselves low will be lifted up. Common English Bible

I am honored to have the opportunity to say a few words this morning as we gather to remember the life of Bob D. Sermons at Funerals are peculiar things in the Episcopal Church. They are not intended as eulogies but instead are meant to show us how God’s grace shown through the life of Bob with the hope that this will lead us to see God’s grace in our own lives.

I chose this morning’s Gospel because I think it captures a side of Bob that I saw frequently. While Bob was an authority on many subjects and unafraid to assert that authority, at the same time he was suspicious of authority when exercised on him by others. Bob is Irish Catholic and had a thoroughly traditional Irish Catholic upbringing. He challenged that upbringing his entire life. It gave him some gifts but he had the clarity of vision that much of the certainty in the church he grew up in was based on the old preacher’s maxim of Weak Point, Shout Louder. Bob had unerring instincts in finding weak points and they offended his sense of integrity.

If you look in the Bulletin you will see that I’m identified at the Homily as Father P. For those of you who know me well you know that I am known as Pete and almost never as Father P. I put it there today to make the point of today’s Gospel. I put it there to take it away and have you notice that I’m taking it away. The text we just heard in the Gospel read in v. 9: 9 Don’t call anybody on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is heavenly. So call me Pete.

Many of us who are clergy in the church are challenged frequently by our insistence upon titles of respect. This gospel reminds all of us that none of us are worthy of that respect, that deference, or that authority. Instead we are called to be servants first. Our only hope is in being generous. Furthermore, service that expects reward is not servanthood. We are called to be servants to find ourselves not so that someone else can reward us for being such a good one. The church and organized religion have too frequently lost that and have settled for accumulating power, authority, position, and respect.

I know that many of us in this church today have been damaged by the power and authority claimed by some in the service of Religion. This morning’s Gospel, and this may be the only Burial Office at which it has ever been read, rebukes any confusion of faith and power. Quite the opposite is true. We are faithful in our willingness to do service. No expectation of reward; no payment sought; no accolades given.

When I met with Bob’s family on Wednesday the thing I came away with was the sense that they remember Bob as a generous person. I remember him that way, too. What does it mean to be generous in this context? It means giving of yourself without expectation of return. It means giving the service I’ve just described. Generous people give because they find themselves in giving, in serving, in being humble, and in being a servant. I know Bob through his participation in AA. I’ve known him since he got sober and I’ve talked with many people whose sobriety was enhanced by knowing, being with, and talking with Bob. He was generous.

I also know Bob because he and I used to meet regularly to talk about his spiritual life and his growth in sobriety as a humble, content, spiritual being. We began in the late summer of 2016 and met, usually in Mackenzie, just the 2 of us, regularly through the spring of 2017. Ultimately he decided that we were too intellectual -- that’s Bob -- but it worked for a while.

The crucial thing about Bob in my experience -- and he and I talked about this when we went to Golds for coffee a few weeks ago and again a couple of weeks ago when I visited him in the hospital -- the crucial thing was the happiness and contentment he felt as a sober man. He knew that he was present to his family and to the world in a way that had not been true.

Now, to be borderline heretical. 41 years ago when I was ordained a priest I was much more certain about what happens to us when we die than I am today. I was much more certain about the necessity of baptism than I am today. I was much more certain about how God was present in our lives than I am today. I told Bob on Monday that I have no certainty about where we go when we die. He had just expressed his doubts. I no longer believe in a God who has room in heaven only for Christians. I’m not at all certain what heaven is, but whatever it is, the primary characteristic of it is love for all. As the men in the rooms are probably tired of hearing me say, I think of C.S. Lewis’s Great Divorce. The primary requisite for making it into heaven is giving up Resentments. Bob and I learned this in the rooms of AA.

I didn’t learn about Resentments in seminary. I didn’t learn Resentments in grad school after seminary. I only learned the importance of giving up Resentments by getting sober and sitting in meetings for many years now and getting to know people like Bob, and getting to know them well.

Of course no one gets sober to go to AA meetings. I have been assured that the spiritual growth Bob experienced, however defined, was apparent to those who were close to him

My hope is that everyone here this morning will acknowledge the spiritual growth in Bob’s life. He was always a force of nature. He always wanted an A in life. His intellectual honesty was important to him. He seemed not to suffer fools gladly. He enjoyed many blessings and he died surrounded by his family. What more can any of us hope for?

I have no idea why some of us get sober while others do not. For some of us the community just makes sense and we fall into it. If you met any of us the day or week before we got sober it is unlikely that you would predict that we would ever enjoy sobriety. Yet here we are. For those here who are having trouble staying sober know that it wasn’t easy for anyone. Years of debate are a feature in all of our lives. However the community is here for all. That’s the spiritual gift of sobriety. In this church this morning are Christians, Unitarians, Jews, maybe a Muslim or 2, atheists, agnostics, doubters, the angry, the hopeless, the weary and much else. The message is that you won’t find meaning in authority, call no one Rabbi, Father or Teacher, you will find meaning and spirituality in service. Give of yourselves. In this way you will find yourself. Bob found himself.

Grace is Gradual, or Calming the storm – then what?

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 01:13:05 GMT

The weeks leading up to my sober anniversary are full of particular kinds of reflection. I can more easily recall the awful days that led toward that crunch of clarity. And, as time rolls forward, my sense of gratitude grows deeper and richer. Retracing the line from then to now, I can begin to catch glimpses of how it happened.

Mine is a story I now hear from countless others; only the details vary. I grew up as a fearful child; I developed into a fearful adult. At the same time, I was blessed with enough gifts to construct large barriers of acceptable accomplishments, protecting myself from a world I experienced as unwelcoming.

When those fortifications of self-will failed, drugs became the duct tape that held me together. Until it didn’t. On that last day, through the din of shame and fear, I heard the gentle voice of a state trooper saying, please get some help, you don’t have to live this way. Could it really be true? There was a way out?

Here’s a question: How do we move from fear to faith? Fear and faith each seem to arise when we face the unknown, the challenging, the difficult, the threatening. On the surface, faith and fear seem like polar opposites, like fight or flight.

But, I wonder if fear and faith aren’t more closely related. Maybe it isn’t such an either/or proposition. Maybe faith doesn’t so much banish fear as make it possible to cope with it. Maybe the question isn’t about replacing one with the other. Maybe it’s not about never being afraid, but learning what to do when you are.

Several weeks ago, the lectionary featured an iconic story of fear and faith: Jesus calming the stormy sea. This is a story important enough to the early followers of Jesus to have been included in all four gospels.

Mark starts this passage with, “When evening had come,” he said to them, “let’s go across to the other side.” For this recovering addict, I can’t help but remember that gentle voice inviting me into recovery. And I climbed aboard.

Sometimes the trip has seemed slow and long. There have been life storms along the way: health, finances, employment, relationships. But I stayed in the boat. And each time I was able to ride a storm out, I grew. I had a bit more faith; I was less afraid. Until the next storm.

Today, I am occasionally plagued by doubts and fears, but I am no longer fully fearful. Life in recovery has taught me that moving from fear to faith to growth leads to new fears and new faith and new growth. After all, grace is gradual.

Life in recovery, the life of faith, is not a “one and done” sort of thing. It is, however, a “stretch and grow” sort of thing. Leaving detox doesn’t make you sober. Taking steps to live a changed life, a day at a time, does.

For this addict, what moves me from fear to faith is not a what, but a who: Jesus. That same Jesus that Mark describes as determined to free folks from all the things that keep us from God, even addiction. Jesus reveals a God who cares passionately for our wellbeing, and whose goodness is always at work beneath the surface of every storm.

When we accept the invitation to cross over from fear to faith, when we allow ourselves to experience these unhurried changes, we will discover that source of hope, that next supply of serenity, that gradual grace that enables us to take the next step. And the next, and the next; daily trudging forward with more faith and less fear.

Grace is gradual. And it’s glorious!

Paul J.
July 24, 2018

Consequences of a Relapse … Part One

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 02:24:54 GMT

I suffered relapses several years ago, but the residual feelings I experienced remain and tell me to “keep coming back.”

A relapse gives us a sense of failure, of letting people—and myself—down. It seems like a loss of confidence in one’s ability to deal with a terrible disease when we knew the awfulness of addiction’s end-game. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, the brutal impact on one’s psyche. Helplessness. I really meant it when I swore off the bottle. Was I simply so weak I couldn’t carry out an earnestly-made promise to loved ones—and myself? We fell into a grand funk. Unconscionably, we may have nursed along this terrible negativity. We were on the border of deciding our lives weren’t worth it. We may have fallen into the depths of “Poor me. You’d drink, too, if you had my problems. I’ll just give in to demon rum, the hell with it!”

BUT WAIT! That’s only the negativity of a relapse. There is a positive side. I went back into the Program with an increased understanding of addiction’s traits of cunning and power. I saw it for what it was. At least I awoke and saw I couldn’t lick this disease by myself. I needed help, a refuge, a safe zone of protective custody, and I was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I’d had enough! As much as I was in the clutches of my drug of choice, I needed to get into the clutches of the Program in order to find Life.

Many of us no matter how smart, no matter how fortunate and blessed our lives have been, are slow learners. I think that when we speak negatively about a relapse, we are saying that I simply haven’t had enough of my drug. I want more of that “good old feeling.” When I sedate myself, I have no problems. Seemingly, it’s a happy time, care-free, problems solved—at least for a while.

Sadly, these negativity feelings miss an important message of the Program. The Program provides a twofold gift: first, how do we stop drinking? What can we do if we feel a slip coming on? What do I do with all my drinking buddies? How will I get through the family picnics and holiday reunions? That’s the stuff of the benefits of those early days in the Program.

But, the Program carries a second and equally important piece: How do I live through life’s bumps and problems, disappointments, physical issues—all that stuff that is still out there—without my alcohol crutch? We were seduced by our drug to believe we could escape the pain and suffering--the normal bumps of life—but if we were to admit it, those difficulties were still there when we woke up. Only they were made worse by our shame of running to the bottle for relief.

That’s why working the Program is a 24 hour a day, seven days a week proposition. We learn by looking at what others have done in similar life experiences. The harms of divorce, imprisonment, loss of jobs, disappointments—all that stuff we ran away from when we drank until we blacked-out. The Program’s constant reminders—this learning process gives us the ammunition we need.

Why is that? Nothing baffling about this. It’s that old ego, the feelings of me, I’m first, I am all-powerful, I can do it, don’t need you. To maintain sobriety beyond “white-knuckle” sobriety, we need to let go and let God. Sobriety is dependent on our spiritual base. We have to get rid of the feeling of the primacy of our ego, of our selves. After all, we tried everything to manage our addiction and it failed in all respects.

To be continued...

Jim A.
Covington, Kentucky

Craxy Times

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 01:32:08 GMT

350,000+ babies are born each day and, since only 150,000+ people die, we are crowding and eroding the blue planet home we share. UNESCO forecasts a global population of 8-10 billion by 2050 – two billion is a pretty fat range – but, what matters is not how many we are, only whether we are sane, capable, responsible, generous and loving. Can mankind, as a species, practice restraint and cultivate a self-respect that accords respect for billions and billions of others? Can we shed the binary, zero-sum math of win vs. lose, succeed vs. fail, advance vs. retreat, us vs. them, me vs. you to embrace multiplying masses of others? Are we doomed?

In the current noxious and perilous atmosphere, I find my mind fraught, my emotions on edge and my spirits sinking into an irritating malaise. A pall settles over my daily life in recovery, and an anger rises from it that drains my serenity and incites rage, even hatred toward the haters who enflame fear and resentment toward “enemies.” How can my recovery and my faith animate my soul and rouse my spirits as an antidote to the toxic miasma?

The tenth step cautions that “it is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.” The tenth step offers an intimate reckoning of our attitudes, motives, behaviors and all their consequences. We may apply any number of yardsticks: the deadly sins, the decalogue, the golden-rule, great commandment, or our personal inventory via steps four through seven. Scripture, spiritual writings, and recovery literature all open paths of reflection, contemplation, and self-examination. We have tools aplenty and we have priests, counselors, sponsors, and friends to raise our ability to apply them to good purpose. We discipline ourselves to grasp and grapple with the gifts and graces we receive – turning our will and our live over to the care of a Loving God as we encounter Him. And, we encounter him most vividly in all those many, messy, maniacal, and miraculous others.

Each day, we are given a rebirth in sobriety within the community of our families and friends, within the coterie of recovery, within the social web, and within all of human society. We, among all, know the ravages of fear and resentment; we above all, know the cost of investing our lives in any power equation not grounded in acceptance, generosity, grace, and love. Each day, we embrace a new life that leads us away from the certain demise of our addictions. In recovery, we are called to manage the noise and master ourselves, as we strive toward unity in the Source of Unconditional Love. We recover out of God’s Love for US. All of US.

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:36:41 GMT

I grew up in a denomination where I went to confession and received forgiveness. I didn’t have to go back to anyone and say I was sorry (I probably wasn’t) unless a teacher or parent (mother) told me to do so.

Step five was a new experience of “confession” as were steps eight and nine. Now I had to continue to do this?

After a few years of going to meetings for all the wrong reasons and not drinking, I slowly began to work the steps as a program of recovery. It took a while for me to understand that I did not just “do the steps” one time and that was it. This program, I learned, is not about not drinking but rather it is about living - living every day as a healthy human being. What I had been told before was beginning to make sense: “Seamus, if you’re not living the program you’re not working the steps.” This is a daily program that helps keep me alive as opposed to staying in a Dry Drunk modality.

Taking an ongoing personal inventory was an interesting experience. Even though I had ceased to drink, my old attitudes -character defects- were not that easy to break. But then, this is where God, my Higher Power, removes the Character Defects when I put myself in situations and the Higher Powers whispers “this is a good time to say “I’m sorry” or “You could simply say “I am wrong. I apologize.”

One instance stands out in my memory: I really did not to want to go back into the restaurant and tell that bunch of teenagers I was wrong when I told them to relocate from being near ‘my table’ and go sit in the smoking section. As I left the restaurant, it was pointed out to me that I was in the wrong; the kids were sitting where they should have been. I continued to the car.

My Higher Power began to talk to me, .and I argued back: Those kids were only too glad to see me gone. What difference would it make for me to go in and apologize? It’s raining; I don’t want to have to get out of the car again. I turned off the ignition, went back in, walked to where the youth had relocated and told them: “Guys, I was wrong in telling you to move. I was seated in the wrong place. I’m sorry for the way I behaved.” They sat almost frozen wondering, I’m sure, if this old man was “normal.” Perhaps I may have been the first adult to apologize to them. Back in the car I really did feel better. How often now do I have to do this?

Well, as of this writing, I am in the program some thirty-nine years, and I don’t have to apologize anywhere near as frequently as I did when I began to work the eleventh step. I got sick and tired of apologizing, so I learned to watch what I said and what I did. Those character defects were now becoming much clearer to me and, more often than not, I’d catch them before the words and actions took place.

A personal inventory became like making my bed when I got up; like having that first cup of coffee in the morning. It became a way of life as in living the program and in living the program I automatically worked the step.

The personal inventory keeps me balanced. I am a good person who makes mistakes. My mistakes have their roots in the Character defects and so by keeping a check on the character defects I have fewer mistakes. However, I am human and there are those times when I get Too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired (HALT). Thanks to the program, when I now make a mistake I can laugh at myself, own it, apologize if necessary, and Guilt and Shame no longer overwhelm me. I am a good person who makes mistakes; it’s okay to be human.

Continuing to take a personal inventory has – like breathing - like opening my eyes to see the world around me - become a way of life. Making amends, becoming at-one (atone) with self, God and others keeps me humble and happy and for this I am grateful to Bill, Bob, and all those who have helped me work the steps till I learned to live the program.

SPIRITUALLY SICK – LIKE ME

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 03:36:10 GMT

Like many others, I grew up in an alcoholic family rift with the dysfunctional behavior that is characteristic of generational alcoholism. Rift with neglect, abuse and violence, it was a depressing existence where alcoholism seemed to rule the day and determine the future. It felt like a sub-standard way of life and although we may not have said it out loud, it inspired a sub-standard way of seeing ourselves. It created a lower expectation of what we might be and what we might become in the world and in some way, I know that it affected what we thought in terms of our perception of how God saw us. It was subtle, but it was there. The world didn’t think much of us and we didn’t really think much of ourselves, so why would God be any different? But God does see us differently – all of us.

I spent twenty-five years of my adult life burning myself up in alcohol and drug addiction, pointing the finger at those who were such horrible examples and who I blamed for all my problems. My absent father, my promiscuous mother, my violent step-father, all of whom were those horrible alcoholics, and list was lengthy. Playing the victim garnered me a lot of sympathetic shoulders from those who bought it. Boy, I could really tell the story – really make it spin. It worked. Until it didn’t. I eventually ran out of people who bought it, most all understood many years before I did that the problem wasn’t with anyone other than myself. But I just couldn’t hear it – not from the family, friends, judges, psychs, law enforcement – I just couldn’t hear the truth about the nature of my life and my disease until I sat in front of another alcoholic who was telling my story.

There is something that sits in the center of the Twelve Steps that changed me at my core. It’s much like the altar in the center the church, much like the epiclesis – that moment where the Presence of Jesus becomes real in the blessing of the elements – that sits in the very center of The Holy Eucharist. It sits in the center of the personal inventory work at the core of the Twelve-Steps, and it is these words taken from page 66 of the Big Book:

This was our course: we realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they like ourselves, were sick too.

Those few words were then, and are still to this day, a huge game-changer for me. They level the playing field. The words presented an instant paradox. On one hand, I couldn’t imagine feeling that way about people like my step-father who would regularly beat both my mother and myself in a drunken rage. On the other hand, I knew deep down that there was profound truth in these words – truth that could lead me to freedom. That is exactly what has happened. The deep resentment I once held for others has been taken away, making room for compassion.

I have done much work over the past twenty-plus years in recovery. I have healed. Relationships have healed. My footing is firm in recovery because I continually work the program. I still have the same sponsor that I met my second day in recovery. We still work the steps together, and every once in a while we are reminded of those words on page 66 and they guide us to freedom. It truly is a miracle in my life. It is a miracle in recovery.

-Brother Dennis

Telling the Truth

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 02:12:08 GMT

Early in my codependency recovery, I became acquainted with a quiet voice of knowing that sometimes came to me when I was journaling and inquiring into myself. The voice brought me words of truth about my life. No condemnation, just clarity.

I was not yet a Christian, and I knew no name for this gentle assistance in my soul. I felt it came from beyond me. I called it “the spirit that helps me know myself.”

I know this spirit as the Holy Spirit now, and I seek the truth he brings: the vital, blessed, and sometimes very difficult truth.

At the beginning of recovery, I was afraid to search myself. I’d had therapy that worked deeply in me and made me grow. But what would I find when I looked at myself from the fresh perspective of codependency recovery?

Although I have functioned in the world as a friend, a professional, an artist, and even as a daughter and sister and wife, I have spent a lot of time not knowing the whole truth about why I did what I was doing — particularly in forging relationships, clinging to them, or abandoning them.

Like many of us codependents, I came from a troubled family. I learned to adapt to others and deny what I knew for the sake of peace and the hope that neither parent would fall apart or walk away.

As an adult, I often gravitated to troubled people who had the emotional fingerprint of my mother or my father. I adored them and molded myself to them. I tried to get them to keep me and never let me go.

I didn’t understand what I was doing at the time. It is embarrassing to remember and sobering to understand how my behavior deprived me, other people, and God of my authentic presence and real love.

In the recovery meetings, I gradually felt safe and brave enough to describe my pain and fear and admit my mistakes. I found a gentle, wise, trustworthy sponsor. I began to trust a higher power, and I began to feel valuable.

I started to glimpse and claim a true self, independent of anyone’s attention or approval. I wanted to know this new self and to live without trying to be anyone else.

The truth was my ground to stand on, and it was the path forward.

Three years into recovery, I became a Christian. To believe now that my self, my life, was made by God with loving intention, and belongs to God for all time, has impressed on me that it is my serious responsibility to understand exactly who I am, to discover and steward my gifts, to remember that God made me unique for work in the world that no one else can do, and to be thoughtful in my commitments, with gratitude to God who gave me life.

I lived more than 50 years without this understanding of who I am. I’m gratefully continuing to recover and grow.

My old behavior patterns are embedded deeply in me, and I have to go back to the beginning over and over, living the cycle of my Christian spiritual life and my recovery: conviction, surrender, prayer, inventory, redemption, forgiveness, gratitude, service.

A few years ago, during a silent prayer vigil in the wee hours of Good Friday morning, these words settled into my mind:

Until you show up exactly as you are, you will never know how much you are loved.

With God’s help, I’m getting closer.

- Bette Jo G.

Easter Week and an Anniversary

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 02:39:25 GMT

Two celebrations on the same day and for some, maybe not “rah! - rah!” types as they are for many of us.

Easter week is a time of rebirths, new starts, acceptance of His Grace, freely given. We pay nothing for it and His Grace flows over us like water over a cliff. It provides us with the courage to seek to do the things we should as well and the courage to ignore the things we shouldn’t do. We learn from our mistakes in life and seek strength to continue.

This year on Good Friday members of our Parish walked through the downtown commercial center of our city … it’s a well-worn center formerly inhabited by girly bars and “clubs”, saloons, gun stores and other familiar debris. The look of the commercial center has slowly made progress accompanied by the usual barriers to downtown renewal which always seem to eat into the rate and quality of urban renewal. But 18 years ago, I’m not certain we would have entertained such a “walk-through”.

It was a bright afternoon, a crisp chill in the air fortunately moderated by a bright sun and clear blue skies. We were greeted by well-wishers some I expect remembering their child-hood days of participation in church Easter activities.

We shared carrying a wooden cross as we walked and stopped at each block to read the Steps of Christ as he headed to his tortuous doom. Unlike Him, the cross we carried was light, easily carried, and stop to stop, with just enough weight to bring His struggles to mind.

But wait! … an anniversary? Yes, indeedy!

I began the process of “surrender” 18 years ago Easter Sunday. The specific date escapes me but it was just about that time so I “picked” Easter Sunday as my date of sobriety.

Seemed appropriate. The Good Friday walk especially fit my surrender process completely. My life was a wreckage, filled with events and feelings I’d just as soon forget. They always come back to me about this time … they reinforce my decision to surrender all and to step into a new life the resurrected life if you will of the Program itself. It provides answers and ways to clean up that old mess from my side of the street. It gave me ways to become closer to my Higher Power and to seek His will for us and the power to carry it out. It told me that one of my steps in the Program was to reach out to aid the still suffering alcoholic and addict.

His Grace provided a way out from the turmoil and pain and self-centeredness of those past days.

As the old song says, “t’was the Grace that saved me” and all I had to do was to reach out and accept it.

Easter morn … a surrender and a beginning … miracles both? … You bet your bottom dollar!

Jim A.

Covington, Kentucky

Faith, At the Center

Thu, 31 May 2018 14:06:49 GMT

They cut the tumor out of his brain and the surgeon held up his fist to show that it was “this big”, but I picture a huge, oozing cone of blackberry gelato. That early May day, the sun shined like July, but then for days and days clouds blocked the sun and rain fell like endless April.

After a few hours, he leaves recovery, after a few days, he leaves intensive care, after a couple more days he leaves the hospital, after a couple weeks, he leaves the rehabilitation center, and in a few months, he leaves skilled nursing, and in a few months, or more than a few, they say he will leave us with hearts breaking.

He is the guy who sees into my soul, who rambles freely along the paths of my conscience and rummages amid the cavities of my heart. We share our recoveries from alcoholism, our experiences with humanity, our perversions, perplexities and pleasures. Weekly breakfasts at McDonalds / lunches at Wendy’s twist threads into yarn, weave yarn into gauze that wraps our wounds, warms our extremities, crowns our glory.

Sponsor is a loaded word in recovery – a shape that alters to fit every stage of recovery and, sometimes, the absence of recovery, and to bind radically different personalities and long-lost clones. Sponsorship is a laboratory for intimacy, freedom from denial, escape from isolation, the passport granting entry to the possibility of faith, access to realms of the spirit.

Now, of course, he cannot say my name, because that part of his brain is groping for traction, but, he does see me and his gentle, vibrant spirit greets me. He is now unburdened with the functional, practical, practiced aspects of manhood and, hopefully, his therapists and treatments will restore these, but for now, the divine in him, the spirit that triggered his acceptance and ignited his recovery from addiction and sustains him through all the demanding, frustrating, thrilling, icky and gratifying events over multiple decades of sobriety – shines. Together, we aspire to be centered and settled: what better measure of faith, of sharing belief, of “knowing” God?

Years ago, we left the restaurant and already at full throttle, veered toward our cars until he paused, hooted and motioned me to him. His embrace, then and every leave-taking since, affirms that our merged mass secures our soles to the surface of the earth and our souls to heaven.

Pelagius: it matters less that we believe in Christ than that we behave as Christ. My heartfelt faith is schooled, disciplined, grounded in rigor and ritual; his is unframed, casual, settled in curiosity and doubt; and, thus unfettered, perhaps his faith exceeds my own. Regardless, the coming days, weeks, months… will reveal the Source of the generous love that makes us friends, keeps us sober and finally, leads us to be settled at the Center of All. Amen.

-Martin McE.

And for this, I am grateful!

Wed, 23 May 2018 23:56:05 GMT

“I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that I am responsible.” Responsibility Statement, 1965 International Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, Toronto Canada

Today, by God’s grace, I give thanks for 21 years of recovering life. I am yet another living miracle, along with so many, many others. Yet added to the key ingredient of God’s grace and my “daily reprieve based on my spiritual condition” were the countless others I was blessed by, the hands of AA to help guide me along this way of “happy destiny.

Each year I take time on this day to look back at this journey, not to forget my past nor wish to shut the door on it. This year I received a very special “remembering gift” of this life. As the New Year began, I received an e-message from a Bill K. from Pittsburgh, desiring to reconnect with me. While my recovering life started in this area, I have been living on the East Coast for the past 18 years. I trusted our paths had crossed by his knowing who I was to find me across the social media universe, but how and where and when did our paths cross along this way? I searched my memory bank for our connections without success. Bill K. asked if I could read his story for an upcoming talk at a conference – and that is when the I am responsible connection was blessedly made again.

As I read his story of addiction, mental disabilities, near death, institutionalization, and into living this recovering life, the “aha” moment appeared. In his recovering journey as a trained addiction counselor, he was the one I was blessed to encounter in my first 28 days while in the rehab center in Pittsburgh. I recalled how remarkably blessed I was by Bill K’s authenticity, compassion, and desire for my living this recovering life. While deeply respectful of my vocation from his spiritual life, he clearly bonded with me as a recovering alcoholic first and foremost. I remembered his belief in ME, his willingness to speak the truth of his life to ME, a truth I knew as MY life as well. Bill K. was living the life of I am responsible.

The evolution of the I am responsible statement emerged for the 1965 A.A. International Convention in Toronto There is an article that identifies former AA trustee, Al S. as the author of the Responsibility Statement. You can read about the history of this at http://bigbooksponsorship.org/articles-alcoholism-addiction-12-step-program-recovery/aa-history/history-aas-responsibility-statement/ In the souvenir book for the 1965 Convention, Dr. Jack Norris writes: "...We must remember that AA will continue strong only so long as each of us freely and happily gives it away to another person, only as each of us takes our fair share of responsibility for sponsorship of those who still suffer, for the growth and integrity of our Group, for our Intergroup activities, and for AA as a whole ... As we become responsible for ourselves, we are free to be responsible for our share in AA, and unless we happily accept this responsibility we lose AA. Strange, isn't it?"

Today I celebrate 21 years of recovering life, by God’s grace and the many, many, many hands of AA compatriots along this wonderful way. I also was blessed to reconnect with Bill K. again earlier this month, and to offer my deep, deep thanks for his part of my recovering life. While Bill K. was grateful for his part in this one precious and wild life I have been blessed to live, Bill K. simply believed and said, “And for that I am responsible.” And for this gift, the gift of Bill K. and so many, many, many others, I am too!

Grateful always, in peace
Paul G.+

"I Enjoy Leads"

Thu, 17 May 2018 02:29:19 GMT

Some are great! … only a few intolerable, but, honestly, never of “little or no assistance” to our working the program, especially the first 3 Steps. Sometimes the lead is what folks call a “drunk-a-log”, one story after another of bad and embarrassing crash landings. Drunk-a-logs do serve a perverse service I suppose; if your own fall from grace is not very funny or exciting or unusual, you are free to steal one from those who have recorded a raft of funny stories. Walla! … you have a funny story to tell in your own lead, and who’s the wiser … except you.

Personally, what I appreciate in one’s story is the reminder of the person’s (and mine) “bad old days”. I always enjoy learning how people came to believe that the Program could rescue them. We were reborn, a fresh start at driving through life’s hills and dales … without reaching for that bottle or drug to comfort us and ease the pressures. It was a resurrection.

Usually, the leads we hear contain bits of helpful information we weren’t aware of. People run into all sorts of problems and joyous happenings. Their experiences, strengths and hopes provide new ideas for our use, new ways to cope, or some new Twelve Step work we might be able to undertake.

A lead by a person with limited time in the Program is interesting … usually very nervous (public speaking is one of the top stressors for most), fumbles with the mike, talks too long or too short or too quietly, and simply doesn’t appear to be enjoying the event for what it really is. We’ve all been there … Bill told us what to say … tell ‘em “what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now”. The newbie’s story always brings nodding of heads, laughter, side glances. The audience is telling you that you’re on the right track.

A good train of thought is to speak to the meeting’s “first-timers” or a couple early attenders anxiously trying to remain sober for first time in their adult life. We can pick up on their feelings, as we recall our own and speak to this anxiety … after all, you were in their shoes once … tell ‘em what worked for you. That’s exciting stuff. Directly helping someone who might be hurting, ashamed, depressed, and lonely. That person is beginning to realize he has to change “people, places and things”, essentially starting over his manner of living. What and how you respond to their seemingly isolated corner will impact their lives.

By the way, If you missed a lead recently and need a supplemental goofy stupid story, here’s one to be used as any readers desire…………..

My Saturday morning’s yard work schedule called me to work with a pile of tree limbs and branches recently pruned by the professionals. I was well into my Saturday’s supply of beer, my energy drink. Armed with my chain saw, but alas, no ear or eye protective equipment, I fired up the saw anyway and approached the wood- It was the pile or me … I thought this was going to be a piece of cake and fun to boot. Oh, I forgot to mention it was cloudy and wet from Friday’s heavy rain … I vaguely remember someone behind me yelling something … I turned and as I did, that roaring chain saw .…

… To Be Continued.

Jim A. Covington, Kentucky

Life on Life’s Terms

Thu, 10 May 2018 02:59:31 GMT

Last night John and I sat down, took deep breaths, and looked at what life on life’s terms has meant for us in the past six months. His cancer diagnosis, the anxiety of waiting for appointments and dates, surgery and recovery (a bit more complicated than we had thought it would be.) His hospitalization for pneumonia. Leaving a temporary job that had become beloved. A busted boiler/water heater. Learning that John’s brother had pancreatic cancer that was metastasizing rapidly. A flight that included top-dollar pricing, delays, rerouting and not being with Bill as he died.

But, the last six months have also included: sobriety.

And sobriety is a priceless gift. Because of sobriety, we have not had to pick up a drink or a drug. We are able to not only cope, but also to celebrate the joy that never leaves us.

v We have the love of our families, who like to spend time with us and with whom we laugh.
v We have sponsors and friends to talk to and rely on, and they listen and give comfort.
v We love to read good books—fiction, non-fiction and program literature--and we talk about the ideas others share.
v We manage our money and don’t spend it recklessly, so we can pay our way.
v We have each other.
v We attend meetings regularly, where we are known and where we know others.
v We have faith in our Higher Power and, as we read in The Twenty-Four Hour Book, feel deeply secure in the fundamental goodness and purpose of the universe.

Years ago, my sponsor taught me about the benefit of writing gratitude lists, about how seeing that those words on paper makes a positive impression on the mind and heart. A gratitude list is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Developing an “attitude of gratitude” has been fundamental to my recovery. “There is always something to be grateful for,” is a message I tell my sponsees, for a grateful heart never drinks.

Sometimes I write an alphabetic gratitude list (A is for AA, B is for our dog Bridget, C is for curly hair, D is for Dancing…) and sometimes as I’m falling asleep, I just think about my list. I make rules for myself like: only names of people or nothing I thought about the night before. Sometimes we just look around the room or wherever it is that we find myself and try to find a few things there that we’re particularly happy about.

It’s a way of thinking. It’s a way of life. And gratitude is a wellspring of energy and stability.

-Christine H.

EXILE OF ADDICTION

Thu, 03 May 2018 02:03:26 GMT

The Four ‘N 20 restaurant in North Hollywood is a small popular eatery known for their pies. It’s one of those places that is better known by the locals than by the millions of tourists that visit Los Angeles each year. Other than the pies, the other menu offerings such as burgers, chicken-fried steak, and the rest of the usual fare you would find at a simple diner is not bad, but nothing to write home about. The charm and attraction to the place is not so much the menu but the history. It’s been there for decades and has become a connecting place for old friends, striving actors, and a gathering spot after the various recovery meetings in the area. I know, because for years I had drifted in-and-out of those meetings in what the program refers to as countless vain attempts to gain a foothold in recovery. It’s also located on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the North Hollywood section San Fernando Valley where I hustled dope and roamed the streets during the last seven years of my life in active addiction before I was able to get sober and allow myself to be rescued by God and the program of recovery. My darkest times were here in this land of oblivion between 1991 and 1998.

I had been sleeping behind the wall of a small run-down office building on a large-box piece of cardboard for a couple of weeks. It was hard and cold, but it was relatively safe. It was one of many spots where I hid away for the night in the area. I woke up – or should I say that I came to – one morning with the usual hungry stomach and sick with craving for alcohol and dope. So I did what I have done a hundred times before. I searched out a supermarket to target to lift some booze and maybe food. I decided on Gelson’s Supermarket on Laurel Canyon Boulevard across the street from the Four ‘N 20. I had my routine. I knew what to do and I was pretty good at it. I would go in, grab a basket as if I was a legitimate shopper walking the isles tossing a few things in the basket and along the way, stuff a couple of tall boys (16 ounce cans of beer) into the lining of my jacket along with some packaged sliced ham and small tortillas. As I casually left the basket abandoned and headed for the door, my heart rate quickened, partly from the risk of being caught, but also in anticipation of being able to pop those tall boys and get my morning medicine.

Just as the automatic doors opened and I was stepping out, there was a rush of activity and two security guards tackled me to the ground and began searching for the goods. They found them. I was busted. They led me back to the security room of the store and began the process of interrogation and humiliation. What was my name? Where was I from? Why did I steal? To my surprise, they didn’t call the police. Maybe they just felt sorry for me because I was so pathetic. Instead, they had me sit with the tall boys, ham, and tortillas in my lap and they took a picture of me sitting there dirty, with my stolen goods. This is the exile of shame. They told me to never come into their store again and they let me go. I walked out into the street, still sick and needing something – anything – to qualm the craving. I walked across the street and past the Four ‘N 20.

There is a row of tables and chairs inside the restaurant right next to the street side of Laurel Canyon Blvd., only about six feet from the sidewalk. I had sat at those same tables before my life went totally into the toilet. Now, I was standing outside looking at a man and woman sitting comfortably eating, laughing, and enjoying their slice of life. They seemed so happy and so content. Standing there on the sidewalk just a few feet away watching them, I longed for their life, my heart ached because I was just so very lost. Even though it was just a thin piece of window glass that separated us from one another, I felt a million miles away. So close yet so far away. Then suddenly, the couple turned and looked at me, clearly uneasy that I was staring at them from the other side of the glass. I looked away. I walked away. More shame. This is life in exile of addiction.

In over twenty years of recovery, I have stopped in at the Four ‘N 20 many times. I always try to sit at one of those tables next to the glass and I drink my coffee and eat my sandwich, sometimes with my friends in recovery. I remember that day all those years ago when I felt so lost and buried in shame. The supermarket is still there across the street. Keeping my promise, I have never been back inside. Sometimes this is what God’s grace looks like.

–Brother Dennis

The Mute, the Demon, and the Hound of Heaven

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 02:15:25 GMT

12 Step Eucharist Luke 11:14-23, The Mute, the Demon, and the Hound of Heaven

Our congregation read the gospel of Luke and Acts during Lent and Easter with Episcopalians all over the world at the suggestion of our presiding bishop. A theme that kept recurring to me was how Jesus seemed attracted to demons like a cadaver-sniffing Scotch collie. He smelled them out and they without question knew his scent as well. Jesus cast out a demon who came out of a man in the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath no less. He cast out the multiple demons named Legion from the man in the tomb bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard in the country of the Gerasenes. As soon as Jesus reached the bottom of the mountain where he was transfigured to a dazzling white, he sniffed out and rebuked a demon who also immediately picked up Jesus’ scent and convulsed a young boy to the ground. Jesus released the cruel demons in the daughter of the Syrophonecian woman after her “crumbs for the dogs under the table” answer which prompted Jesus to extend his ministry to Gentiles, and of course Jesus cured Mary Magdalene of not one but seven demons.

I remember being most moved in Luke 11: 14-23 when we read how Jesus cast out only a single demon from a person who was unable to speak. Usually those who cannot speak have the root cause of deafness as well. Since they have never heard speech, they cannot imitate the sounds. They most often have an amazing mind, but people think they are useless, “dumb” is the word, because their thoughts and intelligence are locked up inside of them like a bank vault with no combination. We can understand how the crowd is amazed when they hear the man or woman in our story now freely speak and communicate.

Perhaps classic movie fans have seen Johnny Belinda where Jane Wyman plays an isolated small-town Canadian woman who is deaf and cannot speak and is branded the unfortunate word, “the village idiot.” Wyman is healed of her demon as she is taught by her country doctor, Lew Ayres, how to communicate with newly developed sign language. Wyman never speaks in her academy award winning performance and expresses herself with her hands in this classic 1948 movie about prejudice!

Of course, we have another chance to experience what it is like to be mute in this year’s academy award winning best picture, the fantasy drama, The Shape of Water, where a sea creature heals a mute “woman” named Elisa.

My mind wanders from the movies and first century Palestine to think about where in our culture today are we mute and deaf and in need of healing? People in addiction cannot speak their truth and are mute because of the anesthesia brought on by drugs, alcohol, commercialism, materialism, or whatever is filling their God hole. I lost my voice when I became an alcoholic. I knew I could not speak out or otherwise people would know I had been drinking too much. Some addicts and alcoholics become loud and noisy, but what they say makes no sense. They also are mute and indeed do say and do “dumb” things.

Lent was a special season of the year to begin to ponder where we had been deaf and had not heard the truth, had been mute to the messages from God about being the person God created us to be.

We do not have to live with our demons. There is a way out. For those caught in addiction, people all over the world are recovering, being healed, in the 12-step programs.

Maybe some of us are deaf and mute to the needs of others around us who are suffering, and we have not spoken out with our voices and our hands and our feet against their injustices. Maybe because of our social disease of busyness, some of us are deaf to those we live or work with, and have been mute, not telling them how much we care or love them.

My experience tells me that the finger of God can not only cast out demons in first century Palestine but also in twenty-first century Little Rock, on the other side of the scientific revolution.

I keep remembering that my prayers should be that the Christ within us releases the demons that keep us from forgiving others and ourselves, the demons that keep us from asking for forgiveness for the harms we have done to others. Christ, “the Hound of Heaven,” ¹ has stopped to rest just behind us waiting to heal these demons. We only have to turn around and realize that it has been the outstretched finger of Love relentlessly following after us all along.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

1Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven.

The nature of ‘Surrender’

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:01:45 GMT

At the meeting the other day, we were discussing the meaning of ‘the surrender’, that moment we gave up and ‘really meant it’. Let’s discard talking about those many promises we’d made in the past … perhaps we then sincerely meant it, but, as with so many other ‘promises’ in the past, the mind was strong but the body weak and nothing really changed.

I find my final “surrender experience” a joyous time for it was only on that occasion I felt this time “I really meant it”. this time. This had to come from beyond me … my Higher Power. I was on my knees in the bedroom. I rose up and immediately felt I had passed into a sincere honest life with the Program. I felt that with the Program with all it entails – my Higher Power, the Groups, the Steps and all aspects we are called to undertake – with all that assistance, I would have a chance to lick this disease. That was what I felt … and I couldn’t wait to start.

I’d tried working the program before. I knew what I was getting into. No! that’s not correct … I never had really tried to work the program. I just drifted along playing the game of attending a meeting once in a while and talkin’ its lingo. Fact was that I just hadn’t had enough of my gala alcoholism.

Returning once again to friends “in the Program” wasn’t the easiest thing to do but it came about easier than I thought. I believe this was so because I had done this for me this time, for me to undertake the Steps and all the rest. I had rejected the game-playing of my previous “surrenders.”

After a period of work on the Steps, when I reached the Steps emphasizing the spiritual aspects of the Program, I decided to put a lot of effort into these steps. I had a belief in a Higher Power since childhood, the nature of the belief having evolved. I hadn’t forgotten all I had experienced. I suppose the fact is that this time I essentially repeated my act of surrender … I truly accepted that old rubric, “Thy Will, not mine.” I went about studying, meditating, following the Big Book’s suggestions for prayer to my Higher Power, and I joined a Church group studying the Rule of St. Benedict thinking it may provide ideas for finding time to really quietly meditate.

I retired several years ago and all at once I had the time to undertake the things I really wanted to do. People asked me, “How are you going to keep busy?” Of course, my reply was that I just “did it.” Among a number of other subjects, I learned that there is plenty of time to explore the spiritual aspects of our lives and for heaven’s sake to bore deeply into the Program … if we but choose to do so.

So, I suggest and say, that surrender can be and for me was a joyous time, one which sticks with me each day.

Jim A.
Covington, Kentucky

Made a fearless and moral inventory of ourselves

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 01:22:38 GMT

I seldom had a problem of taking the inventory of another. After all I was only telling the truth about that person. What arrogance and blindness! That’s bad enough for a lay person but I was an ordained priest. I knew better, but my friends, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker and company only helped to make me laugh it off and bury the guilt and shame of my behavior.

I spent five weeks in a four-week program so I could complete my fourth step. To the best of my knowledge I had seldom, if ever, done any harm to anyone. “Bless me father, for I have sinned. I told (?) lies, I had impure thoughts, I was disobedient, I was angry (?) times……..” and the list I had memorized in childhood I could repeat with some minor variation.

“Seamus, the fourth step is not about getting ready for confession. It is about an internal evaluation of yourself; getting to know yourself, your strengths and weakness, your qualities both positive and negative.”

I had avoided getting to know myself for thirty-three years and had, I thought, done a good job at hiding behind a variety of masks. “If they only knew…..” “They” knew more about me than I knew about myself. My first attempt at a fourth step was superficial and, sadly, sufficient for me to graduate.

Recovery came slowly. I did not need a sponsor. With a degree in theology, courses in counseling, certified as an addictions counselor, I was going to be a “big help” to those in recovery. I read the Big Book to quote it at the next meeting and “look good.” God has a wonderful sense of humour. She sent angels to sponsor me. Two Bostonians, former jailbirds, and absolutely grace-filled people.

“What is a character defect?” I asked. “What is there about…..you don’t like?’ was the response and, without hesitation, I listed what I didn’t like about the mentioned individual. “Seamus, what we see and like in another is also in us. What we see and don’t like is also in us but we don’t like talking about it.”

So, with pen in hand, a legal pad, I began again my Step Four. I listed the Ten Commandments; the seven deadly sins, a list of virtues. I had many of my own gods. In fact, from what others shared with me, it seemed that I had become my own god. I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. Me, myself and I were my Trinity.

No, I had not honored my parents, not the honor I believe now I should have given them. No, I had no murdered anyone but, Yes, I had seriously wounded some individuals with my tongue. Oh, my tongue was very sharp at times. I have stolen time from those who wanted my time. I was there physically but not always mentally or emotionally. I was jealous of the material things others had and I could not afford; I may have taken a vow of celibacy but “the spirit is willing yet the flesh is weak.”

The Seven Deadly Sins are listed as: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Anger, Envy, Pride. These are considered “deadly” as they prevent us from being the Spiritual people we are trying to be. Anger and Fear are like a hand and glove. I did not want to acknowledge my fear so most people experienced my anger. It came out straight or sideways, or passive aggressively. I ate and drank to extremes. Not having the humility to ask for help, I prided myself in my knowledge. And the list goes on. Whatever Virtues I may have had I was much more aware of their opposite in my behavior.

The end result of making ‘a fearless and moral inventory” of myself was freedom and peace of mind; putting my life in perspective and opening up to see myself as others see me; to see goodness and know that mistakes are human, that failure is an opportunity to grow, that’s being human, and Humans are spiritual people attempting to be human.

I believe that, for me, I had to return to Step One and accept the full implications of that step followed by a deeper understanding of Step two. Step three opened the door to trust and risk taking. All of this was the foundation that helped me realize the depth of what Step Four calls us to be and become. Yes, at times it is difficult to see ourselves but then, to see ourselves as our Higher Power sees us - it is a wonderful gift of love.

Seamus D.

I Am an Alcoholic

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 01:26:58 GMT

By the Grace of God and through 12-Step programs and fellowship, I am in recovery.

One morning I got a call from Tina, a friend of mine whom I had met at church when we were both young brides in South Carolina. She started with, “I was thinking about our conversation of last night…”

My heart sank. I had no memory of having spoken with anyone the night before. Apparently, I had talked about my family of origin, problems with accepting myself for who I was, and the overall melancholy I harbored despite being a “believer” and church-goer.

“I’m going to send you some things that I think will help you,” said Tina, who was a mental health counselor. I wonder if she knew that the bundle of typewritten sheets, pamphlets and books she sent me would change my life forever.

What she sent was information about the disease of alcoholism.

I was overwhelmed. I recognized myself. I was not alone. I felt a glimmer of hope.

The only way I knew how to celebrate was by drinking, so I did. I downed one after another until I could feel no pain…or joy, or hope.

After a few days, I realized maybe I should taper down on my drinking. Not because I was an alcoholic, for goodness sake, but because I diagnosed alcoholism in other members of my family. I told my brother my plan and Peter said, “Oh Chrissie, don’t stop all at once. You drink so much; it would kill you if you went cold turkey.”

A few days later, I called a rehab facility at four in the afternoon and told the intake worker I would like to come for the two-week program for children of alcoholics. As part of the screening, she asked me when I had had my last drink and I looked down at my hand. “Well, I’m having a gin and tonic right now,” I said, “but that’s not the problem…I can control it...it’s my family…” She suggested that I should perhaps come in for three weeks for the treatment of my own alcoholism. I heartily disagreed and hung up. Outraged, I called my sister and told her about the conversation. She said quietly, “I agree with her, Chrissie.” I swore at her and slammed the phone down.

How could I be an alcoholic? I was a well-educated woman, a teacher, the mother of beautiful children. I sang in the choir and was a lay reader at church. I never drank Scotch. I only drank my wine out of crystal stemmed glasses.

I started going to ACOA and then Al-Anon meetings, never discussing my own drinking with anyone. Then I read an essay written by Jefferson Airplane’s Gracie Slick in Courage to Change: Personal Conversations with Dennis Wholey. In it she said if you could go three months without a drink, you were probably not an alcoholic. Tapering off so I wouldn’t die as my brother forewarned me, I stopped drinking to prove to the world that I was not an alcoholic.

Since I was a teacher, I decided to go to the three-week Rutgers Summer School for Alcohol Studies to learn more about the disease that affected so much of American society, and undoubtedly was the cause of some of my students’ behavior problems.

During the second week I was there, I arrived at my 89th day without a drink. I was at the Jersey shore with six of my new friends, all alcoholics in recovery. The sky was blue. The sand was warm under my toes. The sun sparkled on the water. Gulls called to each other. Sailboats drifted by in the distance. There had never been a more perfect day.

And I started to cry. To sob. To shake.

My friends formed a circle around me, asking me what was wrong and offering comfort. I stammered, “To-to-tomorrow will be 90 days since I’ve had a drink…so I’ve done what Gracie Slick said and I’ve proven I’m not an alcoholic.”

And one of them said, “Congratulations, why are you crying?”

I wailed, “Because the only way I know how to celebrate is by having a drink.”

And another friend said, “Well, what do you have to do then?”

I said, “I have to say it…I have to admit it. My name is Christine and…I am an alcoholic.”

And they encircled me and hugged me and jumped up and down for joy with me. We left the beach and went to the nearest diner and ordered coffee and pie. And they in turn told me their stories. I was at my first meeting. I have not been without joy and hope since.

And, by the grace of God, I have not had a drink or drug since April 10, 1985.

-Christine H.

Not Fighting

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 01:01:07 GMT

We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it.

Some day we hope that Alcoholics Anonymous will help the public to a better realization of the gravity of the alcoholic problem, but we shall be of little use if our attitude is one of bitterness or hostility. Drinkers will not stand for it.

After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol. Besides, we have stopped fighting anybody or anything. We have to!

—The ‘Big Book’ of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 103

The chief priests accused Jesus of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.

—Mark 15:3-5

This is Holy Week, the annual Christian celebration of someone who never got into a fight.

You might disagree. Jesus cleansed the temple. He called the Pharisees hypocrites. He threw some shade at the Syrohoenician woman, who managed to get Jesus to expand his own understanding of his ministry (!). He got pretty mad at Peter when Peter balked at the idea that Jesus would have to be killed.

But these weren’t fights. The temple cleansing was a political move, a symbolic action. He was sometimes sharp with the Pharisees, but he didn’t get into brawls with them, verbal or otherwise, and he raised no objection, no word in his own defense, when they took him to the Roman authorities on false charges. When the Syrophoenician woman challenged him, he quickly saw her point, and praised her. His anger at Peter was more akin to anticipatory anxiety. Peter, like Satan in the wilderness, was unwittingly tempting Jesus to shrink back from his calling, to duck his own destiny.

I have reflected recently on fighting, the behavior, the relationship pattern, the way humans sometimes resolve differences. Fighting is sometimes praised, and perhaps rightly so. Politicians promise to fight for our rights, or our wealth, or our safety. In church we are often challenged to fight for justice, or (paradoxically enough) fight for peace. In the last couple of years, hundreds of thousands of people have marched through the streets to protest one thing or another, and it’s not entirely wrong to look at this behavior as a kind of fight, even though these protests have been nonviolent, and no one was injured.

I am an alcoholic, and page 103 of the Big Book has always been, if not my favorite page, the most relevant page for me. In my first couple years of sobriety, I felt resentful of people around me who were able to drink, and I was quick to notice the problematic role of alcohol in various social settings. As an Episcopalian, I watched with keen interest as a bishop in our church stood trial for taking the life of a cyclist in a drunk-driving tragedy. It seemed to me, when I honestly reflected on my motives, that I wanted the Episcopal Church, like the city of Nineveh, to sit in sackcloth and ashes, repenting our communal sin of celebrating the frequent use of alcohol in our social gatherings, and the central role of alcohol in our church culture.

I did not help anyone when I nurtured those resentments. It did not help my own sobriety, either. I haven’t taken a drink of alcohol for almost five years now, but that achievement is the work of my higher power, in spite of my small resentments, and my human impulse to fight. Sometimes I want to fight others, to win a competition for the wisest person, or be recognized as the better debater. Sometimes I dream of revenge: I want others to feel the way I sometimes let them make me feel. But indulging those impulses only brings me closer to my next drink.

If fighting works for you, even as a metaphor, then by all means use it, do it, join the battle, particularly if someone will be helped by your courage, strength, and grit. But for me, I have to seek justice differently, not because I am like Jesus, but because I’m not: in my hands, fighting leads to separation, destruction, and anguish.

May you find blessing, peace, strength, and new life this Holy Week.

Willing to Listen

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:21:59 GMT

I was about 18 months into recovery, beginning to rebuild some of my professional life. So, there I was, coming to the end of an organ recital, the first I had played in nearly a decade.

Most of the program went well (in my head, anyway), but I felt increasingly anxious during the last piece. So much so that, by time I came to the last chord, all I could hear was the voice in my head telling me that I had never – ever – played so poorly. “How in the world can I face this audience after such an abysmal performance?”

But, applause requires response and, as I worked up the nerve to drag myself off the bench, I heard another voice. Having lived a long life of perfectionism, this voice felt new. Well, maybe not new, exactly, but certainly unheeded.

Then, in those several seconds that it took to get off the bench and turn to face the audience, it happened. IT. One of those moments of spiritual awakening, of grace, that so many of our companions in recovery share in their stories. On that day, it was no bolt of lightning, but a still, small, urgent voice saying, “you know, you could be wrong.”

Wait… What? Wrong?? And, in yet another moment of grace, I let the voice talk. “Yes, I know that you think you’re the expert in how you played. And, sure, it wasn’t perfect.” (Again, more grace, no mute.)

“But, what if, instead of listening to yourself, you listen to them; to what their applause is saying? The music you played meant something to them, and they are thanking you for it.?”

The very thought seemed transgressive. After all, I was the expert on me.
It couldn’t be that easy. But, what if it was?
What was there to lose in the trying?
Somehow, I became willing to take the risk. That day, taking the risk meant that one neurotic knot in my bondage of self was loosened.

That day, I understood what Herbert Spencer called “contempt prior to investigation.”
That day, perhaps for the first time, I became willing to listen.
May it continue to be a practice each day.

Paul J.
8 March 2018

Sober Children of God (Self-Respect – Part 2)

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 03:00:18 GMT

Bill Wilson, a salesman, settles his vision of the benefits of sobriety in the Promises, we shall realize only if we “painstakingly” work the steps. They follow the narrative on the 9^th step in the “Into Action” Chapter Four of Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book (pp 88-89).

“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace.

No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

Self-seeking will slip away.

Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”¹

These promises lyrically describe “what we have”, mapping prospects that contrast vividly with our addictive psyches and circumstances, our litanies of disappointment, guilt, fear and shame, our mutual pain. Wilson makes them conditional; we must be willing to go to any lengths to attain them. Attain what, exactly, in a word? Self-Respect as Children of God.

Christ, who came to share our plight, our fight, our night², made one promise to the Samaritan woman at the well: living water that “will become… a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She replies, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”³ Christ understands her relentless thirst and offers more, a “living water” that quenches every human craving.

Recovery strives to ultimately resolve the spiritual thirst that ignites our addictions. Our life in recovery and our life in faith are as progressive as our disease. Together, we employ the steps and our religious practices to refresh ourselves and one another. We may arrive late in the day, drained by spiritual aridity, clumsy and wasteful, tripping on resentments, spilling this lifegiving treasure. Living water is God’s gift to us, who are His creation. The notion of self-respect acknowledges that we are sparked into being by God’s unconditional love. Our SOUL: Source Of Unconditional Love.

We progress in recovery, working the steps, engaging our faith through scripture, tradition and reason to encounter God, regardless the chinks in our “understanding”. Christ also told his parched friend, “God is spirit, and worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”

We probe for truth, the “rigorous honesty” AA invokes as we work through the steps. Step Four’s heavy duty inventory creates a baseline of sorts, but each and every step entails honest examination of our behaviors, motives, aspirations. We seek progress, not perfection.

Destined for perfect union with God, we seek to return where we began as Children of God, and “know the place for the first time.”⁴ Our daily tenth step reckons our progress in returning to a God who calls us to come to him as His Children. That is the “Self” to whom we must be true, the words imprinted on every AA anniversary token. That is the “Self” we come to respect, the Self that is the measure of our days and ways, our responsibilities in a complex society:

HEALTH: sleep, diet, exercise, teeth, check-ups, grooming

RELATIONSHIPS*⁺: principled, capable, honest, generous, attractive/positive

FINANCES: priorities, ledger, reserves, credit, foresight, restraint

WORK: competency, capacity, relationships, productivity, rewards

CIVIC: politically informed & engaged, duty, community service, social advocacy

GROWTH: intellect, culture, technology, aptitudes, interests

SPIRIT: recovery, resources, practices, discipline, and the expression of our faith

*spouse, family, intimates, colleagues, clients, acquaintances

⁺give and receive

Bill Wilson’s attractive promises inspire us, and the Steps are the gears and levers we engage to recover and grow as Children of God. Menus for self-improvement in recovery abound, yet the central question remains, what do we want so dearly that we will direct our sober selves to any lengths to possess it? God invested each Self with singular gifts and graces that we may serve Him, as we are, where we are, with the resources He places before us. Each day we examine our Self in a mirror, asking:

§ What duties have I met?
§ What joys have I shared?
§ What fears have I faced?
§ What wounds have I healed?
§ What prayers have I raised?

God made us as children who develop and mature into whole men and women, fully alive in grace, at peace among others, and at peace with our Selves. This is His promise to us, and ours to Him. Our recovery covenant.

¹ Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), AA World Services, Fourth Edition, 2002
² “Incarnation”, Michael E. Moynahan, S.J., Hearts on Fire – Praying with Jesuits, Loyola Press, Michael Harter, S.J., Editor, 2005
³ John 4:1-42, New International Version, Zondervan, 2017
⁴ “Little Gidding”, Four Quartets, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Faber and Faber, 1942

Hope

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 01:48:26 GMT

I've been meditating a good deal lately on the alcoholic death, and how so very few of us experience even the beginnings of recovery. I've heard so many stories about our kind drinking ourselves to death, killing ourselves in drunken car accidents, falling down flights of stairs, suffocating because we can't come to, or taking our own lives in lost hope. Such a small percentage of us can reach the precipice of insanity and death to discover the turning point. We come to know complete defeat - egos perfectly crushed by alcohol - and realize we've backed the wrong horse. Through a barely lucid surrender, we allow the spirit to take the helm.

So, why do some of us keep crawling into death? Those of us who live are not special, unique, or chosen. It could have gone either way. I’ve settled on redemption after death. Why would God's grace expire when our spirit and body have died? It seems to me that those of us who cannot reach God on Earth can find recovery after human death. God never gives up on any of us ever, even when we have given up on ourselves and our own lives.

Lee H.

FINDING THE WILL OF GOD

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 02:30:27 GMT

I mentioned recently how I came to undertake a careful look-see at the nature of my spiritual life in the program. Step 11 certainly called me to do so and, for that matter, the Big Book contains much on the subject. What troubled me, specifically, was how do I identify His Will. Most of the time I'm pretty careful when it comes to figuring out what the next "right thing" to do might be. I'd like to think that "the next right thing" might be God's thoughts on the matter, but that can't be all there is to it. After all, my ego can take on many different disguises and insert itself as the answer to what's right and what's wrong. I am aware of comments in the Book which call us to improve our moral fiber, to elevate our moral standards, and, importantly, to abandon reliance on my ego to guide my actions. Several years ago, my wife and I joined a group at our church devoted to study of the Rule of St. Benedict. After many discussion meetings centered on sharing thoughts about the previously selected book, a couple of retreats at cloistered spirituality centers, I've come to some conclusions that for me, at least, make sense and seem to provide comfort as I encounter life's bumps and grinds.

First, effectively using mediation to find God's Will in a specific case; it's a process. I don't just email or text God and ask for His help. It's a process that entails daily contemplation. I don't pretend that that daily process is taking place in my basement in a cloistered enclosure, but maybe a moment of silence and isolation assists. I believe, like our daily thoughts about the program, our surrender and the litany of working the Steps and each piece of the whole program provides a backdrop for finding Him and His Way. For many, daily maintenance of our program is always present, a daily habit. Accompanying those thoughts and action steps is, in my case anyway, a repetition of the Serenity Prayer ... I ask for "His Will for us and the power to carry it out."

Second, how do I identify His Will, which option do I select as His Will? I've found that the search for "the next right thing" assists -- it's a good starting point.

Third, listen. Listen to others. Don't think you have all the answers and know His Will. Listen to experts, your sponsor, the group - bring the issue up as a discussion topic, and - be quiet and listen. When I do all this I have found that His Will, his answer, is the comfortable one, maybe it is usually that "next right thing." After all, the program calls on us to "improve our spiritual life, to discard the old thought processes and elevate our moral being. His Will is a calming feeling to me -- a serenity. "It just feels like the right thing to do in this situation." And isn't this what the Program is all about. Isn't the basic program intended to bring not only sobriety, but serenity? ... "you will know peace and find serenity" ;the Big Book promises this if we but work at it.

Jim A.

Covington, Kentucky

A Spiritual Surrender

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:50:09 GMT

At a recent discussion meeting, I suggested the importance of the spiritual aspects of the program as the topic for discussion. I did so because without a strong spiritual base we jeopardize our sobriety and serenity. I had long attended church and remained a faithful and believing member throughout my "days of rage". I was cognizant of the words in the Big Book about our prayers and believed in their validity; in fact, the admonition to "seek the will of God for us" became central.

But, alas, several years into sobriety, I experienced a good deal of uncomfortable anxiety. I increased my meeting schedule and listening and participating in the usual "discussion meetings" but something was still lacking. I contacted my sponsor and discussed this with him, a person who has long championed a strong spiritual base as a key to one's sobriety and serenity. I studied the available material and articles on the subject and I started concentrating on aspects of "surrender" ... "surrender" in the same sense as our surrender to the fact that we were powerless and needing help from something other than my own efforts.

After a meditation program I grasped the fact that this "spiritual surrender" is as important as our "powerless surrender". I learned I'd have to "really mean it" when I took this second step in my search for His Will for us. Not a surrender with a "hedging of my bet" but an "all in" surrender. So what happened? ... no, my anxiety didn't disappear but it redefined itself by relieving me of the anxiety over my anxiety. That is, I became more comfortable with the problem. I spent time on how I might be able to work through the issue, knowing that sooner or later God would show the way. He did ... the problem was resolved and consequently my uncomfortable anxiety went away ... it was clearly a case of my ego still trying to control the situation. I had done all I could. I needed help and the program provided me the tools to search for the help I needed ... His Will was truly more powerful than my ego.

So today, just as I ask for His Will to carry me through the day without drinking, so do I look for His Will and His Power to carry it out. The program supplied the tools for me to search for and ultimately find some serenity for an issue that was becoming a problem and for that I am grateful.

Jim A.
Covington Kentucky

Sam Shoemaker January 31

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 02:10:32 GMT

Do you ever wonder where the 12 steps we so often repeat came from? Listen to this story.

1934 Calvary Episcopal Church New York, City

The Rev. Dr. Sam Shoemaker has been rector of Calvary, for 10 years. He has developed Calvary House, a hostel and center for ministry and small groups in the city. He also runs Calvary Rescue Mission, a place for the “down and out” to get a meal and rest. Bill Wilson, an alcoholic New York stockbroker, visits there during his last days of drinking. Bill is influenced by Ebby Thacher, a friend who has become sober through a spiritual program called the Oxford Group led by Sam Shoemaker while Ebby meets at Calvary House.

1935 Bill Wilson becomes sober and spends more time with Sam Shoemaker in his book-lined office talking with Shoemaker and attending Oxford Group meetings as well as visiting at Calvary Mission and Calvary House. Dr. Shoemaker sends Bill a letter when he is 60 days sober thanking him for his help getting a chemistry professor sober.

Later Bill Wilson says, “Every river has a wellspring at its source. AA is like that. In the beginning there was a spring which poured out of a clergyman, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. He channeled to the few of us who then saw and heard him.. the loving concern, the Grace.. to walk in the Consciousness of God- to live and to love again, as never before. ⁴ Dr. Sam Shoemaker was one of AA’s indispensables. Had it not been for his ministry to us in our early time, our Fellowship would not be in existence today. Sam Shoemaker passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated. He was a co-founder of AA.” The first three Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were inspired in part by Shoemaker. “The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and no one else.” I am quoting Bill Wilson directly.

So, Dr. Shoemaker provided a refuge for alcoholics in New York and directly influenced the Twelve Steps through his long and close friendship with Bill Wilson. ^1.2,3

You have heard from Bill Wilson. Now here are the words Sam Shoemaker later said.

“I believe the church has a great deal to learn; not from any individual member of AA, but from the incredible collective experience of AA. I pray to God that what is happening pretty steadily and consistently throughout the fellowship could happen in every church. The AA fellowship is made up of people who are beginning to be changed, not saints, and not perfect. We in the church can all learn by this example and if we think we’re above it we are in real danger.”⁵

Every January 31, the Episcopal Church remembers the ministry of this Episcopal priest in New York City who saved and changed the life of so many people at this service today. One of my most spiritual moments was attending an AA meeting seven years ago in Sam Shoemaker’s office at Calvary.

Perhaps you have seen an Episcopal presence in AA, but even more, perhaps you can see that Sam Shoemaker transmitted to AA a message, that it is all about love.. the same message we hope is transmitted at every church and at every Eucharist.

1. Dick B, "Calvary House and the Oxford Group,” The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous, A Design for Living that Works, p. 114
2. “A Biography of Sam Shoemaker,” AlcoholicAnonymous.org
3. "A.A. Tributes Samuel Shoemaker "Co-founder" of A.A.," Dickb.com
4. Karen Plavan, "A Talk on Samuel Moor Shoemaker," Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburg, January 31, 2010
5. Michael Fitzpatrick, "Rev Sam Shoemaker, His Role in Early AA Part 11," Recoveryspeakers.com
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

Self-Respect (Part 1)

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 02:42:22 GMT

On St. Patrick’s Day, the city dyes Chicago River a brilliant hue no Kelly I know would claim for his own. I’ll be there to attend a retreat with recovering men I’ve known for decades. I’ll also have tea with my former wife, the mother of my children. We’ve been estranged since our divorce a dozen years ago and this conversation is long in the making, though not overdue.

We make cut ‘n’ dry amends for what we have done, or what we have failed to do. But, when we perpetrate sins or shirk duties out of a lack character, well… we can’t exercise, can’t put to work what isn’t ours to summon. Joan Didion¹ wrote that “people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; … the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” ¹ I flubbed the play because I was never in the game.

“To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness.” ¹ Shame? Guilt? Regardless, without self-respect, we stand empty-handed at every threshold. There, I remained.

What then, might I now say to my darling-ago? Words will come. My determination arises from a long delayed appreciation of my childhood. My parents loved, nurtured, educated and entertained me, insured my place in the family circle. I came unmoored, perhaps by circumstance, but not thorough any intent of theirs. My education included the conviction that we are children of God: “God’s love sparked me into being. My life echoes His love. Inhabiting this love is my deepest need and my greatest desire.”² This exalted belief implies a responsibility to myself, to my innate gifts and to the prospects that arise to use them. To show “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life.”

Decades ago, I did not enter my third marriage with any such mandate, and my alcoholic bottom shortly followed our firstborn’s arrival. In recovery, I acquired a grudging “willingness to accept responsibility”, but lacked “discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.” ¹ George Bernard Shaw described Oscar Wilde as, “…so in love with style that he never realized the danger of putting up more style than his matter could carry. Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.“³ Time heals; it also teaches.

If we even half-practice a rigorous honesty in recovery, eventually our egos crater and we are “driven back upon oneself, …the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect.” ¹ We discover that the “sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. … to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.” ¹

In college, Ms. Didion lost “the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me… happiness, honor and a good husband.” We zealously cling to our innocent self-deceptions. Some of us drink and drug ourselves silly to perpetuate them. When we ultimately release, are finally released from them, we know a “new freedom and a new happiness”⁴ grounded in a newfound self worthy of respect, a self we protect, nurture and love.

-Martin M.

¹ Self-Respect, its source, its power, Vogue, Joan Didion, August 1961

² First Principle and Foundation, The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola, interpretation, Martin McElroy, 2017

³ Letter to Frank Harris, introducing a revised edition of Life of Wilde (1918)

⁴ Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book), AA World Services, Fourth Edition, 2002

Misanthropic Anthropoid

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 03:39:12 GMT

I heard something a couple weeks back in a meeting that hit me between the eyes. "I'm a spiritual being having human experiences." I'd never heard that one before, as you guys probably have. It made so much sense to me, and it's been rolling around my alcoholic brain ever since. My dad always told me that I would start paying attention to and caring about politics when I became a taxpayer. I care less about it now than I did when I was fifteen. I don't have any affinity for watching football, basketball, baseball, golf or any activities of their type. I tried to fake it for years.

My thinking runs counter to our societal values and conformity. I'm not interested in hunting, fishing, or other stereotypical masculine pastimes, and, growing up and into my twenties and thirties, I always thought that my disinterest meant I was generally disinterested. I was a searcher, as my mother-in-law says, but I didn't have the rocks to be an all-out member of the counterculture.

So on and on, I developed low self-esteem, felt awkward and out of place, fell victim to fear and anxiety, and started the cycle of mental self-abuse. I was innately alcoholic on a cellular level. Then booze came along and introduced me to the two-drink smooth. It was literally magical. Alcohol began doing for me what I could not do for myself. Low self-esteem, vaporized. Awkwardness, gone. Fear and anxiety, gone. As one of my favorite speakers says, all of the boxes were being checked. And so began the descent and ultimately the path back to the happy road with you guys.

I couldn't have understood back then that I was a spiritual being having human experiences. The journey is required to smash the ego and set the heart in a condition ready to accept the weight and depth of the spiritual life. It’s so clear now why I was the way I was. God does not make mistakes.

-Lee H.

I RECOVERED MY CHRIST

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 01:48:09 GMT

The Third Step of Alcoholics Anonymous states “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

As I sat at my Sponsor’s table and read these words, memories filled with pain and resentment washed over me. Recollections of bullying, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy poured out of me onto my patient Sponsor. He listened to my rant in silence. After I’d exhausted myself he said: “This isn’t about them. It’s about you.”

I had admitted in Step One that I was powerless over Alcohol and Drugs. I had “come to believe” in Step Two that only a “power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” Couldn’t that “power” be the 12-step program itself? “Yes” my sponsor smiled, “for now.”

I started trying to pray. I asked “Whatever Was Out There” to help me stay clean and sober every morning and thanked my unnamed deity every evening for letting me go to bed without drinking or using. Within my first 90 days of recovery I found myself having to ask for help from my still unnamed higher power more and more often. I began to borrow the title “Spirit of the Universe” from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Despite the many resentments I had towards organized religion, I have always been spiritually curious and aware. As I gained more time clean and sober, my recovery deepened, and I became comfortable calling my higher power “God”.

I found myself having a greater willingness to expand my spiritual health. I read daily devotionals and meditation books, along with asking questions of “old-timers” in recovery who were walking spiritual paths that I admired. Although I respected their journeys and learned about different religious traditions from them, I couldn’t stop thinking of myself as a Christian.

One beautiful spring day I decided that on my lunch break I would attend the mid-day Holy Eucharist service at my city’s Downtown Episcopal Cathedral. The service was in a small chapel off to the side, and there were but a few worshipers there that day. Yet, I felt a great sense of fellowship in the communal readings that we did from the Book of Common Prayer as a congregation, especially the Lord’s Prayer.

For the first time in a long while, I felt “part-of,” rather than an outsider in a religious body. As I knelt at the alter rail to take the sacraments, I was overwhelmed with an emotion of a God that loved me so much that he sent his Son to us, a Son who endured barbarous agony out of love. Love for us, love for me. In that moment God didn’t seem distant, or “out there.” He was in the room with me, close to my pain, struggles and fears.

I walked back to my pew and knelt in prayer. I reflected not just on God’s love through Jesus, but the love that Jesus’s mother, Mary, had for her son. She stood by him to the end, even after all those who had pledged their eternal loyalty had fled him, in a supreme act of unconditional love.

I was struck that this was just the kind of love that I had received from my brothers and sisters in recovery. They had given me welcome and support from the first day I staggered, a beaten pulp of a man, into to their lives.

When the Priest gave the Blessing: “In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” I found myself making the sign of the Cross like I belonged there.

I walked out of the Chapel that day into the warm Sunlight of The Spirit. I’ve been walking with Christ ever since.

-Greg S.

Anonymity, a Response

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 00:18:59 GMT

This is a response to the insightful reflection on anonymity as it is practiced in AA.

It is a painful spiritual maxim to embrace that a life-giving strength may also be a debilitating weakness. For example, do I give generously to bolster a weak sense of self and to receive the acclamation of others so that I might ignore the demons within me clamoring for attention? Am I regarded as one who loves all because I cannot acknowledge that I do not love myself? As we grow in grace, we find that a loving confrontation with these realities is the path of growth in newness of life and in a more certain future of sober living.

In my estimation, our rightly cherished anonymity remains sadly necessary because we live in a world where people are quick to demonize and slow to appropriately forgive. I believe our world would be better if we were all able to claim with a pride born out of genuine struggle and not self-service, that, yes, I am an alcoholic or an addict, and I have triumphed over this devil of despair. I have triumphed not because of anything I have done, but because of the workings of a gracious God in me. And, I know many other people who have the same experience – Come, let me introduce you to them. There is hope for you!

We once lived in a world where mental illness was a source of embarrassment because it was ignored out of ill- founded shame. We once lived in a world where cancer was not mentioned because of fear. We found that talking about these things gave us freedom to heal. Would that we could begin to talk about addiction in the same spirit of freedom and hope – openly, confidently, generously, and graciously.

Is this difficult? Of course. Is it necessary? Absolutely.

Dating

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 04:19:43 GMT

A question that has come up regularly in the rooms is dating. I do not mean 13^th stepping. I am referring to a normal activity of spending time with someone where there is a mutual attraction for the express purpose of an intimate relationship. The question I am referring to is “do I date someone in the program or a ‘normie’?” That exact question was posed to me by a fellow member while sitting at my kitchen table just recently. “Good question” and a smile was my response.

As with any significant decision, I ran through the pros and cons. First, let’s consider dating someone else in a 12 step program. One benefit would be that they get “it;” they know what the 12 steps are and can see the benefits of the program. There's a common language! In addition to that, they understand the wreckage of your past. Our past can be difficult to explain. In fact, as we put a few 24 hours behind us, new acquaintances may have a hard time understanding why we go to meetings. We don’t “look” like alcoholics anymore. Other concerns such as time with your sponsor, meetings, service responsibilities, usually do not require justification to someone else working the steps. You also are usually safe using the term “Higher Power” without a second thought.

So what could possibly go wrong? Let’s look at the odds. The divorce rate in the United States hovers between 40 and 50 percent. While this is just dating, the statistic is relevant. The most recent studies note that there is, at best, a 30 percent chance of long term recovery from addiction. All we have is a daily reprieve from our disease based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Recovery is not linear. Having two people with a fatal disease in a relationship together means that the deck is stacked against them, from a probability standpoint.

Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that the two individuals considering a relationship enjoy an active, long term recovery program. Things like step work, sponsors, sponsees, service work, 12-step work are all common place. Newly sober folks (and not so new) have no business dragging the wreckage of their past into the life of another human being, period. It's not fair to the other person and it’s time to stop taking hostages.

“Check your motives, check your program, check with your sponsor” was advice I received early on and it has proved valuable. Another gem was “you wouldn’t go shopping for a new car in a junk yard, so why would you look in AA for a partner?”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit I have had relationships in and out of the program. I managed to not drink through all of it. I can't tell you, even for me, which is better. I recommend finding someone that is spiritually healthy to date, program or not. Things have gotten easier for me once I was able to accept the idea that if I truly cared about someone, I would only want them to be happy – with or without me.

My A-nonymity Is My Identity

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 23:14:28 GMT

Scene 1 – a rousing AA meeting (it gets personal!) on Tradition 11 - “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” (and now, internet?)

The 11^th Tradition’s emphasis is not shame, but rather humility. Our spiritual foundation is not our “success” in recovery, but our humble gratitude; all our recoveries are as unmerited as any grace. We share the badge of early Christians: “by their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16), and “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) Our identity is in “God, as we understand Him”, and for me, Christ as Redeemer.

Scene 2 – a small gathering of priests and laity to discuss diocesan resources for addiction/recovery

“Why is a church, a faith community, less welcoming to alcoholics than a 12-Step meeting, or for that matter, a prison?” Animated dialogue scribed the constraints and opportunities we face in recovery: our positions, our reputations, even our mere accessibility, either inhibit or invite addicts and alcoholics to avoid or approach us. Do we hoist our recovery banners, or are we to strike our colors, surrendering anonymously?

Scene 3 – a documentary The Anonymous People, Greg D. Williams, 2013 (Amazon, YouTube)

Advocating for 23.5 million recovering alcoholics and addicts, the National Addiction Foundation (65,000 members) and the Faces and Voices of Recovery (25,000 members) promote openness about recovery, to carry the message widely and lobby for legislative and community support. They are well-meaning counterpoints to Alcoholics Anonymous’ 11^th Tradition. The film features leaders in the contemporary movement, and reports on prior generations’ efforts to take recovery out of the shadows of shame, particularly in the late 1960’s when legislative support expanded insurance, treatment and research efforts (which were curbed in the 1980s-‘90s by the “war on drugs”). The movement poses a fair assertion, exposed by Twitter, Instagram and identity theft, “Addicts can’t find help unless we openly proclaim our recovery, our victory over our addictions!”

Scene 4 – Donning coats in the vestibule after the late Sunday liturgy

As my wife and I gathered our starving selves to scoot off for lunch, a parishioner arrested her hurried exit to ask a deeply personal question. “Oh, I should talk to you”, she said. “I’m on my way to the hospital. My alcoholic brother is dying. We haven’t spoken in years and I don’t know what to do. What can I say to him?” Thing is… how did she know to ask me, presumably as an alcoholic? A sober alcoholic? Moreover, if she knows, who else knows, and does the idea that “everybody will know” inhibit a drunk or an addict or their spouse or parents or kids from “reaching out to me for help or hope,” because, well… “everybody will know” if they do? How vividly is my recovery on display?

Yes, I am the parish’s designated Recovery Resources Advocate and have responded to families in crises. But, I am also a member of the parish, famous for Bandito Bean Chili, helpful with building repairs, active in stewardship, and an enthusiastic participant in liturgy. All me. My identity.

When I returned from Vietnam, I refused to be defined by that experience. I was drafted, served, returned – life goes on. But, Vietnam was an event. My alcoholism is intrinsic, as are my gifts and flaws, those gnarly snags in my character and the graces that offset them to bring joy to my work, love to my family and devotion to Christ. My answer to the 11^th Step riddle is the 3^rd Step: … to turn to God as I encounter Him within the span of a day, regardless or the case or place or face before me. “Lord, show me the work you are choosing for me this day, inviting me to do in humility and love. Amen.”

The Gift of Being Present

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 22:57:41 GMT

Living a life in recovery has provided me with so many blessings – ones I could not have dreamed of when I was using. I have a calm and loving relationship with my family, I have a loving partner in my life, I have the privilege of being paid to do the work I feel so passionate about – bringing recovery into the healthcare system; the list goes on and on. When I take a moment to get still, really still and quiet, what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt after almost 11 years sober is this: the greatest gift I have been given in sobriety is an incredibly grace-filled, loving relationship with God and therefore with myself so that I can show up in the world in the way that I believe God wants me to show up in the world.

On the evening of Jan 21, 2007, there was an intersection of what I can only describe as my willingness and God’s grace; some would call it a spiritual experience – I know I do. And it has been a slow unfolding for me. When I first walked into the rooms of AA, my best thought was: can you please help me figure out how to stop using drugs, so that I can drink normally. Yep, that was my best thought. Luckily for me, I was desperate enough and felt so broken that I was willing to listen and follow suggestions. To listen to the others in the rooms, who had more experience than me and, who one day at a time, showed me how to work the 12 steps.

A lot has happened since Jan 22, 2007 – In 2010, I moved back to the East Coast – I missed my family, I wanted to be closer to them. I also had to put my dog Nicholas down that year (I cried for 2 months straight). In 2011, my best friend’s dad died and while sitting in the church pew hearing the priest say, “Michael is with God now,” I cried and cried and cried, because I really believed it – for the first time I was able to take in the fact that death exists no more, that Michael, that I will be with God forever. In 2013, and when I turned 40, I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The love and care of the fellowship and my parish carried me through that journey. In 2015, I fell in love, and for the first time was able to truly let someone love me and to fully let myself love another. In 2017, my mom had her 3^rd bout of cancer. And today, I am able to say to her, “Mom, I love you so much. I support whatever decisions you need to make for your healthcare.” And 2018…well, as my sponsor reminds me: more will be revealed.

As I look back over the past almost 11 years, what I know in my heart and mind and body is that, I would not be sober without God and without AA I would not have God in my life. And for all of this, I am feel extremely blessed.

Almost Legal

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:07:54 GMT

On November 3rd I celebrated my 17th sober birthday. Almost legal. It was a hard a year, a scary year, year 16. The rug was pulled out from under me and I ended up being someplace I had never been before. I had been living my life one way and I was faced with the decision of doing something different. It wasn’t a decision really. Maybe on some level there was a moment where I could have done something differently, like drink, but that didn’t seem like an option until much later in the year. My survival instincts kicked in and after 16 years sober, lots of therapy, meetings, working steps, service, prayer, and meditation, those instincts said, keep doing what you're doing, and do more of it.

A relationship ended. That was all. Relationships end all the time. But this particular relationship at this particular time in my life shredded my heart and left me scrambling to gather the scraps and begin the process of stitching those tattered pieces together. I had worked hard those previous 15 years. I was determined to get well from the time I was 24 years old. Not only was I in recovery from a hopeless state of mind and body but I was recovering from a childhood that had left me with a deeply embedded core negative belief about myself that I was unworthy, easily replaceable, fundamentally defective. That’s why I drank. Sure, alcoholism runs in my family, along with every other -ism passed down from grandfathers and uncles, and the women in my family were emotionally unstable and were living from a place of believing they too were worthy of nothing but scraps, which made it challenging to raise kids with a healthy dose of self-esteem. But I drank because the pain of living as the human being I believed I was was excruciating and made it impossible to face the world stone cold sober. Drinking saved my life and 12 step programs have made it possible to live, not just survive.

Here in California we celebrate sobriety birthdays with cakes and candles. Tonight, mine will hold 17 candles. It holds 17 candles because I didn’t drink. I put one foot in front of the other and held on to meetings, therapy, prayer, and service for dear life. There were moments when I understood that drinking could be an option and I chose not to drink. Pure ego. I wasn’t going to give alcoholism the satisfaction of taking another one of us down. I was not giving up without a fight. It won’t be the last fight of my life because life is in session and I’m fully engaged in healing and recovering from who alcoholism wants me to believe I am to the person God has always intended me to be. That is a fight I intend to win.

ALCOHOLIC WORLD

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 02:43:56 GMT

Somewhere between my departure from New Orleans in 1997 and the turn of the millennium, my mother gave me a book written by Anne Lamott. She is a recovering alcoholic drug addict and a progressive Christian, and a celebrity of sorts in the recovery community. So years later her name pops up in speaker circuits and convention chatter. To me her most remarkable writing came in the form of a tweet: "The world's an untreated alcoholic!" Someone told a story before a meeting a couple months ago about Lamott at one of the NA or AA conventions or larger gatherings. She was part of a panel interacting with an audience, and the topic of labeling non-alcoholics as normies or earth people came up. She said she considers these folks "untreated." I think this is such a brilliant, hilarious and accurate way to describe the larger human condition. The world is totally alcoholic. We are powerless, unmanageable, self serving, dishonest, and inconsiderate. We are restless, irritable and discontented, and none of us can live in the present. But what an awesome journey it is to progress from this state in seconds, in minutes, in inches, and in days. By acknowledging that I am incomplete, broken, and have the worst and the best of humankind inside me, I can accept myself and be a whole person right now, today. There is no waiting in this deal. It's grace. It's free. Its God. It's there if I am fit to accept it

Lee H

Leonard’s Love

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 00:40:57 GMT

The Malvern Center hosts six meetings a day, from “Wake-Up” every day at 6:30 am to Friday’s Midnighters Meeting. 100,000-plus times a year, an alcoholic, addict or an anon-family member crosses the threshold. Its walls are laden with framed posters of the steps and traditions, slogans, and pictures of Bill Wilson and Bob Smith. Behind the speaker’s desk, prominent among the helpful, hopeful clutter, is a wooden plaque: “Whatever the question… LOVE is the Answer / In memory of Leonard C.” Many remember Leonard, now long passed, and his mantra encourages and inspires his successors.

Like the mute and immutable posters and pictures, the plaque fades into the background. Occasionally noted by a speaker, by and large the sign is just a touchstone for wandering attention. Yet, like water etching a canyon, its message penetrates the intellect, the emotions, the soul.

“Whatever the question…” So many questions arise in recovery. They are shape-shifters, evolving as we progress from newfound sobriety through its adolescence, adulthood and into maturity. The dragons of our addiction grow as they sleep, our character defects and shortcomings adapt with our changing stations and circumstances. As we advance, perhaps even as we stumble, our questions acquire nuance or veiled implications, or launch from new and unpredictable premises. We question our questions.

As a fledgling consultant, my boss advised: “the answer is always, ‘what is the question?’.” Presuming “love” to be the answer implies the need for sharply defined questions. We must be willing to seek, face and embrace rigorous inquiry. One of the great gifts of twelve-step recovery in combination with our faith is finding the safety to tackle ambiguous, penetrating, ugly questions. In his memoir, the actor Rob Lowe¹ encourages us to “face your ugly secrets and inner conflicts.” That only happens from a foundation of trust in the setting, in our companions and counselors, and a conviction of the value of both the need and the opportunity to consider every fear, misapprehension, distortion and fantasy that lures or goads us into the dead ends of our addictions. Trust is the gateway to truths that are camouflaged, buried and locked inside. Some yield handily, but most we must pry out, and a great many we must wait out over the course of years and decades. It is solitary work that cannot be done alone. Trusted and trustworthy voices around us call out the truth within us.

When Philip summoned him to Christ, Nathaniel dismissively said, “what good can come out of Nazareth?”. Yet, trusting his friend, Nathaniel went and was greeted by Christ as “a true Israelite, in whom there can be nothing false.”² Nathaniel, a student of Torah, an honest skeptic and trusting companion, came to believe in Christ’s power to redefine every premise, shape every question and resolve it all in the great commandment: “Love One Another.³”

Leonard’s signature maxim arises from profound questions that are courageously met and reconciled in the trusting community of recovering people. On November 13^th, 1985 my first sponsor, John, inscribed my pocket-sized Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: “This little book will provoke a lifetime of questions, and the answers to a lifetime of questions”. Christ, Leonard and John agree that the answer to all of them is love.

-Martin McE.

¹ Love Life, Rob Lowe, Simon & Schuster 2015

² John 1:45-49

³ John 13:34

A Daily Reprieve

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 02:11:41 GMT

I’m sitting in the back of the chapel. The children are gathered near the front, the casket behind them. Between sobs and gasps, I hear familiar words. “Dad was too young.” “He was doing so well.” “I know he loved you so much.” While not heard, thoughts were present on those faces. “What was he doing out there, at that time of the night?” “Why couldn’t he stop for his beautiful girls?” How many times did he go to jail?” “It’s just a shame that he wasted his life.”

George had double digit sobriety when we met 8 or 10 years ago, at a service function no less. He was full of life and sobriety. His laugh was infectious and I was amazed at how healthy he was – physically and mentally. Throughout that year, I would see George at various meetings and events. I had just moved to town and was still getting replanted in a local group and new sponsor. It was great to see that familiar face! He loved his children and just beamed every time he got a chance to talk about them.

Over time, I watched as work demands increased for George. He had less time for meetings, sponsees, service, and his sponsor. His demeanor took a turn towards the negative. Then an altercation at work left him unemployed. Shortly after that, word came that he was back in jail and then transferred to a facility upstate to serve time on a weapon’s charge.

Then we heard that George had been released and was in a transition center not far from the jail upstate. He had a sponsor again, was hitting meetings regularly, and was working. Good reports continued to appear periodically, and confidence in George’s recovery grew.

An extended family member needed assistance and George moved back here after finishing a year at the transition center. Worried looks were exchanged by a few long-time members when someone shared that George was back in town. Everyone crossed their fingers and prayed that their guts were wrong. While George wasn’t making meetings, he was spending time with this family and children so maybe that would be enough to get by. He turned 50 Friday. I happily posted Facebook birthday greetings for the big event. The accident occurred late Friday night, his birthday.

I would not allow myself to read between the lines as I scanned the news report of the accident. It didn’t matter what the details were; George was one of us and he was gone. The tornado running through the lives of family and friends was finally still. My corner in the chapel provided a disease laden vantage point of a poignant reminder. We are only promised a daily reprieve, dependent on maintenance of our spiritual condition. Godspeed, George, Godspeed.

“We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.”

FHS, Loretta

They Have What I Want

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:00:49 GMT

The four of us are sitting around my small living room. Four women, four different recovery experiences, four different lengths of sobriety. Different childhoods in dysfunctional families. Different ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds. Ages: 32, 60, 63, and me, 53. One, nine, two, and sixteen years sober, respectively. Each of them at some point in their recovery asked me if I’d sponsor them.

Sponsorship in a 12-step recovery program is a weird and wonderful relationship. It’s mentorship with a very specific task: work the 12 steps with someone who needs to work the steps. That’s the wonderful part. The weird part is how complicated this kind of relationship can be because we’re human, we’re complex and we’re alcoholics and drug addicts, and our lives depend on this relationship being a successful one. You’re newly sober. You’re told to go to meetings, get a commitment, and a sponsor. Criteria for sponsorship: you want what they have, but you only know these people from meetings. What happens when they take the show on the road is something you can only know from direct experience of them in their lives. Maybe what they have that you want is a car, a job, a spouse, a house, and kids, if you’re into that. Maybe it’s the person’s relationship with their higher power that peaks your interest, or it’s that they seem kind, generous, compassionate, and honest. Or they’ve just been sober a long time and have lived through the ups and downs of life sober. Until you’re in relationship with them you have no idea how it’s all gonna go. It’s going out on a blind date and hoping it works out. It’s showing up and hoping the person is who you think they are. It’s hoping they can help you get some recovery--both emotionally and spiritually. It’s hoping they don’t turn out to be crazy and controlling like your mom.

We start reading Step 1 out loud, going around in a circle and sharing our experience of powerlessness and unmanageability in our lives, both in active addiction and now in recovery. The relationships I have with these women started because despite how much fear they might have had, how vulnerable it made them feel, and risking rejection, they asked me if I would walk them through the steps, be a loving and supportive witness to their journey of healing and recovery, and be there any time they might need to be talked down off the ledge. I’ve worked the steps with them, listened, encouraged, and challenged them to grow. Being in relationship with them, I have learned compassion, resilience, patience, and love. They have talked me down off the ledge on more than one occasion and saved my life countless times. These women have challenged me to be a better sober woman. They have what I want in spades.

–Holly C

The Invitation

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 01:18:27 GMT

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous¹ is a quote factory, a wellspring of meeting topics, sponsor guidance, and – ah, yes! – essay topics. 30 million-plus copies have been sold in 43 languages (no tally for the number actually read), and numerous BB digests and doorstoppers dissect every syllable. Judging by others’ and my own dog-eared, highlighted, annotated editions, Big Book quotes may rise in favor with the tides, time and circumstance, but a few lines are indelible: “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles” from Chapter 5, “How It Works” states the problem. Chapter 2, “There Is a Solution” lays out the remedy: “our very lives depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.” That qualifies as a spiritual awakening by any standard. The gateway to this transformation is the practice of the twelve steps, grounded in personal powerlessness and a decision to “turn our will and our lives to the care of God”, as we understand Him.

As it happens, the original printer’s proof of the Big Book, heavily laden with Bill Wilson’s handwritten edits, is pending auction², poised to fetch up to $3 million. The Maine Antique Digest³, June 2017 issue says that the Big Book “must rank as one of the most successful examples of writing by committee ever, and the manuscript is the evidence.” … “Equally important, the manuscript shows how the Big Book, and as a result AA itself, moved away from specifically Christian references. That decision has made it possible for the book and the program to be embraced not only by agnostics and atheists but by a multitude of religions throughout the world.”

The case must be made that the Big Book’s writing committee is still engaged. The steps are “but suggestions.” We are thus coauthors and, perhaps, “the only Big Book someone in need will ever meet”. The book was edited against the fetters of the mid-20^th century that to a considerable degree had already shackled Christianity to conform to narrow social, economic, political and economic strictures. Today, alcoholism is counted as only one among many destructive addictions, and post-traumatic stress disorder is being applied to an expanding array of conditions. There is no shortage of suffering in the world. Though the Big Book’s language is archaic, its principles, especially that of inclusiveness, endure: AA and its many twelve-step progeny are ready, “whenever anyone reaches out for help.” We invite others to share in our recovery, and do not impose our paths upon anyone, under any condition.

Although Christianity was formally edited out of the Big Book, the twelve-step’s spiritual principles lead, as all spiritual principles must, to a clear recognition of Christ’s constant invitations to follow Him. His quiet provocations fill the gospels. This year, during the course of an extended retreat³ and under the patient guidance of my director, I came to recognize, reflect upon and respond to Christ’s persistent, ingenious and sometimes bewildering bids to serve Him, aligning my gifts and graces to abate the world’s losses and grief. We needn’t be heroic, merely genuine and generous.

Christ shows us that we are not in a contest of wills with the Father, but engaged in a loving collaboration with Him to bring healing, justice and peace to all. As recovering servants, the provenance of our broken selves, the flawed “press proofs” of our lives are rehashed and amended by grace. Now, within our pages, we carry messages of faith and hope, and evidence of God’s mercy and love. We are, ourselves, Big Books, open invitations to others in hope of healing.

-Martin M.

1 Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., Fourth Edition, 2001

²AA World Services went to court in May 2017 to block the sale at auction of the original printers proof with Bill Wilson’s handwritten edits, triggering blowback from some AA members and unwelcome media controversy. A hearing was scheduled for August 2, 2017 and the outcome of the suit is not yet determined. new york state supreme court, new york county, no. 652676/2017

³ Maine Antique Digest, Waldeboro ME, 2017

⁴Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, 19^th Annotation

Prayer and Meditation

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 01:36:38 GMT

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.” -Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 11

Maintaining a regular time of prayer and meditation can be difficult. I’ve been in ordained ministry for twenty-five years, yet I’ve got a confession to make: I have always struggled with my devotional life. Prayer and meditation have never come easy for me. It wasn’t that the desire wasn’t there; I really did want to spend time with God on a regular basis, and get to know him better. And I certainly felt the yearning in my heart to do so. What was missing was the discipline, the follow-through to actually do it.

Perhaps you’ve felt challenged in this area of your recovery as well. I’ve had people tell me they don’t know what to say to God when praying or how to actually go about meditating. As Anglican Christians, we are blessed with a rich resource to assist us in making our own ‘quiet time’ more meaningful: The Daily Office in the The Book of Common Prayer. Nearly 500 years ago, in 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer introduced this new book of liturgies, psalms and prayers to the Church of England. Cranmer greatly admired the piety of monks and nuns whose daily lives revolved around prayer, reflection and service. In these religious communities prayers were said up to seven times each day; Cranmer realized that it was probably unrealistic to expect the majority of the faithful to keep such a rigorous schedule. So the Archbishop endeavored to distill these seven prayer times into four daily “offices,” or “duties.” (from the Latin, officium)

Find a Prayer Book and turn to page 136. There you’ll find “Daily Devotions for Children and Families.” You’ll see that there are readings and prayers for Morning, Noon, Early Evening, and at the Close of Day. You don’t have to say them all each day; if your schedule works better to begin your prayers at noon, then start there. Perhaps evening, after supper, is a time when you have some extra moments to spend with God. The point is to build some time into each day when you can slow down and take a ‘sacred pause’, giving thanks to God for the strength he’s given you to stay clean and sober, and reminding yourself of the myriad of ways he’s blessed you. St. Clement of Alexandria once defined prayer as “keeping company with God.” That’s all we have to do; simply show up with an open heart and mind, expecting that our time spent in God’s presence will change us and give us strength for whatever challenges lay ahead. Daily prayer and meditation are spiritual disciplines; in our culture the word “discipline” is sometimes viewed negatively, usually thought of as some sort of punishment. But discipline has a good side, too; and it is through consistent disciplines such as these that Godly character is formed in us. St. Paul writes:

“…we glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:4)

Those of us who have struggled with addiction have had enough of suffering; now is the time to build, slowly but surely, one step and one day at a time, a new life of freedom.

Father Richard

Sue

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 22:51:59 GMT

One doesn’t need to be in the rooms very long to hear discussions about sponsorship. An alert participant will comment that “sponsorship” is not in the first 164 pages of the Big Book. That is true in a literal sense; the connection of the two founding members of the fellowship is sponsorship without the label. One of the gifts I have received from a life in recovery is the blessing of a sponsor. Not only did my sponsor walk me lovingly but firmly through the steps, but Sue also was extremely active in service. Twelve step calls to other women, participating in workshops, assemblies, and district meetings, and serving on committees were common place with Sue’s sponsees. Taking a meeting to the local jail or treatment facility was expected and part of our responsibility to help others as well as maintain our own recovery.

Sue was a meeting maker. She was a fixture in the rooms with her needlework and welcoming smile. She shared from the Book, from her experience, strength, and hope that was always rooted in the steps, the traditions, and the concepts. If you wanted what she had, you had to be willing to do the work. Her spiritual connection was obvious to anyone who met her. It attracted women, new (and not so new) in sobriety, to Sue’s sponsorship. Sponsor and sponsored meet as two alcoholics – neither one better or worse than the other. It was hard to feel in her league, though. Sue’s grace made it appear as if she held the key to a spiritual life. And she did – just like the rest of us – she lived one day at a time.

After almost three decades of sobriety, Sue passed on recently. As my son said, “God lent Miss Sue to us for a long time. It was time for her to go home.” What wisdom! My life is dramatically different today because Sue shared her recovery with me. Knowing it was a selfless gift, I cannot ignore the lesson she imparted to me. Am I giving my recovery to others in the same fashion? Do I sponsor in the same selfless way? I must admit the answer is “not to Sue’s example.” I have work to do.

If this kind of sponsorship is something you desire but have not experienced yet, step out of your comfort zone and look for the “Sue” in your home group. He or she is there; you will recognize them because they have what you’ve been looking for. It’s yours for the asking.

and Godspeed Sue ...

FHS,
L.

Freedom

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 02:20:38 GMT

The experience of AA is one that is powerful, life changing, and freeing. Before I joined AA I had spent many years drinking and about a month sober - but I was lost. I knew I shouldn't drink because I was an alcoholic, but I didn't know how to live my life as a sober person. I felt alone-wandering angrily through sobriety with a chip on my shoulder that I couldn't drink like everyone else in the world seemed to.

Enter AA. I met people like me. I started to open up and share my story. People told me that they learned things from what I said just as I had learned from them. I felt the power of a community of people who got what I was going through but pushed me to work a program that would get me out of my "why me?" mentality and into a fulfilling and satisfying life.

I worked the steps with a sponsor. I surrendered. I did my inventory. I shared my past and acknowledged my defects. I prayed to have them lifted. I made amends. I started to understand freedom in a way that I never understood it before. I had been living shackled in fear, shame, guilt, and sadness. But I gave it all up to my Higher Power and learned what it is for my soul to feel lighter ... and I learned how to "keep my side of the street clean."

Every day brings fresh challenges. I pray for guidance on the "next right thing" multiple times a day. And I get answers, believe it or not. They come relatively effortlessly... like a whisper of wisdom in my mind.

Freedom in surrender is a strange concept for some but to me it has come naturally. I surrender my will and my life to my Higher Power and find empowerment in the steps I take as a result. The next right thing.

I pray that those still struggling will know this freedom one day. I never knew it possible but I am living proof of the power of a program and community like AA. It has given me back my life.

-Mindy M

Listen to Him! – Transfigured by Grace

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 03:17:54 GMT

Some years ago, a priest colleague of mine began a sermon on the Transfiguration by asking: “Can you think of a time when you knew that you were in the presence of something Holy? Something Holy that had something to say to you?”

As I mark the annual miracle of my daily deliverance from active addiction, I, along with the cloud of witnesses who have been transfigured by the grace that is recovery, can answer my friend’s questions with a resounding “Yes!” And “Yes!” Because, as I have learned, this was a scriptural way of stating the second step: “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

In the early months of recovering from a devastating and humiliating bottom, I set myself (sic!) the task of trying to make things right. And then, at a meeting, I heard a fellow priest declare, “I have always believed in God. I was just never sure that God believed in me.” Boom! He was telling my story. Maybe the Holy did have something to say to me. Now. In my brokenness.

I was the dutiful child of a certain type of puritanical Scandinavian works-righteousness piety. In a nutshell, it was up to me to live with such rectitude that God would find me acceptable; that I would, somehow, be found worthy of the grace of restoration, of sanity.

In other words, I was a follower of Peter. Impulsive, mouth-open-before-brain-is-fully-engaged Peter. Poor Peter, who never really got the “be still and know that I am God” business. Quick-draw Peter – a sort of apostolic action hero. Peter always seemed to be saying, “What am I supposed to do?” From leaping into the lake to offering to construct a booth, Peter’s initial response, like my own, was to engage in pious busyness.

Like Peter, I leapt into problem-solving mode quickly because it helped me make sense of the chaos. At least that’s what I told myself. It allowed me the illusion—the delusion—that I wasn’t really falling down the well. But, to be honest it was all about control. And, in trying to think myself into a solution (before anyone found out, I hoped), I was just building booths on the deck of my own spiritual Titanic.

My vocation is one of talking. For me, living into recovery has been largely about learning to listen. A huge step for me was to learn to ask for help. I knew that I didn’t have the answers to everything, but somehow I thought I was supposed to; that I didn’t, meant that I was weak and incompetent.

I was told that I had to ask for help. And, perhaps more importantly, I had to listen to what people said. “Maybe that’s not the best idea you’ve ever come up with.” “This is what’s worked for me.” “You’re looking really peaceful these days!” And slowly, one day at a time, my life of activity with spiritual overtones is growing into a spiritual plan of action. First, always, I have to listen.

God’s imperative, “Listen to Him!” means to listen not only to his words, but also to his life. A life of the Holy coming down, all the way down, into the depths of my addiction, my brokenness, and my fear. In traveling to the cross, to the grave, and through the grave, Christ embraces and redeems all that is hard, difficult, and even despicable in life, in order to wrest life from death itself! Recovery is always possible.

If you wanted to construct a story about standing at a turning point, complete with an overpowering spiritual awakening, you needn’t look beyond the Transfiguration. For me, this year, the Gospel story is not so much about the vision of a dazzling Jesus, or of the presence of Moses and Elijah, or even of the ever-busy Peter. It is, today, about hearing the Holy who has something to say to me – to us. And then today, and each today that follows… listen.

Paul J.
August 2017

We Talk

Thu, 27 Jul 2017 02:03:27 GMT

Eight a.m. of a Sunday morning isn’t all that early, but allowing for the preliminaries of the AA Preamble, How It Works, newcomer and visitor introductions and anniversary coins, Change or Die (Change and Live) is infamous for stretching the limits of “you’re never late for a meeting”. By its end, as many as eighty will hold hands to chant, “Keep coming back…” but, as Kristen opened the meeting, she faced a sparse gathering. Kristen is settled in long-term sobriety and flourishes in the Big Book’s promises. Her talk was not crafted or rehearsed, but a sincere, impromptu display of the “Language of the Heart.”

She spoke so spontaneously, I almost missed her take-away line: “I’m Kristin, my sobriety date is this date on that year, and my sponsor is the delightful Marielle. We talk.” For the next twelve minutes, Kristen described minor and major miracles that comprise her days and frame her life, but for much of the meeting, I savored, then waded and plunged into her pithy, powerful declaration: “We talk.”

“We talk” animates every aspect of all our recoveries as we navigate the bridge back to life.

From the beginning, “we talk” – speak and listen – at meetings. We hear our own stories as others tell theirs; we see ourselves in their descent, collapse and rising. We hear our anguish, identify our defeats, and recognize our healing in one another’s words. And when we do talk, we attempt our new, now true voices. Talking with our sponsor, we try, test and gain a capacity for trust. Grudgingly at first, but over time our need for self-honesty wins out. In the 5^th step, we talk and gateways open to transparency and intimacy within ourselves, and toward others and God.

“We talk.” Colloquy, dialogue with the divine, is a tradition in every faith. Mother Theresa, whose spirituality spanned every creed and culture, was asked what she said in her prayers, “Nothing, I just listen to God.” And what does God say? “Nothing, he just listens to me.” Our listening speaks volumes and invites our outpourings. Present in the Presence, we talk.

We talk and we grow in understanding, sympathy, empathy and compassion, so that by the 9^th step, we are ready for authentic amends. We talk with – not to or at, but nakedly address the trifling or tragic ruptures with those who have been bruised by our attitudes and behaviors. We face the “damaging emotional conflicts, violent twists which have discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worse.¹ We find the words, the gestures, and reparations tailored to both our offense and the vulnerability of those we have wounded.

As we continue in our recovery, we talk to sustain relationships, no longer imposing “unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.”² We are capable of forming “true partnership with another human being”³. As we “move out from ourselves, toward others, and toward God”⁴, we talk… to help, to heal, to hope… “we talk.”

Martin

¹ Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services, 1952, Step Eight, pp 79-80
² Ibid, Step Seven, p 76; ³ Ibid, Step Four, p 53; ⁴ Ibid, Step Seven, p 76

Opening the Doors

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 01:22:45 GMT

The Promises that appear in the Big Book after Step Nine are presented as a payoff from the work done in the preceding steps. That effort includes an inventory, admission of character defects, and righting wrongs to the best of our ability. Recently, I have witnessed several heartbreaking events that resulted from not conducting a thorough review or not facing character defects. Each time, the phrases “We will not regret the past…” and “…we will see how our experience can benefit others” were running through my head because they were not true for the individuals that were hurting. I had to stop and review why they were for me.

My late sponsor, Janie, saved me from myself by pushing me through the first nine steps. The fear of opening the door on the wreckage of my past almost killed me. Those doors held back shame, guilt, humiliation, degradation, and every secret I drank away. They also held me hostage, endangering my very fragile sobriety. And yet I desperately wanted what she had, so onward we marched! She cared more about my sobriety than my feelings. We stuck to a firm schedule until I had completed the step through my first round of amends in Step Nine. It was years later before I understood completely the necessity of not setting up camp in the wreckage but going through to recovery.

The chapter in the Big Book where these Promises appear is aptly named “Into Action.” Opening the doors on my past brought sunlight to a place where there had only been darkness. For me, it was the beginning of a healing process that accompanied my recovery even today. At the age of 20, I entered the rooms motivated only to stop the overt death spiral my life had become and had no belief that recovery was possible.

The Promises did come true and have become more of a constant companion to me instead of a fleeting moment. It has taken work, trust, faith, hope, prayer, and time to lose the feelings of regret. It is a gift from God and the steps that my past does not continue to create tragic stories for me. I am not haunted by the wreckage of my drinking or the mistakes from my 27 years of sobriety. I use the tools in the steps to make necessary course corrections immediately. That was Janie’s gift to me, and my gift to others I meet along the way.

So, if you are holding back, not quite ready to “Clear away the wreckage of your past,” consider that we are with you in the “Fellowship of the Spirit.” You are not alone!

FHS, L

Freedom

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 22:39:22 GMT

As we celebrate Independence Day, I have encountered the words, “Freedom isn’t free.” How true that is to me in my recovery. There was some work I had to do in this world to get me back to where I could live freely. I had to make some conscious decisions that I would go to any lengths to get my freedom.

At the point that I had gotten in my alcoholism, I really didn’t have a problem admitting that I was powerless over alcohol. I had grown up in the church, so again it was not a far stretch for me to believe that God could restore me to sanity. But turning my life and my will over to God, well that didn’t sound very much like freedom. In my head, I felt that I had already done that. I went to church. I gave when the offering plate was passed. You know, I was “giving” of my life to God. In my heart, however, I knew that this was not the case. As I worked the steps with my sponsor, I pretty much went right to step three. With my lips I said the words, but my ego would not let go. My sponsor left me a copy of the third step prayer and I read it. I could identify with the principle and I had the desire, but not that last little bit of will power, you know freewill. It was an example of saying, “Let go and let God,” and then taking back the reins to my life after about five or ten minutes.

As the days progressed, I found that I could let go for longer and longer periods of time. In evening prayers, as I recounted the days that I was able to do this, I had been happier. A low level headache that had been my norm, disappeared and I was frequently less irritable. I was able to see progress in my recovery, my life became more manageable. When praying, I could honestly thank God for taking away the obsessions that had plagued my life. I was in a word, happier.

What I have found is that while “Freedom is not free,” God’s Love is. Somewhere in my surrendering, I experienced an entirely different level of God’s mercy and Grace. The progress that I have made has not come without cost, nor has it been easy, but it has been simple. I have found that by regularly offering myself to God and submitting to His will, I am better able to discern what is His and what is mine. Retrospectively, the lengths that I have gone to achieve this freedom don’t seem that arduous, and it is worth so much more than the cost.

-Chad

Veneer

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 00:42:24 GMT

Our friend was approaching end-stage alcoholism: dehydration, extreme weight loss, malnutrition, and bouts of delirium tremens. Then in her weakened state, she fell and broke her foot, injured her shoulder, and sustained lacerations – deep purple hematomas swelled beneath her skin. Even so, patched and propped up in an armchair, she defiantly refused treatment. “No!” to the hospital ER and detox; a vehement “No!!” to rehab; and at the last resort, a mute, dismissive smirk to a bit of egg, a bite of toast. Some hours later, a counselor briefed her family on an array of worst case scenarios, with only a hairline allowance for grace to intervene – a margin we know to be more than enough. That’s why we pray for it.

The details are now sketchy and in any case, no litany of them could explain grace’s workings. But, providence shimmered and our warrior painfully breathed a “yes” that sped her to the hospital for primary treatment, and from there to detox and the senior unit at a well-regarded rehab for a six-week program of recognition, acceptance and, hopefully, eventual recovery – one day at a time.

Her husband of many years is, himself, in the throes of retiring from retirement – choosing a setting for their independent living, then advancing through assisted and nursing care under his own life’s end- game arrangements. He is her elder by a fair margin and it has always been assumed that he would “precede her in death”. Perhaps so; perhaps not. Addiction is no respecter of plans and dreams.

Recovery from anything implies a gateway to something else. As we recover from our addictions, we encounter ourselves and all the hurts we’ve accumulated inside. We have been wounded “too much, too often and too long” – our heroine’s own words at the depth of her demise and further proof that at its essence, recovery is an inside job. As raw apprentices, we take up the twelve steps, tools to strip the veneer of our personas, our crafted identities, our layered coats of avoidances and pretense and coping– clumsy or sophisticated, awkward or artful. We scrape and sand to arrive at the natural grain of our timber, its rings, fibers and resin. We discover, too, that we’re not the only tree in the forest and that if we are all to somehow thrive in the grove of marriage and family, we must all grow together. It may come as a shock to co-dependent “others” that they also must take the rasp to their painted strata, their cosmetic devices. At any age and in every time, the only way to recover, share and cultivate our authentic selves is to expose the heft and color and grain and texture of ourselves to each other and to our God as we encounter him. Lignum Vitae: the Wood of Life

Ultimately, it is in peeling away the glaze of self and our mirrored affects that we engage, as never before, God as the author of creation, the artist of our creation, whose only desire is for us to recover our lives in the embrace of his animating love.

-Martin McE.

Double Down Into Another New Day!

Thu, 25 May 2017 00:46:17 GMT

“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.” Philippians 3:12-14, The Message

By the Grace of God, and this fellowship of recovering souls, I gave thanks for 20 years of recovering life yesterday, May 23. On this day, I always hold the promise before me that states “we will not forget the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” So I remember looking out the window of my room in the rehab facility that first morning of May 24. I remember still being unable to not stop sobbing uncontrollably about what had happened, what I had done to my family and myself, and the certainty that all I had worked for so long would be ruined from this day onward. I remember looking at my intake photo – bloated, red-faced from blood pressure numbers through the roof, bleary eyed, and hopeless. I have since shredded the intake photo, but it is and will be ingrained in my soul’s hard drive, and with gratefulness.

I had no expectation of making 20 days without alcohol, let alone 20 weeks, or 20 months. Yet now, by working the program of recovery physically, mentally, and spiritually, by giving away what I have to help the other wounded ones coming in those doors, I gratefully stand with 20 years sober living. While still basking in this double digit marker in this recovering life, I am quickly grounded by “Trucker Jay,” my dear friend and companion at our home group meeting. Bright and early we gather, 7 a.m. each day, coffee with friends, and much, much more. While many in the room offered handclaps and handshakes in congratulations yesterday, “Trucker Jay” looked me in the eye with his semi-perpetual scowl and said, “Yeah, yeah, BIG whoop! You got another day like the kid that just walked in the room today. Go help him with what you have been given. Double it down, &*$*%#” Jay is a truck driver, so you can fill in his closing word. It is pretty much the same words every year of the almost 10 years as part of this home group. Yet there is always this slight wry smile and twinkle in his eye that says, “Good working it! I’m proud and happy for you.”

This is the gift of the recovering community for me. We celebrate, we give thanks, and then we double down into another new day! As I come to the end of my service in full-time ministry to the parish I serve now, and those I have served for 25 years, I am grateful that over three-fourths of my work life in ministry has been living the recovering life. Perhaps some of the gifts of the Twelve Steps, of the deep and profound friendships and fellowship of the recovering communities I have been a part, might inspire others no in the rooms to live into and serve out of the greatest gift of Love for all. For we all are recovering from something, day by day.

Grateful always, in peace

Paul G.+

Rising Through a Mirror Darkly.

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 23:27:39 GMT

1)   Admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2)   Came to believe that a power greater than us could restore us to sanity.
3)   Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

I am writing this blog post on Monday of Holy Week and I am more aware than usual how fortunate those in 12 step programs are to live in a quite incarnate way the mystery of the cross and resurrection. Very few people can claim to have suffered in exactly the same way as those who’ve found their way to the rooms; very few can know so fully the power of resurrection that occurs through fully embracing the cross of addiction. This is true across the board, whether for those in Alcoholics Anonymous or those in any number of other programs that have arisen in the shadow of AA using the same 12 steps. It doesn’t seem to matter what one’s difficulty or addiction might have been; those who come to the 12 steps and take them seriously are those who’ve confronted the stark and inescapable cross of their own powerlessness.

Christ, too, knew powerlessness. When he asked the night before his death that the Father might take his lot from him, he knew powerlessness of the sort that those who’ve come to the end of their suffering in addiction and compulsion know well. In his passion and crucifixion and death, Jesus knew the kind of soul wrenching terror of those who know they cannot continue living as they have, that something will need to die if they are to go on living.

Did Christ come literally to believe that God would restore him to life in the resurrection? We don’t know, though we do know that Jesus seems to have had complete faith in the Father till the end of his earthly life. We do know that he completely turned his will and his life over to the care of God from the cross when he prayed, just before dying, “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.”

Jesus rose from the dead after a process that very nearly mirrors the first three steps of the 12 step program. It is often said by persons who have longtime experience in a 12 step program that the first three steps are the only ones that can be completely taken and that they are the primary ones that keep individuals in recovery on a day to day basis.

For those in 12 step programs who are also Christians, there is great solace in knowing and understanding that the recovery process so closely patterns itself after the central mysteries of the faith. The path of loss and recovery that those in 12 step programs tread is the same path taken by Jesus. It is not uncommon to hear Christians state that “WE ARE AN EASTER PEOPLE!” Perhaps this is no more evident than in those lives that have sought and found recovery through the 12 steps.

Recovering Truth

Thu, 13 Apr 2017 02:28:50 GMT

Jesus answered, “…I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“’What is truth?’ Pilate asked.”¹ Pilate dithered between his own certitude and the Jews’ insistence that Jesus die. Jerusalem was jam-packed on this high holy day and, for the Roman governor of this volatile hell-hole, it was easier to snuff out one life than quash an uprising, so in the end, Pilate set aside the truth and caved. On that day, no one listened to Jesus, heeding instead the imperatives of self-preservation and privilege. Ouch – a little close to home for a recovering drunk like me.

Truth is incidental to addicts and alcoholics, sometimes expendable entirely. Truth interferes with our addictions and the ideas and attitudes and behaviors that sustain them. Truth is our addictions’ enemy, which is why “rigorous honesty” plays so prominently in recovery: “Those who do not recover are …usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. … They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a way of life which demands rigorous honesty.”²

In isolation, we reinforce and exaggerate the lies we tell ourselves, the lies that excuse our addictions and demand our manipulations to feed them; lies that affirm our delusions that we are “fine”, repelling any impulse to seek help and dismissing every hope of a way out. We recover the truth together, because when we are lost in ourselves, the truth doesn’t stand a chance – Pilate knew this and so did the Jews. Alone with our fears, facing a drink, we are swept into darkness.

“Martin, if you’re talking to yourself, you’re talking to the wrong guy.” Early on, my sponsor explained this simple fact of recovery. It stuck, though it was years before it penetrated the armor of my self-sufficiency. In time, talking with friends in recovery, I began to open up and began recognizing, then listening for Jesus. As I continue to engage intimates in recovery, the truth of my venality and self-centeredness, the truth of my fears and resentments, the truth of my innate gifts and swelling graces are revealed.

“I am the heart of Christ…The self of you becomes itself in me. …Pray to me. Few words need be said.”³

“What is the truth?” In the words and actions of people who are not only regaining sobriety, but reclaiming grace, we learn to listen for Jesus. In prayer and meditation (Step 11), through scripture, tradition and reason, and in the silence of our hearts, we learn to listen for Jesus. It is in his “experience strength and hope” that we learn the truth. In him, we learn to live in the truth. -Martin McE.

¹  John 19:37-38, NIV
²  Alcoholics Anonymous [Big Book] GSO World Services, Fourth Edition 2013
³  I Am the Heart of Christ, George Gaston

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 01:39:06 GMT

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Seen on a poster on the office wall of a Crisis Counselor.

I had believed the trauma of my childhood, the nightmare of living with a continually drunk alcoholic stepfather for several years were far behind me. In fact, I sometimes wondered if

I had been affected at all.

Then one night as I shared some of the crises our family was experiencing with my small church group one of the members spoke privately with me as the meeting ended. “It sounds like you have a high tolerance for inappropriate behavior. I’ve come to see that as one of the symptoms of adult children of alcoholics. I go to an ‘al anon’ group for adult children on Monday nights and you’re welcome to come with me.”

“High tolerance”? that sounded like a compliment. It took time for me to hear the ‘inappropriate behavior’ part of what she said. In the days to follow I became aware that my understanding of appropriate and inappropriate behavior was very limited and I couldn’t/didn’t often make the distinction. My need to know and my desire to control and fix things motivated my decision to accept her offer. The following week I attended my first meeting.

Attending ‘Al Anon’ meetings and working the 12 Steps became part of my weekly schedule.

There were days when I felt elated and liberated but there were times when my childhood terrors, fears and shame began to surface and I felt panic stricken. When my stepfather left I was 9 years old and my mother said “that chapter in our book is closed.” We didn’t talk about him. As I attended my first few meetings listening to each person share their experience, strength and hope, I was amazed as I heard my own unvoiced thoughts and feelings being expressed.

If it’s true that “we can’t heal what we can’t feel”, it is also true that we can’t heal what we don’t remember. Memories that I had been able to bury for most of my forty-something years began surfacing – it was liberating and frightening. It sometimes felt like a light going on. At other times it felt overwhelming. Moving away from denial to honest self-disclosure felt very awkward. However, staying with the program helped me to come to terms with my past, understand the effects of childhood trauma and begin to get acquainted with my real self.

My big question, as I reconnected with my inner child, was why my alcoholic stepfather was so angry with me. The answer my sponsor gave me – “He was an alcoholic. His anger had nothing to do with you. You just happened to be there. The anger was in him.” That acknowledgement and assurance marked the beginning of my recovery. My denial came to an end and I began the hard work of recovery. Ernie Larson says, “If we hang on to anger for more than 10 seconds it becomes a resentment. A resentment is a poison we take to hurt someone else.” Today I’m thankful to have traded my resentment of my stepfather for compassion.

Today I know that life is for growing - mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I believe, too, that working the 12 Steps of AA is a daily guide to help us grow and heal.

-Anonymous

Falling Well

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 01:51:50 GMT

I tripped this morning while running and fell. I run almost every morning (it's an addictive behavior with far more positive benefits and risky side effects) and sometimes toward the end of a run, I'm fatigued and not as careful picking up my feet.

I was almost home, just a block away and running in the middle of our narrow residential street, where the road is smooth and flat. I saw one of my neighbor's car headed my way so I veered toward the sidewalk. My toe caught momentarily on the lip of the curb and I pitched forward.

A runner's forward momentum makes it nearly impossible to avoid a fall at that point. I've done it many times in the past, scraping knees, calves and even breaking a pair of glasses once. This time was different. I fell well.

Many years ago I took karate briefly and one of the things we had to learn to do is fall well so as to avoid injury. This morning, for some reason, I remembered to twist my torso so that I landed at an angle which allowed me to "roll" through the fall. I bounced right back up with no damage. My neighbor slowed down to make sure I was okay and saw me sprint right off, no worse for wear.

As a recovering sexaholic, I have had to learn to fall well in my progressive victory over lust. Unlike a recovering alcoholic who can avoid bars or liquor stores, I can't ever leave my brain behind, so I have to be vigilant about things that trigger me, such as an attractive jogger, or any number of provocative images in media. So I know that I'm going to be triggered constantly: taking that second glance, or wanting to click on a pop-up on my smartphone screen. I will trip, but now I am more aware and astute of falling well and resuming life after I've tripped up.

I know that I will never be free of lust and its constant allure, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to trip me up. But when it does, my Higher Power and program of recovery remind me how to fall well.

Scott

Sanctuary Hour

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 02:18:52 GMT

I often joke when I speak at a meeting that God brought me to recovery and recovery brought me to God. But it is my absolute truth. As we wind our way through Epiphany this year I have been so conscious of the influence of the Program in my life as an Episcopalian and now as a seminarian. It seems like every encounter with scripture, every sermon I hear and encounters with others I have are enriched by the gift of the Twelve Steps in my life.

This is especially true, as we have encountered Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew over the past few weeks. The counterintuitive nature of the Beatitudes, where high is low and low is high, poor is rich and rich is poor, where humility is celebrated, and death is transformed into life, punctuates for me the radically transformative nature of surrendering to win that I have been shown so dramatically in my own recovery. Sobriety is not only transformative; it is God’s gift of new life each precious day.

I don’t think I have ever been so grateful for the “rooms of recovery” and for our Traditions and singleness of purpose. Being in a meeting is safe harbor for us. With the current turmoil in the U.S. and the caustic rhetoric that seems to have invaded every corner of living, being “in the rooms” has never been such precious sanctuary as it is right now for me. It’s much the way that the apostle Paul describes who we are in Christ, “neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free”. When I am at a meeting, I can leave the pervasiveness of politics, political partisanship and differences in viewpoint at the door. They will be there waiting for me when I leave, but oftentimes I find that simply setting them aside for an hour allows me to once again bring the focus back to living out my faith and my recovery, with the help of my Higher Power.

And while I can find blessed peace and centering in a meeting, I am also so aware, perhaps more now than ever before, that my program is meant to be lived out in this crazy world. The road to happy destiny holds no promises of being without challenges. Thank you God for the Steps and my companions along the way!

-Sandi A.

Stay Weak!

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 03:30:47 GMT

At my weekly AA gathering it is customary, after hearing the daily readings and instructions for our time together, to go around the circle and introduce ourselves and share our experiences and/or reflections on the literature, etc. This is pretty much standard practice in most meetings, I suppose. Last week I especially noticed how many participants began their allotted time by saying something like: “my name is _______ , and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic, and thankful to be at a meeting tonight…”

Grateful. Thankful. What important words these are. Even more, what an important attitude. The Psalmist encourages and challenges us to offer gratitude and thanksgiving to God in every situation: “I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” (Psalm 34:1) St. Paul advises the congregation in Ephesus: “Do not get drunk with wine… but be filled with the Spirit…giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:18-20)

And the apostle Pauls’ parting words in his first letter to the Thessalonian believers seem to settle the matter: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18)

At all times? For everything?

This has indeed been a struggle for me as I continue in recovery. What am I to do with all the wasted years given over to addiction, when my life, it seemed, was spinning out of control? Should I be thankful for all the grief and loss my family and I have endured in the past? And what about the present? Should I be grateful when there is a temptation to relapse? Should my first response to challenging circumstances like these really be to simply give thanks, or to fight- to make holy war on the disease that has robbed me of so much? I must confess my first inclination is to fight.

Here’s where Step One of the AA Twelve Steps can be a source of wisdom and encouragement to us:

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Power-less.

I have a pastor friend, a mentor, whom I’ve known for over thirty years. He concludes all his letters to me not with a “sincerely yours” or “be blessed!” but with the command, “stay weak!” This is truth that is counterintuitive; none of us wants to be weak. We want to be capable, self-reliant, powerful, certainly not weak. Yet this is exactly what Christ became:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

Father Richard Rohr, in his thoughtful book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, observes: “What humiliated and wounded addict cannot look on the image of the crucified Jesus and see himself or herself? Who would not rush toward surrender and communion with such a crucified God, who against all expectations, shares in our powerlessness, our failure, and our indignity? Who would not find himself revealed, renamed, and released inside of such a God?”

A suffering Savior? Inconceivable to the first-century mind. A scandal, and utter foolishness to most, says St. Paul; the majority prefer their deity to be invulnerable, powerful.

Yet those of us who have been slaves to addiction are continually invited to fall into the arms of the one who himself became a slave; the one who gladly gave up his privilege and position in order to forever redeem us from the powers of sin and death – and addiction.

I’m convinced, too, that giving thanks and daring to rejoice in our powerlessness is a spiritual discipline. It’s a valuable thing to go around the circle at meetings and echo the words “I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic…” It’s like the words of the liturgy; you hear it, and repeat it enough times and eventually it seeps down into your soul and ultimately you believe it. This is important work. Gratitude is an attitude, yes; but it’s also something we must practice. If you really want to learn something, you practice. As a musician, I know this. Scales and arpeggios. Arpeggios and scales. Played over and over until they become a part of you, until they are literally hardwired. Continually acknowledging God’s care for us and his presence, even in the midst of our pain, reminds us that we are not alone in our struggles. Moreover, giving thanks also reminds us that even the most hopeless circumstances and wounds are redeemable, and can be occasions for grace. Julian of Norwich wrote:

“First the fall. Then the recovery from the fall. And both are the mercy of God.”

Be grateful. Give thanks. It won’t always be easy.

And stay weak!

Fr. Richard W.
Goshen, Indiana

Conversion and Hope

Thu, 26 Jan 2017 01:22:25 GMT

Today the Church marks the Conversion of St Paul. Today also marks my 25^th anniversary of sobriety. I certainly didn’t plan to be converted on January 25, or any other day, for that matter. But there are some interesting similarities when one sets aside the old way of life and picks up the mantle of a new one.

I doubt I ever would have awakened one day to decide I’d call anyone or anything to ask for help. Yet people who knew me began to hear of my deteriorating life, and they were wise enough to know that an intervention was mandatory if my life was to be spared.

I don’t know how much Saul might have been looking for a conversion on the Road to Damascus. For us today, perhaps it doesn’t matter that much. Something was working inside him, and he was open to a sudden or radical conversion.

For someone who drank every day for 20 years, the idea of staying sober for a day was about as radical as can be. To me, the idea of becoming a non-drinker was more than a conversion, it was an impossibility.

But our God is a God of surprises and there is no question He was working on a big surprise that day. My first night in treatment, a kind, older, wizened woman told me I didn’t have to drink tonight. And it was obvious I wouldn’t find a drink anywhere in a treatment center. She also told me I didn’t have to give up drinking forever, just for today was enough.

I find sometimes the smallest thing can start the conversion. It might be a burning bush, but more likely God messes around with things much more subtly. Living with the questions and recalling that we do not hope for that which we can see. Once we see it, there’s no need to continue to hope.

My Church was newly meaningful to me in the midst of this conversion and it was a safe haven, a refuge from my storm, and a place of hope. I am glad I had spent 40 years attending church every week and serving in a multitude of other ways.

Church was significant in my recovery as it welcomed me back in so many new ways. In 25 years, I see how this is the experience that many have after they begin recovery. Not all, but some. This alcoholic is grateful for all that God has done for me, and for all He has spared me.

What Paul received, he passed on. Conversion and hope is what I can pass on to others in recovery. I hope you can do so, too.

Gary G

"I Can't"

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 13:01:51 GMT

January is a month of new beginnings! It's that time of the year where we make resolutions and try something new. The name January actually comes from Janus, the Roman god of transition or beginnings. Janus is represented by two faces looking in opposite directions; the past and the future. Janus was also thought of as a gate, a doorway, or of passing time. In the spirit of Janus I begin the new year with working Step One of AA which has been about a new beginning for me!

Step One can be the beginning of a new way of life. This step is an honest statement about what our lives have become. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable". When I came to AA I was told that this was the only step I had to get right and that the rest of the steps were suggestions for a new way of living. During those first few months my mind was in such a mess. I knew that my life was unmanageable. In my confused state, many told me to focus on the word "WE". "We" is the first word in Step One and I believe it is for a reason. It means we are not alone. I had felt alone for so long that I hung on to the word "WE" for dear life, leaning on others and listening to their stories. I learned to identify with people and to quit comparing. When I saw myself in others I began to see that we were connected, that we needed each other. We were never meant to see ourselves as alone. Was this really what Step One stood for or was there more?

As part of working Step One, it was suggested that I look up the words powerless and unmanageable to make sure I knew what these words meant. It gradually dawned on me that these words were about giving up. I knew from listening to talk in the rooms that I was supposed to surrender, but who wants to admit defeat? What was I surrendering to? I knew it was supposed to be God, but even though I grew up in the church, I really didn't know God yet. I began to keep a journal and to write about how these words were manifested in my life. Slowly I came to the conclusion that I gave my power away out of fear. I tried too hard to be strong when letting go was all I needed to. "When I am weak God is strong", but I wasn't there yet. I was not able to see that I didn't need to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I was trying to do God's job. I went through the rest of the steps as suggested to the best of my ability, but it wasn't till I started with a new sponsor after several years in the program that Step One took on a whole new dimension for me.

My new sponsor said to me one day that "I Can't" was a short version of Step One. When she said "I can't" a light bulb exploded in my brain! I immediately grasped what Step One was trying to reveal to me! It was that I can't fix the chaos around me and that I am powerless to fix almost everything. Realizing that "I can't" was probably the biggest epiphany of my spiritual journey in AA. It helped me to start letting go. I now could see the futility of what I have been trying to do all my life. To be honest I still sometimes try to slip back into my old habit of crazy thinking, trying to take over and fix things, but then my dis-ease reminds me it’s my Higher Power's job to take care of the universe and not mine! It is the small deaths daily to my ego that reveal my true self to me - the self that can be of service to others and not get stuck inside my head.

Step One continues to help me surrender and let go. The amount of time to let go depends on how much pain I want to deal with. Pain is a gift now instead of something I want to be free from. It is a warning sign. It usually means there is something wrong with my attitude or how I am looking at the world. I accept that pain and suffering are part of the human experience. Trying to escape pain is what led me to drink in the first place so accepting it has set me free. Today I have a new pair of glasses called AA. AA has helped me experience the world the way I feel God meant it to be for us. So today let January, a time of new beginnings, remind you that Step One is all about bringing you to a place of transition and transformation. May you experience it and you too finally let go.

Margaret D.

Carrying the Message

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 22:54:25 GMT

I recently had the coolest, most spiritual recovery experience I've had in quite a while!

One of our local meetings had four birthday celebrations, and although I don't normally go to that meeting (even though it's an awesome meeting), I went this particular night for the birthdays.

It was a huge meeting. I sat down and looked across the room and saw a lady who looked so familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew her from. It didn't seem like it was from our local meetings.

Towards the end of the meeting she shared that she had just gotten out of prison, and it clicked. She had been in the women's facility that we had been taking meetings into for the past year! She shared that although she had a year clean, someone told her it didn't count since she was in prison. My first thoughts were how awesome it was to see this lady in a meeting and that people CAN recover in prison, too! Plus, she was going to meetings there and now at a meeting on the outside!

She picked up a white key tag when they were handed out. After all of the anniversary medallions were given out, the chair of the meeting stands up and says, “We just happen to have another one year medallion. And yes, prison clean time counts, so come get your medallion!” It teared me up then, and still does, and gives me chills every time I think about it.

Out of the six panel members for the women's department of corrections, five of us were at the meeting that night. That is amazing in itself. I'm not saying God magically put all this together—her being there, us being there, the medallion—but it certainly was a special god moment for me, another spiritual awakening, more proof that taking meetings into prisons does make a difference.

So, here's a plug for being of service in this way. In our area there are facilities WANTING recovery meetings—but there are not enough willing people to take these meetings in. Why, I wonder? We have a big fellowship. The women's prison panel goes in twice a month. Wouldn't it be awesome to go every week??? Many of us got clean in a prison or treatment facility. I know I did, and being of service in this way (taking meetings into prisons and treatment facilities) is how I show my gratitude. I'm grateful that the opportunity came up for us to go in this women's prison, and that I just happened to be at the right place, at the right time (a Hospitals and Institutions learning day) to find out about it. I need to be of service for my recovery and this is a much needed and very rewarding way to give back to the fellowship that saved my life.

-Lucy O

Advent

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 02:59:41 GMT

Advent is observed by the church as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus. The word Advent comes from Latin word adventus which means"coming" or "arrival" and in Greek it is the word parousia which was used to describe the coming of a King or in this case about Christ's second coming. So with these meanings in mind it is for many Christians that Advent is the anticipation of Christ coming from these two perspectives of the ancient longing for the Messiah and being alert for His coming again. It is about expectant waiting and the hope coming into the world.

When I was a child I would get so excited during Advent about the preparations for Christmas: the presents, the tree, the decorations, wrapping paper and the wonderful scents in the air of balsam and pine and especially the rich and succulent food prepared by my Grandmother. The anticipation alone would keep me awake at night. I would get so excited and anxious that I also could not enjoy the days of Advent, because I would wish them away for Christmas! As I got older it was the anticipation of the people that would come and celebrate with us, usually some new boyfriend when I was teenager and young adult. My feelings were always about me and my expectations.

Growing up in a home with an active alcoholic Father and in a family that pretended that the problem did not exist was very hard, especially since I wanted my home life to be different, to be normal. Many holidays were about stepping around the elephant in the living room. This would make me dive further into my own thoughts and desires, to try and think a way out of what was in front of me. Part of my escapism was at church; the smell of incense, the brightly colored poinsettias, and the beautiful carols during the holidays! I loved them so much I would wrap the sights, fragrances, and sounds of the season around me like a beautiful multicolored quilt to protect me from the fear that was always on the edge of my horizon. I would be so tightly wrapped in anticipation that come Christmas Day all the excitement was gone and only disappointment was what I felt. This would usually come to a peak for me on Christmas Eve. This is when my family would meet at my Grandmother's for dinner and presents. It would end with midnight mass at our Episcopal church. In the dark cold night of Christmas Eve as I left church I would look at the stars and wonder why all my dreams and wishes did not come true. Why did God not stop my Father from drinking? I prayed to God that he would make my Father well. I wanted God to love me and save me from all the craziness of my life. What was I doing wrong? So Christmas Day would come and we were just back to a normal day and my same problems were still right in front of me. I couldn't see God's Love right in front of me, within me and all around me. I didn't know how to see God's infinite love because I had so many expectations and no hope.

All the hopelessness of crazy thinking led me to drinking. I began to see myself repeating history that I saw in my Father's drinking. It terrified me that I was becoming like him. However, I knew about AA and I knew there was a solution there. I had seen my Father's best friend become sober and his life change miraculously. At my end I knew I had lost everything that meant anything to me. I was on my knees in so much pain that the only way out was to give up. Surrender and defeat became my "gifts" that I had been looking for all those years ago as I struggled to find the baby Jesus that would come on Christmas and save me. Looking back. my life had been a continuous crazy kind of “Advent" as I lay in wait hoping for something or someone to rescue me from my life. I looked for salvation in people, places, and things and of course that did not work. I also didn't see I had a part to play in all of this. It was through the action of my surrender that my real Savior materialized before my eyes and I realized God had always been there waiting patiently on me. What a surprise! God celebrates Advent too! He waits patiently for us to give up!

It was eight and a half years ago that I finally gave up. I now believe Christmas comes to each of us when it is supposed to. It is the gift of dying before we die that saves us and helps us find our Messiah. I began to see Advent for what it truly is. It is a time of quiet expectation, not the expectation that is leading up to a resentment like most of our human expectations are, but a spiritual expectation where we know that God Loves us just the way we are and His grace is sufficient for us. We are made in the image of God, we see God in His examples of creation and soon one day we will all return to God as the very source we came from. While we are here in Advent let us be patient and full of hope in waiting and know that God is already here waiting just for us!

Margaret D.

Cast away the works of darkness

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 02:19:21 GMT

In 1992, as I was nearing my one year anniversary of sobriety, the season of Advent began. “Cast away the works of darkness” spoke to me in a new way that year, even though I had heard and sung that line for nearly 40 years. While the world around me moved into the darkest time of year, I was emerging from the darkest time of my life. Putting on the armor of light of recovery and the sanctuary of the Church was literally and figuratively meaningful.

Thomas Cranmer’s words about casting away the works of darkness was for me about shedding the darkness of 20 years of drinking, a darkness that was so familiar, yet so debilitating.

In detox and treatment, I learned that sobriety was going to require action on my part. Not difficult or stressful actions, but it was not going to be a passive undertaking. I’ve heard it said ‘I didn’t do a thing’ to acquire my sobriety. That’s not my experience.

If I show up for a meeting, I am taking action. If I ask someone to be my sponsor, I am taking action. If I go to lunch with a newcomer, I am taking action. If I meet a fellow alcoholic for coffee, I am taking action. If I pick up folks from a halfway house and take them to a meeting, I am taking action. Taking action is a way I put on the armor of light and experience God’s grace.

God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved, forgives us, enlightens us, and strengthens us. Only with those gifts from God do I continue to have the ability to cast away the works of darkness on a daily basis. For we know well that recovery is a daily reprieve, if we maintain our spiritual condition.

Until those last weeks and months before the bottom rose to meet me, I had never left the Episcopal Church. I believe that God missed me and came looking for me, through the action of friends who intervened, moving me to refuge and safety. Words came back to me from countless hymns. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, He tends and spares us, well our feeble frame he knows, God of grace and God of glory, I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true.

Together with what I was reading and hearing in treatment, I realized God was responsible for guiding me through the storm, keeping me alive and safe, when the course I was on was anything but. Tears of peace and joy streamed from my eyes one afternoon when I was overcome with that realization.

In retrospect, I realize it was in that moment I became conscious of contact with God, and I had the good fortune to feel the tears and be overcome with gratitude.

Advent reminds us that God has visited us. And God is coming again. Put on the armor of light, again today, and be blessed with another season of sobriety. Soon the season changes: the world is about to turn. The days get longer, the light moves closer, hope takes hold.

Gary G.

It's Not the Bottom, It's the Foundation

Thu, 24 Nov 2016 03:06:06 GMT

Okay, first off, I stole that title. It’s actually the headline from a recent blog post by the marketing guru Seth Godin.* My story does not relate to Seth’s story, it’s related to the headline itself.

About a month ago I had the pleasure of attending a talk by the Director of Community Relations from Hazeldon/Betty Ford, William Cope Moyers, a former crack addict and now a bestselling author. In his presentation he mentioned that when someone tells him that they had ‘hit bottom’ as a result of their addictive ways, he corrects them by saying, “The only real bottom is death.” In a Q&A following his talk, he unpacked the phrase to explain that while everyone has a different depth to which they have fallen, it’s not so deep that there is no way out. To describe a situation as a bottom means that there is no further depth to fall. Many of us who have lost friends and loved ones to addictive diseases know that whatever depth we have fallen to, it is not the ‘bottom’ that has taken so many others.

My personal journey into alcoholism has taken me to deep depths that have created feelings of grief and remorse for what I have lost and the hurt that I have caused loved ones that will last for the rest of my life.

My recovery has forced me to take 50 years of Christian formation and turn it upside-down. Most of what I studied was always through the filter of applying the lessons from scripture and the studies of theology to other people. People who needed help more than myself. How could I identify with those that needed these messages when I was, well, not perfect, but in complete control of my life? Wow. Talk about alcohol being cunning, baffling and powerful. I was the model of that sediment. I was not in control. In no way, shape or form.

I cannot, however, let my feelings and past failings get in the way of what God has laid in front of me, an incredible opportunity. This is where Seth Godin’s headline comes in. It’s a great metaphor.

The writings of Richard Rohr, with his plain and clear style, really spoke to me and forced me to look at life with a new set of filters. I could use my fall, to my depths, as a brand new starting point to not just rebuild a life, but to build a new life. One that can take the strengths and skills of my past life, work through the challenges created by my addiction, add a new ‘clearness of thought’ and emerge as a much stronger, focused and humble Christian servant.

“It's not the bottom, it's the foundation.” As clearly stated in Psalms 118:22-23, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”

That passage from Psalms always takes me back to my younger days as a counselor at Sheldon Calvary Camp with the words of Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary fame from his song Building Block, “There is a man who has collected all the sorrow in our eyes. He gives us love as God directed but is seldom recognized. When all your dreams have been connected and your vision has been returned, remember, love, you are protected by the truth your heart has learned.”

Amen. Every day I am thankful for AA, my spiritual advisor, my Church, and my triune God for this amazing journey.

Andy M.
Sober since August 26, 2013

* http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/11/its-not-the-bottom-its-the-foundation.html

And for this, I am grateful!

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 01:11:07 GMT

I was looking forward to attending my first Episcopal Recovery Ministries Annual Conference in Williamsburg, VA on November 3-5. The wonderful opportunity to connect with good friend in recovery journey from a previous parish, to hear about the work and resources for supporting recovery and healthy recovery living at my parish, and to meet and make new friends along that “happy road of destiny.” However, the literal “happy road” did not start very well.

Driving along I-64 to Williamsburg, I was about 1 mile from my exit when traffic stopped due to a truck accident ahead. I stopped in the right lane, turned on my emergency flashers, glanced in the rear view mirror to an empty highway behind me, and then started to text my friend to alert her of the delay. Something nudged me to look again in my rear view mirror, now to see a tractor trailer appearing around the bend at a high rate of speed. Sensing he would not be able to stop in time, I pounded on my horn, and then began to move to the right side of the road … just not soon enough. The truck clipped my back driver side, then careened and totaled two more cars in the eastbound lane, rocketing across the median strip to the westbound lane and totaling another two cars before stopping by hitting a tree. I joined with others in reaching one man who took the brunt of the impact, turning off the car engine and providing care until emergency help arrived soon afterward. There was a long waiting process, speaking to state police, completing reports, clearing the road of debris, and replacing my destroyed rear tire with a spare. My insurance carrier directed my to a local tire and car repair facility, who were most understanding and helpful in processing the work to obtain a replacement rim, tire, and damaged sensors so I may return home to attend to the body damage to the car.

Finally arriving at the hotel, most of the first day session completed, I sat in my room looking at the mini-refrigerator. Although and thankfully nothing was stocked inside, my addiction whispered in my soul, “A drink could make this all better, just like old times.” I was firing on all the H.A.L.T. cylinders at this point – exhausted physically and mentally, just settling into the shock that I could have been in the hospital at that point, if not dead. I sat with that thought, the old voice whispering, and then …

I texted my friend to say I had arrived and needed to meet with her and others gathered as soon as possible! We met in the hotel lobby a little while later, driving with other new friends to the evening dinner and program, where I met more new friends in recovery. We shared stories, said prayers for the unknown man badly injured, trusting the Holy One would direct our healing intentions. I got out of my self, got right by using the recovery tools I know well, and the subtle but strong whisper disappeared. Sessions the next day were wonderful, learning more about brain science and spirituality of recovery, sharing resources, and making more new friends for the “happy road” ahead. I was reminded in spirit what my first sponsor would often say, “The grace of recovery is great because we receive God’s grace gratefully.” The car was temporarily repaired to make my way home to family and parish, and my Sunday after All Saints Day sermon was changed to GREAT with GRATEFULNESS!

On Thanksgiving Day, I will begin my ninth and final year of serving at my parish, retiring sometime in 2017. While serving and sharing my recovering life with many during my years in this parish and others I have served, I am looking forward to being able to “spreading the message of recovery” with many, many more in years to come, along the Happy Road!

And for this, I am grateful

Paul G.

Saying Yes!

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 03:17:26 GMT

Before I stopped drinking I walked in fear and isolation. It was not until AA that I came to know that my life has a purpose. It seems to be to help other people just like me. This is the gift of AA and living a sober life. I see now that suffering is a part of all our lives, but being a victim is optional. It is what we do with our pain that makes a difference. I realized through the help of others in the program of AA that I didn't need to be a victim anymore. When they reached out their hand to me, I said yes to their gift. They helped me see that my powerless could actually set me free, and that by surrendering my life as I knew it, I would be changed. It wasn't an instant change, but a slow gradual one that happened by going to meetings and not drinking and by helping others.

By helping others I began to see that I was being released from my wounded spirit. I first saw this through the eyes of a newcomer! I will never forget the night a lady walked up to me at a meeting and asked me to be her sponsor. I only had about 6 months of sobriety and I was afraid. I tried to think of an excuse to say no, but I looked in her eyes and saw how serious she was. Before I could answer her she told me she was an atheist and she did not want to hear about Jesus because she didn't believe in him or God. She had never gone to church or read a Bible in her entire life. I was speechless. I wanted to say no. How could I share with her my sobriety and not talk about God--the God I knew and loved? Then I remembered when I had asked for help someone had said yes to me. Couldn't I do the same for her somehow? I would do my best and so I promised her I would not force my Christian beliefs on her. I decided to show her the love of Christ with my actions instead of my words. I started slowly using secular words and ideas as we did each step. Sometimes I would hit a wall where I knew no other way to explain something to her or how to share my experiences without a story or an idea that was part of what I believed. We agreed that I would tell her in advance that I needed to use a Christian idea and gradually she began to trust me and just let me share however I needed to. This is how we began the steps and our friendship.

As we went through the steps I started to realize what I would have missed this relationship if I had not said yes. By doing the steps together we learned to trust each other and to trust that the steps would work for her as they had for me. To my greatest surprise she began to help me. She became a mirror so I could truly see my true reflection. We were more alike than different! She saw herself as a victim just as I had. However, we shared the greatest character defect of all...Resentment! I never could see resentment in myself till I met her. Resentment was the log in my eye that I had to release! The whole experience with this person made me see the purpose of Jesus' life and what he was calling us to do. It is the action of really living in community with one another and loving one another that we can lift each other up. She saved me from my resentful self. She has been one of the greatest gifts in my life and I almost said no!

My dear friend died last year after being sober for seven years from COPD. It was my honor to have been with her through her illness and to help her make choices about the end of her life. She knew it was time to truly surrender and let go for real and she allowed me to walk that last mile with her. I cannot describe in words the sorrow and joy of this experience, but it has been profound and it changed me forever. Our last words together were words of love and surrender. I can truly say we became like Christ to one another. Although her faith didn't look like mine it didn't matter. I knew she found her Higher Power because she died sober and free. Just like the man Jesus healed from Gerasenes that was living in the tombs alone and destitute from his personal demons, my friend and I were healed and made whole again too. We are no longer possessed by our addiction. We are always being saved by the love of God no matter what words we use to talk about our Higher Power. God's grace comes to us in many ways. Sometimes we become aware of it when we sayv"YES" to another alcoholic!

Margaret

Spiritual Awakening

Sat, 15 Oct 2016 03:59:05 GMT

I remember well that cold, wet February evening when I walked in to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe that the minute I walked in the door my spirit began to awaken from a deep and deadly sleep. The room was bright, warm, full of people with love for me before they even learned my name. Yes, I inwardly rolled my eyes at the corny slogans on the wall -- One Day at a Time and Easy Does It – but the atmosphere of the room reached a part of me that had grown as cold as the weather outside.

A kind woman gave me the A.A. Big Book and in it she wrote, “It’s a WE deal!” Apparently, that was the topic of that night’s discussion. All I can remember was the talk about God. I thought God had abandoned me and I cried through most of the meeting.

A few members of the group invited me to dinner and I followed them to a local restaurant. I had a bowl of soup and listened to their happy conversation about their lives and how A.A. worked. When a young man asked if I still had alcohol in the house, I answered honestly, yes. I believe that was the first fruit of my spiritual awakening, that simple honest answer from me – a person who lied when telling the truth would be just as easy. Someone else asked me if I could pour it out when I got home. Again, an honest answer came from me when I admitted that I didn’t think I could do it. It was suggested that I put it outside, away from sight. I believed I could do that much and I did.

I was so hungry for relief from the agony of my alcoholism that I read almost the entire Big Book before I went to sleep. I also prayed the Serenity Prayer that night and the miracle of my spiritual awakening really kicked in.

By the time I started on my second step with the guidance of a sponsor, I had become reacquainted with the God of love I’d grown to know as a child. I had no trouble turning my will and my life over to the care of God when I did my Third Step on the banks of a beautiful little creek near my home group.

The rest of the steps weren’t as easy or maybe I wasn’t quite as desperate but I did them to the best of my ability. When I got to Step Eleven, it was like coming to an oasis. Establishing “conscious contact” with something I couldn’t see, hear or touch was a challenge but the process of prayer and meditation brought me then and now into contact with a loving force beyond my understanding.

I arranged a small meditation spot at a table with windows on two sides. I keep a small vase of fresh flowers, a candle, my journals, a meditation book, my bible and a few other things that are special to me. Almost every morning, I make time for what I call “Coffee with Jesus” at this small table. My gray cat often joins me and as I enjoy this quiet time with my Lord and we watch the birds and squirrels in the backyard.

Currently, I’m struggling with a couple of life’s challenges and I have to admit that I’ve been discouraged and questioned God’s love for me as well as his very existence. Nevertheless, I continue to have that brief quiet time at my table in the mornings. It enriches my spiritual connection even in these times of doubt. If I keep at it, I know my spirit will continue to awaken a little more day by day in spite of trouble and the difficulties that life presents me. God is good!

-Anonymous

God Is Running This Show

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 01:51:05 GMT

Before I had a program, I thought that my life was a play that I had to write, direct, star in, and produce. Even though I had prestigious degrees and affirmation at work, I felt overwhelmed and angry at all the different people I had to please to pull off the show. In my exhaustion, my solution was to isolate on the weekends, passing away hours alone in my apartment ruminating about how I ended up being so unhappy despite outward success. My solution to my isolation was to imagine the person who would break through the walls of my heart, freeing me from my isolation, fear, and shame. Looking for that person got me out of the physical walls of my apartment but I never found “the one.” Instead I found affairs, romantic intrigue, and the deep pain of feeling like I had failed God and my own values.

That pain brought me to program. I remember the freedom I felt when I first time I heard page 61 in the Big Book and the line when the authors describe how most people are like actors trying to run the show rather than letting God be the director, “Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” Those words freed me from the shame of feeling like a failure - of course I couldn’t manage; I was trying to do a job that was God’s job, not mine. So I poured myself into program – 90 in 90, three outreach calls a day, sponsorship, steps, service, daily meditation – to learn how to let God direct my life.

I am on step nine and feel the promises of the program bearing fruit in my life. I left a painful and destructive relationship. I left a job that paid well but that disconnected me from my Higher Power. I have moved to a new city I have wanted to move to for more than a decade. However, with all the positive changes are new fears about economic insecurity and uncertainty about where to find new friendships. But today when I feel overwhelmed and afraid, instead of going into a cycle of shame, overwhelm, and isolation, I make even more outreach calls, go to even more meetings, and spend even more time in prayer. I know that what I crave isn’t really any particular outcome but the freedom of knowing that God is running the show. The more I work my program, the more I realize that his play is far more joyous, fun and abundant than anything I could create.

-Anonymous

Be Still

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 01:50:41 GMT

Headed out the door, late as usual, I paused with my hand on the key. The neighbor’s cat was immobile on the front porch, deathly still, ready to strike. My eyes sought out his prey. After a moment, I saw it: a lizard or green anole, just three inches long. It was a dusty, unremarkable brown, still as a stone, about three feet off the ground. It was out of reach of the cat, but was it aware that it was safe? Looking closer, I saw its throat was pulsing rapidly, and it looked like fear to me.

When I am fearful, anxious, out of control, I forget to breathe and lose my focus, paralyzed by the threat I am so certain is about to pounce. Then I am best served by stillness, because that’s how I sometimes discover how to act, think and become what my Higher Power has in mind for me.

My first impulse was to rescue the lizard from the fanged, clawed predator, but some instinct or maybe just curiosity stilled my movement. I stopped and witnessed the stand-off, a miniature high noon, completely inconsequential except to the three-inch anole. For the lizard, it was literally a life-or-death situation, and I wonder now: did those few seconds feel like an eternity to the cold-blooded creature?

Then, because of impatience or a short attention span or a desire to look like a responsible adult who owns a clock, I twisted the door knob. The cat, quite accustomed to my comings and goings, barely flickered an ear. The chameleon’s throat seemed to pulse even faster. How ironic, that the apparent source of its salvation at that moment caused even more distress.

I told the cat, quite nicely, to leave the poor beastie alone for the time being, and Rocket complied with feline aplomb. That is, he ignored me for a leisurely beat or two before strolling a few feet away and burying his nose between his long, upthrust legs.

I stood on the threshold and watched the lizard. The fresh air reminded me to breathe, and the deep stillness of the creature gave me a little jolt of joy. As I watched, and breathed, and remembered to be grateful, an electric, vibrant green crept from one end to the other of the chameleon, a transformation so soothing, so astonishing, so poignant I gasped – and just like that, the lizard disappeared.

When I came home hours later, no sign of the lizard. But Rocket, my neighbor’s cat, was sprawled across my front step, and deigned to allow me the pleasure of sinking my fingers in his silky, warm belly fur. He purred, and it was as if we had never held the balance of a tiny life in our control. Perhaps we never did.

Karyn Zweifel
9/21/16

The Spirituality of Imperfection

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 02:49:25 GMT

One of the greatest gifts I received from AA was learning and understanding that I am both good and bad. That sounds crazy at first doesn’t it? What a contradiction! Aren’t we supposed to be good and not sin? Aren’t we supposed to be perfect? What a gift to know that we are supposed to be both! It’s the spirituality of imperfection that brought me the peace of God that passes all understanding, to the knowable mystery of God.

I tried for years to pull myself up by my own boot straps and try to figure out what I could do to make you like me? All I did was wear myself out and push people away. Wasn’t my being nice and trying to figure out what you wanted a good thing? Why didn’t you like me and why didn’t God like me? Why did I not fit in? Was I not being perfect enough for you and God?

Actually it was crazy to try the same thing over and over for years and of course all of my endeavors never worked! I finally gave up and jumped into the bottle when I could no longer feel comfortable and stand your company. I had to be drunk to endure certain relationships. So whose fault was that? Who was right and who was wrong? Who was I supposed to blame…you or me? I lived in a very black and white world where it had to be one or the other, no liminal space where all belonged!

In giving up and trying a different path, a different way of being, my life began to change. I will say it was not overnight and I had to do the work of the 12 steps and take all the suggestions I was given. I became teachable. I became willing. I also began to learn about my character defects as part of the steps and how to look at them honestly, to accept them and to admit I am wrong when I am wrong. How freeing is it to say to the person I hurt that I was wrong? That allows for forgiveness and reconciliation for both people! I also learned to ask God to remove my shortcomings and to accept if they were removed or…. NOT. Let me say that again… accept if they were removed or not! I have come to believe our character defects are our greatest gift from God. Character defects actually bring us to God. Again another contradiction! Without these defects why would I ever need a Higher Power in the first place?

This acceptance of my defects also taught me that not all character defects will be removed when and if I want them to be. To date the ones that have not been removed have taught me about humility and it has also taught me how to love and accept these behaviors in others. Even Paul asks God three times to remove the thorn in his flesh and the answer he gets from God is, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.” (2 Cor. 12: 7-9) Talk about powerlessness! Paul shows us how step one works by admitting he is not in control! Paul’s thorn was not removed and through his acceptance Paul rejoiced in God’s immeasurable grace. The reason for the thorn remaining like my character defect is an affirmation of God’s Grace. It becomes a way for us to name and claim our defects and that naming and claiming frees us from them. Sitting in an AA meeting I began to see my own reflection in the voices and faces of the other people in the room. We are all good and bad, right and wrong and we need each other to live through these choices we make, to love and accept each other as we struggle in our life here on earth. We are all in the same lifeboat; actually the whole earth is in the same lifeboat called LIFE. We are all needed to keep the boat afloat and to share the work that it takes to do that. Some of us are more skilled than others and that is why we are to carry the message and share the gift we have of this miraculous program.

Today I am grateful that what was broken in me led me to this new way of seeing, feeling and perceiving. Yes, life is still a struggle and there are things I, too, wish would pass from me, but today I know as I am falling into the abyss of life, God has me firmly grounded in His love.

Margaret D.

A Special Ministry for Drunks and Addicts

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 03:16:08 GMT

I was two months sober and my mind still foggy when my dad invited me to an Episcopal Recovery Ministries retreat. Actually he didn’t invite me, he said, “I think you ought to come”, and I said “OK,” which was about all I was saying at that point. So we went, my dad and I, who hadn’t had a good relationship since I was about 12. I was flabbergasted that a church denomination would have an entire department devoted to recovery from addiction and alcoholism. How did that happen? They must have a bunch of drunks in their midst!

The retreat leader was a Catholic priest in recovery. There were two more things I couldn’t wrap my head around – an alcoholic priest and a Catholic being at an Episcopal gathering. If I wasn’t messed up before, now I was really confused! But I played along.

We went around the room introducing ourselves, telling how long we’d been sober, and what brought us to this retreat. I said I was dragged there, and been sober 2 months. The priest reached in his pocket and said, “Well, this must be for you!” and gave me a 2 month coin. I already had a plastic poker chip coin, but this was a real metal coin – Wow!

He told an old Native American story about Jumping Mouse which made no sense to me, and I don’t remember the rest of the weekend. But I knew that I was hooked, and already planned to go the next year. I don’t remember anything about that year either, but I know it was part of my recovery.

In addition to AA, my sponsor, working the 12 steps, and prayer; these retreats gave me a warm “coming home” feeling every year. I started getting more and more out of each gathering, remembering more and more, and beginning to put into practice some of the things I learned. It was good to see the same people every year, especially the ones whose first time coincided with mine. We can now look back and laugh at crying our way through those first couple retreats.

All this to say – Thank you, thank you, Episcopal Church, for creating such a needed and special ministry for us drunks and addicts. I, for one, may not have survived without it.

Rachel M, Birmingham, AL

Expect the Unexpected

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 19:57:17 GMT

Last week I arrived outside of Iconic Ink, (a real place) for a consultation on two tattoos that I was getting as enduring reminders of two pilgrimages I have had the good fortune to take in the 12 months.

In June last year I was blessed to travel to Assisi on my honeymoon with the love of my life. We met nearly five years ago when she relocated from another diocese to take a new position as rector of a neighboring parish. That happened on September 1, 2011, which also happens to be my sobriety date. Assisi, according to my new bride, is a “love drenched landscape.” That nails it in my opinion and experience. Francis and Clare are lurking around every medieval building and throughout the countryside that nurtured two of the most influential Christian lives in history.

We hadn’t even been married yet when the opportunity arose to take a pilgrimage to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Occupied West Bank during the week of Passover and Orthodox Holy Week this year. We jumped at the chance. Needless to say it was a very special and poignant time personally and spiritually.

I had been tattooed for the first time just before my sabbatical to Ireland in 2012. I was there in the first year of sobriety and on my own for several weeks. That was a graced time given that Guinness Stout was my drink of choice at the end of my drinking. St. Brigid and St. Brendan crosses had been inked into my shoulders as sort of a talisman on that way. I was surrounded by grace and not a few AA meetings in Ireland during my stay in West Cork.

Before I had left on that trip I had experienced a continuous if not rapidly growing belief in the truth of the Step 9 promises that are read in my home group before each meeting. Those promises end with this phrase, “We will suddenly see that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not!”

As I walked in the door of Iconic Ink, I followed the proprietor who had arrived to unlock while I was waiting in my truck listening to the news of an earthquake in Umbria, not far from Assisi, and a story of the beating death of a Palestinian who had been jailed on suspicion of attacking an Israeli soldier the previous week. (God can weave some remarkable patterns in the tapestry of our lives if we take the time to step back and look!)

He asked me, “What do you do for a living?”

I told him I was a priest. He said, “I’ve never tattooed a priest before. I have inked a couple of my fellow deacons in the past.” He used to serve as a deacon at a neighboring UCC church near where I live.

I told him that I was the first priest that each of my two previous tattoo artists had inked as well. I told him that one of them asked me, “Are you going to hell for getting tattooed.” And that the other one had asked, “Am I going to hell for tattooing you?”

The proprietor of Iconic Ink and I shared a good laugh and then he told me that he had been raised Roman Catholic and only gone back to church after getting sober some 15 or so years ago. The spark of connection was swift and unmistakable (I suspect he may have seen among the many bumper stickers on the tailgate of my truck, ‘I’m a Friend of Bill W.’

We talked a little bit of sobriety, a bit of church, and went on to work on the designs that he would inscribe on each of my calves in two days time. It was fellowship that only The Fellowship of AA has provided me on a regular basis.

Two days later we opened up the shop together sharing stories, experiences, and views on sobriety and faith while we prepped for our session together. As he finished measuring, applying the stencils, and confirming the color schemes and selections, he asked me, “Should we pray first?”

We joined hands over the table. I offered a prayer and we concluded with praying for one another’s families, our shared faith, and our continued sobriety. I have to say that was not one of my expectations as I planned to honor and remember these pilgrimages--that I would be praying with my tattoo artist on a bright summer morning.

This vignette is only the latest in a string of graced events that I have received since I started living the Promises of AA with a confidence born of experience. A new ministry, a new wife, a new circle of friends, and deepening friendships that had shallowed out until I got serious about working on spiritual fitness as the bedrock of each day of sobriety that I am blessed to live.

Life is full of unexpected graces. I have learned to expect the unexpected with varying levels of faith and confidence since I turned my life and will over the power of God and the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Are these extravagant expectations? I think not!!!

-Anonymous

Social Unrest and the Traditions

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 02:25:55 GMT

I have been in the program for 41 years and have often been conflicted between what is happening outside the rooms and what happens inside. Chaos outside, rioting in the streets, anger, racial conflict, political hatred, gun violence and too much "stuff” happening not to mention it in the rooms at a meeting.

But we don't. We practice the fifth tradition; our primary purpose remains carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

Can you remember your first several meetings, sitting in the rooms in physical and emotional pain, wondering what these people were doing? What a different experience it would have been if folks were making political speeches to each other about the current presidential candidates or the latest liberal or conservative hot button issue?

In the great wisdom of the program, we heard people speak of the importance of honesty, of the unmanageability of their lives, of working the steps and the importance of having a sponsor. We heard men and women speak of ravages alcohol had done to their personal lives, how we destroyed the trust of our spouses and children, of our professional colleagues and siblings, and destroyed our own sense of self-respect and integrity.

What I needed when I came into my first few meetings was what I couldn’t get from a newspaper or NPR: I needed a place where I could face my shame and guilt; a place where people would laugh about things I cried about; a people who would love me when I hated myself; care for me when I loathed who I was; a program that addressed the corners of my life which I wanted to hide; and offer me the light of hope in my life of darkness. By their talking about things they had done, the secrets of my own life had a new light shone on them and I had to own and takes responsibility of my life.

AA dropped a life-line to me while the rest of the world was busy with other things…important things but extraneous to what was my greatest problem. While I was busy talking about political solutions to the world’s problems, my alcoholism was destroying my home, my health and my professional standing in the community.

What I needed was someone to help me separate the important from the busy. Of course what is happening in the streets is important but that wasn’t my greatest need and problem. I needed help to see what I could do something about and what I had to leave alone and let others solve. I thought I had to solve everything. The Serenity Prayer became an important part of those first few days, weeks and months. It still is.

The traditions are a part of AA as much as the Steps and it is critical we practice them in times of social unrest. Talk about other issues over coffee…talk about the program in meetings.

-Joe C

Living vs. Managing

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 17:34:40 GMT

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

By most accounts I was managing my life as a father, husband and parish priest fairly well. I made all the appointments on my calendar. I made sure that the laundry was done, my son was off to school with lunch or money for lunch. I preached faithful and fairly orthodox sermons each Sunday. Somehow, in spite of my drinking, I seemed to be managing just fine, thank you very much.

Why, then, was I generally irritable and discontent? I managed to do all of the above fairly well, but there was a dimension lacking that I had found so palpable during seminary. I wasn’t enjoying my life very much. I had managed to get good grades, passed all seven areas of the General Ordination Exam with relative ease. It is easy now to recognize that my drinking was the problem. Until I managed to get my sorry self back into the program (Thanks Be To God!), I was existing. I was managing. I wasn’t really LIVING!

When I did find my way back to the basements of churches (without my collar for nearly the first year) I saw people that were doing more than managing their lives. They were living them. The reality of that, as God’s hope for me and for everyone, was to really live our lives. I remember a young woman from one of the halfway houses saying in a meeting that until she had found the program and really started working the steps, especially Step One, that she “felt like an understudy in her own life.”

The scales dropped from my eyes and I remembered Jesus saying in John’s Gospel, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (10:10) I was trying to manage life when God’s invitation was to live abundantly!

Once I gave myself over to the will of God for my life and focused on ‘doing the next right thing’ and being true to the self that “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), I was never going to live my life, much less really enjoy it.

Little by slow, I gave up the management of my life to God and his purpose for me in any given circumstance. Lo and behold, I really started to enjoy my life without having to go to the effort of controlling people, places, things and events and managing the expectations of anyone other than God for me. I started to find freedom and peace that I hadn’t known in a long time.

There are still plenty of rough patches and bumps, but hey, that’s life. A life that’s lived as opposed to one that I try and manage. I’ll take the former any day!

-Warren H.

The Masks Must Go

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 23:50:45 GMT

Although far removed from the Fifth Sunday in Lent, this last week in July gives me an annual chance to ponder anew the raising of Lazarus in the eleventh chapter of John.

I have always loved this story, and found great joy in preaching on friendships tried, expectations challenged, reliance on God – all leading up to the triumphant “Lazarus, come out!” All very well and good, and let’s get on to Holy Week. What I didn’t yet know was the best part of the story was yet to come.

Some of the circumstances of my life, partly growing up gay in the 1960s in the suburbs of the Midwest, formed me as a chameleon. Early on, I became deft at wearing whatever guise I thought might be expected of me, changing masks when it seemed desirous or necessary.

One of the masks I tried on late in life was a social life of recreational drug use. It was like finding a ticket to an amusement park I never knew existed. Of course, amusement park life and real life could never meet. Now there were two complete sets of masks.

And I learned, as many of us have learned, it was fun --- until it wasn’t. Fun to habit to problem to utter chaos. I struggled to solve my addiction on my own before anyone else found out. After all, it was my fault, right?

As the unmanageability of my life skyrocketed, my energies were directed at keeping those two sets of masks apart, with increasingly less success. And then it happened, my worlds collided, and I hit a bruising and humiliating bottom.

The days immediately after were the darkest I had ever known, culminating in dragging my frightened, defeated self into my Bishop’s office saying, “help.” Slowly, help arrived. Often from the people I had hurt the most.

And this, of course is the point of the Lazarus story I had previously overlooked, and now live by. After Lazarus is alive, but not yet living, Jesus turns to the crowd saying, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Take all those masks off of him, and let him begin to live as the person God made.

And from that day to this, through the grace of God, and with the Steps and Fellowships, I try to practice resurrection, to live unbound by the masks of self. And this new life is often not what I want, certainly not what I had planned. But, day by day, if I pay attention, it is the life that I need. Thanks be to God!

Paul J.

We Are God’s Beloved

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 04:45:07 GMT

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t afraid. I was afraid I wouldn’t fit in. I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. I was afraid I’d fail. I was afraid I couldn’t do it perfectly. I was afraid there was something fundamentally wrong with me that wasn’t wrong with other people and I would never be able to live comfortably in the world.

Then I learned that fundamental thing was a God sized hole in my soul. There was treatment for that, and treatment for the other thing, the alcoholism, the insidious unscrupulous disease that thrived on fear and self-loathing.

My alcoholism is arrested and abstinence has been possible only through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Admitting powerlessness over alcohol and all mind altering substances, giving my life to God daily, taking a thorough inventory and giving it away, praying for removal of my defects of character that stand in the way of my usefulness to my brothers and sisters in the world, trying not to engage in behavior that impedes my spiritual growth or is hurtful to me or those around me, checking in with myself every day that I’m on the right path, maintaining that relationship with God and helping others, that’s my treatment.

I used to think the fear would go away, or the self-loathing. I’d get rid of that stuff for good and skip down the road of happy destiny. After years of experience, the truth is the fear doesn’t go away and often times the self-loathing and feelings of unworthiness continue to percolate just beneath the surface. Only now I see the fear as a little child, and sometimes my terrified adolescent self that only wants to keep me safe. If she can keep me from taking too many risks, stepping out into the unknown with no circus net to cradle our fall because she thinks, inevitably we will fall, then she can keep us safe and sound, and we will never experience grief or loss or pain or rejection. Sometimes, she’s really loud and persistent, and before too long I look at my life and realize I’m holding myself back from experiencing the fullness of life because I got too comfortable in a job I didn’t like, or stayed too long in a relationship that was destructive. All tangled up in that mess is fear, feelings of unworthiness, and not being capable. But I have these tools, this fellowship, and these people-mostly women-that I can come to with my desire for change and my fear of change, and tell them what’s going on. I talk about it, out loud, in a group full of women, who share their fears and feelings of unworthiness. These women have walked the path ahead of me and moved the big boulders out of the way. They stand in the light and wave me on saying, “This way. It’s ok. It’s safe. It’s super scary but it’s safe, too. Cause we’re here.” And the fundamental truth, underneath all of it, is that we are God’s beloved. That is the fundamental truth of who we are. We are not our fear, or unworthiness, or our character defects, or our limitations. We are God’s beloved.

-Holly C.

AA after a violent week and the second step

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 03:22:11 GMT

As I sit in the AA meeting this Saturday morning at 9 I think of the reaction of so many people to the violence in Dallas, Louisiana, Minnesota, 5 policemen (now 8), 2 black men killed. People talk about returning violence for violence, questioning how could there be a loving God who would allow this to happen, no longer believing in God.

I know violence can never overcome violence. For those who question the presence of God, I want to drag them to this AA meeting. This is where the God of my understanding lives. This is a room full of people who had stinking thinking not dissimilar to the thinking of those who killed others this week. Somehow the people I see coming into this meeting have changed, and they now represent a room full of miracles, people trying to lead a different life, knowing that there is a God who saved them and trying to make a difference in the world because they were rescued.

The meeting is on the second step, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Two people, a balding man and a young attractive woman pick up 24 hour chips. Rarely seen. No birthdays.

One middle aged attractive woman with many years in AA talks about how her sponsor first asks her about her higher power. Hers is a vengeful God keeping records of all her many wrong doings. Her sponsor looks her in the eye and tells her, “I want to loan you my God for 2 weeks. My God likes to be read to, likes to hear these meditations each morning. My God likes to hear the Serenity Prayer and the Prayer of St. Francis each evening before you go to bed. My God likes to talk to you like you talked to him as a child, on your knees by your bed.” Just these simple things change her life and she then says in passing, “I get into trouble when I am in a hurry and only say these prayers on one knee as I go out the door.”

The group talks a great deal about sanity. One woman speaks out, “ When I went to treatment and heard the second step, I kept saying, ‘I am not insane!”’ Her counselor finally asks her, “ Does it help for you to think about where you are?” She bows her head and says, “I think I am in a psychiatric hospital.” Many talk about realizing they are insane when they hear the definition. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expected a different result. Yes, we are insane, but by some miracle we are being restored to sanity, trying to find a new result following a new way of life.

I am so grateful I am in this place today.

Joanna

Summer Tales [An 11th Step Contemplation Technique]

Thu, 07 Jul 2016 02:09:12 GMT

Summer is short, but daylight hours seem longer, especially in northern climes where sunbeams linger ‘til stars flood a midnight sky. Summer’s idle hours are ideal for lazing on a lakeside dock listening to the wind stir tall pines, or on the swaying foredeck of a sloop at anchor, or long interminable drives to nay-cation with relatives… hours filled with games: “I spy with my little eye…”; or, songs; “what do we do with a drunken sailor” / “the wheels on the bus go…”; or, stories by the fire pit: family legends and memories ghost stories; whatever springs to mind.

Stories from scripture? As it turns out, there’s an imaginative twist on holy writ that is purpose-built for summertime. The life of Christ is highly episodic, filled with incidental characters to drive the narrative: random, faceless men and women who emerge to be counseled, blessed or healed, then neatly disappear. Summer’s hollow hours are brilliant opportunities to flesh out these stories… perhaps, some of these bit players were mired in addiction. Who knew?

Jesus curing the ten lepers (Luke 17, 11-19) is ripe for picking. The story unfolds in a village on the border between Samaria and Galilee as Jesus preaches his way toward Jerusalem. One leper bellows, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” That’s certainly a wide-open appeal with roomy expectations. It seems this bold leper knew Jesus, or at least had heard of Him. For his part, Jesus didn’t give the plea much shrift – just another infirm, diseased and deformed outcast on the outskirts of a hard-scrabble village. Indeed, He dismissed them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” No way! This is crazy. Priests don’t welcome lepers, they despise them as foul, contaminated by sin and disease. But, they went anyway – group courage? Hey! Just like in our own recovery. Before the lepers even arrived at the synagogue, they were cleansed.

One, a Samarian, we’ll call him Jonah, came back and thanked Jesus, who blessed him and sent him along – Christ always sends us to “carry the message”. “What about the other nine?”, Jesus wants to know. Well, what about ‘em?

As it happens, Jonah had come back because he and David, the only Samaritans among the ten, were trekking home and Jesus was on their route. David had raced on, because he’d been stricken only recently and was frantic to comfort his young family. It hadn’t occurred to him (yet) that they were in God’s care too.

The remaining locals were detained by amazed and wary priests, dithering between praise to heaven and damage control. Eventually, the priests bogged down in their own deliberations, so the exultant lepers uttered thanks and slipped away.

Anne hurried to the marketplace where her brother sold nuts and seeds and while she regaled village women with droll wisecracks and comic tales. Anne made every day a celebration.

Samuel hastened to his forge, now in the custody of his idiot cousin. Samuel liked his craft, but prized his customers and relished devising clever answers to their needs.

Jonah had hated his disgrace, the ignominy and degradation, the stench of his rags even more than his disfigurement and pain. His unexpected cure stunned him. Lost in self-pity, he remained agonized, isolated and numb.

Trevor, (we’re making this up, so the names needn’t be strictly Hebrew) remained with the priests. He cherished the scriptures and admired the learned ones for their wisdom and devotion. Having been so favored by God, perhaps he could contribute to their understanding.

Paul tracked down Averill, his nemesis and partner in a toxic feud that has layered fresh resentments since they were young men, hoping that smug sonofabitch would choke on Pauls’ great favor with God.

Aaron and Susan have been many years married and were jointly afflicted. They had each other and, basking in God’s lavish grace, left the village to seek out other lepers and pariahs, bringing them care and comfort and inspiring hope among the hopeless.

Shy Meg returned to her family and spoke little of the miracle and the Healer. As she and the others departed from Jesus, she’d looked back at Him, walking with his friends in the late afternoon sunlight. She held that image in her heart and from time to time, encountering others of the ten in their small village, she sensed their shared gratitude. He had changed everything.

We, too, in recovery are transformed. As addicts, we go as a group to show ourselves to our various priests. We live our lives, practice our trades and professions, dodge our fears, seethe in our resentments, rejoice in our loves and serve others as best we can. We are healing. We are the ten.

Ice cream, anybody? Happy Summer!

-Martin

I found a place in the life boat.

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 23:18:43 GMT

I heard, early on, that god, whatever it is, doesn’t give you more than you can handle (nor less than you can handle, btw!)

She asks me one day, “Will you accept Jesus as your lord and savior?”
I answer, “Yes, I got nothin’ to fear from Jesus ((I had been sober, the first round, for 10 or 11 years, 7 years in ACoA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families) and was crystal-clear that there is something out there, why not Jesus. Besides I had had a visit from Jesus on a “walk with Jesus” mile on some spiritual retreat years before.))!” And added, “as long as I can continue to discuss and ask questions.” She agrees.

She asks me soon after, “Can we marry? I want to be right with Jesus and be married in the eyes of god as well as in our hearts.”

I answer, “Yes. I got nothin’ to fear from marriage!” [grimace]

It is impossible for me to believe how much love surrounds me now. I came from such awful ancestry. Bigoted, abusive, neglectful, grasping, criminal folk came before me and were charged with raising me. Only my grandma, “magu,” rescued me from full ‘confirmation’ in the family tree. Bio-mom completed what magu could not, I lost magu only three years after I found her-before my 5^th birthday [swallow]. Bio-mom tried out an Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families meeting on a Wednesday – the “teddy bear meeting” in Spokane, Washington. Bio-mom was so strangely changed and calmed, something I had never seen before. Then she went to the ACoA meeting again the next week and the calm and the stillness happened again. I was so stricken by this powerful affect that a few years later, while in college, my friends and I were commiserating over how crazy our social backstabbing was that I spoke up that my mom had gone to this place and clearly felt better after.

We got to the meeting and this being the early 90’s there were 50 people in the room. We had to break into 4 groups after the leader shared in order to let everyone have a chance to share. Our dozen was in a small office and I sat on the carpet for lack of chairs. A woman on the couch shared and cried like a snotty mucus mess. I was floored. I thought, “Wow, it’s safe to share and cry! Cry in front of these people!?” I continued attending ACOA meetings for 7 years. I host an online ACOA meeting, now.

After 7 years of ACOA meetings, I finally said, “Maybe alcohol’s a problem.” Fortunately, I uttered this to a fellow in both fellowships. He said, “Well, why not come try out a meeting?”

It is so strange that it is a “moral” remedy that maintains my relationship to Self-sean. Three years ago I acquired severe neuropathy in both feet and I am stuck at home 80% of the time. Eclipsing face to face meetings, god has handed me the mission to seek out the fellowship as a disabled person and this seems too great to bear. Thing is, my life has become full and purposeful in spite of my disability. In fact, the leader of one of my 12 step fellowships called me today to talk about some more adjustments to make to the meeting listings to help folks that are stuck with only the internet to nourish their moral remedy. It is vital to rant, to plead, to yell and to cry. Sometimes expletives are shouted. This is all to clear out the past so the sadness can see the sun and being a sad man is more and more ok with me.

I cannot, will not, need not, turn my back on the 12 steps. Drowning and lost, I found a place in the life boat. Life! [tears]

-Anonymous

Thank God, for AA. Thank you, God.

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 01:54:41 GMT

The world is a harsh, violent, scary place these days and the massacre in Orlando put me over the edge. The word on the street is that we are sensitive creatures, we alcoholics and addicts. More so than the average person. Maybe it’s a genetic predisposition to sensitivity, or maybe it’s because of the trauma of abuse many of us endured as children, the jury’s out on that one, but even Bill wrote, “We alcoholics are sensitive people.” (BB p.125) He knew.

I often feel out of place in the world even after 15 plus years of sobriety and spending the last 27 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. The violence we human beings perpetuate against each other is devastating and last week, one more time, I’m shaking my head and thinking, “Really!? Again!?” When are going to learn? When are going to care for each other in a way that acknowledges the dignity of every human being? When are we going to act more like Jesus? When? And so I lose hope. I can’t easily shake off the despair of loss, whether it’s 60 million refugees displaced by war and violence in their countries or the 50 in Orlando or the sadness that I feel every time I drive by the tents of the homeless under the Gower over pass on my way to the church every day in Hollywood. I feel helpless and hopeless and powerless.

And then I walk into a meeting. The same meeting I have walked into for the last 10 years. My home group: 9am Came to Believe. We read from the collection of stories from the short but spiritually packed book, Came to Believe, and we share our experience of God, our spiritual journeys, our doubts, our fears, our sadness, our joys, our grief, our successes. We talk about trusting God, and finding joy in the little things. We talk about the harsh realities of the world and how sometimes we feel like going out there again, seems absolutely impossible. Then someone shares about how she did it, how she mustered the courage to go into the world, one more time, and do what needs to be done, and everything was ok. God was there. And the room is filled with hope, again.

God is always there. God meets me in my grief and holds me in arms so big and wide and gentle and merciful that I can move through the world with a little more hope. The women of AA fill me with enough strength and courage to muster the energy to get out there and do my best and believe that through unity, recovery and service, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian of Norwich

-Holly C.

12-Step Eucharist

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 19:05:27 GMT

(Note: The name of the priest mentioned in this personal reflection is not the individual's real name.)

Nervously I sat in the nave, waiting for something they were calling a "12-Step Eucharist" to begin. This was not my home parish, but it was a real Episcopal church with the dark wood and stained glass and old-fashioned red door to prove it.

I scanned the room a bit furtively, taking in the group of maybe 30 people as we gathered. I was a mid-forties female suburban corporate executive with less than six months under my belt, and being open about my alcoholism, even among others in recovery, was still scary. But here, in God's house? It was what I knew my healing required, and it was terrifying.

I engaged in some chitchat that quickly turned into deep sharing with the attendees seated around me—a motley assortment of prodigals who, like me, were making their way back to God.

I gazed at the altar. The flyer had said that Communion would be served. This was a Eucharist, right, so Communion would be served? Somehow the idea of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, surrounded by these people I'd never met before, but who knew something profound about who I was, what I was, what I had become... I felt so vulnerable.

The service got started. There were well-known lines from the Big Book to listen to and recite, woven among the more familiar components of the Episcopal Eucharist. I began to relax. These two worlds that were both so life-giving to me—Alcoholics Anonymous and The Episcopal Church—were harmoniously merging in a way that was incredibly powerful. I was not the only one feeling this. The energy in the room was palpable.

And then a middle-aged man dressed in clerical vestments approached the lectern to deliver the sermon. Now I worried anew. I wondered whether this priest had any idea what I had been through to get here. I wondered whether this man of the cloth knew how ashamed I was before God. I wondered if he could help me find God again.

He opened his mouth to speak. “My name is Brent, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Tears began flowing down my cheeks. He was one of us.

A 20-something, heavily tattooed man sitting next to me, an urban artist in recovery from heroin addiction as I had learned in my conversation with him before the Mass started, reached for my hand. I looked at him and smiled through my tears. He understood what I was experiencing.

“We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, page 17)

“…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)

I was completely safe here. No part needed to hide. I experienced fully who I am—a recovering alcoholic Christian and a Christian recovering alcoholic—in a way never before possible for me in an AA meeting room or in the Church.

I was deeply known by God and by the other beautiful human beings gathered here. At one time, in one place. And I was invited to meet them all at the Lord's Table.

The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven. Given for us.

The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation. Shed for us and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Sins. Indeed. And it was grape juice. Yes, shed for us.

This was the first sip of the sacrament I had taken since, half a year earlier in the wee hours of a Monday morning, I had gotten on my knees in my bedroom closet and cried out to God that I was sick and that I needed God's strength to heal. That I needed salvation—the cup of salvation.

This is what I received that day—among my people, in my Church. Welcome, understanding, safety, wholeness, community, salvation. Thanks be to God.

Katherine G.

Free to Struggle

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 04:24:57 GMT

Hell is defined as a state of separation from God; exclusion from God's presence. For those of us consumed by the grips of an addiction, it certainly is. Addiction, whether it be from a substance like alcohol, drugs, or food, to a behavior such as sex, viewing pornography, technology/ gaming, or shopping, the behaviors certainly do separate us from a "power greater than ourselves." These behaviors bring relief for the user. A separation from what haunts them, whatever that may be.

In our western culture there seems to be a "quick fix" for any type of discomfort. We don't like to sit in any feelings, or situations that disturb us. Whether it is from a present relationship or a past memory. This release soon becomes a self-imposed prison. A dark place where there doesn't seem to be a way out. A sick cycle.

Society in general sees it as a weakness. What many do not understand is that the addict has lost the power to choose, once the addiction has taken over. The relief is constantly on their minds. This relief soon turns into an obsession, and a destructive prison that they feel they cannot get out of.

Addiction takes with it the addict, the family, and friends leaving destruction in its path. As one alcoholic put it, "I drank from the bottle until the bottle drank form me." I like to think of addiction as a "Dementor," from Harry Potter. It is a non being that is considered one of the foulest in the world. It feeds upon human happiness, and causes depression and despair to anyone near them. Abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs is costly to our Nation, exacting more than $700 billion annually in costs related to crime, lost work productivity, and health care.* Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Excessive Drinking Costs U.S. $223.5 Billion. More young adults use prescription drugs non-medically than any other age group. Many souls are dying every day from addiction.

I recently celebrated my freedom from alcohol, five years of a life worth living and loving. Even during the most difficult times. Through the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I came from a life of struggling to be free, to a life in which I am free to struggle. In my opinion, the world could use the 12 Steps to help everyone live a more peaceful and full life.

It is my hope to help others. To pass on the Good News!

Peace and Presence.

-Patty K.

Joyfully serve in confidence and serenity

Sat, 28 May 2016 23:48:06 GMT

Collect of the Day: Proper 3
Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be peaceably governed by your providence; and that your Church may joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Twelve years ago this week I felt abandoned, isolated and trapped in a continuous loop of despair. This week I celebrated twelve years of continuous sobriety. How did that ever happen? Sometimes I shake my head in gratitude and astonishment, continually amazed by the grace and love of my Higher Power, whom I call God. Over the past few years in particular, in addition to regular 12-step meetings, I’ve been praying the daily office using an app on my phone. I find that setting aside some time in the morning or in the evening helps me quiet my mind and increase my conscious contact with God. Today, for example, I smiled as I read the words “joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity.” Twelve years ago I certainly did not feel much joy, confidence or serenity, and I wasn’t interested in serving anything or anyone. On this warm sunny day, with a sleeping dog at my feet, I feel so much gratitude for the gift of sobriety, life, love and joy. In my 12-step group we talk about the goals of love and service, which aligns beautifully with the desire to serve God joyfully. When I speak with a newcomer, I feel so much compassion, love and welcome as I share my own experience, strength and hope. In helping newcomers, I feel more peaceful and at ease within myself, and I feel joy, confidence and serenity. Today a woman in my daily meeting had a lot of pain and suffering, and I was able to listen to her struggle. I do not know everything about recovery but I do feel confident in my ability to share my own experience in the spirit of being helpful, thus I can “serve (God) in confidence.” Listening to another deepens my own well of joy and compassion for myself and others, thus I can “serve God joyfully.” Praying the serenity prayer daily helps me ask God to grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. With these new tools, from my church community as well as my 12-step community, I know that today I can embrace this challenge to serve God with confidence, serenity and joy.

-Kirsten RH

Normal

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:20:25 GMT

Growing up in an alcoholic home I had a strange sense of what was normal. I thought all grown-ups had drinks in the middle of the day, in the evening and at bed time. One really did have three martini lunches. I thought all 5 year olds drank from their parents’ champagne glasses on holidays. When I was out of college and looking for work, I drank at lunchtime because that’s what grownups do. I did it in graduate school too, even if I had afternoon classes. Every Sunday a group of my parents’ friends gathered at our house for after church drinks. All very normal, right?

The one place I did notice that things were not normal was in the things I was not allowed to do which others my age could do. I think primarily because many of them involved my being driven somewhere or inconveniencing may parents in some way. Additionally they were so out of touch that I was always sent to school in jeans or overalls—everyone else wore dresses. I was sent to the pool in swim trunks because at 8 or 9 I didn’t have noticeable breasts.

I did not know that what I was experiencing had a name---shame. I not only made mistakes, I was a mistake, an inconvenience, who fit in nowhere.

I truly think that I drank against the shame, drank to not be shy, drank to finally fit in. Unfortunately I over shot. I drank more than anyone else and it became a source for more shame. I managed to get tranquilizers but was careful to not mix them with booze. I always waited 30 minutes between stopping my drinks for the day before I took a tranq. or a sleeping pill. At some point I realized that might not be normal.

I drank because I couldn’t not drink. Sometimes I stopped after 2 or 3 but once I put the first one in my mouth I could no longer predict how much I would consume. I swore off alcohol many nights as I fought the “twirlies” in bed and had to keep one foot on the floor. The next day it was “well, I won’t drink anything tomorrow”.

A side benefit of getting sober was that I could buy a high four poster bed because I no longer had to be able to get my foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning. But the greatest benefit was that at age 40 I found a program that not only got me off booze, it gave me a road map that got me to the goal I had always chased. My skin fit. I was comfortable in my own skin and didn’t grimace when I looked in the mirror.

I still make mistakes, we all do, but today I know I am NOT a mistake. The shame is gone, and I belong somewhere. Not just in AA but in the wider community. I have been given the opportunity to be of service to God and my fellow man. As they say, if I’d said 30 years ago where I wanted to be at age 70 I would have short changed myself. As a friend who died 52 years sober always said, “I don’t drink, and I’m not mad about it”. I’m thrilled about it! Sober is the new normal. Thanks be to God.

Lisa K

The Ultimate Gift

Wed, 04 May 2016 23:48:08 GMT

I did not get sober on purpose. I was so naïve to recovery, getting sober, addiction, disease – all of it. I knew nothing. And I certainly did not have a problem, I enjoyed using and was not about to stop. Of course I was defensive because no one was going to tell me what to do. Besides, I wasn’t hurting anyone. Except everyone!!! At this juncture in my life I was falling apart – mentally, emotionally and physically. I needed a Band-Aid quickly. In my first few weeks I was angry, tired, irritated and annoyed. I started to realize the more sober I got that I had a problem, a big problem!! I had a disease of all things. I soon realized however that it wasn’t anyone else’s responsibility but my own. I was feeling as overwhelmed as I had ever felt in my life. Was there really something to this 12- step stuff I keep hearing? Was it going to make me normal if I followed them? Here is where you get courageous…..

As my mind started to become more clear every day and I started to see the bigger picture…..wow, my thinking really started to change. I was ready to take a real plunge into this recovery thing and try those steps. I found an incredible sponsor who started to guide me through the spiritual 12 steps and I loved how I was changing. By step 4, Yes my feelings and thoughts were as raw as hamburger meat but I knew that meant I was working on some deep things inside of me. This is where I had to decide if I was going to run from those feelings or work through them. So I prayed to my Higher Power and I asked for guidance. It was then that steps 1-3 came flooding back. Then I had that “Ah ha” moment, “wow this is actually working”. I have since worked my 4^th step and through some individual counseling and an amazing recovery program I am learning about self-acceptance, self-love and self-worth. I have mended broken relationships and I have also learned how important it is to my recovery that I keep healthy boundaries. One of my greatest assets are friendships; those true and honest friendships that have helped me through this process. They are always there for me and are never concerned with my past. No longer do I have to live in misery and uncertainty. I just celebrated 18 months clean. Today it feels good to be me. That is the ultimate gift of my recovery. God Bless and remember……one day at a time! J

Shona S.
Dalton, GA.
Clean Since: 11/1/2014

AA after 25 years

Sun, 01 May 2016 23:16:51 GMT

I walk into the 9 o’clock Saturday closed AA meeting through the handicap entrance with my cup of Starbucks decaf Americana with two Splenda and light whip and find a seat next to the door as I set my cane down beside my leather chair. I now remember that all of the leather chairs with arms were given to the Cosmos group when a dear friend in AA, Betty, died. Thank you, Betty, for making it so easy, so comfortable to sit for an hour each week. I wonder if I am the only one still remembering who bequeathed the money for the chairs in her will. For the first ten years of sobriety I went to this meeting every day except on Sunday. Now I only come once a week to this Saturday morning meeting. I look around. I can count on my hands the people who were here when I came to my first meetings. What has happened to them all? Are they dead, like Betty? Did they die sober or did they drink again? I know many who left and drank. I am afraid that is the norm. I hear that only 10% of people who are alcoholics come to AA and that only 10% who come to AA stay. Is this true? It is sobering and scary. I look to my left where all the young women sit together in a line. They are beautiful. Only one was here when I came. I look to my right around a table at the back of the room where many of the older men sit. Two were here when I came. I have had five sponsors. All have relapsed. Two have come back. I hear a man speak who is celebrating 45 years in AA. He admits he rarely comes to meetings. His wisdom is less that the young man who speaks before him celebrating two years. Time in the program does not mean wisdom. Earlier in the week I do remember talking with a woman with great wisdom whose son had relapsed after many years of recovery. Her words to her son: “It does not matter if you fall down. The problem is if you do not get up.” This is wisdom. This disease is cunning and baffling, destroying lives by a slow painful death like a cancer that makes you think you do not have the disease. The meeting is almost over. I have heard wisdom. I have remembered wisdom. I have seen wisdom. As we stand and pray the Lord’s prayers, I also pray that God will help me to remember this wisdom for one more week, one more day.

-Joanna

Happy, Joyous and Free

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 01:19:49 GMT

The promise of being able to live life happy, joyous and free is one of the greatest treasures I’ve found in sobriety. Sometimes though I have to admit that freedom, joy and happiness are a bit daunting, especially when I have recurring bouts of alcoholic thinking.

Remembering that alcohol is but a symptom of my problems means that I have to continue to work my program continually. I have an old timer friend that says he has to practice Steps 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 on a daily basis to keep his joy, freedom and happiness. I think he’s right. I would also add Steps 10, 11 and 12 to that list for me.

Once I’ve done the work that allows me to ‘keep the plug in the jug’ I’ve just begun the ongoing work of changing the person that I brought into the halls a few 24 hours ago. That jug plugging happens in 1, 2, 3 for me. Simple as 1, 2, 3. I also have to be reminded that simple does not equal easy. This puts me on the road where true happiness is possible.

When I practice Steps 6 and 7 on a daily basis I work on extending my 4^th and 5^th Step work by making sure I don’t pick up new baggage that will limit my service to other people. Becoming entirely ready and humbly asking God to remove my shortcomings as I become aware of them is what makes freedom possible for me. The freedom I’m talking of here is not the freedom to do whatever I want, but rather to be free to do the next right thing in the pursuit of my sobriety that is marked by real metanoia, or the new mind and heart that dependence on and trust in God brings within my grasp.

It’s only when I’ve worked here on the front end that I find myself ready for the peace and joy that comes with the authentic expression of Steps 10, 11 and 12 in my daily life.

To promptly identify and admit my shortcomings is something that would have been nearly impossible before I committed myself to the working of all of the steps. Once I get in the practice of doing my turnarounds in as close to real time as possible I notice that I can go through the day with a certain buoyancy that leads me organically to conscious contact with the God of my understanding. When that happens, when I allow that to happen through the grace of God, I find 12^th Step work in almost everything I do because I have allowed God to change who I am. Knowing that God is at work in me is the source of my joy. I count myself so very fortunate to recognize it sometimes when it happens and when it doesn’t happen as well.

Now I know that I have tools that I can use to put me in a place “where grace is possible” to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, makes Happiness, Joy and Freedom possible in all circumstances if I have the courage and humility to give myself over to the care of God. That’s Gospel for me.

-Warren H.

Trust God, Love God

Thu, 14 Apr 2016 01:21:59 GMT

This month I celebrated 29 years of continuous sobriety. The years have produced some times of both deep joy and sorrow, success and failure. Life has been lifey, but the one thing I can share with you that kept me sober was I never lost my trust or love of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

I lost my oldest son to this disease, I went bankrupt, I lost a business that was thriving because someone else made a bad decision. All the time I still remember the one small voice that would speak to me “trust Me Bob.”

I also have had some wonderful happenings in my life. People pay me when I need money. I have 5 other healthy, clean children, 16 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren. I have a wife that has been at my side for 61 years, and will celebrate 27 years in Alanon this June. When I retired from my business, I went to seminary and became a Deacon in the Episcopal Church. I have worked as a chaplain for an Episcopal Hospital, and I handle the Bereavement for a major Hospice.

If I had settled for what I would have listed as my hopes during the first retreat I attended, when sober, I would have cheated myself. I remember my prayer “Father I don’t care if I ever have another dime, if I ever own anything again, I just want to be sober. I want to know how to love You with my whole heart, my whole mind, and my whole soul, and my neighbor as myself.”

If you’re new, make no plans for your future, trust God, love God, love your neighbor, and hang on. Get ready for a “yellow brick road” that isn’t leading to Kansas.

-Bob L.

Parish Priest and Treatment Center Chaplain and Advocate

Thu, 07 Apr 2016 02:12:30 GMT

In 2001, I was confronted for my increasing alcoholic behavior—drinking at work, which happens to be a church—and a visible lack of ability to function.

As a result, I went to Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. The gifts I received there gave me the foundation of recovery that continues today.

After four years I was able to return to Silver Hill as the onsite chaplain. The many gifts of recovery and the opportunity to work with those in recovery and their families are amazing.

Much of my work as a priest reflects what I have learned from meetings, sponsors, reading, and study. The wisdom I have discovered, as I see my Higher Power working through others, continues to be awesome.

The acknowledgement that spirituality plays a major role in recovery by clinicians encourages my own ministry.

As chair of two diocesan committees on substance abuse, I have discovered that education of clergy is critical to helping so many who are in harm's way. I continue as a parish priest in transition ministry where I can have a role in change.

I try to follow the example of the many in recovery before me, while the support group to which I belong and all who attend remain anonymous. I am open about my continuing recovery so I can teach, counsel, and write.

I encourage public awareness and clergy understanding, and I am an advocate for legislative support for equality in insurance coverage for addiction recovery and mental illness.

–The Rev’d Hugh Tudor-Foley

Broken

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:59:01 GMT

As I was walking along the beach yesterday, I saw at a distance a beautiful seashell. Upon reaching the shell, I saw that it was only half of a shell, the side I could see was perfect, but the other side was missing. Oh, I thought, it could have been a dish it was so big, so I walked on by, leaving it behind. Instantly, I turned around and went back to pick it up. I realized that there had been a storm the day before, and I am sure fragments were broken and lost at sea. That, I realized is a lot like my life. I have had a lot of storms, and pieces of me have fragmented and broken off, lost somewhere, never to be found again. God gave me inspiration at that moment, as long as there is a piece of my heart and soul, no matter how small, it is enough for God to mold me a new and make me strong. I am worth picking up and saving. I can be used as an instrument in God's love, even if I am missing a few pieces.

-Renee L.

Resurrected In Recovery

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:17:14 GMT

I’ve agreed to conduct a workshop for our parish on Laudato ‘Si – On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis’s encyclical. Reputedly a treatise on climate change, its driving themes are social justice derived from an intimate relationship with our Creator and all of creation:*

“… Disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the mutual environment. …Pope Francis, Encyclical, Laudato ‘Si – On Care for our Common Home, May 24, 2015 Paragraph 203

“Sobriety and humility were not favorably regarded in the last century. … It is not easy to promote … healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong. Ibid, paragraph 222

“On the other hand, no one can cultivate a sober and satisfying life without being at peace with him or herself.” Ibid, paragraph 222

Curious, isn’t it, how recovery themes recur in our religious and spiritual practices and even in our business, civic, social and family routines. Throughout the Lenten season and approaching Holy Week, craving God’s inextinguishable love, seeking the forgiveness that Christ bought, imploring the assistance of the Spirit, we prepare for the resurrection. Our addictions brought us near to death “excluding God from our lives”; our recovery restores us to grace and to life “at peace ourselves”. As never before, we share in Christ’s resurrection.

The message of the cross, the message of Easter is more than forgiveness. It’s an invitation, as people who are forgiven and loved, to elect a life of “sobriety and humility”. What came of the prodigal son the next day and the days after? Did he reconcile with his brother and strive to rebuild trust within the family? Did Dad’s compassionate embrace lull him into a smug backslide, lapsing into prodigal ways? Did he rejoice in the renewal of his heritage? Did he celebrate his sonship and his brotherhood?

For five years prior to my last drink, I’d been on the outs with my brother – banished from his home. He’s a man of few words, and as I neared my first sober anniversary, I asked Mom’s advice about making amends. From her vantage point of sixteen years in recovery, she said, “Be patient and alert. God will provide you with the ideal chance and you’ll know what to do.” Several weeks later, my brother’s family celebrated his youngest son’s high school graduation with a lawn party. I bought a card, adding ten bucks, showed up, warmly greeted my brother, his wife and kids, munched a burger and left amiably. We’ve been right ‘n’ tight ever since.

“… gratitude and gratuitousness, a recognition that the world is God’s loving gift, and that we are called quietly to imitate his generosity in self-sacrifice and good works…. living…a life of virtue…” Ibid, paragraph 217

Loved, forgiven and restored to – “a life of virtue”. Resurrected in recovery.

* Dropbox Link to a compilation of highlights from the encyclical https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv5utwyovz00mw1/Laudato%20Si_Highlights_030616.pdf?dl=0

In the Presence of Infinite Power and Love

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 01:49:33 GMT

My belly button birthday is Sunday. I’ll be 52. Which is a miracle because when I turned 30 I wept, not believing that I would make to 30. I did, and it was a hop, skip, fall, skid, 2 divorces, 2 relapses, one kid to treatment, another depressed, falling in love, and ordination process in the Episcopal Church to 52.

When I got sober the first time at 25 in 1988 I was so emotionally and spiritually immature that I really believed God should give me what I wanted because I was good now. I was going to work, I wasn’t sleeping around, as much, I was going to meetings, and seeking a relationship with my Higher Power. I picked a sponsor who wasn’t as helpful as I probably needed and I had no tools or understanding of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and consequently didn’t stay sober.

I got sober again in September 1992 in Chicago, and that was my white light, struck by a thunder bolt, spiritual experience. I walked into the Lincoln Park Alano Club and within in a few months I understood that alcohol and drugs were but a symptom of what really ailed me: fear, loneliness, insecurity, a feeling of never, ever being good enough, and a hole in my soul that was so deep and expansive that it seemed like nothing would ever fill it or make me feel better. And then I read the steps on the wall and the first 164 pages of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and knew that I knew that I knew that God was the answer. The only answer. And so I sought a relationship with God with the hunger and voraciousness of an infant gone all night with no milk.

I’m 52 on Sunday and 15 years sober, because I didn’t stay sober the second time around in ’93. I had a baby, married his alcoholic father, had another baby, and had an affair, drank for 9 months to hold the marriage together and finally separated from my children’s father and got sober again, November 3, 2000.

In the last 15 years my primary purpose has been to stay sober, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. I have been active in Alcoholics Anonymous through another marriage and another divorce, through falling in love which was probably one of the most painful and fulfilling experiences of my life because I now know what it means to be truly and wholly yourself and be completely vulnerable with another human being. Through seminary, the ordination process which has tested every ounce of faith, courage, and acceptance I have, through making the gut wrenching decision of sending my daughter away to treatment, to watching my son traverse the pain and joy and fulfillment of growing up, through the successes and failures of his life on his path, and so much more. Through it all, every so often, I have “stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love.” I have stepped from bridge to shore and every so often, by grace through faith, I have lived in conscious companionship with my Creator. (p56. Big Book)

The Lost Son

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:45:01 GMT

Last Sunday we read the Parable of the Lost Son or the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). As I listened to the reading which I have heard hundreds of times, I started remembering when I became aware of something that I had never identified with in the story before. Having been in recovery for the last 7 1/2 years opened my ears up to hear old things in a new way. As we were hearing about the younger son taking his inheritance from his father and squandering the money, I remembered that like me, the son suddenly comes to his senses. He WAKES UP to the fact that his life is a mess. I can remember the day I woke up and realized how unmanageable my life was. I too had an answer to my dilemma when my epiphany came, and like the younger son I ran home to the rooms of AA. I knew that AA was there shining like a beacon in the darkness because I had grown up in Alateen and Al-Anon. God had always had a plan! I knew that there was love and hope if I just asked for it. What a miracle to WAKE UP and know there is a solution to my problem. Like the younger son I knew I was wrong and I also knew I would find love and forgiveness on the other end. However, I had another surprise.

Not only was I like the younger son. I had also been like the older son. I too had stewed in my own resentment for years. Some of those resentments were for my family members who were alcoholics and couldn't understand why they were drinking. I did not understand it until I saw my own resentments and began to identify with them and see that the drinking had all been about pain and doing anything to make it stop. AA gave me the solution to the pain by giving me the 12 steps to work. Little by little the fog of resentment and fear began to lift. I began to rejoice like the Father in the story when a newcomer came in and had the same life changing experience I had. How easy it becomes to love and forgive when you know how much you are loved and forgiven. You want to share God's redeeming Grace with everyone. I love going back and rereading the Prodigal Son because I find myself over and over again in the story. It is a good reminder to know where I came from, what I was like and what I am like now, and that my Higher Power has my best interest at heart no matter what I may be thinking or feeling today. May you find that same Grace as you walk through the steps of AA and continue your journey of recovery!

-Margaret D.

Powerlessness

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 03:28:43 GMT

“Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” –Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent

What a powerful collect for this addict! Powerlessness. My most frequent response when a sponsee is struggling is: Have you asked God to help you?” Throughout my recovery and even before I found recovery (or it found me) I prayed for help. The prayers changed over time. When I was younger and my dad died, my prayer was “God, please bring my daddy back.” When I was first getting into drugs my prayers were “God, please don’t let me die from using this scary new drug. Please don’t let me get stopped and go to jail. Please don’t let the house catch on fire with my young son home alone. Please don’t let me OD and my son wake up and find me dead.” When I got clean, my prayers were: “Please, God, help me be willing to do whatever it takes to stay clean. Help me not get so upset every time I talk to my mother ‘cause she just thinks I’m using when I do. Help me to stay out of relationships ‘til you think I’m ready.” (Boy did I regret that one – it was YEARS before I had a romantic relationship after that prayer!) Today my prayers are more like: “Please help me not think these evil thoughts. Help me to be more compassionate, more loving, more forgiving”. And sometimes just, “please help.”

Does God wave a magic wand and help me? I don’t know. But I do know that my prayers are answered. Usually just a change of heart, a change of attitude, a change from negative to positive, from feeling overwhelmed and helpless to I can do this with God’s help.

So, sometimes I think my pat answer of “Ask God to help you” is taking the easy way out. Shouldn’t I have a more intellectual response to offer others after all these years in recovery? Maybe, but as long as I know “Ask God for help” works, that will continue to be my most frequent go-to solution for life’s problems. Maybe God won’t wave a magic wand, but somehow I (and hopefully others) will get the strength and courage and knowledge and willingness and acceptance, and faith and hope to make it through one more of life’s challenges.

-Anonymous

An Addict’s Trinity

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 00:35:50 GMT

My sleep habits are irregular, which means I suppose, that they’re no longer habits: a sign of ageing? Asleep by 10:30, awake at one am, maybe at two, and again at 4:30. Once awakened, I may fall right back to sleep or lie quietly. On occasion, I’m disturbed about this or that, or dogged by a random ache. Mostly, I’m just awake with my thoughts, which some time ago, I began to shape into prayer, searching for a way to speak of God and to God and call His name. From there the words wound themselves against my pain and around my joy. Now, in the dim light of night with my wife asleep or lying still beside me, I lull my soul with this anthem of healing and redemption.

An Addict’s Trinity

To the God of a Thousand Names and No Face, to the Christ, to the Spirit

I. Infinite Being, Infinite Love, Innate Stillness,

The Source, the Essence, the Creator of Creation and my Maker, by whom all that is, is:
I invoke You, I exalt You, I revere You.
I revel in your breath within me, as I awaken to Your perfect care.
To you, I entrust my terrors, turmoil, trials and triumphs;
Dismiss my despair, distress and dismay, my devices, designs, desires and delights;
Shed my secret shame and sadness.
In you I reconcile all the seething resentments I cannot erase;
Release all the nameless anxiety I cannot escape;
Relinquish all the loneliness and longing I cannot endure.
In You, I rejoice in all the love I cannot express.
All this, all that I am, is Yours.

II. Transforming “Yes”, the Master,

by Whom I am settled within myself, compassionate toward others, and intimate with the Holy:

I abandon myself to You,
Bind my “yes” to Yours, to be with You, mirror You, echo You
in every manner of thing, under any condition and at all times.
I am Yours entirely.

III. Extravagant Grace, the Presence

by Whom all hope, forgiveness, courage, honesty, wisdom, peace and love reside in me:

I invest all my hope and trust and confidence in You.

IV. My Petition

Embrace me, calm me, heal me – wounded, frightened, resentful, running, scheming, ridiculous.
Let me be settled, careful, astute, deliberate, brave, kind and happy.

Ignite my love. Infuse me with your grace. Invade my fortress self. Inspire me to your service.

O Holy,
grant us quiet hearts, wise choices, deliberate speed, contagious joy. Amen

-Martin C. P. McElroy, 2015, from Shattered, Anthems of Healing and Rejoicing

Through the Red Doors

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 22:50:18 GMT

Before I entered recovery, I spent a lot of time feeling alone and cold. Even surrounded by my family and friends I could still feel isolated and unloved. I had no connection with God and when I drove by churches in early recovery I had a feeling like I should be there, but just couldn't get through the doors.

The first time I attempted to go to a face to face meeting, I was an anxious wreck. I showed up at the church, wandered through the corridors and could not find the group. I knew I was in the right place but I was too scared to wander any further. I left through the doors crying and did not have the courage to come back for another six months.

One cold December night, I walked through those same doors where I ran into two women. They welcomed me with smiles and invited me to where they were meeting- in the warmth and light of the basement. My stomach was sick but I felt lighter having felt that I was in the right place. The women around me were just like me and that basement had a feeling about it that I can't describe. It was God's presence.

I hadn't been to church in years but it's as though the church was enveloping me into its arms to comfort me. I was welcome no matter what state I was in. God was waiting for me there even though I had felt so separate from him for so long it was a reunion that felt natural.

I would falter still. Over the next year I would attend on and off for some months and then fall off the map, struggling with an addiction to anxiety medication and then attempting suicide. I felt cold, alone, hopeless, and crying in my heart to be held again.

Back through the doors I came—those open arms—and I was embraced with a warmth that was so desperately needed during a very dark and difficult time.

It was because of those times in the basement that I reconnected with God after years of being estranged. I would soon after begin walking through the red doors of our local church on Sundays with my children.

Whether the doors are bright red or dingy white, opening to the high ceilings or crowded tables and chairs, to me, walking through them means walking into God's arms. Where I need to be and where I belong.

-Mindy

Keeping Recovery First.

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 01:45:30 GMT

My first attempt at getting clean, after a 17-year downward spiral to the depths of my addiction, was through a long-term women’s treatment center in Memphis in 1985. They only offered AA meetings and used AA literature at the time because other 12-step fellowships had not been around long enough to have long-term recovery. Alcohol use was not the primary manifestation of my addiction, so it was somewhat difficult to identify. (Today, the ladies of that same facility are offered a variety of fellowships and recovery literature, and I am grateful they have that choice.)

I was there for 9 months and started using about half-way through after my priorities got out of balance. When I got caught, I was given the choice to start over or leave. I chose to leave because I wasn’t going to use anymore. Wrong! One is too many and a thousand is never enough, and I just couldn’t stop.

My addiction got so much worse, so quickly. It wasn’t long before I resorted to: “Dear God, please help me” (not go to jail, not OD, etc.). Finally, one of my cries for help paid off. I ended up in another treatment center on January 20, 1987. A few days before my discharge, I made a phone call to the Narcotics Anonymous helpline and asked the young girl who returned my phone call for a ride to a meeting the day I was scheduled to get out, and I also asked her to be my temporary sponsor. You see, I knew that I had to put my recovery first this time, starting with day one.

The suggestions I followed in early recovery I still follow today. I have a sponsor, go to meetings, work steps, read the literature, pray, fellowship, and serve others. Recovery gave me the ability to hold a job long-term, raise my son as a single parent, the tools to cope with whatever I might be going through – to live life on life’s terms in the best and worst of times.

I’ve had my ups and downs in recovery. At 10 years clean I found out that I had Hepatitis C as a result of my active addiction, and surviving 2 rounds of interferon treatment is nothing short of a miracle! My son grew up and moved away from home around the same time as the Hep C treatments. I felt so alone. I was super depressed and continually sick from the treatment. I was beginning to slack off in using the recovery tools that had kept me clean. After making some poor decisions, and then finally getting out of the mess my life had become, I began to make changes for the better again. My health improved. I started going to more meetings. I got a new sponsor. I started over in my steps. I renewed my service efforts!

One of the greatest gifts of recovery has been my relationship with the God of my understanding. I prayed when I was out there using for God to please help me. When I realized I could pray those same prayers for help in recovery, I started to feel more hopeful, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to start believing that I could stay clean. The Episcopal chaplain at the treatment center I was in helped me to realize that through God, I could receive the willingness, strength, courage, and faith that I so badly needed in early recovery.

I had started working at an Episcopal church shortly before my relapse in 1986 and the love and support given to me by this faith community (and my 12-step fellowship) made the difference between me staying clean or facing a life of jails, institutions, and ultimately death. I was thrilled to realize that the Episcopal church had a national recovery organization (Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church), as well as a local diocesan commission on addiction and recovery.

I’m eternally grateful to have found this new way to live. I know that I can’t keep what I have unless I give it away, so I’ve stayed involved in helping to carry the message of recovery through both my church and 12-step fellowship since 1987 and hope to celebrate 29 years of recovery later this month.

-A grateful recovering addict in Memphis

One Day At A Time

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 06:44:48 GMT

2106 is a leap year with 53 Fridays and 53 Saturdays. 366 days to tally as four seasons, two solar and two lunar eclipses, standard and daylight savings time, a presidential election day, civic holidays, religious feast days, work deadlines, school term schedules, tourneys and championships for every sport, and of course, our personal birthdays, wedding anniversaries and milestones in recovery. We measure time by more than watches and calendars.

As a high school senior, I was ‘kind of a big deal’ (what high school senior isn’t?). Top grades in a top school, yearbook editor, student council officer, societies and activities against the backdrop of college applications, and in my case, an interior pull toward the Jesuit novitiate. As the stakes swelled, my grip slipped and screw-ups swelled until one chill March night, a cop busted me for 50 in a 35 on a rain slicked road and froze me in mid-flight. A friend prodded me to unload my gathering woes to my Dad, a step that loomed to me as fearful as accosting Zeus.

Zeus was compassionate and kind. He, himself, already held growing concerns that my legs were slipping out from under me. His underwhelming advice: “take one day at a time.” It turned out that “one” day was exactly right, because the very next day at school, my advisor called me out for my crappy attitude and cockiness. I knew he was right and I had a solution, or at least the thread of one. “One day at a time.” That, and call Dad.

In the years to come, I fecklessly accelerated into the curves of life’s choices, yielding miscues and messes, careless of my own and others’ needs and interests. I sped from pasts (last night, last semester, last boss, last marriage) toward futures (next deal, next job, next wife, next drink). Eventually, the day, the hour, the moment of grace arrived, slowing, quieting, opening time to see, accept and live in each moment, each “now”.

A learned business guru once wrote that “strategic planning grasps the future outcomes of present decisions.” The 4^th century Indian poet, Kalidasa, wrote, “Look to this day, for it is life. The very life of life.” St. Theresa of Liseux wrote, “trust God that you will find meaning and value here and now.” On my first sober anniversary, my sponsor gave me an edition of John Singer Sargent’s paintings. In the overleaf, he wrote: “…so much beauty collected over a lifetime. Today, we each add a sketch to our own lives. Before – perhaps not even a line.”

Saints and worthies are united in their counsels to make no new year’s resolutions to fix, reconcile, improve or achieve anything, anything at all beyond the twenty-four hours at hand. I can only shape or change me, my own attitudes and behavior, and only at this moment. Our impatience, our urges and ambitions are distractions. Horace declaimed, “seize the day!” Yes! See, explore and revel in this day. Let it reveal its gifts as being gifts to be gauged, used well and treasured much in thanksgiving.

What is dominating me, distracting me from this moment?

What fears, desires, attitudes, behaviors, habits cloud my vision of this moment?

Whose needs and gifts and love are with me now and what is my response to them?

How does my faith help me enrich my grasp of the Presence in the present?

O God, “I AM” – Grant me a moment’s grace, a moment’s peace, a moment’s love.

Martin C. P. McElroy
from Bumper Sticker Healing: Slogans in Recovery

Staying the Course

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 23:55:43 GMT

There was no song in my heart. The world was a pretty dark place. I didn’t see stars in the heavens. I had no hope in my soul. My best friend was a glass of scotch. My family didn’t trust me; I was a liar, a terrible mom, wife, sister, friend and employee. I was running on empty. My mom had died, which would have been difficult enough to process had I been sober. But add active alcoholism, and I was rock bottom depressed. My husband and I had adopted a son, and I was failing miserably at being a good mom. You can’t parent well when you are not present to the needs of the child. I was a complete and total failure on every front. I would just as soon be dead myself.

And then, on January 22, 1987, after getting my husband into treatment (he was sooo much worse than me) I GOT SOBER. By the grace of God I got sober. And by the grace of God I have stayed sober since that day. Life did not become a “piece of cake”, but hope began to fill my soul, and I saw stars in the sky, and sometimes I thought I could hear the song of angels in my heart.

I was broken and began to heal; was hungry and received nourishment; lost and I found a place where I belonged. I was a prisoner to alcohol, and my “sentence” was ended and I was free. And my soul began to come alive.

I have found that I am always okay if I trust in God, follow the steps and stay in a place of gratitude. With Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, my AA birthday and my natal birthday all descending upon me within the next 90 days, I want only to pass on my message to continue the path, and know that God will guide us and care for us if we stay the course ~ you too will begin to rebuild and to find peace and discover that special music in your heart. Blessings on each of you, most particularly during the holidays.

Patty B.

The Meeting in the Crypt

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 03:52:19 GMT

I was looking for an AA meeting in Paris. I got to the church early, and watched which door people were going in. Churches can have many doors, and meeting locations can be sort of cryptic, a back door or an obscure staircase from the parking lot.

Finding and following the crowd, we walked down steep stone stairs. AA? I asked. Oui, she said, oui, c’est dans la crypte. The location actually was cryptic, that is hidden, mysterious, the lowest, deepest room of an old stone basilica, the foundation, where we would gather to share our struggles to maintain a foundation of sobriety.

I love church crypts. These deepest rooms are small and dark, with stone arches, musty smell. Sometimes there is an eternal light, or an icon, and an invitation to spend time in prayer. Once in a crypt I found on the altar a roughly scribbled note, and read it: Cher Dieu, dear God, help me in my addiction, help me find new life, forgive my sins, pardonnez vous mes offenses, help me, m’aidez. I picture a desperate young man, alone in the depths, seeking respite from the apocalypse of his life, scribbling that note. How long had it been there?

In Vezelay, in Burgundy, there is an all-night vigil every Thursday night in the crypt, praying before the host, the reserved communion bread. On retreat, I join the monks and nuns in the dark. At 6am Friday the bread is brought up out of the Romanesque depths and placed on the altar in the bright Gothic nave.

In Paris I join another procession, more noisy and scraggly than the solemn monastics, down to the crypt. The room is like a lot of AA meeting places in other churches, a room also used by many other folks. Perhaps it was also the choir rehearsal room, or a church school classroom, various boxes of music stacked by the walls and kids’ pictures taped to the stone.

A nice person offers to get me some coffee through the crowded bustle of chairs and people, and brings me back a cup half full. I feel a blast of grumpiness about their stinginess, it’s early and this is my first cup, until I taste it – delicious French espresso, thick and jolting.

The speaker is a longtime American Paris resident; it is an English speaking meeting. She had moved here originally on a “geographic,” an AA term for dealing with your addiction by moving; “I did a geographic, to get away from trouble, shame, the wreckage of my past.” A desperate or resigned hope that a new place will help one get sober. But mostly these stories are about how the descent only continues, gets worse, in the new place one just gets deeper and deeper into one’s addiction.

It seems appropriate to be in this deep cold dark room, well actually it is pretty well lit by 21^st century lights, but one can tell it was originally lit only by candles in the wall alcoves, to be down deep when we are speaking of down deep cold memories. Crypts can be cold, but that jolt of expresso and the happy 40 people in a small room warms me up pretty quickly.

After the meeting I sit for a few minutes to enjoy the room, the afterglow. My sponsor encourages me to do this, not to rush out afterwards, stay for the meeting after the meeting, meet someone. A young woman starts talking with me, we discover we are staying near each other, we talk Paris for a bit. “My parents are driving me crazy.” They are so judgmental, it feels like to her, why does she have to live so far away, why does she have to keep going to meetings if she is now sober? We laugh the knowing laugh of the converted.

Like the sleepy Friday morning exodus from the crypt tomb in Vezelay, we stumble up the steep stone stairs of this church and out into the Paris morning. I see that same woman a day or so later at another meeting across town. We smile and hug like old friends.

I continue my France trip visiting crypts and meetings. In towns where I can’t find a meeting I take my Big Book with me down into the crypt and read. Not by nature a great kneeler or bower, I have to get down closer to the ground to enter these crypts. I pray. And practice beginner’s mind. I touch the cold stone foundational walls. The dirt floor connects my feet to the earth. I stare at the precious host and give thanks for new life.

-Deborah Streeter

Times of Remembrance and Reflection

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 04:04:43 GMT

My birthday is in April, and I look forward to it with excitement as God has given me another day, another year to live, to breathe in all that life has to offer. But there is also a little dread in anticipation of my birthday. I think of how old I am getting, and of how much I wish I could take back, how much I will never be able to experience. I think of all the time I will not get back. And about how closer I come to my mortality. Birthdays can truly be a mixed bag of blessing and lamentation for me.

There is, however, another day which I look forward to without trepidation. The past three Novembers have reframed my thinking about birthdays and times of remembrance and reflection. You see, on November 4, 2012, All Saints Sunday, I was baptized in a small, rural Episcopal church in Virginia. Surrounded by family and new friends, I was given grace. I was made clean indeed. I made a vow, a covenant with the God who saved me countless times that I will never know and many times when the eyes of my soul were open to behold the miracles of grace. On that day, I acknowledged, for perhaps the first time ever, that I was powerless and that God could be my only salvation. I fell into the drops of water as the priest sprinkled them over me, just as I had fallen into the grace-filled, divine flow of life.

I acknowledged that day something I already knew: I was powerless. Powerless to overcome alcohol. Powerless to overcome the paralyzing fear and anxiety that kept me from living abundantly. Powerless to accept love and help from those around me, from those who loved me. Powerless to the need to control everything and everyone in my life. That is, I realized I was powerless without the help of God.

On that day, I knew that God was working in me, showing me the things, as the Book of Common Prayer says, "necessary for my salvation." At my baptism, I promised to walk humbly with my God, knowing that I could fall, but trusting that God would pick me up.

And so each year, on November 4th, I recall that glorious day, my spiritual birthday, with gratitude and joy. I recall the friendship God made in me. I remember the promises I made, and marvel at the promises God made to me, which I don't truly understand. I remember the man I used to be, this time with mercy, instead of rigid criticism and regret. I remember the feeling of that water on my forehead, and the cleansing that I felt as sins were put away. I remember how far I have come since that day, and look to the present moment with gladness and mindfulness to the hope of tomorrow.

-James D.

Turning It Over

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:41:46 GMT

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all
things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of
lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided
and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together
under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP p. 236)

This coming Sunday is Recovery Sunday in our diocese. After a long hiatus we have given congregations the option of celebrating recovery and calling the church to awareness in the area of substance abuse and addictions.

After I had suggested the date to the Bishop I realized it was Christ the King Sunday. If there is anything that most of the folks that I know in recovery are not it would be abounding in triumphalism in the broadest sense of the word. The more I prayed on it and found something in the texts to link to the work of recovery and powerlessness I became less sure that the path would emerge. Thank God my darling wife read the collect to me. The path began to emerge in a real and tangible way.

If there was any way to describe my state at the end (please God) of my drinking, it was “enslaved by sin.” I sometimes felt that Paul’s words in the letter to the Romans “¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” were written just for me. Sin, for me was not the act of drinking so much as it was making consistent and irrational choices to do the very thing that left me feeling spiritually dry, arid and separate from all that is good, holy and true.

Any day that I don’t drink now is a triumph that can only be realized if I know, in thought and action, that I cannot remain sober on my own will. When I came into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous I really started to understand what it meant to “be freed and brought together under God’s most gracious rule.”

The only door I have found to the freedom that sobriety has brought to my life and the lives of those I love has been when I admit my powerlessness over only three areas of my life—People, Places and Things. Other than that I’m on it.

So, on the cusp of the Feast of Christ the King, I pray that I can continue to ‘turn it over’ to God’s most gracious rule. Sometimes it’s a day at a time. Mostly, though, it’s moment by moment. I cannot begin to tell you the kind of freedom I have come to experience by allowing God to be God so I don’t feel tempted to take the reins of my unruly will back.

-Warren H.

¹ The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Ro 7:15). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

How can I save him from his addiction?

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 04:48:57 GMT

Sarah was proud of the fact she had 6 months in the program but was very worried about her 18 year old son and his addiction to alcohol, so worried in fact she felt his behavior was jeopardizing her sobriety. Of course, everyone jumped in with their own thoughts of what “worked for them” in situations like that.

The first comments related to her feelings about her own sobriety. I certainly felt she couldn’t let someone else’s behavior threaten her own sobriety. That’s akin to what I did all the years of my own drinking: I let others define my own behavior patterns and importantly how I felt about myself. I drank so others would like me, I wanted to be part of their group and believed that the admission key was a case of beer. I had no self-esteem or feelings of self-worth. It was all tied to what others thought.

The talk turned to the fact that her son had to take responsibility for his conduct, that it had nothing to do with her. I felt strongly she can’t control him, that her efforts to do so only lead to frustration, anger, resentments, self-pity and depression and anxiety and ultimately to that first drink – which for the alcoholic leads inexorably to the whole bottle or case.

There were several paths mapped out for her but ultimately we came to the point of reminding all of us that we must be aware of unknowingly rescuing the addict, covering-up, excusing his conduct, enabling his comfortable continuation of his addiction.

It’s not easy, especially with children and parents and siblings … enabling just makes it easy for them to continue on their path of self-destruction. So we all mentioned that in this situation she can’t let him stay at her house if he continues his drinking, give him money, loan him the car, bail him out of jail, call his boss with the excuse his absence is caused by “the flu”, clean-up after he is sick in the living room … in a word or two, we can’t engage in any conduct that enables him to fail to take responsibility for his action and the consequences of his drinking.

Johnny C. summed it up very nicely:

“He knows you’re in the Program and of course is threatened by the changes in your life already.. So he’s afraid, maybe angry. But he – like you – won’t work the Program ‘til he’s ready. Hopefully, that occurs before his drunkenness causes a tragedy in his or another’s life”

Jim A., Covington, KY

Clothed with joy

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 01:52:29 GMT

I carry with me two talismans of my recovery.

The first is a medallion celebrating two years of sobriety this month. I am fortunate that the desire to drink was pretty much taken away after I hit rock bottom – literally – on the marble floor of the hotel lobby at a work conference.

The second is a bracelet that arrived the day after that conference – the last thing I bought without telling my wife – that helps me remember I don't need to spend money when I am feeling "restless, irritable, and discontented."

But what recovery really looks like for me is the Pendleton shirt that I wear around the house on the weekends.

After I lost my job, I was at home a lot more often. I would usually wear jeans and a turtleneck and that favorite shirt.

I remember sitting on the couch one evening thinking, "I really like this shirt; I should buy another one."

It took only a few seconds for my new inner voice to respond. "Don't be an idiot. This is a Pendleton shirt, and it will last forever. You won't outlive this shirt; you don't need to buy another one."

Paul writes that:

“We do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day .... in this tent we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed" (2 Cor. 4:16, 5:4).

Even though God is working in us to renew our inner nature, we may need reminders of that hidden process from time to time.

How often?

"One day at a time," says Alcoholics Anonymous. "Daily we begin again," say the Benedictines.

That first day after my fall, I spoke by phone to a fellow deacon from another diocese who I knew was in recovery. I confessed my fear that every day would feel like a burden, an endless process of giving things up, not being able to do what I wanted.

He burst out laughing and said, “You’ve got it all backwards! Any day that you don’t drink is an oasis, not a burden!” He went on to describe how people in recovery enjoy a “daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of [their] spiritual condition.”

That really stuck with me.

I have for 23 years practiced praying the Daily Office, and as I continue in recovery I understand more and more how the 12 Steps illuminate basic practices of the Christian faith. The familiar prayers are shot through with a deeper meaning now.

The Confession of Sin that begins Morning and Evening Prayer – what is it but a daily self-inventory (Step 10)?

The regularity of the Daily Office, the discipline of Bible reading, the prayers for ourselves and for the needs of others – what are they but “seeking conscious contact with God … praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out” (Step 11)?

Even though we "wish not to be unclothed," we may have to spend time each day being uncomfortably open and vulnerable – honestly sitting with our restlessness and our "stinking thinking" – before we can experience a new kind of peace and serenity.

Being content with what I have, being at peace with those around me, being calm about asking for what I need – these are what it means for me to be "clothed with joy."

Rodger P.

GRATEFULNESS

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:42:35 GMT

“We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” I remember hearing this portion of the 9^th Step Promises from pages 83-84 of the Big Book in my first days of not drinking. I use the term not drinking for I did not have a clue about what the recovering life could look like at that point in my life. My 29+ years of drinking had come to an embarrassing, painful, anger-filled, and life saving intervention by my boss and others who loved me. As I slowly started hearing how the work of the Twelve Steps could lead to these promises being fulfilled, I thought “maybe for others, but not for me.” I so desperately wanted to SHUT the door on ALL the regrets I had from this past, especially as they impacted my wife, our son, and particularly our daughter.

For 18 years, she had weathered the storms of my alcoholic behavior. The profound depth of those effects came to bear in her teen years. She was the “Mini-Me” most families find occurring in parent/child relationships – a perfectionist, often flares of deep anger, then regret, then despair, back to anger. Although we did not overlay expectations upon her for school work or other activities, she pushed herself harder and deeper. At thirteen, we dragged her, and I mean I literally threw her over my shoulder to drive to the therapist! Her first sessions she refused to leave the car, so she sat in the back seat while the therapist stood next to the slightly cracked open window. This all happened while I was still active in my alcoholism which continued for another five years – because, as you might understand, I was not the problem!

As I continued working the steps to #8 and 9, the amends making was not possible with my daughter. She was one whom we learn of the latter portion of Step 9 “… unless to do so would injure them or others.” She tolerated being in our home because of her love, care, and protection of her mother from me. So I learned, accepted, and PRAYED that in God’s time a window for making my deep amends to her would open. Over the years following in recovery – now 18 years, matching her age when I began this journey – the windows of opportunity cracked open at times. They usually came after she had drunk too much, did something she now regretted, and was wallowing in that valley of feeling worthless that I had known so well. When she opened a little, I would try to share my experience from times just like this in her life, and ask forgiveness for how I had hurt her in this life. Sometimes my amends were heard and grudgingly accepted, and other times vehemently rejected. I accepted her side of the street and did what I knew I could do in becoming a sober man and father she might forgive and embrace someday. I just kept doing the next things as right as I could, and asked for forgiveness when those character defects popped up again. I just kept coming back as best I could, one day after another after another after …

I offer this part of my story this day for on Saturday, October 17, our daughter will celebrate her marriage to a fine man … and I will be walking her down the aisle! Eighteen years ago, and even eight years ago, I am pretty sure I would not have even been invited to be any part of the blessings of this day in her life.

For this reason, I now embrace this promise of the 9^th Step … and for that I am grateful!

Paul G.

Recovery Ministries - two ways we support recovery

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 18:32:15 GMT

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Tacoma, WA (Diocese of Olympia) seeks to support recovery in two ways that may be of interest and encouragement to other congregations. Of course we make our facility available to several 12 step meetings, including AA and Al-Anon. The first is to designate one Sunday every September as Alcoholism Awareness Sunday. On that Sunday, the sermon focuses on alcoholism and substance abuse and on recovery for the person and their household. In place of the regular sermon, we may have a speaker from AA or Al-Anon, a speaker from our diocesan Commission on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, or I as rector may speak specifically about the “disease” of alcoholism and how our Christian faith offers hope for recovery. Simply dedicating one Sunday to alcoholism and substance abuse is a powerful and welcome message to our congregation that this issue can and needs to be talked about. Many members each year express their appreciation that this simple observance offers an opening to talk about this challenge they carry in their household and/or family history which is generally taboo for discussion.

Second, after much discussion, St. Andrew’s now offers a chalice of consecrated juice as well as consecrated wine at our Sunday Eucharists. I confess that as rector, I resisted this because it seemed logistically awkward and because just receiving the bread was “full” communion. However, we were offering gluten-free communion wafers as an alternative to the consecrated bread, and some parishioners did feel that excluding them from the cup denied our acknowledgement and commitment to recovery. After consultation with our bishop, we instituted a trial period and now have been offering an alternative chalice for the past year.

The logistics have gone very smoothly, and the alternative chalice has been appreciated by more folks than I expected – those refraining from alcohol as part of their recovery, those who choose to refrain from alcohol because of other medications, and several children who do not like the taste of the wine.

We purchase small, 6 oz. bottles of grape juice – individual serving size – which do not need refrigeration before opening. One bottle is sufficient for both 8 am and 10 am services, with any remainder discarded. So there is no issue of refrigeration.

The chalice used is distinct from our other chalices – ours is ceramic rather than silver plate. The filled chalice is placed on the Altar at the Offertory. I make the following announcement every Sunday: “When the wine is offered, if you would prefer a chalice of non-alcohol-bearing, consecrated juice, indicate by placing your hands together, palms down, and that will be offered.” (We use the same signal to indicate a preference for non-gluten bread when that is offered.) Then when the Eucharistic Minister bearing a chalice of wine sees that sign, they pass that person at the communion rail and another Eucharistic Minister, bearing the chalice of consecrated juice, steps up to serve. (At 8 am, the one Eucharistic Minister may return to the Altar to exchange chalices if an assistant is not available.) Over-all, this part of our liturgical service has flowed very well.

These two practices have been much appreciated in our congregation and have inspired visitors beyond our parish. Regular members find this a gracious expression of our welcome to all God’s people.

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Martin Yabroff

We have made the journey together

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 03:36:14 GMT

At times I felt alone; at times I battled with the idea that I was the maker of my life. When I was caught up in a constant desire for fame and material wealth, my partner was not with me. I was alone, trying to figure out the path to happiness. Drug addiction gave me the illusion of control. Many years passed of trouble, with the law, with the family, and with the job. I met my end when alcohol brought me to the place that an alcoholic knows well: loneliness, an indescribable sadness and fear. I reached out for help in the physical world, to the people in twelve step recovery.

I started to walk in the sunlight of the Spirit, life did take on new meaning,and I found the friend who I thought had left me behind. But my lessons were not complete. For 12 plus years, fame and fortune threw applause my way and I thought that I had “arrived”. One day while in Dover, England, after carousing around the links, I left my friend for my old acquaintance: addiction. The walls did not come immediately crashing down, there was no black cloud, my bank account was not emptied, and my wife of 10 years (who also had 15 plus years of recovery) suspected nothing. Yet the slow return of loneliness and despair was inevitable and it felt like torture. Eventually I was alone again; or so I felt.

Leaving prison and living in the big northern city did not fulfill that desire in me which I could not identify. I turned to the country in South Georgia. While seeking fame in an anonymous fellowship, I met with a Vicar who freely offered his church's space for our new recovery meeting. He had moved here and became Vicar of the church only two weeks prior to us meeting. Things developed and I struggled with staying clean but was never judged by the members of the congregation, and certainly not by the Vicar or Youth Minister. I had never made my own decision to become a member of a congregation; that decision was made for me as a youngster. This time the decision is mine: to follow a path that is not clearly visible yet, but my thoughts about my purpose are clear: carry the message of God, using recovery, to reach the man on paper, the mother hiding from her family, and any needing help, to mend the shame and prejudice surrounding the addiction and recovery process.

Say the word “God” and watch how addicted people react. Exhibit an “act of God” and feel them respond. The words are not useful until the spirit is open to them. One cannot graft a new idea into a closed mind. God has put me in a position in my life I never imagined, given me an opportunity to carry his message, through my experience, to a community I have grown to admire. Homelessness, treatment, affiliation with the rich and poor, prison, popularity, fortune, children and my family relationships are some of the experiences I carry.

Our Church now has more recovery meetings of any place in our county. We plan to show the documentary “The Anonymous People” for the community in October. We are praying for guidance to discover our signature mission.

I am taking more time for prayerful meditation and the worldly clamors are becoming quieter. My journey was always with God. The practice of discernment has become a base for my faith and my continuing relationship with God.

-Anonymous

God's Grace

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 03:05:44 GMT

As I reflect on my sobriety and the struggles I have had in the past with self-medicating through alcohol, I invariably come back to the idea of grace. I am here by grace, and it is through grace that I find the courage to stay sober. I don't know when or if I will slip up. It could be today or tomorrow. It could be years from now. But what I do know is that grace will be there to pick me back up.

I have many reasons to stay sober. From the love of my mom to the smiling faces of my nieces, or the responsibility I have to my younger brothers to provide a good example of what a good man does, or the hope of fulfilling the dreams I have implanted on my heart, there are real, incarnate reasons that remind me each day that I have a good life and I need to entrust my failings and my doubts to the higher power of the Grace of God. If I can surrender my need to try and control everything, I can see that grace alive and vibrant in every moment. And, I can realize that alcohol cannot make anything better than it already is!

Alcohol, for me, is a "stumbling block," to use the words from Jesus in Mark, Chapter 9. It is an impediment that keeps me from being my best self, from whom God created me to be. It soothes the pain, or so I think. Really, it simply numbs the pain, making me think things are ok. But the pain is still there; I am simply ignoring it. And when I recognize that the alcohol has not really made my problems go away, I get mad or depressed and I take all of the anger and sadness out on those around me, on those I love. And God was one of my favorite targets. What I have come to realize is that not only does alcohol keep me from being my best self, but it becomes a barrier to a full, deep, enriching relationship with God.

And while I know God is big enough to take my railing and wailing and anger, my love for God keeps me from drinking. My desire to be who God wants me to be stops me from picking up a bottle. My desire to love God as God loves me strengthens me to not drink. And when I fail, if I fall, God's grace will pick me up and cover the gap that I cannot fill.

James D.

The Gathering

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 02:16:30 GMT

"What's The Gathering?" I asked her. To this day I do not know how the name of the annual conference was chosen. It took me a long time to arrive at this gathering of recovering saints. Not because the flights were long or the taxi drivers were slow to arrive or the trains were delayed. It took me a long time to get to The Gathering because it took me a long time to finally choose sobriety.

Choosing to live a sober life was certainly the very best choice I have made. My family said they had missed the real me much. I was turning to alcohol, running away, making unhealthy choices, and finally hurting so very much that it was my only choice left. I was finally able through the path of recovery to know that I had been forgiven and that I could choose to forgive. I found a loving God full of mercy and grace who heals, redeems, reconciles and restores. And I was given peace.

After a few years of my new life, I discovered that many people gather together (there it is, the name!) in the path of recovery in many different organized events, from different countries, speaking different languages, worshipping in many different ways. And when The Gathering, an annual conference hosted by Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church, was introduced to me as a place I could go, as a conference I could attend, as a retreat I could give to myself, I registered, booked my flights and hotel room, and waited.

I waited because I was not really sure what was ahead. I waited because I did not have any idea who would be there. Would they be people that I could relate to? I wondered. Will I meet anyone that I will enjoy knowing? Will they understand my journey in recovery?

My journey in recovery from alcoholism and other addictions had required that I thoughtfully and prayerfully rebuild my broken relationship with a loving God and with the church. Gratefully, I found that almost everyone attending shared a very similar journey.

My journey in recovery also included discovering service work. Service work shows up in all places and in so many needed ways. I was surprised when I realized that I could be of service to others in recovery through this important fellowship of Recovery Ministries. So, as I walked through the conference, attended the lectures and experiential events, worshipped with fellow recovering folks surrounding me, I was touched deeply. I was surprised by the depth of the meaning of this Gathering of souls who have walked paths quite similar to mine. I laughed and cried. I attended meetings that touched me very deeply. I heard lectures that I recall years later in my heart and mind. I savored the marvelous worship. I made very dear friends. And, after a few years, I was invited to serve on the board of Recovery Ministries. I have found great depth in my fellow board members. I have repeatedly prayed to God to direct me and use me in this unique and precious service to other alcoholics, addicts, and members of recovery in the church.

Oh, all of this is not necessarily guaranteed by the organizing committee for each attendee. But indeed, surely goodness and mercy shall pursue us as we Gather together in Seattle in October. May God's grace and mercy pour over each person preparing for The Gathering booking flights, hotel, and transportation, and waiting. May God bring to each of us the gifts that only God knows what each person truly needs.

Anonymous (thank you)

The Love I Found in the Program

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 01:41:29 GMT

On Sept. 5^th I celebrate 43 years being clean and sober. And like the first meeting I attended on Sept. 5, 1972, the lead up to my birthday has things stirring inside.

My mother asked me to attend an AA meeting with her when she was perhaps six months sober. I was just a few months past my 21^stbirthday; she had gotten sober while I was out of the country and wanted me to understand why she had been the way she had been while I was growing up.

I decided I could go to a meeting and find out why she had been so mean. It was Father Martin’s chalk talk; a two hour presentation that filled the room near Annapolis, MD, to capacity. During the first hour he spoke about what the chemical composition of alcohol does to anyone’s body. During the second hour, he spoke about what alcohol does to an alcoholic.

For the first hour I took my mother’s inventory. During the second hour, I took my own. He described how the alcoholic might initially have a tremendous tolerance for alcohol, frequently seeming to drink others ‘under the table.’ But that wasn’t the good news I thought I had demonstrated; it meant that one’s body had an abnormal response to alcohol. And he described the progression to suicidal depression which I had been in the previous year as I closed the bars night after night. Even more horrifying, he said that for an alcoholic who stops drinking when that person picks up the next drink it is not as if they start over, or even start where they left off. An alcoholic’s body reacts as if they had never stopped drinking… picking up that much farther down the progression. I had proved it just two weeks before when, after a dramatic conversion to Christianity and six months without a drink, a half a beer had me stumbling into the furniture. Me! Who had been putting down between a pint and a quart of tequila a day the year before.

I turned to my mother’s program friend sitting next to me and said “I think I’m an alcoholic.” She took my phone number and for a month hounded me until I agreed to go to another AA meeting. The second meeting was celebrating another woman’s fifth sobriety birthday. I remember listening to her in amazement and thinking she was from Mars. How, in God’s name, did ANYONE go five years without a drink?

Slowly. One does it slowly. And, if we are fortunate, we get remade in the process.

I was so sure I knew God much better than all the AA people who rumbled about “God as we understand him” and then made it clear they did not understand God at all. But they were willing to trust a loving Presence that might not be there. They were willing to help each other no matter what time of day or night another drunk reached out for help. They were willing to tell the truth, every truth, the most terrible truths, to at least one other person. And to clean up what they could of the wreckage of their pasts. Bottom line, they were staying sober and I was not.

So I showed up. Haltingly. Resisting suggestions for as long as possible. Choosing meetings attended by those who looked the least like me that I could find. But I showed up and slowly started to experience love that did not have to do with age, or class, or education. Love that sneaks past our defenses; love that sustains us when unthinkable tragedies occur; love that reaches through us to the next person who has called out for help with cries without words. Love in which even/especially God is anonymous. Love that carries me still, after 43 years, into deeper service to my beloved Triune God.

-Marguerite J.

Poem

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 00:11:52 GMT

I am a recently retired priest, and also a card-carrying, dues-paying codependent in recovery. I am also Chair of the Board of Directors of a small residential recovery home for women. Working with these women, I see miracles all the time, as Susan A. said on 7/29. Here is one of those miracles, written by a meth addict with just 60 days clean. -Martha Kreamer

Poem
(Written by current resident and used by permission)

It starts at a House on 27 acres,
Letting go of the past.
Becoming friends with 10 strangers.
Suddenly we experience many life changes.
Mornings filled with devotions,
Days, with up and down emotions.
“Rising Above” and making mistakes:
A life or death situation, so do whatever it takes.
Anxiety begins when we look at the future.
Then the term, “just for today,” is crucial.
It all boils down to Faith or Fear.
Get it together, girl; go after that career.
Once baby addicts, now starting to grow,
The person we should be is starting to show.
We have let go of lying, cheating, stealing.
Learning to laugh again, and laughter is healing.
Fight hard to find your Voice,
Cause at the end of the day,
It is still a choice.

Miracles

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 01:20:08 GMT

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a new clergy friend. We were sitting outside on a beautiful New Hampshire afternoon enjoying one another's company and exchanging views on life and the church. I thought we had pretty similar attitudes until he said, "I'm trying to convince my congregation that the miracle stories in the Gospels are just myths." Startled, I blurted out, "But I see miracles every day!"

My dictionary defines 'miracle' as "an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs." As a recovering alcoholic, every facet of my current life is a miracle. Six years ago a loving Power managed to get through all the blockades I'd erected over the years to keep out any recognition that I was not in any way in control of my drinking. Very quickly the mental obsession to drink which had been my faithful companion (and a substitute Higher Power) for decades disappeared.

I'm a miracle who loves to hang out with other miracles. The more I learn about the people around the table in my AA home group, the more I see that their lives too are "extraordinary events manifesting divine intervention." The young woman who'd been homeless, her children taken away; the middle-aged man once ostracized by his family and neighbors. The young woman's daughter came to the meeting a few weeks ago and spent most of it with her head laid fondly on her mother's shoulder; my other friend occasionally has to rush home to care for his grandchildren.

Being in recovery is the big, capital 'M' miracle. But little 'm' ones occur in my life every day as I continue to work the 12 Steps. Just now, having spent the past month with my husband's huge extended family vacationing nearby, I am endlessly grateful for the power of 10th Step inventory. I am at all times prone to resentment, but in July of each year I become a boiling kettle. I seethe, I sulk. But this year I resolved to write inventory on the resentments as soon as possible after they bubbled up. When I followed through on my resolve and even before I read the inventory to my sponsor, I could feel my emotional temperature return to normal. I could see my part in the situation and the all too familiar character defects driving my anger. I'd realize how much of the resentment was based on fantasy. And for the time being anyway, I was able to return to being a loving in-law to my husband's big, happy, chaotic family.

This may seem trivial compared to ongoing sobriety, but to me the defusing of emotional overload through inventory brings one of those little 'm' miracles. By stopping and taking the time to do a 10th Step I'm not fixing myself. That wouldn't be a miracle, it would be self-help. What's really happening is that I'm opening myself to "divine intervention," or as I'd prefer to call it, grace. While I'm scribbling my inventory I'm silently, maybe unconsciously, praying, "Here we go again, God. I know you've heard this all before, but I'm in trouble. I cannot, cannot, do this by myself. Help me!"

And amazing grace saves me once again, just (as I said to my new friend) as grace poured out of Jesus into the eyes, ears, bodies, and spirits, of those he healed.

Susan A.

Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today.

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:18:00 GMT

Why is it so difficult to accept things? Just thinking about acceptance makes me growl and feel sick to my stomach, which in itself tells me it’s time to work my program right this very minute. Before I even started drinking, I sought escape through reading, shopping, and creating elaborate fantasy visions of my future success, “as anticipated for years, the Nobel Prize goes to…. Kirsten H…..” When I started drinking, I could not believe how much better I felt when the weight of all that anxiety I carried around most days just vanished, or faded into the distance. A drink or two helped me feel more relaxed, less worried, more courageous about talking with people. And, I discovered, that when I felt really good after one drink I felt even better after two or three or four or five or….Well, maybe I didn’t feel better after five but I could keep working on getting it right, that magical numbers game of “just the right amount,” that I never figured out. As I drank more, the grandiose fantasies of success just kept spinning out as a deep black hole of self-hatred expanded within.

As I drank more, my desire to drink increased and became a physical, mental, and spiritual disease. I could not accept the most important and urgent part of my life – that I am an alcoholic and I cannot drink in safety. I tried prayer, going to church, but I felt that God had given up on me because I just could not stop drinking no matter how much I pleaded and begged. I refused to accept that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. I didn’t realize until much later how broken I was on the inside, and how I was trying to play God myself by dictating my terms and conditions for controlling my drinking. I forgot that God is love – and that God loves me no matter what because God is loving and generous, not because of anything I do or do not do. Yet that is more about steps 2 and 3, “came to believe in a higher power greater than ourselves” and “turned our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.” In order to get to that good stuff, in order to open myself to the sunlight of the spirit, I had to accept that I was alcoholic. I fought it for so many years, until finally, broken and afraid and out of options, I knew I needed help – from the rooms of the twelve steps.

When I keep my sobriety and recovery first, I always have a touchstone for acceptance. When I remember to accept, over and over again, that I am powerless over alcohol and my life has become unmanageable, I remember I also have a solution. When I face the situations in the day, I remember this powerlessness, as well as the capacity to take the action that is mine to take. Today, when I feel uncomfortable about the word “Acceptance,” I realize I have work to do. When I am spiritually fit and connected with God and my program, the word “acceptance” is another word, another tool, just part of life. When I am out of sorts and off the beam, the word “acceptance” makes me want to throw up and fight and run away. Today, I notice this in my body and remember again that oh yes, I must need to accept something. How can I do that when my head is crowded with disturbance? I can go to a meeting, call my sponsor, call my sponsees, ask for help from another person in recovery. I can read some program literature and take deep breaths to quiet that disturbance within me. I can pray. I always have my higher power, whom I choose to call God. Today I realize that I have to accept that I am responsible for my own sobriety and recovery, as well as my own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. That does not mean I can do it on my own – absolutely not! Yet, I cannot rely on other people to take care of me – that is a holdover from my old childlike fantasies from long ago. I cannot rely on other particular humans, but I sure can trust that God has put some human in my path who can help me. And when I accept that, I open myself to the light and love of my higher power, and I feel hope and relief. I am so grateful to be sober today.

-Kirsten H

Edge of Adventure 2015

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 02:39:10 GMT

Beach notes June 2015
Images of Sponsorship
Edge of adventure

The Edge of Adventure was a book by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller that some of you may have read many years ago in the 90’s about the Christian life and what it is like to start the adventure. I see a metaphor of the adventure of intervention, a 12-step call, sponsorship as I watch this evening from our balcony on the gulf coast as a pageant plays out on the beach below.

It is near sunset. A sleek young couple dressed in black drive up to the beach access road by our condo in their looks-like-new Clays Car golf cart -- black with a white top and leather seats. They get out with the young daughter. The barefoot darling could not be more than two, petite with a wide brim sunhat and a flowing blue sundress ending just below her knees. As she holds her father’s hand, the top of her bonnet barely reaches his hip. They walk to the beach to the ocean’s edge, and then she will go no farther. Her parents coax her to put her tiny feet into the surf, but she refuses to get wet. She now wants her mother to hold her. The father goes into the surf and picks out beautiful shells and shows her her first fruits of the sea, but she still will not budge into the water. It is obvious that her parents love the sea and they want their daughter to experience it as well. Finally her parents walk into the surf together hand in hand and the daughter plays and runs about the dry sand just in front of them.

Just a few feet away a shirtless grandfather comes out to the surf with his grandson, maybe 4 or 5 years old. The grandson has on a white shirt and short blue pants. The grandfather strokes his white beard, shows the grandson how to bait his hook and casts his line into the surf. He almost constantly looks back to see where his grandson is. Is he babysitting or is this a lesson in fishing? Maybe both. The grandson is less interested in fishing and more interested in the rise and the fall of the surf. The grandson playfully goes to the edge of a wave’s edge but awkwardly runs away from the rising surf as it comes close to him. He as well decides the surf is too scary or maybe he just doesn’t want to get his feet wet. He tiptoes to the edge and then runs back as the unpredictable surf moves toward him. Then something happens. Either he does not move fast enough or the foaming white surf comes in a bigger wave, but he gets his feet wet. He quickly runs away from the water, but with the next wave he ventures slightly into the water again. This time he stays a brief period longer. Then finally he just stays at the water’s edge getting his feet wet with each wave. When the wave has more power than his legs can handle he widens his stance to stay firmly in place.

Life at the beach near sunset. A time for young children to venture out when the sun is not as hot. Parents and grandparents care for them, watch them, want to share with them their love and adventure of life at the edge, but the children must be ready for adventure, but when they are ready, how wonderful to be with those we love when the adventure starts as they get their feet wet and feel the power of the surf. The parents tried to entice their toddler daughter to the adventure, but she is not ready. The grandfather just let his older grandson by a couple of years venture by himself while the grandfather stayed near by watching. The grandson was ready. Perhaps tomorrow his grandfather will take his hand and they will walk farther into the ocean side by side. Perhaps as they go deeper into the waves, the grandfather will give him a life jacket just in case in he slips and falls and loses his grip on his grandfather’s hand.

This is evangelism, what it is like to share the good news.

This is what it is like to share the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. We want to share the message of this new life with those we love but sometimes they are not ready. When they are ready we walk to the edge of this new adventure with them but we have to let them decide when to go in. We patiently wait, and when they are ready, we take their hand and go deeper and give them more protection, the 12 steps, a new life jacket.

--Joanna Seibert

The Gospels Were Written for Drunks

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 22:11:57 GMT

Every Monday I think to myself, "the Gospels were written for drunks."

Let me explain: Every Monday night I celebrate a Eucharist at the alcohol and drug rehabilitation center where I work. So my Mondays are generally spent pondering Gospel stories through the lens of addiction and recovery. And since I'm an alcoholic, when I preach I'm always preaching to myself as well as my congregation.

Looked at through this lens, even the most familiar Gospel stories surprise me and every once in a while even a Gospel story that had confused me or which I'd resisted springs to life in a new way. For example, I've always dreaded preaching on Jesus' words to a potential disciple who asks to say farewell to his family before he leaves home. Jesus refuses to let him go. How insensitive! How callous!

But in the context of addiction and recovery these words make perfect sense. When you've hit bottom, there's no time for waffling, no times for weepy apologetic farewells with family (you've probably done that already anyway, multiple times!). Recovery needs to become the first priority, no questions, that's it.

The perspective of recovery has also illuminated for me the wonderful story in Mark of the paralyzed man on his mattress being lowered through the roof to Jesus. Much as I love the story, I wondered for years why Jesus didn't just do the obvious--heal the man's legs, rather than pronouncing, "Your sins are forgiven you."

But now I understand that Jesus is reaching deeper here, probing into the man's heart and seeing . . . what? Bitterness, fear, resentment, despair? Jesus saw a spiritual malady that needed to be treated before the man could be fully healed.

For the spiritual malady beneath my drinking to be healed, I first had to face the truth that I was powerless over alcohol. I then had to go step by step, surrendering to God and keeping on with the hard, healing actions of fourth step inventory, fifth step reading to another person, and amends, and then keep on practicing these in all my affairs.

Sometimes on Monday nights I let the rehab's guests do the preaching. I read a Gospel passage and then invite them into an Ignatian-type meditation where they imagine themselves into the scene and then choose a person or element to identify with. After a few minutes, I ask them to relate what they've experienced in the meditation to their experience of addiction.

One night I read the story of Jesus calming the waters. When I asked for comments on the meditation, a young man said, "I was the waves." Then he went on: "In the years I've been using, all I've done is make chaos happen around me. For my parents, my girlfriend, I've been the storm that keeps on knocking their lives off balance. All I've done is wreck things."

I don't always hear right away how a story may have touched someone. A few days after we'd meditated on the healing of the hemorrhaging woman, a guest who was a chronic relapser on drugs was sitting in my office. She was talking about something else when all of a sudden she stopped and said, "You know last night, that story? When we were meditating, I was the woman, and I actually believed that I can get better. I've never felt that before."

Many of the guests have never heard these stories before. So one of the gifts I receive is to hear completely fresh reactions to them. A young drug addict and alcoholic who came back to speak to the guests after achieving a year of sobriety said to me, "You know that story about the sheep that ran away and the shepherd went to find him? And then he carried him back home?" When I said yes, I remembered it, he went on, "I love that story! I tell it to people all the time."

I smiled at him but I couldn't speak. My heart stopped for a minute for gratitude and awe. Awe at the continuing, undimmed force of these holy stories, gratitude that the miracle had happened for this young man and for me.

Yes, I thought, it's true. The Gospels were written for me, for us, for addicts and drunks. Alleluia!

Susan A.
The Plymouth House

My life was a train wreck...

Thu, 04 Jun 2015 02:26:38 GMT

My life was a train wreck, and I was searching for an answer to my dilemma. I remembered a retreat I had attended in high school many years ago. I was sitting under a tree talking to God, and feeling completely comfortable in my own skin, for what I thought, was the first time ever. I was a practicing Roman Catholic, not a good Roman, but one that sat just outside the circle of the righteous. I called the local priest and asked him if there was a retreat that he knew of that I might attend? He knew of a place in Houston, and suggested that if I found a suitable place to let him know, he would like to start an annual men's retreat.

I found the place, called him back and he suggested I put it together for the parish. This fed a very major part of me, my ego, so I was glad to take on the responsibility. I did so with much vigor and along with about a dozen other men we headed to the retreat house. I took my last drink for that day in the retreat house parking lot. This was 1983.

At the opening session, with about 75 men in attendances (other churches were there also), one of the clergy introduced himself as an alcoholic. I was shocked that someone would do that. He added that if anyone in the audience felt like they might have a problem, please come and talk to him sometime during the weekend. I made an appointment, went into see him, and carefully described my drinking patterns. He knew nothing about how my life was spiraling out of control, nor did I fill him in on those details. I just stuck with the drinking story. The room grew quite for a few million seconds and I asked him what he thought? He answered me in the only way he could of and gotten my attention. “It makes no difference what I think Bob, it is what you think that counts”. I immediately started to weep, and he took me to my first AA meeting the next evening.

The problem that jumped on me as soon as I arrived home was the old craving. I did not require a drink for the whole time I was at the retreat, but as soon as I arrived home I drank. It would be another year and a trip back to the retreat house before I finally gave up the ship. This time all the Brother had to say to me was “Have things gotten any better?” Again through tears I asked for help, and in chapel that night, I asked God to teach me how to love him with my whole heart, my whole soul and my whole mind. I knew nothing about love. I then asked him to allow me to love myself, so I could, in turn, love my neighbor. That was 28 years ago and he has been answering that prayer, one day a time ever since.

Bob L.

From Despair to Joy

Thu, 28 May 2015 23:39:41 GMT

Just over 11 years ago, I found myself in deep despair. I cowered alone in my apartment afraid to open my mail. I wondered when life was going to start and feared that it never would. Instead, I clutched my bottle and hid from the world – but I could not hide from myself. I had always considered myself to be religious and I attended church regularly, singing in the choir. Yet, my disease was one part of myself that I tried to ignore, deny and repress. Of course I regularly gave up alcohol for Lent. I had conversations with God where I would say things like “I promise I will never drink again if…” and “please help me manage my drinking.” I just didn’t get it – and my religion didn’t seem to help at all with my drinking problem. Driven by desperation and the growing sense of impending doom, I finally sought help in the rooms of twelve step groups. I knew in my bones that I needed to change my life, and I became willing to try another way. I had no idea when I walked into the doors eleven years ago that I would receive the gift of sobriety and recovery, as well as an amazingly rich new relationship with my higher power and my faith community. Through working the twelve steps and close contact with my sponsor and other people in the program, I began to take actions that opened up a new world for me. By connecting with my higher power, the nameless One of a Thousand Names that sometimes I call God, I learned I could walk through anything. My sobriety is the most important part of my life today, and because I am sober, I can choose to keep the channels of my soul open to where my higher power would lead me today to be of love and service. In my outside world, I enjoy a sense of freedom and responsibility in my work that I was unable to experience when I was hiding out in my disease. I have learned how to cultivate relationships with other people. Through the tender love of my sponsor and my sponsees, I begin to sense the magnitude of love and compassion for myself and others. I often sing “the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.”

Shortly after I got sober I met the man who became my husband, the love of my life. Under the full scrutiny of my home group of sober women, we fell in love and married the following year. With great joy, we welcomed two young children into the world. Throughout all of this, the hearts and hands of the 12-step fellowship helped me broaden and deepen my relationships with my church community. When my beloved husband was diagnosed with cancer shortly after our son’s first birthday, I knew I had to work my 12-step program more than ever. Hand in hand with the fellows in my program, I was able to walk through my husband’s extensive medical treatments, and his death. Because of my sobriety, I was able to care for our children, cultivate an extensive network of support, and provide my dear one with a faithful witness through the end of his life. Because of my sobriety I am able to care for myself, to nourish my relationship with my higher power, to bring a spirit of Love and Service to my life. Because of my sobriety, I am able to show up for myself and others in ways I could never imagine when I was sequestered in my small prison of disease and fear. Even today, as I give thanks for the miracle of sobriety and recovery, I am able to hang out in a hospital waiting room with a dear friend undergoing cancer surgery. I am able to tease her about her lovely scrubs and fancy IV, and we can laugh and laugh about silly things. I have a choice today – to walk the way of fear and death or to walk the way of light and love. And for today, I think I’ll choose to savor these moments of joy.

-Kirsten H

MORE POWERLESSNESS!

Thu, 21 May 2015 22:27:16 GMT

“I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees … At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, The Message

God willing, on this coming Saturday, May 23, I will give thanks for 18 years of recovering living. It certainly has been by God’s grace alone WITH my working the program of recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous. It certainly did not seem to be ANYTHING of God’s grace on that Friday morning in my office at the parish where I then served.

I had been a “professional” drinker since the age of 19. I had successfully navigated a business career for almost 20 years. Then in the Infinite’s sense of humor, I was called to follow into the life of ordained ministry in 1992. It was not like my drinking had not been noticed and mentioned in concern over those years by co-workers, bosses, my wife and friends. I knew what I was doing, always showed up and did what needed to be done on time and successfully. I deserved a drink or two for all that I did every day for all those other people, until … The last years of drinking I noticed a shift of needing a drink or two earlier in the day to get me going, then during the day to keep me going, and then to end the day because I deserved it so much. On the evening of May 22, 1997, after another argument with my wife about having yet another beer, I stormed outside the house in another fit of rage. I sat on the back porch steps, the last beer in hand. I looked over to the recycling bin filled to overflowing with my empties finished just in that day, and I knew something was not right any longer … something needed to change … but I had no idea what that was or how I could do anything about it. So I looked into the warm evening sky, the stars just emerging in vast array, and simply said “God help me … Jesus help me …”

I am living proof that one must be careful for what one prays for! At 8 o’clock the next morning, my Bishop and six others walked into my office. They needed to talk to me about my drinking … they wanted me to get the help I needed … one by one they told me MY story. After each one had spoken their peace, the Bishop offered that I could go with them immediately to a rehabilitation facility in a city 70 miles from where I live and served, or I could choose not to go. In either choice, there were consequences to my decision. The addictive voice that desperately needed feeding screamed “Tell them to go to hell! I’ll take care of you … I always have!” The voice I heard speak from within me and outwardly responded, “Yes, please help me, thank you.” This day began a journey of life that at that moment I expected would not have continued as it has to this day.

While certain I would lose wife and family, be deposed as a priest, and be outcast from all I knew and loved, including God’s love, this was not the case. My wife and family have walked with me in truth and love these almost 18 years. I found the parish, or at least one-third of the parish, wanted me to return as their priest, which I did 46 days into my new life of recovery. To say it was a welcome with open arms would not be faithful to “this is an honest program” we seek to live! It was hard, very hard at times, to redeem and regain trust of the people who called me to serve. When I thought there was no reason to continue, I would hear God’s word spoken directly to me by someone else’s story shared in the many AA rooms I frequented for solace and strength, pardon and renewal. As day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year pass, I continue to find God using these “thorns” I bear to God’s glory in helping others living a life free from those things addictive that bind us away from God’s love – and those bindings are not just addictive substances alone!

I find that when I live deeply and intentionally into the words of St. Paul, day by day, I am living proof that ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ And for this gift, I am grateful.

With grateful heart,

Paul G.+

The Serenity Prayer and My Journey into Recovery

Wed, 13 May 2015 21:22:04 GMT

Many of my early memories are set in the Episcopal Church: Easter’s flowering of the cross, Vacation Bible School and children’s choir. When I was nine my mother began working in the church office. In summer my sister and I accompanied her. One day someone brought pretty pens to the office. Mom let me have one. Praying hands were on the clip and the Serenity Prayer on the barrel. I thought it was a nice prayer and memorized it.

Although I was quite happy, I also struggled with insecurity – never feeling pretty, smart or popular. I didn’t know how to talk to people outside my circle of friends. I was terribly shy.

As I got older I looked for a solution to those uncomfortable feelings. Did I turn to God for help? I tried but found a more tangible solution, alcohol. I drank a little in high school but it was college where I experienced alcohol’s power to help me shed my shy, good girl image for one comfortable with dancing and flirting.

Alcohol was effective for a long while. Then I noticed my friends getting married and I couldn’t maintain a relationship. Others were climbing the career ladder while, in spite of an advanced degree in education, my insecurities caused me to give up my teaching career.

I became more withdrawn in middle age, preferring to drink at home where I pondered over all I didn’t have. Ultimately, I determined the problem was God. He wasn’t attending to his part of what I currently call “The Santa Claus Contract.” I attended church regularly, gave money sporadically and helped others when it suited me. I was a good person for Heaven’s sake! It was God’s fault! Certainly, I had no part in how my life was unfolding.

Alcohol silenced those voices. Alcohol seemed to medicate my growing depression and help me unwind. Alcohol confirmed my suspicions that God was a sham or He just didn’t give a fig for me. I turned into a C&E Christian, Christmas and Easter.

Eventually, I began to suspect that I was an alcoholic. I drank throughout the day and awakened at night to drink. I determined that if I was an alcoholic, I’d be the finest one I could be.

My body had other ideas. The morning nausea was worrisome. In business meetings my hands were clasped tightly under the table to control my shaking. I couldn’t participate in discussions because my voice trembled. Apparently, living as an alcoholic wasn’t going to be easy.

One cold, rainy night I knew I couldn’t continue to live as I was living. I left work and went to AA. A man full of the enthusiasm that only a newly sober alcoholic can be led the meeting. He greeted me warmly and seated me near him.

As the meeting started, I listened hopefully. They were talking about God. That’s all it took for the tears to flow. How could this work when God ignores me? Yet, the people were nice and the meeting began with the Serenity Prayer I learned in childhood.

I continued meetings and found a sponsor. I said the Serenity Prayer dutifully but with little faith. I began the Steps and at Step Two “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” found a modicum of willingness to believe again in God’s love.

In AA I learned about “The Santa Claus God”. Instead of asking God what His will was for me, I tried to make deals. “If you will get me out of this jam, I’ll change.”

My sponsor listened to my history and suggested I try church again. I relented and returned to the Episcopal Church. I was awestruck when the sermon ended with the Serenity Prayer.

I heard similar lessons in AA and church. At my Third Step, I gave my will and life to the care of God. My sponsor emphasized the word “care”. God wasn’t going to control my life or will but He would care for them. That was a turning point for me.

When I got to Step Twelve, my spirit truly was awakened. The awakening continues daily. When afraid or unsure of myself, the Serenity Prayer and the assurance of God’s love dissolve the fear. If I can quickly find someone to help, I’m relieved of worry as I turn my thoughts away from me. Finally, I have a community of sober alcoholics and parish family to support me as I hope I support them.

I believe that God had a long-range plan I couldn’t have known when I received the pen with the Serenity Prayer. The pen was lost long ago but its prayer and my God bless me daily.

-Julie W.

NEW YEAR’S EVE by Dennis G.

Thu, 07 May 2015 17:45:22 GMT

It was New Year’s Eve 1997 and I woke up – or came to – being beaten-up in the back of a van. The one throwing the punches was Noah, a low-level drug dealer whom I had known for the previous seven years since my arrival in Los Angeles. We had been up for days partying with a small band of sorted characters, flying high with cocaine and the obligatory bottle of vodka just to smooth things out a bit. At some point the dope ran out, as it always does, and everyone crashes. For me, that meant the back of a van, which wasn’t all that bad considering the options. Choices are limited when you’ve run your life to the bottom.

The punches jolt me from my sleep. Noah’s yelling about something – who knows what – and I’m fending off as many blows as I can for someone who has just been jarred from a drug and alcohol induced stupor, groggy and defenseless. Any good street fighter knows the value of the element of surprise and on this chilly December morning I was caught cold. I was so busy fending off the assault that I don’t think I even threw a punch.

I’ve never been much of a fighter. It’s just not who I am. I got into a fist fight once when I was in junior high school. I got my ass kicked. Other than that day behind the gymnasium, I honestly cannot remember ever throwing a punch at anyone again in my entire life. So that morning in the van I was an easy target. And who knows, maybe I deserved it.

Noah finally ran out of punches and left. I stumbled out of the van and looked around. It was early morning. The air was crisp and cool. I just stood there…in silence. In that moment I knew it. What I knew was this – that if something didn’t change, nothing was going to change and I would end up dead. Maybe it would be from an overdose or from my body just giving up and collapsing under the weight of the past twenty-seven years of alcoholism and drug addiction. Or maybe it would happen like it did for Kenny – a bullet in the head. Either way it was only a matter of time and circumstance. In the end, drugs and alcohol always win.

I knew I had to make a choice. I could continue on this road that was leading to death or I could choose to live. After all the years of slavery to the bottle and the bindle; all the jails and institutions; all the broken promises and disappointments; all the people I’d hurt, on this New Year’s Eve Day it was all caving in. My soul was trembling. I was desperate as only the dying can be. It was a moment of truth – indeed a moment of clarity. I chose to live.

And so I started walking.

I ended up at a meeting that I was aware from a few years before during one of my countless vain attempts at sobriety. Clearly, I wasn’t sober, and in fact it would be another few weeks before I could remove the claws of addiction, get an honest foothold and begin my sobriety. But this was the day that things indeed changed, and I was able to make a move in the right direction.

I have asked myself what made that morning so different than all of the others that had come before it. The answer is that there was nothing different. It was the same desperation, wrapped in the chains of addiction, the same sense of hopelessness and aimless wandering; the same awareness of impending doom…and death. That’s why I knew that unless I made a move in a different direction I was a dead man. I was painfully aware that I had already begun to die spiritually. If I didn’t make the move, there would just be more of the same and worse, until one day I would cross that line of no return. I had seen it happen to others. Why should I be any different? I knew I wasn’t. It was, as they say, a sobering moment.

Dirty, trembling, sweating, and dazed with the terror of the nightmare I had just somehow simply walked out of, I walked in and sat down in the meeting. Everything in me wanted to bolt, but I didn’t. Somehow I stayed. That was over seventeen years ago and I’m still here.

So the day that changed my life started out with me being beat up in a van.

God’s grace can be like that.

ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:48:31 GMT

ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE
Remember you have been in the ditch.
(Principle 17, The Women of Magdalene)

In their book Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart, the women of the Magdalene community, led by founder Becca Stevens, share some of their joy and pain. These are women who have survived lives of trafficking, prostitution, violence, abuse, and addiction. Inspired by the ancient Rule of St. Benedict, they have written down 24 principles to live by. Magdalene women support each other in many ways, including their shared work at Thistle Farms, a non-profit business run by them and other recovering women.

After my twenty-plus-years of recovery from alcoholism, these women's stories - their experience, strength and hope - have inspired me anew. Some have come to speak at churches I've served as a priest. Others have simply "loved up" on me when they see me. They are my sisters in recovery. (I've learned I can't have too many sisters or brothers in recovery - and in life.) Their meditation on Principle 17 begins, We do not share the same experiences, but we all have been in need sometime in our lives. We stay grateful for when someone lifted us out of the ditch and offered us food, clothing, or shelter. A Magdalene woman writes:

"My sister was rescued from a ditch. Her bus crashed while crossing over a bridge in Cameroon, Africa. She was going there to help teach and ended up being pulled from death by a kind stranger who happened to be traveling behind the bus. (I hope) I will never forget how quickly she went from being there as a helper to desperately needing the help of others. If I let myself have the luxury of contemplation, the image of my sister being pulled from the ditch leaves me forever grateful" (pp. 79-80).

I remember how my first sponsor saw me in an ecclesiastical ditch, pouring too much wine into the chalice for Communion. He knew about ditches, so he symbolically climbed down beside me and asked, "Do you have a drinking problem?" Over the years my sponsors, spiritual advisors and companions have, from time to time, seen me in a ditch, stopping to join me and to help me understand what kind of help I need.

Recently, I came to see how I need help, one more time. It happened after I retired from full-time ministry to my home town, living again near my father and other family members. Six months after I came home, Dad died. I realized soon afterward that I was angry for all kinds of reasons and with all kinds of people, places, and things. I asked my recovering friends which meetings they attended. But I didn't just get up and go to one. I was in a ditch, and I guess I felt fine, staying there for awhile.

Eventually, two of my biological sisters asked me to join them and our brother at an open AA meeting. (The four of us had never been to a meeting together.) I decided to get up out of my ditch. At that meeting I heard ditch stories. I heard people talk about times they had been in the ditch. I knew it was time for me, once again, to take

Step 3: to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, who gets into the ditch with me, if and when I ask - and sometimes, even when I don't.

Two other recovering women, in their devotional booklet Depending on the Grace of God, speak of Step 3 this way: "Physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we...become stranded beside the road, hoping and waiting for help to come along. Now we must ask God for roadside assistance" (p. 6).

To be honest, it's time for me, a professional helper, to ask for some roadside assistance. Again. And when I'm in a ditch so deep I can't seem to see my way out, hoping and waiting for help to come, I thank the God of my understanding for my sisters and brothers who give me help, even when I don't want it or think I really don't need it. I thank God, who helps me remember, again and again, how important ditches can be.

-Tom

How My Recovery Began

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 23:52:11 GMT

It was a Monday night and I was sitting on the edge of the bed in my guest room at a Franciscan monastery where I was on retreat. I was antsy and trying with every ounce of my will to resist getting in my rental car and driving to an adult book store. I desperately wanted to obtain pornography. I was experiencing my first signs of withdrawal.

I was on the west coast for the wedding of my nephew, at whose marriage I would be officiating the following Saturday. I had just run a marathon the day before with him and three other members of the wedding party. I was going to spend the few days in between on retreat at a local monastery.

But I knew weeks earlier while I was making my plane reservations that I needed help. I was excited about running the marathon with my nephew and looking forward to officiating at my first family wedding. But more than anything, I wanted the freedom to go visit adult book stores and feed my addiction to pornography.

When I realized, as the weeks closed in toward the weeklong trip, that I was looking forward to the pornography more than the marathon or the wedding or the retreat, I admitted to myself that it had overtaken me. I had to do something. This compulsion sure didn't align with my values as a priest. I had the foresight to look up some 12-step programs and find a meeting near the retreat center. I went to my first one that Monday evening.

I knew the dangers of addiction early in my life. My father died of alcoholism just shy of his 66th birthday. I swore I would never let that happen to me, so I chose not to drink myself. Problem solved, or so I thought.

But I was a dry drunk. The addictive personality was lurking below the surface looking for the weakest spot to infiltrate. That came through pornography.

I was exposed to a significant amount of pornography at a relative's house beginning when I was 13 years old. It didn't become a problem until the Internet provided unlimited access to a large and mostly free volume of graphic images and videos. At first it was curiosity-driven. But the visits became more frequent.

My wife caught me a few times and I promised to stop, but I simply couldn't do it on my own. It was in control of me, so I finally mustered the courage to seek help.

The Monday evening of my first meeting was one of the longest of my life. I remember the enormous shame and embarrassment I felt walking into that room, but at the end of that hour, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. It all made sense, the stories that I heard. Those were my stories. These were people just like me. One person there was even a pastor. I wasn't the only one.

But returning to the monastery was so hard. I was so conscious of wanting to find a book store instead. The desire was stronger than I had ever felt it. It was the addict in me fighting for control. I had many times seen my father attempt to dry himself out and I remember when he would get the DTs of withdrawal and how scary that was for me to watch as a teenager. What I felt that night was my own version of it. I spent most of the night awake praying for the power to stay put and get through the night. I did--with the grace of God. And I found another meeting the next night.

That's how my recovery began.

Scott

Alleluia? by Stephen Crippen

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 19:17:29 GMT

“As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.^” —The resurrection account in the Gospel of Mark

I attended an Easter vigil for the first time in the mid-1990s, in Minneapolis. It was at a Lutheran church that did everything very well, and very “high”—incense, robust choral tradition, chasuble on the pastor, the works. I found that vigil nothing less than thrilling. The entrance of the ministers in perfect darkness, the growing light of the candles while the cantor sang the Exsultet, the salvation stories read expertly by skilled lectors, and finally the proclamation (with alleluias) of the resurrection, bells ringing, lights flashing on, the organ sounding, the congregation on its feet singing lustily. I wept. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed the vigil, along with many other festivals of the liturgical year, but I’ve noticed that as I move into my mid-forties, I rarely feel thrilled. This year was no exception. I’m a deacon assigned to a parish that (like my former church in Minnesota) not only enjoys a fine liturgical tradition, but truly empowers people to live out their faith in their daily lives. And yet, when the resurrection is proclaimed, I typically feel a little deflated, a little sad.

Over the years I’ve attributed my mixed feelings to my mother’s untimely death in 1996. But in recent years—and particularly in the last two years, since I got sober—I have sensed that something else is going on. I see many of my friends rejoicing the way I think most church folk do: “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” the priest sings, and they joyfully sing back, “The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!” and most everyone looks to be having a grand time. But I struggle with it all.

I have a theory about why.

It’s easy to see my sobriety as a kind of resurrection. Don’t worry, I don’t have a messiah complex, but I do hold to the idea that the Resurrection is meant to be something that happens to all of us who die and are raised with Christ in baptism. My sobriety gives me health and strength, and feels like a new life. I am dead to drinking, and alive to a responsible, happier life with better relationships, a new sense of purpose, and even—on a good day—serenity. Nobody gets sober unless there’s an upside. Genuine recovery can’t be tedious or humorless. Mine is full of color, activity, love, and laughter. Like Jesus, who was not raised to return to his old life but instead appeared to his friends in a new way, we also are raised into something new, something better.

But it’s not all songs and flowers and ‘alleluias.’ I recall my first day of sobriety as a painful, wrenching day with many tears, and fear (terror, even) of a kind I had never experienced. I ended the day feeling much calmer, having attended a 12-step meeting and found new friends who welcomed me exactly as I was. But it was a hard day. Like the women in Mark’s Gospel, I was very afraid, and I did not know what would happen next.

One way to understand Mark’s strange, unsatisfying ending is to see ourselves as the people who must write the ending to the Gospel—with our lives. Jesus’ friends were supposed to return to the other disciples and tell them he was raised, but they said nothing, and ran away, afraid. And so it is up to us.

But sober life isn’t always a joyful romp through the Easter garden. I still feel fear from time to time, and still have days when, even though I’m not drinking, I’m doing old behaviors and nursing resentments just like I did before my ‘resurrection.’ I’m told that in recovery we have only a daily reprieve from our illness, which implies that I must be resurrected every day. I feel much better, but it’s rare that I feel the unadulterated joy that swept over me at that long-ago vigil.

And that will have to be okay. Like the first witnesses of the Resurrection, I don’t have all the answers. But I have been raised.

Drug of Choice

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:15:07 GMT

I write this on Holy Saturday where it is all about waiting. I am not good at waiting, never have been.

In the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have learned that one common trait of alcoholics is, “I want what I want when I want it!” The first several hundred times I heard that I was convicted. After a while I learned to chuckle nervously. Now I know that truth as a comfort and a way of building a defense against the first drink.

Yesterday I helped lead a Way of the Cross Procession through the second largest city in New England. We wound our way through places where the homeless seek services, where there have been incidents of violence, sites of tragic accidents and places where hope that patience can pay off lives and moves and has its being. This is a city in the grips of a major heroin crisis. Some 35 or more people died from overdoses in the city in 2014. This year does not look much more hopeful.

As we walked between the homeless advocacy program and the site of an automobile accident involving a well-known panhandler in our city, we passed the building that used to house one of the largest pluming supply houses in Central Massachusetts. That business has since moved out of the center of the city, but that is another story.

The moving vans were lined up behind the chain link fence topped with razor wire that protected the business from the neighborhood it inhabits. As I passed by with the procession, behind the cross, I tried to count the empty nip, half-pint and pint bottles that had been blown, swept or plowed up against that fence. I lost count at over one hundred.

It is a stark reminder that the drug of choice is still mainly alcohol in my town. It was my drug of choice. In days past I would have been one of those contributing to the pile of small vodka bottles, empty of liquor but still capped, that lined one of the major streets of my city.

I could not wait to get home from the ‘packy’ to get started. One or two ‘nips’ on the way home was ‘just a start’. I could not wait to get home. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it now.

Thank God for the Fellowship, the program, the Steps and the power of the God of my understanding that expresses in this world as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier I can not only wait a little bit now, I value patience and continue to grow in trust that the promises of the ninth step (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 83-84) are mine if I give myself over to a few simple suggestions.

If the promises are not signs of the resurrection, I do not know what is. May God grant us all the patience and honesty to grow into the fullness of the people God has created us to be. In God’s time and not our own.

Blessed Easter season to all!!!

--Warren H.

The AA Promises

1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

8. Self-seeking will slip away.

9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves

Are these extravagant promises?

We think not.

They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. Alcoholics Anonymous p. 83-84

Holy Week.

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 17:29:06 GMT

My recovery began with a blast of cold hard water one Sunday morning while in church. I was serving a large congregation in a suburban community known for its wealth. A high pressure position with high expectations were cast on all clergy in the parish, mirroring the expectations of those sitting in the pews by their superiors. Pressure begets pressure. I struggled with my sexual behavior for decades with no ability to find release from the pain and anger I felt simmering right below my skin. I thought I had achieved it all: a seminary degree and a prestigious position at a prestigious congregation. I was living the high life. What no one outside my private world knew was the pain of sexually destructive behavior. And most of the time, even I could not acknowledge the same truth. Until that Sunday, I could not face the reality that I was a sex addict.

Unbeknownst to me, a person with whom I had acted out sexually was in church on that Sunday morning with his family. While meeting eyes at the altar rail, I could hardly keep my composure. What if people found out? What if he makes a scene? What if my inappropriate sexual behavior became public knowledge? HELP!

Not long after that Sunday, I addend my first 12-step meeting for sex addicts. I knew that I was home. The other men sitting around the circle spoke my language and knew the shame, pain and self-loathing that surrounded my soul. The motto of the fellowship I attended that day reminds us, “from shame to grace.” The imbedded metaphor has since become a daily touchstone in my life.

Just a few short months after that first, eye-opening meeting, I checked myself into a treatment center focused on the twelve steps for people suffering from all addictions: alcohol, drugs, internet, gambling, food, shopping, and sex. I finally was able to face the realities of years facing pain, joy, sadness, hope and lost dreams through sexual behavior. I spent over four months in treatment, examining my life, motives, history and faith in relationship to my addiction. It was one of the most painful experiences of life telling a room full of strangers what brought me to my knees. But I was welcomed with open arms from people of all walks of life, suffering from all sundry and forms of addiction. I was in a safe place for the first time in my life, and I could begin to heal.

While in treatment, my faith in Christ was honored and I was invited to find peace and be reconciled with God. The years of shame and fear in believing in a punitive God, started to melt away, but like any glacier, it has been and continues to be, a long process. Twenty-plus years of active sex addiction could hardly be overcome in a day, let alone six months, or even a decade. It will take a life time to see and know the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. The chaplain at the treatment center offered me another metaphor for the journey I had started: Holy Week.

In the decade since that chaplain invited me to see my journey of recovery as the walk from the Palm Sunday to Easter Day, my faith, my addiction and my recovery have been interwoven and a strength beyond anything I could ever have known before that man looked me in the eyes. I know a trauma that was repeated every time I acted out. I knew the pain and suffering on a daily basis that kept me from knowing and loving the God I preached week after week and sought to know day after day. I know the invitation to faith through the Eucharistic celebration on Maundy Thursday. I know pain, loss, and the death of my soul with every passing day. I know Good Friday. But it is the middle day that hurts the most. I know a living hell, the absence of God, the realm of the dead. That is my active addiction and a place I lived for over two decades. Not with the brass trumpets or tympani of a grand Easter morning have I come to find the celebration of recovery. But it has been through the veiled sight in the shadow of the Pascal candle in the Easter Vigil where I have found the burning light of recovery held out to me in the darkness, during the darkest moments of life. I could only come to new life of recovery through death of my addiction.

Today, I live in Easter.

-Anonymous

Grace and Healing

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:32:05 GMT

I knew that my life was steeped in shame. I was under a doctor’s care for Hepatitis B, injecting myself with interferon every day, which left me feeling perpetually achy and sick. I developed an eye infection, and was under the care of a retinologist, who could not figure out what was wrong. I was deeply ashamed and couldn’t tell anybody what was going on. This shame made my physical suffering even worse. Finally the retinologist ordered extensive blood work to determine what was causing the deteriorating vision. The wait for test results seemed interminable. Finally, everything came back negative except for one test – syphilis. My heart and self-esteem sank even farther than before. The next day I got the dreaded call – from the health department demanding that I come in for further testing.

I took off early from work to keep my mandated appointment at the health department. I was in a complete fog, so demoralized and despondent that I could barely walk or drive. As I entered the health department, the receptionist asked where I was going. Could things get any worse? Now, as I mentioned the STD Clinic, even the receptionist knew how filthy and contaminated I felt. Checking in at the clinic, I was given a number and told to wait. I no longer even had my name. Not only did the wait seem interminable, it was. I had an hour to study the faces of the other people there. Most of them seemed rather unconcerned with being there, like they had been there many times before. I was dressed in business casual clothes since I had come straight from work. My clothes and my race made me stand out so that others were looking at me too. Finally my number was called.
I first saw a nurse who took a blood sample and told me to see the social worker down the hall while they ran tests on my blood. The social worker was not new to this scene, but the questions were new to me and I was mortified. She asked about sexual partners, and I could not name most of them since we never exchanged names. When I had learned names, they were only first names and often pseudonyms. The only name of a sexual partner that I knew was the name of the man I was dating, who lived out of town. I gave his name and immediately regretted having done so, knowing that this man would be contacted by the local health department. Finally I was summoned back to see the nurse, who confirmed the positive results for syphilis. In fact, she said, it was one of the worst cases she had ever seen. She immediately started me on penicillin shots. I would have to return weekly for at least eight weeks for additional shots and blood work.

In some ways, this was the beginning of an extended cycle of shame. Each week I would be reduced to a number and have to wait in that dreadful waiting room. However, in other ways, redemption had begun. Now the secret was out of the bag. Once it had been aired and discussed in clinical terms, it could no longer be contained – at least not at the health center. One form of shame – secrecy – had lost its power. I began slowly to understand that my actions had led to my infection. I had reached a bottom and was able to recognize the resurrection that I felt as the readings got better. With a decrease in shame, I was able to begin to rebuild a shadow of self-esteem through prayer and meditation. Slowly I was able to feel God’s hands cradling me and freeing me from the self-abasement that had wracked my entire being. This led me to a new appreciation of the power of God’s grace and healing. There was still much work to do in my efforts to rebuild my life, but I now knew that my Higher Power was walking the road with me. Although it still took me awhile to come to grips with my addiction and join SLAA, this experience initiated my sense of renewal and care has remained with me since this period of healing.

-Martin J.

My Journey and Vision

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 23:27:13 GMT

I started my recovery oversees in the end of 1990s. My country of biological origin had just been opened to the West.

AA was started in few big cities, so that people addicted to alcohol and other drugs didn't have to die.

There were no detoxes and no treatment centers, but suffering alcoholics and addicts had new hope, the message of recovery from God.

God loved us so much that He was able to remove the political walls and offer peace and serenity for all of us.

I was in a hurry doing the Steps, just thinking that if I could do them fast, I could use drugs and drink safely without killing myself anymore. Therefore, I ignored many suggestions that AA offered. I wasn't willing to get a sponsor, I wasn't willing to do the Steps in order with my sponsor. I just went to the Orthodox church with my Fifth Step and wanted to hear from the priest "All your sins are forgiven, you can drink 'socially' now." But, thanks to God, it didn't happen my way. After listening to all my testimony, the priest said: "You, addicts, are very complicated people, with complicated matters. As a human being who does not have these issues, I can't fully grasp them. Each time you confess, you go back and keep killing yourself. I would strongly recommend that you, my daughter, go back to YOUR people in recovery and do what your program suggests you to do. Do the STEPS." I was shocked. I didn't expect that he had read the Alcoholics Anonymous book before seeing me. He was well prepared with the answer.

Twenty some recovery years later, I live in the Diocese of Southeast Flordia where I'm a member of the Episcopal Church. I love my congregation, I love my pastor, and I love reading the Word of God in the Bible.

And, I have a vision of the Recovery Ministry in our Church: That the pastor can say to any people who suffer from the disease of addiction and alcoholism that our parish has educational programs; that the people in our parish are not in denial about this problem among it's parishioners and clergy; that we have a recovery mass for those who hesitate to admit their problem; and that we are open to any change.

Regretfully, for myself and for others in my Episcopal Church that need to hear the message of recovery, what is happening is that the recovery masses are being discontinued.

-Anonymous

Recovery Sunday

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:30:15 GMT

Have you not known?

I always knew, but I didn’t want to believe that I deserved God’s love.

I left Salt Lake City in October of 2001 and moved back to a small town in Idaho where I had two sisters. I arrived full of despair, self-loathing and shame. I had lived almost three decades in active addiction. My mother asked one thing of me when I arrived, that was to attend St. Francis of the Tetons Episcopal Church where she had played the piano and lead contemplative prayer prior to moving to Washington state. I went, but every time I walked through the doors my heart would start to hurt, literally, as if someone had a grip on it. I realized later that it was God trying to love me, because I had no idea how to love myself.

On February 11th, 2002, I got into my car, drunk. It wasn't long before my car was flying through the air, upside down. In that moment, I asked God to take me; I saw it as the perfect opportunity for my life to be over. I was a failure at life and relationships. I was a disappointing daughter, sister, friend, and employee, I felt completely worthless. I then heard a voice, he said, “I’m not going to let you do what I did” It was my brother, Clair, who died September 10, 1996, He, too, shared this disease. God had sent me the only person he knew I would hear. The car landed, I was perfectly fine, not a bump, a scratch or bruise, nothing. My call was answered, the woman who wanted to die in that car, perished, I stand before you today a woman reborn, given the gift of life.

Have you not heard?

I heard, but I didn't want to listen, because I refused to believe I deserved God’s grace.

Easter Sunday 2002, St. Francis was full; everyone dressed in their finest, with the view of the Tetons’ crisp and clear through the three narrow windows behind the pulpit. I was sitting and singing with the choir, when after the sermon, the presiding priest asked, “Does anyone want to be baptized?” A friend sitting next to me said it was as if I had been pulled up by a string, I stood up and walked to the front and was baptized. There was no plan, the priest told me later she had no idea why she asked that question; it was the second most powerful moment in my life. From that moment my life has been God driven.

In Paul’s first letter to the people of Corinth, he was compelled to spread the Good News without payment, because he believed he had been chosen to do so. In my recovery, I am also compelled to share God’s forgiveness with those who share my disease, to listen with a compassionate heart. We are all connected by our heart strings, said my first sponsor. We share a commonality regardless of race, gender, social standing, or job description; we are all children of God. We share common ground and from that common ground we build a foundation of love and service. I must give away the blessing that I have been given; I will never recover, but will always be in recovery.

Today my life is amazing! I have become a loving daughter, a true friend, a devoted sister and a good employee. To be honest with you, I don’t think I would have written my life plan the way it was, but I also wouldn't change one minute of it, because God’s plan for me has brought me here, today, to tell you, “He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.” I have been empowered with both the love and grace of my God and I choose a better life for me.

My sobriety date is 2-13-02

I am a child of God, and I am loved.

Shu D.

Reminders

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:16:29 GMT

In recovery myself for several years, I am reminded of the often slippery paths trod by those "working the Program." Our addiction is truly "cunning, baffling, powerful" for it tells me I don’t have a disease… and, yes, I’m reminded…

…of its progressive nature for I personally felt its progression following a period of sobriety in a matter of days to even lower levels of self-hatred. Contrary to my expectations, I wasn't a recovered alcoholic; now I know that the strength of my recovery itself is also a matter of progression coming about only by my daily conscious contact with my Higher Power.

…that as a youth in the 1950s on the South Side of Chicago, I first read about the heroin addictions of many of the premier players of the modern jazz culture, never suspecting that alcohol, like heroin, was addictive.

…that many of us really enjoyed playing the game of "chicken" …seeing how far we could go before we plunged over that cliff. We also seem to enjoy manipulating family, friends, even the social workers, psychologists and clergy... all of whom were probably somewhat baffled by the continuation of our conduct.

…I am reminded of the aid provided by family and others, aid given out of loving concern for our well-being, often excusing my conduct as an unfortunate result of a stressful profession.

…it breaks my heart to watch someone trod addiction’s path… continuing onward in spite of addiction’s unavoidable consequences… when all the time, help was available… Grace was always there for us… a Grace supporting our working the Program and giving us a life truly "happy, joyous and free."

…finally, I am reminded of the Twelfth Step’s call to action of "carrying this message to alcoholics." We've seen progress but work is still needed.

Again, say that “help is available” to the suffering alcoholic. There’s an easier softer way to respond to life’s difficulties …that help was there for me and is also available to those who seek it today. I must continue to humbly carry that message, for truly, "There, but for the Grace of God, go I."

Jim A.

Covington, Kentucky

Big News

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 01:43:19 GMT

A clergy who is an abnormal drinker and ends up killing someone while DUI is Big News. A clergy who is in an ongoing spiritual program of recovery is, thankfully, not Big News. By the grace of God and the fellowship of recovery, I am a clergy with 19 years of sobriety one day at a time. More than that, God, for reasons known only to Godself, has chosen to bear witness to those I would help of God’s power, love and way of life through my experience, strength and hope. The manner in which God chose to use me is not one I would recommend to anyone in recovery unless there is a very clear (and verified through independent prayer for discernment) prompting of the Holy Spirit.

I was a Spiritual Director on a Walk To Emmaus (think Cursillo with Methodist flavor) with 5 years of sobriety when I received a prompting of the Holy Spirit to reveal my disease to the pilgrims on the Walk. There were several women from my church (it was a women’s walk) who were spiritually mature and powerful in prayer and discernment. I told them what I thought God was asking me to do and would they please, please, pray about it. They did and came back with the answer I didn’t want to hear: “We think this is what God wants you to do.” So I did in a chapel meditation of the scripture popularly known as “The Prodigal Son.” During the time set aside on the weekend for spiritual direction. I had a line of 7 women wanting to talk about alcohol related problems. Well, the proverbial cat was out of the bag now, I thought. There’s a reason why “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation” of recovery and I had broken mine -- so that 7 women could get some help for themselves or loved ones.

I returned to my “normal” ministry for a year until I was asked to be a Spiritual Director on an Epiphany Weekend. Epiphany is the 3 day spiritual “retreat” in prisons with Juvenile Offenders. These young men and women are felony-level offenders. They were hardened car jackers, gang bangers, and even murderers. What did I, a middle-class white clergy have to say to them that would get past the shell of toughness they had developed to survive on the streets? Despite obvious socio-economic differences, I was still a drunk -- addicted like most of them. Into the simple faith prescribed by the official talk outline was infused my own adventures before, what happened, and what it is like now. That afternoon there were several requests for “one on one” sessions with a spiritual director. Their issues were heart-rending and ranging from “How can I stop Daddy from drinking?” to “How can I stay clean after I’ve served my sentence?” To paraphrase St. Paul, it was not I, but God working through me to break through the hard shell.

But God was not done putting me through the wringer yet. I was in my 7th year of sobriety and Easter was fast approaching. Another prompting of the Holy Spirit kept poking at me as I was working on my Easter Sermon -- “Tell the people.” Hang on, this could get to the District Superintendent and in turn to the Bishop! “Tell the people.” So I gather 5 of that church's Healing Ministers and ask, once again, for them to take a week and pray for discernment. Naturally, they came back with the dreaded words, “We think this is God’s will.” The Lectionary reading was Mary Magdalene’s encountering our Resurrected Lord. Why would God choose a woman (unreliable witness in that culture) from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ (Magdala) to be The Apostle to the Apostles? Because that’s what God always does. God uses people we probably wouldn’t invite to our next potluck in order to touch and heal a person’s hurts and hopes. God even chooses (for reasons known to God alone) to use this recovering alcoholic of a pastor.

The custodian of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship which rented space from my church was the first to seek an appointment. He was slipping in and out of sobriety. Then a young wife and member of my congregation came in. In tears she said she was ready to end her marriage because of her husband’s drinking. Then an older lady came in and poured out her worry over her son’s drinking. And so on it went. God’s power, love and way of life was manifested in the weakness of my disease. It’s not Big News, and that’s all right.

-Lee C

A Life Worth Living

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 14:20:12 GMT

“Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” (Mark 1:31) I love the focus on serving in the gospel of Mark. My first attempt at getting clean wasn’t successful and was short-lived. One thing about that attempt is that I don’t remember being of service, other than the chores required of me in the rehab center. On my second attempt, I prayed for the willingness and strength to do the things I needed to do to stay clean. One of those things was being of service. I was told that I couldn’t keep what I had unless I gave it away and I believed it. The fellowship I was recovering in was a young fellowship at the time in Memphis, TN, so there was plenty to do. I came into recovery with little to no self-esteem and found right away that being of service helped me to feel better about myself and I needed to feel better! This was just one of the benefits of helping others. I wouldn't have thought in a million years that opening a door for a meeting, or making a pot of coffee, or answering a helpline call would help ME.

I was blessed with finding a job working in an Episcopal church early in recovery. One day when opening the mail, there was a notice from the diocese about a local commission on alcohol and drugs. I was thrilled to see that the church was interested in addiction and recovery! After sending a message to the bishop expressing interest in this commission, I became involved in this ministry. Along with being involved locally came news of a national organization – at the time called the National Episcopal Coalition on Alcohol and Drugs (NECAD), now Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church. Now, I not only was of service in my 12-step fellowship, but in my church also! My church started setting aside one Sunday a year for education, support, prayers, and recognition of this important ministry, and still does. Join us August 30 at Grace-St. Luke’s Church in Memphis as we welcome the Rev. Rebecca Stevens as our guest preacher and Sunday school presenter for Recovery Sunday 2015.

The motivation to continue this work has not always come easy. But when I remember that being of service in my church in this way can be a matter of life and death, I am grateful for the opportunity to continue this work. We, the church, can plant seeds that will bring others out of the bondage of physical, mental, and spiritual addiction - from a life of jails, institutions, and death - and into a life worth living -- a life filled with faith, hope, love, and freedom.

Just like Mark 1:31, when the fever left me – when I stopped living in active addiction – I began to serve others. And in turn, the days have added up – over 10,000 days to be exact – and just maybe another addict or 2 along the way has found a life worth living.

-Lucy O.

A New Way of Life

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 17:26:47 GMT

I am new to this website and Ministry but I am not new to the Episcopal way of life.

26 years ago a loving and caring friend walked me up to a pair of red doors and invited me to come inside. They told me they had a friend at the church who was well versed in addictions and counseling. I was already well versed in addictions, it was the recovery portion I lacked. After 28 years on the street, three failed marriages and not easily employable, I was ready to try anything. I didn’t know I had hit my bottom nor did I know that I would learn a lot more about that phrase in the coming years. What I knew was that I was tired of being sick and tired.

I was greeted with warmth and an understanding of what I was going through, even though I hadn’t said a word. I thought maybe I had a flashing neon sign on my back witnessing to the world that I had an addiction problem. I immediately wanted what they had and they shared with me what that something was. I was invited to a seminar being put on by the Diocesan Drug and Alcohol Coalition and for the first time in my life, felt like I actually belonged to something.

Many meetings later and working the steps one day at a time started a string of sober days that became months and then years. I have never forgotten that feeling I had when I was accepted for who I was and not rejected for what I had become. I became very involved in AA and Diocesan events which led me to a new wife and a new life. I have been happily married for over 16 years and according to my wife, she has been happily married the same number of years. That in itself is a miracle. It wasn’t until I learned that I had to become the “right person” before I could ever meet the “right person” for me.

I used to wish my life had been different, but when I stop and count the blessings of each day that God provides for me, I realize that I had to go through those dark times to appreciate the light that He provides and allows to shine through me. If my life had been different, I would not be married to the wonderful lady I am married to, the ministries I am involved in and the miracles I see every day when I walk with the Lord.

I am one satisfied customer and would recommend this program to anyone who is not happy with their life on the terms they are trying to live it. Praise God.

-Anonymous

I Am Not God.

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 01:33:07 GMT

I am not God. This was a huge awareness and admission for me in early recovery. Up until then, I thought I had to be in control because there was no one else I could trust or depend upon. Acceptance was not part of my life plan; I thought I had to stay in control and create a life where I was safe and taken care of. My insight that I was not God opened the way for a Higher Power, God, to enter my life.

In the final weeks of my drinking, as my life had spun out of control, I was trying to soothe my panic and sensed that I was about to crash and burn. I was 33 years old, married, and had two beautiful young daughters. Then the inevitable happened--my marriage, my dreams, and my life lay scattered in broken pieces around me. I willingly went into treatment; I had no idea what else to do. I could not see a tomorrow, and I could not see any happiness in my future.

While in treatment for my alcoholism, an elderly Catholic priest told me to fire my old god and to open myself to a new relationship with God. Firing my old god was easy – I wasn’t all that attached to him. I started going to meetings and working the 12 steps. I read, wrote, and made sober friends. I eventually started really talking to others, my family, and counselors. I was able to peacefully part ways with my childhood religion and make room in my heart and soul for a new relationship with God. I became comfortable with not knowing where I was going. I worked on accepting life as it was and not as I thought it should be.

I’ve come to believe that faith is a choice. As a child I had happily believed and accepted the faith and church given to me by my parents, and as an adult I had rejected that same church. I scoffed at people who believed in God and were part of an established religion. I did not understand how sensible people could be so weak and delusional. I was miserable, lonely, and scared. I missed the faith I had had as a child.

After 23 years of sobriety, I have come to see my alcoholism as a great gift in my life. Without my descent into alcoholism and the shattering of my illusions, I could not have let go of my old pain and disappointment in God. Without the insights and help I was given in my sober community, I could not have found my way home, back to the God who had loved me as a child.

I am now part of a church community where I am loved. I know I am loved because I am able to truly love others. St. Francis was right – it is through giving that we receive. By loving people in my community, I realized I was loved. Acceptance and staying out of God’s way are still a struggle at times, but now I have the right tools and the right people in my life to remind me to let go and let God--to love without knowing the outcome.

--Kay Rawlings

I am Heather Cook (A recovering priest’s response to the tragedy in Maryland)

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:28:44 GMT

This week’s blog entry was a deeply moving piece for me personally. It's a story of what one woman learned about herself while praying for the victims in recent tragedies in Paris and Maryland. It’s a powerful testimony of identification and understanding and one that helped remind me how powerful and heartbreaking the disease of addiction can be in my life and in the lives of those affected by it.

I am thankful that this priest and child of God found recovery for herself 6 years ago. I hope that by sharing her very personal words with you, it will help someone who may be struggling today. I’m grateful to know today that I am not alone and that help is out there any time I choose to reach out. May we all reach out when we need to.

God’s Peace, Shannon Tucker – RMEC President

I am Heather Cook (A recovering priest’s response to the tragedy in Maryland) Submitted Anonymously

"Je suis Charlie" and "Je suis Ahmed" (a Muslim policeman killed in the attack) have sounded loud and clear around the world in response to the horror of the massacres in Paris.

At the same time the Episcopal Church has been reeling from the hit and run incident involving the Suffragan bishop of Maryland, Heather Cook. As we all know by now, the fatal accident involved alcohol.

I've been praying for the dead and for the survivors in Paris since it happened. But after the news from Maryland broke, when I tried to pray for Thomas Palermo and his family and for Bp. Cook, I found myself sucked into an emotional vortex. I wasn't able to pray for them in the same clear way I could the people at Charlie Hebdo, and the kosher bakery and the printing shop. My prayers for those involved in the Maryland tragedy shortcircuited and I was left with free floating anger and a kind of despair. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

A few mornings after the incident as I was again obsessively googling the press reports from Maryland, these words flashed into my mind: "I am Heather Cook." And my heart broke open.

"I am Heather Cook": I am a priest and an alcoholic. I was actively drinking throughout seminary and nine years beyond ordination. Nothing externally terrible ever happened to me because of my drinking--one minor accident that was settled privately, no DWI's. I was never drunk on the altar or at my office. But every time I was called out at night to an emergency, I knew I was impaired, even if no one else seemed to guess my condition or preferred not to acknowledge it.

"I am Heather Cook": I live on a road in easy walking and bicycling distance to my small town. One night I drove to town just having drunk a bottle of wine. On the way home . . . I didn't hit someone. Instead grace hit me: I KNEW that I could easily kill a pedestrian or cyclist. I knew it as clearly as if it had actually happened. I drove the rest of the way home as slowly and carefully as I could.

I've been sober for almost six years. My sobriety date is the night I was given the gift to grasp the power I had, each time I drank and drove, to kill.

Now I can pray-- for Bp. Cook, the soul of Thomas Palermo, his family, and the Diocese of Maryland. I can pray, because I know now that the anger and despair that were keeping me from prayer for them was really for myself, for the reality of what I could have done. I am not outside this story, but deeply inside it. I am Heather Cook.

CLEAN AND SERENE IN 2015

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 21:47:23 GMT

Another year has turned to memory. A new year brings new promise and renewal. It marks the passing of time and is a great time for me to reflect on past accomplishment and how much work remains to be done. This is never truer than in my reflections on my moral inventory.

Several years ago I had the awe-inspiring opportunity to visit the majestic Redwoods of Northern California. It seems a good analogy as to how we arrive at our fellowship. We come into the fellowship as little “nuts” (usually having dropped from a great height in crisis). We are sheltered by the shade of massive Redwoods which shield us from too much sun and too much water. With time we put down roots and begin to stand on our own. Over time we grow and take our place amongst the others. We hold our own value against the wind, sun and rain. As we grow, we don’t always notice the “rites of passage,” but to those who observe us, they see the growth.

May everyone find themselves in the forest. May we be a peer amongst equals with deep roots.

-Justin Womer

Imperfection and a Way Out by Oscar Carr

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 00:34:19 GMT

"Happiness is knowing when to avoid perfection" - my law school roommate's refrigerator. When I was in law school, my roommate had a dry eraser board on his refrigerator with that saying written on it. It really did not make sense to me until I came into recovery. When I was growing up, I was taught that success looked like going to the right college, having the right job and doing it all without looking tired or showing any "negative" emotions. Religion for me was about having the right God and the right theology. Happiness was having all of those things together in one neat package. But what about the brokenness in my personal life? What about the stress? What about the repressed emotions? Well that is what alcohol and workaholism were for. That is what working out in the gym for two hours was about. My goal was to numb out or avoid those pesky emotions. Just study harder, work longer, drink more on the weekends and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, my witches brew of unhealthy behavior stopped working for me. I started to consider whether I needed to surrender. I didn't want to. I believed in no surrender. Like the Japanese soldiers from World War II who kept fighting until the 1970's, I was determined to keep living by own creed way after the war was already lost. I might have been fooling other people, but I was not fooling myself or God. I was done. I hit an emotional rock bottom and realized I needed to change.

Someone once told me that recovery is like riding a snail and hitting it daily with a horse whip; it is very slow going. He was right, but by admitting to my many imperfections, I have been given three amazing gifts: the ability to show emotion, the courage to be vulnerable, and the humility to ask for help. The snail is finally moving in the right direction. All of these gifts have been God doing what I could not do for myself. Through recovery, I have also connected more deeply with my church and the people in it. I am honored to be involved with the Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church and look forward to helping others who struggle. God promises that we will never have more than we can bear and that there is another way to live free from drama and addiction: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." 1 Corinthians 10:13-14.

Solstice--In the Dark Street Shineth--Diane C. Albany, New York

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:24:25 GMT

Off we go trailing shopping lists and credit card receipts. Hanukah and now Christmas. We may complain about our errands, but we do enjoy the brightness the holidays bring to our gray December days.

It’s no coincidence. The holidays that celebrate light, Hanukah and Christmas, are aligned with the seasonal transit of the sun. It’s a leftover from earlier times when the religions of nature led all of the others. There was good reason, then as now, to run from the darkness.

In recovery we are also moving from darkness to light. We have a similar transit. We leave our pink clouds of early recovery and journey through stages of longer recovery that takes us from darkness to light and to darkness again--as real life inevitably unfolds.

Spirituality is a way out of darkness and into hope and joy. Just like the ancients our holiday transit is full of mystery and miracle, whether it’s oil that lasts eight days or the birth of a baby in a barn.

But we still fear the dark. Much of what we do this time of year is about distraction. Not unlike whistling when we pass a graveyard, now we sing and shop and light candles and eat too much. And we complain. A lot. But maybe our railing against holiday chores is itself a part of the solstice. Now when we are oppressed by darkness--when our primitive fears can be felt even through layers of advertising and anti-depressants--we are drawn to lights, and to other people, just as our ancient relatives were drawn to stars and fires.

The words of this Christmas carol could just as well be a recovery song: Yet in the dark street shineth, the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Maybe there is another way to experience this time of year. What if we allowed the darkness and went toward it, daring ourselves to sit still before we light the candles or the tree. What if we sat a moment and just breathed. That’s what the December holidays are about. We can enter the darkness and emerge transformed. It is what we learn in long recovery: Whatever it is, we can stand it.

This week is Christmas and solstice. The sun is at the most southern point of its transit. Now the days will grow longer again. The cycle is astronomical and holy. On this night we are as ancient as ever.

Connecting the Dots

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 02:34:36 GMT

During this season of Advent our lives are enriched by so many objects that symbolize the anticipated birth of Our Lord. As I examine my own life in recovery there are phrases as well as objects that prompt me to dig deeper and to meditate on their significance in my life. Despite the frantic schedules, crowded stores, and demands for time, I find that I really am emphasizing that word FOCUS.

The fact that the Red Door is such a symbol reminds me that during my long life spent with dedication to the programs of Al-Anon and AA being so important, the door also represented being open for re-entry the few times I faltered in this path. Since my father was in AA I attended my first meeting when I was 12 and always respected and honored his own journey and service to fellow alcoholics. In fact it was someone he had sponsored that carried the message and “opened the door” for me when I first came to terms with my own disease. This happened while living in another country and I was the only woman at first. The door to the General Service Office became of vital importance to me. They provided amazing support and encouragement along with my brothers and their wives. Pamphlets, even phone calls from my “long distance sponsor” helped so much as I began my first sober years.

Phrases have become important to me and as recently as this past Thanksgiving holiday KISS…or Keep it Simple Stupid became my mantra as my husband and I both in recovery traveled to distant places for reunions with both sets of children and their children. In that rewarding, although heavily charged emotional atmosphere, I would close my eyes and repeat the thought. On our return home we both celebrated that period with our children filled with gratitude for the health of the interactions and so very thankful that God has given us both the gift of reconciliation and acceptance.

The theme in Rochester and the wonderful “Web of Grace” so aptly gathers the many positive experiences in recovery and illustrates so profoundly the reliance on our Higher Power as the pathway to recovery.

Most recently for me a new phrase comes to mind as we look at not only the history of 12 step recovery programs and other programs that support the sufferer, but also the family…and to me it is “Connecting the Dots.” This imperative relates to scientific research, yes, but more personally to the many possibilities there are as we continue this journey. This season of celebration with the observance of His birthday can only re-enforce us as we gather with others on similar journeys of recovery. Gifts take on a different meaning. My prayer is that each of us focuses on these symbols and phrases and sees them as God’s great gift to us, and that we take a moment to be strengthened by their meaning, especially in terms of our addiction, and to say thank you.

-Anonymous

Full Circle by Lisa K.

Wed, 10 Dec 2014 20:42:12 GMT

I grew up in an Episcopal church in West Virginia, the one place I always felt safe from the chaos of my alcoholic home---I sang in the choirs and tried to figure out why girls couldn't be acolytes. While in graduate school I met some more evangelical, charismatic types who seemed to have an extra something. When my father died of alcoholism/colon cancer, one of my new friends came to apologize to me because she had not been able to pray for my father to live, since he “was leading a miserable life.” WHAT? Is God so frivolous as to hold some sort of popularity contest in deciding who is to live or die? Did St. Peter count the votes---before the days of “hanging chads”?

I had very little to do with the church or God for the next decade. Twenty nine years ago, like many, I came into recovery with many misgivings about the role of a higher power in my life. I was told to “act as if” there were a loving presence walking beside me and caring for me. The third step says we turn our will and lives over to the CARE of God. The one who walked beside me would care for me, not protect me from losses, or pain. I had never felt truly supported and cared for, even by my husband, so this was a powerful notion. I acted as if, and at some point it ceased to be an act; it became a reality of my life. God even sent me a letter one time: I received an envelope with “HP” as the sender and saying “redemption enclosed.” Wow! As it turned out, it was a rebate check from Hewlett Packard, but for a minute there…

Slowly, my HP and the God of my church merged as I began going to church again, and feeling the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. I saw this merger visually as I lay on a gurney waiting to go into surgery as my Priest held my right hand, my sponsor held my left, they held hands and we said the Lord’s Prayer together. We were, in a sense, a circle, and a triangle. For me, this represented the full circle I had traveled from God, away and back. I felt the power of the “we” which is the guiding principle of recovery and of faith in community. There are many people in recovery who will never return to the church or the God of their childhood and they have years and years of recovery through a higher power with a name of their choosing. Somehow, for me, it was important to realize that the God of my church, who had provided a place of safety and peace in my childhood, had been with me through all the darkness and pain, patiently waiting to welcome me home.

Live and Let Live by Cate Bridge

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 19:09:05 GMT

As I grow in my journey I get to learn daily what “live and let live” means to me. It was easy to learn what this meant for my addictive nature. I can’t drink and others around me can. At first I needed to not be where alcohol was served or I needed an exit plan. My sponsor told me to keep my keys in my pocket so I would literally have an exit plan. It also served as a reminder that I have choices in each situation that I am in and just feeling those keys in my pocket was all I needed to get through an event with alcohol.

Applying “live and let live” in a much broader way is inevitable when I continue to work my program day-by-day. If one of my adult children tells me they have a plan and then they don’t follow through, I remind myself that it is their choice. Not saying “I told you so” when it doesn't turn out as they had planned because their actions didn't follow their words is my opportunity to let them make their own choices and learn for themselves.

Recently the opportunity to practice “live and let live” is happening in a volunteer project I am leading. It is taking off in a positive way with more energy behind it than plans to implement it. People will come up and say “you need to do this and you need to do it quickly.” My first thought is to act out of their urgency. Then I remind myself (and am also reminded by my sponsor and those in the program) to let them live their path, which may include quick actions and making demands to get results. My way to “live” is to move in a day-by-day manner, making decisions that are thought out and prayed over before making decisions! I’m thankful for the keys in my pocket to remind me that I have a choice in my actions.

Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy the Flight

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 22:13:39 GMT

So we must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say…we must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide.” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upwards, p.66). While flying across the country in route to a long needed vacation, these words sang true as I sat in the back row of the plane, trusting the pilot to safely bring the plane back to earth. Even with something as simple as walking on the plane, I needed to give up control and trust that someone else, a skilled and trained pilot, will guide the plane on its necessary course. All I needed to do was to sit back, relax and enjoy the flight. And in fact, I did as the flight attendant directed. Somehow, when it comes to flying in the sky, I am able to enjoy the flight. Before recovery from addiction, there was no way I could do so. I needed to fly the airplane!

The wonderful and scary paradox of this quote from Richard Rohr, is the necessity of falling, of stubbing the toe, of being put off balance to the point that we must ask for help, and accept the help that comes our way. He even apologizes for having to name the obvious. The human condition is to avoid any action that might otherwise suggest that we are not in control, or holding the reigns, or simply making life look “easy.” Falling is a part of life. My grandfather, who taught hundreds of children to ski, would say the only way to ski is to fall down, and get up again. It is a simple paradox every toddler knows by instinct. It is a simple paradox any growing creature accepts just by living. We must stumble and fall, so we know what stability feels like. If we choose not to stumble, we lie on the floor until death comes our way, even if sustenance is three inches beyond our reach. We must stumble and fall if we want to stand up straight to see the sun.

Ten years ago I could no longer pretend to fly my own airplane. Even more paradoxical is when I thought I was standing mighty straight and tall, I was in fact a heap on the floor. No words, no wisdom, not even a whisper of truth could have brought me to lift my head. Ten years ago, something broke, and I started seeing how broken I was, how deep the hole was, and how my life was such a mess! But could I accept it? Could I, even in the middle of the mess, the middle of a career melt-down, a family crisis, a world of chaos, could I accept the fall and learn to stand again? Could I apologize for the obvious, accept the reality, and take up a new walking stick? Could I learn to sit back, relax and enjoy the flight of life?

In recovery, and only in recovery, could I hear and know what this quote means. But, I am a slow learner. In one year’s time, I first spent six weeks at an inpatient treatment center, and five months later, I returned for another five months. One fall was not hard enough. The road since has offered me opportunities for continued training wheels, returning to the basics and building up steam again and again. Sobriety is more than abstinence, it's a place to see and know and find God at the center of life. Today, I live not with a crutch or even training wheels, but trusting the “Real Guide” to give me hope for another day. Today I can listen to the flight attendant over the intercom remind me, “sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.” --Anonymous

Get Out Of God’s Way by Diane C. Albany New York

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 18:30:43 GMT

In long-term recovery we often lean back into moments from our early recovery that help and sustain us. And sometimes in early recovery we have glimpses of what staying in recovery might mean for us later.

Here is one of mine:

When I was very new to the rooms of recovery I heard a woman share in a meeting in a way that made me truly want to be deeply in recovery. The woman was telling the group that the day before her daughter had been hurt –hit by a car in front of their home. The woman said that she got into the ambulance with her daughter and she began to pray that her daughter would be okay and she was praying that God would fix this situation.

And then, she said, she stopped and she changed her prayer. Instead she began to pray, “God help me to get out of your way.”

That was more than 30 years ago and that moment of realization and revelation has stayed with me. I still want that. It’s why I continue my recovery.

God help me to get out of your way.

Fierce Wild Beast? by Shannon T. Memphis, TN

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:24:47 GMT

I think one of the most beautiful traditions of the Church is our commemoration of All Saints’ Day. It’s the day where we, in the Episcopal community, pause and remember the many who have gone before us and celebrate the lives they lived. It’s also a day where I inevitably get choked up trying to sing a song I have been singing since childhood. If you don’t know I Sing a Song of the Saints of God, click here to listen to a 2012 recording on YouTube of the Children's Choir of St. John's Episcopal Church in North Haven, CT. It’s only verses 1 and 2 but I couldn’t even get through this short version without my eyes welling up with tears and my heart welling up with a familiar feeling I now know as gratitude.

So why does a children’s choir singing a very simple song about doctors and fierce wild beasts elicit such strong emotions for me and the folks on the video and so many other people at my own church this past Sunday? My first thought is a personal one, that it reminds me of the connection I still have to my own father, who died 11 years ago this week. It takes me back to the memory of his life and of the connection we can still share when I bring my thoughts to him.

My dad is probably not the most likely person to think of when remembering the saints, since he was rarely at church and didn’t share much about his own spiritual life with me, but there it is. The feeling that he is with me still, guiding me with his wit and wisdom and practical nature. I can see him in my mind’s eye being proud of me and cheering me on in my recovery and in my life. I can feel him urging me to apply myself and to work hard and I can hear him consoling me, saying, “It’s hard to be a Rebel fan,” after my football team loses a tough game. He is still with me, every day.

During our services yesterday and in our All Saints’ evensong last night, my mind drifted toward other saints who have toiled and fought and lived and have made a difference in my life. I think of Rick who met me on the first day on my recovery journey and has been shining a light and holding a mirror for me ever since. I think of Coni who taught me that her “flow of life” higher power was not in contradiction with my own concept of God. I think of Tara Mae and Whitney and James and Michael and Matt and Matthew and many others who have taught me more about the process than I have ever taught them. I think of Terry who told me to breathe, and I think of my mother who is about as close to a saint as you can get from this side of the veil. I think of my sister who is the spark that lit the fire that got me into recovery in the first place and my brother-in-law who is the patient glue that holds our family together. I think of their two little girls who were 2 and 6 when I found recovery and who I couldn’t imagine a life without. I think of my partner in life and love who never knew me before recovery but still knows how to hold the string that connects me to the ground when I sometimes want to float a little too far away.

My hope this week is to remember and honor all saints in my life, those here in body and those watching over me in spirit. And my greater hope is that I can remember that I really do mean to be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.

Who are the saints in your life today?

Halloween: Holy or Scary -Diane C. Albany New York

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 17:26:46 GMT

It is almost Halloween: a time of scary stories, horror movies and dire safety warnings. What we miss in all this get-the-candy rushing about is what we’re celebrating and where it comes from. Yes, the religious right might ban Halloween because they think it’s pagan, but even they forget their heritage on this dark holiday.

Halloween or some version of Souls Day Eve is celebrated all over the world and in some places All Hallows Eve is a solemn and austere time. Our Halloween is really a combination of Druid practices with a lot of other religious beliefs thrown in. We are winking at the Druidic past and what underlies the origins of our faith.

As with almost all Christian observances - new religious rites were deliberately laid on top of ancient festivals. Halloween emerged from an act in the 8^th Century when the All Saints Chapel in Rome was dedicated. That new holy day suppressed one of the oldest Celtic festivals called Samhein –a harvest festival - always celebrated on the last day of October. In a sense it is not unlike how Alcoholics Anonymous was built on the Oxford Group practices.

But what else is going on around Halloween? Except for the candy, October 31^st doesn’t leave much for grownups. Being scared of goblins lost its sway when I got old enough to lose people that I loved. I think that’s true for many of us as we age. Baby Boomers - so mobile and with access to technology - have been a generation that has always been able to stay in touch. And maybe we still expect to even when our loved ones have died.

That’s what this holiday is about. There is a belief that in the days near the end of October the veil separating this world and the next is thinner and so we are able to be closer to those who have died. So we create rituals and customs and yes, Halloween.

A ritual is a way of ordering life. In recovery our meetings are rituals and our step work, service work, and giving anniversary chips, and celebrating milestones are kinds of recovery rituals. And in our faith communities too--Purim and Advent, hearing Mass or saying Kaddish, are ceremonies that help us sort and reframe our memories. When someone dies the relationship doesn’t stop, it’s renegotiated, literally re-conceived. This is especially important as we continue in recovery because we will live - sober - through the deaths of those we love and care about.

The root of the word grieve is heavy. We carry our dead as a cherished burden. Death ends a life but not a relationship. Who would want to close the door on that?

A Place Where Jesus Loves and Heals

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:49:10 GMT

Nine years into parish ministry I finally admitted that I was powerless over my drinking.
I'd drunk daily for years, but was firmly in denial except for 3:00 a.m. shamefests which were conveniently forgotten by the next morning.
About six years ago, the night before Shrove Tuesday, I was alone at home. My husband was away for a few days--always a time when wine and I could enjoy each other freely. Late at night, after a bottle or so I did what I'd often done before. I got in my car and drove the two miles into town for ice cream.
On the way back, something happened. No drama, no accident or flashing blue lights. But like the Prodigal Son "I came to myself." I suddenly perceived the condition I was in and the dark rural road I was driving down, and I realized with total clarity that I could kill someone on that brief ride home. It terrified me.
The next day I called a friend who was a staff member at a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation center nearby and blurted out, "I think I'm in trouble." A few days later we started going through the Big Book together.
I'd call it an answer to prayer, except that try as I can, when I look back to my years of drinking, I cannot remember ever once turning to God for help.

Flash forward to the present day: I am retired from parish ministry. And--what feels like a miracle--I am serving as priest at that very same rehab center.
I meet with "guests" one on one in recovery-oriented spiritual direction, lead groups on prayer and the Steps, and each Monday night, I celebrate Eucharist. As part of every service I read and we all discuss a Gospel story.
Every week, Jesus' words and works, his healings and exorcisms shimmer into new life in the dim living room where we do the service.
Because each one of us in the room is addicted to alcohol or drugs we know we are no different from the folks who crowded around Jesus crying out to be healed. Each one of us knows what it's like to be in the grip of an implacable disease, a disease that feels and acts like we're possessed by a demon that controls our lives and seeks to destroy us. For us addicts and alcoholics, the Gospel reads very close to the bone. We're the lepers, the prostitutes, the demoniacs. We're the lost sheep, the lost coin Jesus never stops searching for and welcoming home.

A few weeks ago we read the story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof to Jesus' feet. Afterward a young man, a chronic relapser, said, "I felt like the paralyzed man. I looked around to see who was lowering me down toward healing and it was my parents. They've never stopped believing that somewhere there's healing for me." An older woman said that she too identified with the person on the mat. At first she was furious at her family and friends for bringing her to rehab. But as she imagined lying at Jesus' feet she felt herself let go of her embarrassment and anger and feel gratitude for the people that got her here.

And me? Here's what came to my mind. When I was ordained, I thought I knew what God was calling me to--parish ministry. That was true for a while. Then God dug a hole in my expectations and lowered me gently to right where I belonged--surrounded by fellow addicts, in a place where Jesus loves and heals.

Your God is Too Small (Or Too Big)

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:15:31 GMT

Years ago I read a wonderful book called, “Your God is Too Small” by J.B. Phillips. In it he wrote about how most of us struggle with God or faith because we keep making God too small-we make or imagine him kind of like us or maybe like a human being with super powers. But even if God was a human being with the powers of the whole Justice League of America-it’s still a human construct and hence, according to Phillips, too small.

I thought about that this week when I was meeting with some theology students and we were discussing some new ideas about God and evolution and how God may intersect with physics and God and Love may be the main construct of evolutionary direction…yeah, that kind of talk.

At one point I said, “But what about a personal God?” and I got THE look, and someone said, “Well, I used to believe in a personal God but then I studied…”The message was basically that believing in a personal God was kind of juvenile or “early” in spiritual formation.

I do pick up that slight judgment in other places as well. That look or word that suggests that those who (still) believe in a personal God have not matured in their spiritual development. There’s a kind of spiritual condescension, “Oh, I’m past the personal God thing. Now God is a cosmic force or a New Physics God…blah, blah.

So me, doing my daily-very personal-prayer starts to feel small-or worse-I feel unsophisticated in my faith.

Can’t God be a galaxies-wide, loving, impersonal cosmic force and a personal shepherd at the same time? Why can’t God (we are talking GOD after all) be BIG and small at once?

I think that Hillary Clinton can be the president of the United States and Chelsea’s mother at the same time. So why can’t God be both (and more) simultaneously?

Action Figures?

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:41:09 GMT

As young kids, my sons toted around four-inch tall plastic creatures called action figures. Some of the figures were from comic book series like Masters of the Universe or GI Joe. They appeared in our house after birthday parties and visits to friends’ houses. These characters were often gruesome and scary in appearance. Their skin tones were white, blue, and brown and their bodies were over-muscled from head to toe. Their weapons and outfits proclaimed power and war and a “don’t mess with me” message. Action figures were about just that: action. “Destroy now, think later.”

I understand the desire of young children to feel strong and safe and even superhuman. As an adult, I have the same desire. I want to fix the brokenness in the world and in my family. Swift and direct action seems, well, the best course of action to correct the errors of the universe.

A few years ago I was talking to a friend about how my actions and interference often backfire; they cause more trouble than healing. Without considering my own bad behavior and flaws, I try to take the inventory of those around me and tell them how to improve their lives without a clue how to change my own. Not only is my action arrogant but my advice is often wrong. I told my friend I needed to tote around a non-action figure, a reminder for me to stop, think, and mind my own business first.

A week later, my friend showed up with a gift for me: maybe the first and only non action figure . This wild-haired seven-inch plastic doll reminds me to consider my actions. She says it with words, duct tape, gloves, and footgear. The Step 1 and Step 2 on her feet refer to the first of the Twelve Steps of AA and Al-Anon:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

For the word “alcohol” in Step 1, I can also substitute just about any other noun. I am powerless over institutions, my children, my spouse, my colleagues, my friends, the government, alcohol… and almost everything in my life except myself. Step 1 and Step 2 remind me that I am not superhuman, that I am not the Master of the Universe; that sometimes I need to surrender my actions to a Power greater than myself.

Sybil MacBeth is the author of Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God and The Season of the Nativity: Confessions and Practices of an Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Extremist. She is an Episcopal layperson and lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Action Figures? was first posted on www.prayingincolor.com/blog on September 30, 2014.

PRACTICING TRANSPARENCY, by TERESA MCBEAN, Richmond, VA

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:24:58 GMT

Living transparently sounds like a good idea, until I actually practice it (usually accidentally). A few months ago, on a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon, I dragged myself from my self-interest and headed down to our local teaching hospital to visit a very sick kid. I don’t do “sick” well. We have countless stories in our family, some bordering on parental abuse, about all the things I, as a mom, cannot handle. I faint at the sight of blood, I can’t clean open wounds, I completely freak out when I accidentally squish a family pet in the garage door. I lost my peripheral vision while carrying my grandmother down a flight of stairs after she falls in our upstairs hallway, much more attenuated to how I felt than what she needed.

This overall lack of sturdiness is particularly apparent on Sunday afternoons. By Sunday lunch, I’m often filled with shame and regret berating myself over my inadequate message during the morning worship and harangued by my inner critic who continues to ask questions like, “How dare you try to preach God’s word?” Sunday afternoons are best reserved for a good nap, maybe a leisurely walk or reading a novel that was written for a sixth grader.

But on this Sunday, I embraced my weakness and soon found myself sitting in a pediatric ICU room with a precious young woman who was fighting for her life, and also, by the way, pregnant. Afterwards, I headed home. I was as tired as tired I could be but still found the energy to pick up the phone when my best friend buzzed in on my cell.

Did I tell you this is my very best friend in the whole wide world? And did I mention that she never ever calls me on Sunday afternoons because she is the one who is often lecturing me about the value of a good nap, a leisurely walk, and a children’s book to cure my common (and not particularly pastoral) bouts of performance anxiety?

I answered her call because I would never not. When she speaks, I love to listen. And I really do want to be there for my friend. Sure enough, she had a serious need. Her mom had fallen, broken bones, and was in bad shape. The situation was much more complicated than throwing on a cast and dispensing extra strength Tylenol, as my friend’s mom is in an advanced state of Alzheimer’s. In this addled condition, it is almost impossible to adequately care and treat the injuries of one who doesn’t even know they are broken, fragile and in need of medical attention.

My friend lamented, and I listened. I sincerely, with all my heart, want to care compassionately for my friend. And if she didn’t know me so well, she’d probably think I had done just that while she moaned, and I muttered sympathetic words of concern.

Once she pulled into her driveway, she ran off to take a restorative nap of her own. Conveniently, my husband was calling me at the exact moment that she was ready to say goodbye. I answered my husband’s call, without knowing that I had accidentally and by some technological miracle I can never replicate managed to put the three of us: husband, boon companion, and myself into a conference call. Here’s where the transparency comes in.

“Honey, where are you? You still at MCV?” asked my husband, who just woke from his own siesta to realize it was late and I wasn’t home in my jammies as would be my Sunday norm.

“Nope, on my way. Just got off the phone with Jean. And you know I love her with all my heart but…” and I began to, yes, I did this…complain. I lamented about her interpretation of her mother’s condition (time has proven her assessment was grim AND spot on). I know I sounded tired and cranky and completely without compassion. And she heard every word.

Horrible? Embarrassing? Absolutely. If I had known what I actually did! But I did not, so I went blithely along with my daily life, believing that my friend could still trust me, and that I would always have her back.

Weeks passed.

One Monday morning, super early, Jean showed up at church and took a seat in my office. She went on to tell me to the last detail the nature of my offense against her. She did so with grace, compassion, and patience. Every illusion of myself was stripped away, and the true nature of my petty, judging, small and hard-hearted self was laid open for Jean and I to stare at in horrified communion.

I felt a kinship with Eustace, the boy in The Chronicles of Narnia “whose pride and greed caused him to inconveniently become a dragon.” Like Eustace, I ache with the consequences of my ways. Despite his best efforts, Eustace cannot extricate himself from his false Dragon self. In the end, the Lion tells Eustace, “You will have to let me undress you.” If you are so inclined and care to read (or reread) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader(New York: Macmillan, 1952), pp. 88-91, C. S. Lewis describes in gruesome allegorical fashion the work of the Lion in freeing Eustace from a bondage of his own making.

That early morning encounter with myself left me feeling as vulnerable and naked as little Eustace, after his extrication from the dragon’s coat. I felt raw and tender. I fell apart in abject misery into my friend’s lap, to ask for absolution for my sin. Her tears of compassion and mine of shame mingled in love.

I could go on and on about the gift of her love, and the healing power of forgiveness and relationship restoration. But what I need to say, I think, is that living transparently sometimes is less a choice and more an encounter. At the moment when Jean served as a modern day Nathan, I wasn’t capable of living transparently how could I? I was spiritually asleep. But, by the grace of God, when presented with the opportunity to accept the reality of my own nakedness, it was my friend’s honesty, and her long history of faithful loving friendship that allowed me to stay in the moment of truth. It hurt. It still hurts as I write this account today, but this is what living transparently looks like for me. And I appreciate the opportunity to share how awesome and privileged I am to have Jean for a friend.