Perspective and Principles

Twenty three years ago, give or take, we began what is now known as Northstar Community founded upon a deep and abiding respect for the principles and practices of mutual aid societies like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. People did not prefer this. People from a faith background and years of church experience came and visited us in the early weeks and months and would often call me with feedback.

"Teresa, you may not have noticed this, but you do not have people stand up and greet each other at the start of your service. You know, this is how we do it in our church because it makes folks feel welcome." It also makes some people feel uncomfortable, especially folks trying to be anonymous.

"Teresa, I came over and you did not have a visitor card for me to fill out. You didn't take up an offering. Would you like me to bring you some cards and maybe get some ushers to volunteer to take up an offering?" I would not, because this is a pilot project and some of these folks are homeless and a few have warrants out for their arrest and no one wants to fill out a visitors card.

"Teresa, these 12-Steps you referred to today. They did not mention God once. What is this nonsense about a higher power? How can you expect me to be supportive of these efforts when those 12-Steps are so anti-God?" Well, actually, the writers of those twelve steps used the Bible to come up with the principles, particularly parts of Romans, 1 Corinthians and the entire book of James. I'm pretty sure the Oxford Group, who early on required baptism before attendance at an AA meeting would be pretty surprised to hear that we judged them so harshly.

Suffice it to say I received a lot of feedback that indicated that perhaps I was doing something wrong. None of this feedback was particularly stressful. Why? Because I was compelled by a strong inner voice that we were forging a path for the OTHER, not someone who had a faith background and years of church experience. I knew there were plenty of churches who had ushers and public greetings, but, as the scriptures say, "...the fields are ripe for the harvest, but the workers are few..."

There were people who did not feel comfortable with greetings and offering baskets and church buildings but they did feel at home in an AA meeting. Folks deserve at least one place in town that is set up for those who are interested in pursuing faith in an environment that respects their particular background. No one was wrong, people were just looking through different lens and coming to different conclusions. Eventually some folks find a church home and settle into it. Others stick around and some simply move on without leaving a forwarding address. Our beliefs and preferences can change. That's not a problem!

In any work we do, we have to make room in our mind, bodies, and spirit for feedback and the preferences of others. It will be easier if we have a strong sense of our own principles and preferences too. It will also help if we are not to stressed out - just in case people are more interested in telling us what they know rather than being curious about what we are learning - which can be frustrating.

If you are going to embark on an adventure, there will always be stressors. What are you doing to deal with your stressful situations and close your stress cycle?

Selfish? I Think Not!

I am not a fan of the old, worn out belief that AA and other mutual aid societies promote a selfish program, although I understand the sentiment. A husband who regularly pulled his wife out of pubs and honky tonks in the wee hours of the morning laments, “It used to be that my wife was never around because of her drinking; now she’s always at a meeting.”

In the short term, this husband sees no difference between his wife in the midst of her SUD and in recovery - where is she? He has a point but I think misses the potential for change. This program changes us; it wakes us up spiritually; we become more decent human beings. At first the program may feel arduous and time-consuming. It needs to be. We are working hard to manage early recovery post acute withdrawal symptoms. We are learning new skills. We need to establish and deepen a support system. Eventually - this wife can show up more fully present in her home.

This is not being selfish; this is learning how to treat a potentially fatal disease.

I had a guy tell me this was a selfish program because members help others because it helps themselves. According to him, this is selfish. We need to do things from a pure motivation he says and anything short of pure love is useless. I heard what he said but still scratched my head over the sentiment. OF COURSE this work helps both the giver and the receiver. Antibiotics helped me get over a sinus infection last month but no one called me selfish for taking them! Now, if the ONLY reason we work a 12th step is to benefit ourselves, I assure you, it will not last. But if it takes this understanding of the benefits of the work for us to get started? Who can argue with such reasoning? It’s ok to start with a mixed motive.

If we stick with this work long enough, it will occur to us that we better do so without expectations of reward or compensation. Because let me tell you - oftentimes, there is no reward or compensation. And that is as it should be. Many of the people who tried to help me pre-recovery received no benefit from their efforts. In fact, they usually ended up having to endure my baloney. Today, I see how each foray into the jungle of my dark lost mind with the intent to rescue was a breadcrumb that eventually led me out of the darkness and toward the light. But none of the breadcrumb droppers know that!

Sharing, even in the face of heartbreak, gives us a new set of problems.

Powerlessness and Limitations

If someone tested us on our capacity for carrying the 12-steps anywhere, much less to someone in trouble, how would they measure our competency? I measure my strength by how much I can deadlift; my endurance by how far I can run without keeling over. I measure the state of my marriage through a convoluted and mostly intuitive set of data points honed through decades of marital trial and error. How do I measure my recovery? In AA, the only qualification for attending a meeting is a desire to stop drinking. Each mutual aid group has its own particular dependency it hopes to eradicate. But is “stopping” the only criteria for measuring progress and fidelity to the principles the program teaches? Is the “desire to stop” our only necessary decision?

Remember Step 1 when we had to wrestle with powerlessness and unmanageability? Powerlessness over ______. Hopefully by Step 12, we are not misled by the common misperception that the 12-steps require us to renounce all our power (whatever that means). Powerlessness as a principle is really saying that whenever we do _______, we cannot do it safely. I cannot go on a diet safely. Others cannot drink alcohol safely. Some struggle with using opioids safely. We are not powerless in every dimension of our lives. But the principle here requires that we have the capacity to know where we are truly powerless.

Our powerlessness reveals itself via a particular kind of symptoms and dis-ease. In the first step we tied our powerlessness to our unmanageability. We identify unmanageability often as external factors - DUIs, divorce, debt, loss of jobs. But the heart of unmanageability is the internal emotional state of restlessness, irritability and discontentment.

The twelfth step is not about getting powerful and leading a manageable life. Qualifications do not include a perpetual state of bliss. It is about allowing the process of recovery to alter us in a way that grants us the capacity to give a restless, irritable and discontent person a little compassion. How does that happen? We practice our principles and we learn that compassion is the most sacred expression of any principle worth applying.

I think about the people who have helped me in my life; they were never the loudest voices in the room. They were the ones who showed up with a presence that radiated trustworthiness. They did not present me with answers or suggestions, they offered me compassion and empathy.

Identity

In the previous study we wrestled with who we want to become, post dependency. Mutual aid societies like AA do not tell anyone what to value or who to become or even how to feel. Their work is to be supportive of people who want to get sober from the dependencies that entrance them.

The Big Book of AA warns us of resentment. The collective experience of the program has taught its members to be wary of resentment as it has resulted in many a relapse. AA does not pick favorites with emotions; the group observes the effects of resentment, for example, and warns those willing to listen that it is bad for recovery.

AA and other groups similar to them teach us to serve others without threatening us with expulsion if we do not. Again, the group declares the value of giving away that which we received freely from others BECAUSE these suggestions fit the core value of the group - getting and staying sober. Both admonitions against harboring resentment and suggestions for behaving this way or that, all spring from this one true thing: the mission is to help fellow sufferers get sober.

This is AA’s core value: sobriety. Everything they say, do, think, organize, and practice is aimed at helping people get sober.

The question we all must ask ourselves in order to do a proper inventory is: what are my core values and what thoughts, feelings, actions and beliefs must I practice to live out those values?

Trust is work

My husband’s willingness to trust me with his color choices seems like a silly, small matter. But his struggle was real and I often think about how hard it was for him to admit this one true thing about himself - he mixes up black and blue. How hard should that be? It isn’t like he was copping to being a serial killer! If I think a bit longer, I realize that I too have trouble with small truths.

Is it any wonder that, if we struggle with realistically assessing ourselves in areas where the results really are no big deal, we will struggle in the arena of trusting God with our WILL and our LIFE? For decades I did not have much hope that I would ever understand God enough to trust him. My vision of who God is was impaired. One day I came across these verses:

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

~ James 1:16-18, The Message

I had a moment of receiving “light cascading down” as a series of new thoughts. (I did not realize at the time that this was my experience; it is only in hindsight that I understand that this is what happened to me.) Here is a list of what eventually became a new way of seeing for me. (Kind of like having my own spiritual form of color blindness taken from me.)

* I am off course; how much more off course can I get? I’m dying from my disease.

* What if I am off course in part because I have been wrong and blinded by my own faulty way of seeing and understanding the world?

* What if the book of James is right, and I am wrong?

* What do I have to lose?

* What if I choose to believe in this God who is not deceitful, not two-faced, not fickle?

* What if God really believes that we humans are the crown of all his creatures?

* What if God believes in me?

In the AA Big Book, and in meeting rooms, there are talks about having a moment of clarity. This was one of mine. In some ways it felt like I had been in a dark, airless, windowless room for a long, long time and someone had swept in, turned on a light, thrown back the curtains and opened the windows. Fresh air blew in and cleared away the stench of stagnation. I do not believe I could have “done this” on my own. I believe that God was doing for me what I absolutely could not do for myself - giving me, a blind beggar, sight. How about you? Is it time for a good Spring cleaning of old ways?