Daily Reprieve

AA Comes of Age, Page 232:

There are those who predict that AA may well become a new spearhead for a spiritual awakening throughout the world.  When our friends say these things, they are both generous and sincere.  But we of AA must reflect that such a tribute and such a prophecy could well prove to be a heady drink for most of us – that is, if we really came to believe this to be the real purpose of AA, and if we commenced to behave accordingly.

Our Society, therefore, will prudently cleave to its single purpose:  the carrying of the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.  Let us resist the proud assumption that since God has enabled us to do well in one area we are destined to be a channel of saving grace for everybody.

I don’t think being a new spearhead and protecting AA’s single purpose are mutually exclusive.  The 12 step program has been applied to a multitude of compulsions and addictions.  Why not take the spiritual guts of the program and use it for the spiritual development we didn’t want but ended up needing.

The 4th Step prayer dealing with Resentments on Page 67:

We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.  When a person offended we said to ourselves, ‘This is a sick man.  How can I be helpful to him?  God save me from being angry.  Thy will be done.

The principal implied in this prayer is that those who offend us are “sick.”  The disease concept is thus expanded to include those demonstrating spiritual deficits, not just alcoholics.  Spiritual bankruptcy is the real disease, and it manifest in a multitude of ways.  12 step programs grab hold of one lethal symptom to lead to the root cause. 

Why wait for life threatening symptoms to develop?  Why not go ahead and connect with a Higher Power of our own understanding, seek a Vital Spiritual Experience by working the steps, replace the Judicial Damnation of the Sin Concept with the tolerate Disease model, and come to the realization that we are helping others for our own survival, altruism minus the social pretense of  religious offices.  Why not embrace these saving heresies before we get our collective asses handed to us?  Just a thought.

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This entry was posted on November 29, 2008 at 1:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.