April 23, 2020
When I married into the Program (and by the way, I have Tom’s permission to break his anonymity), I was variously accused of being attracted to “sick people” and having a “broken picker.” Neither is remotely true. So let me tell you what I have learned to admire about the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its practitioners.
First, it is their whole-hearted and imperfect surrender of their will and their life to the Higher Power of their understanding. This act, which often requires both great courage and deep desperation, is extremely powerful and humbling to witness – because it is a daily process: “just for today.” Even though I do not suffer from an addiction to drugs or alcohol, I have struggled for years with surrender and obedience to the God of my understanding (a concept that I believe most believing people follow, whether they admit to it or not) in an attempt to be a faithful, practicing Christian. So I greatly admire people in the program who have persisted with their surrender, even on a moment to moment basis — which can be likened to Christ’s exhortation that daily we take up our cross. “Working a good program” in AA is measured in terms of spiritual progress and health, not impossible perfection or rigid adherence. There is bend and doubt and great love in the 12-step walk.
Secondly, is the rigorous honesty required by adherents to the 12-step program of recovery. No illusions of grandeur or control here. Instead there is a constant evaluation of one’s own agency in the world – and the prompt admittance of wrong doing or wrong motive and its rectification. “Authenticity” is an over-used term nowadays, but it certainly applies to members of AA. And, as you now know from these blog pages, I am especially attracted to truth-telling, to personal honesty. When I sit in meetings with Tom, I often hear clear admissions of faulty actions or thinking — then realization – then correction. Solid standing in AA is built on the capacity to see oneself clearly and share those shortcomings, as well as the constant practice of their overcoming.
Finally, AA is a program of “attraction, not promotion.” There is no weaponized declaration of Truth here. Nothing makes me more wiggly than a person’s unqualified assertion that they possess “the Truth;” or that their worldview is completely bent through that particular prism. Twelve-step practitioners offer the program to others by the truth of their own actions. They quote James from the New Testament: “Faith without works is dead.” When the recipients have the “ears to hear”, twelve-steppers will share their personal “experience, strength and hope.” AA also has a saying: “Don’t stop coming before the miracle happens.”
And the miracle does occur — lives are in fact redeemed — with dedicated surrender and honesty. I have never met a greater concentration of happy, productive, grateful, spirit-filled people. As one of the wiser members often says: “I have a higher power who is just crazy about me.” And I am finding out how true that is, for each of us.
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