Wishing and Willing

In Step 3 we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.  Most of us devote a lot of attention to the precise meanings of the word "God" in that sentence, point out the importance of the word "decide" and pretty much assume the words "will" and "lives" are understood.  This might be a serious oversight.

The dangers of sponsorship

Over the last 6 months or so a friend and I have grown into a 'co-sponsorship' relationship.  He had decided to go through the Steps again and wanted a fresh perspective on them and I need someone to slap me around a little when I let unemployment get me depressed.  It's funny, because we both have sponsors, but this sort of arrangement on these particular issues just seems to work.
This morning I sent my friend some comments on his working of the 3rd Step and it got me thinking about just how careful we have to be when sponsoring.

The Third Step and the Noble Eightfold Path

Tonight I went to church with my family to attend a mass being said for my wife's grandmother. While there I found myself meditating on the Third Step, partially to give my mind a spiritual purpose while in church, and partially because Brian and I have been working on this Step together and it's where I am at right now.

Breaking down this Step, I found myself taking each term and reflecting on what it means to me.

Some thoughts on the concept of a Higher Power

The following are some 'thoughts in progress' on the question of a Higher Power.  They are not fully developed by any means.  In fact, they are not even completely consistent.  But they represent a direction my thoughts are going these days and as such I would love to hear people's reactions.

Fellowship

This morning at my home group we had a discussion about the Fellowship.  It was good to be reminded of what a special thing an AA group is.  People who have never felt a part of anything feel accepted.  People who are afraid of just about everything in life feel safe.  People feel comfortable talking about things they would virtually never discuss elsewhere.  People know they have somewhere to go for help, that every person in that room wants what is best for them.  It's amazing how you can bump into a fellow AA, someone you've maybe had a few chats with, sit down for a cup of coffee and very quickly begin talking about what is really happening in your lives, what you are happy about, what you are afraid of, and all at a level of reality you almost never reach with non-alcoholics.

It is just plain nice.

Why all this 'practical polytheism', gods/Higher Powers vs idols/Lower Powers stuff?

If you have read any of my recent postings, you've seen that I have been making a lot of use of the idea that people are 'practical polytheists', worshiping multiple gods or Higher Powers and idols or Lower Powers. Among the Higher Powers people worship are God, community, justice, love... and among the Lower Powers/idols one could find money, power, praise, possessions.... Why do I find this approach useful, rather than just sticking with virtues and vices or character assets and character defects?

Our lives become prayer

I have mentioned in some of my comments on the Second and Third Steps that I think that it is useful to view people as 'practical polytheists', that is to say, in our practical, daily lives we in fact worship many Higher Powers, what I refer to as Gods and Idols, but many might prefer to call Higher and Lower Powers. In other words, we value, follow, even worship and pray to many things that we are powerless over, both positive and negative. Some examples would be the economy, others' opinions of us, our jobs, money, justice, peace, love, security....the list goes on and on and differs from person to person.

Love and the Fourth Step

There is a fascinating article, The Rigor of Love, by Simon Critchley in the August 9 New York Times. The essay is about the question of whether non-believers in a transcendent God can have faith. I will probably deal with his central concern in a later post but for today I'd like to think about one of the stepping stones he uses to get to his conclusion: Soren Kierkegaard's (Danish philosopher, 1813 - 1855) concept of Christian Love.

The 'innate violence' of modern life and the Third Step

A friend was telling me yesterday about how she felt overwhelmed by various forces in her life pulling her in a hundred different directions. She had so many things she had to do that she couldn't do anything. The resulting feeling of what I guess you could call besieged impotence had her parking in front of a liquor store, trying to decide whether to go in or to call another alkie. Luckily, she made the right decision. (Anyone wondering what the right decision was really needs to go to a meeting.)
One of the methods of execution used in medieval England was to tie the limbs of the victim to four horses and have them tear him apart. Our lives, or at least my life, can feel that way and it certainly seems like a good metaphor for what my friend was going through. I think I'm safe in saying that it's one of the worst feelings we regularly experience in today's world.

Two Spiritualities

In Finding God in All Things William Barry quotes John MacMurray as follows:

All religion...is concerned to overcome fear. We can distinguish real religion from unreal by contrasting their formulae for dealing with negative motivation. The maxim of illusory religion runs: "Fear not; trust in God and he will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you"; that of real religion, on the contrary, is "Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of."

I think this is a brilliant distinction and one that applies to some of the types of spiritualities we hear people express in meetings.

Approaching the Fourth Step

The Fourth Step is one of the two that really scare newcomers looking at the Steps. The other is, of course, the Ninth. In both cases it strikes me that the fear stems from pride, from a failure to see my place in things. Probably the best way to test whether we have done Steps 1, 2 and 3 well is to check whether we are still afraid of 4.
I am reading William A Barry's Finding God in All Things, a Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. He points out that saints consistently say that they feel more and more sinful the closer they come to God, but that far from finding that depressing, they find joy in it. What gives?