First Things First

"First seek ye the kingdom of God." (Matthew 6.33)  - This is the quote behind our slogan, "First Things First".

Most people don't know that, and the way that New Age/Eastern philosophy has infiltrated the Fellowship, nor do they care. 

I came to a critical understanding of first things first today. As a Catholic, I say my prayers in the morning and at night, I offer penance to the Virgin Mary, and sometimes I even attend church during the day, and is perhaps why I have never put too much emphasis on Step Eleven, "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out."

But now that I am taking a newcomer through the Steps, I realized that I have to at least try to practice prayer and meditation in a way that I can pass on through the program. The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, also known in the fellowship as the Eleventh Step Prayer, is the closest to an Eleventh Step that I tend to get. And it is helpful. When I was adjusting to working in a new section at the store, and was being ostracized and left out, I recited that prayer to myself, "Grant that I might not so much seek to be consoled, as to console...for it is in dying that we are born unto eternal life."

But I have recently come to realize that it does not matter how well, how often, or even how genuinely I practice the Eleventh Step. If I do not have solid footing in Steps Six and Seven (from seeing the cold stark facts about myself in a Fifth), then I have no business thinking that Step Eleven could possibly offer me any favour, or that I am deserving of any sort of absolution. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "Though I have all the faith necessary to move mountains - if I am without love, I am nothing." (1 Corinthians 13.2)

If I am so lustful that I am infringing on the autonomy of another, so greedy that I leave my peers behind, so angry that I blame those I care about, so proud that I will not treat people with due attention, or so envious that I am crippled with anxiety, then no matter how diligent my external acts are, or how sincere my intentions, my spiritual progress is at best stagnant and at worst, condemnable. 

In the program we believe that pain is a great motivator, and surrender via humiliation took me through Step One, and now Step Six as well. Today I recognize that not only can I not afford to physically slip anymore, but nor can I now spiritually, either. How can I have a program, and at the same time be getting fired, or arrested, or being disconnected from my peers and family. It is a disservice to the program, which saved my life and possibly even my soul, because it taught me how to earn what Christ said I need to do in order to gain salvation: be reborn (John 3.3).

Thank God for the patience of others, who have helped me get to where I am today, who told me the truth, and without codependency and without hurting me, helped heal me. And thank God for the gift of desperation, because when I was drowning in a sea of sin, I was offered enough grace to understand that peace comes from letting go, not from taking in. 

Recognize, release, and restore - This to me now, is First Things First. 

Seek HIS refuge

Step One is about more than just "admitting" that we are powerless over alcohol.

It is actually surrendering to it.

We have agreed that alcohol is a power greater than ourselves, and we all have our different stories, under the same banner, which drove us into the rooms. But who of us truly believes that it is bigger, faster, stronger, and craftier than us? The very few of us who do recover.

Imagine that alcohol is your opponent on the battlefield, and you are the last man standing. All the others have fled or died. (Let's say family, friends, and employers, all of those people who most of us have lost one way or another, by the end). It's time to surrender.

When we look at what it means to surrender in war, it no longer becomes a word that implies some sort of righteous, humble action-taking before God, that it seems to have taken in the fellowship. No, it is actually saying to your enemy, "Do what you will with me now."

What a terrifying thought.

And this is why those who recover "get it", and are far and few between. Because now, we have given up any power, or any illusion of power that we (thought we) had. We know that we are at the end, and we finally saw that there is no fight left in us. It doesn't matter how high or low the bottom, it is just about saying, "Enough!"

But now here's the dilemma: we need real intervention, or else we might as well have just died on the battlefield, for we are just shells, as powerless as we were before we ever admitted complete defeat. 

Who can save us now? We've just placed ourselves as a lamb before the slaughter.

So the answer is in Step Two, and for many of us, myself including, it starts out with the meetings.

That gives us some strength, enough to blindside our enemy long enough for us to dash out of sight, but that's not enough. We are still homeless, powerless, and running out of fuel.

It's time for Step Three, because we - the ones who have found shelter and food - won't be around everywhere you go, and you see, you have to go, for we all have different paths to walk. Who can be present, no matter what the condition? Who is greater than all of us combined?

Make your decision.

Now.

Because we will ask you to leave if you have overstayed your visit. We are not here to hold your hand, but we are here to rejuvenate you, and to offer camaraderie when you follow instruction.

We are just like you - survivors from a bloodied battlefield, but we are no longer camping out, wandering.

We have achieved a sustainable way of living. We are no longer empty shells, but are now vessels of Spirit. So either follow in our footsteps, to the One who has all Power, or you will be left alone to the wolves and the thieves .

Make no mistake about it. This disease is deadly. It either destroys the body, imprisons the mind, or plunders the spirit.

We who have recovered have sought a path beyond a finite line from no man's land. We rest within a greater power now, and we can and will help only those who take direction

And we do not give handouts.

Rest in Peace Paul.

Hate the world

I am in a few Catholic/Protestant groups on Facebook, and thousands upon thousands of members actually think they are being good followers of Christ, posting from their egos, when instead we are taught to die to self.

To take after Christ is to be despised by the world. It is to be the one in a hundred who walks alone, with only God by his side, because there is only one who can be shepherd. The handful in an entire community who have the honesty to challenge mediocrity and the politically correct social committees. Those precious few, already rare, who are then scattered as well. This is one of the devil's war tactics: divide and conquer. 

Instead of supporting each other, we look at our faith superficially so that we can appear to be more favoured or pure, more desirable and trust-worthy. We think to be a good Christian is to do good deeds or say the right prayers at the right times of the day. No, that is not what it means to be saved, at all. To be a real follower of Christ is to have a total rebirth, to cut out the root of darkness that has grown like a weed in the very depth of our spirits. To then have that newly emptied space which has been utterly voided of sin, ready and open and desperate to be filled with God's spirit - that is what it means to be born again.

To love our neighbour enough that we genuinely want them to have a nice day, free from the pain of this cold world, and to not do a good deed simply because it is convenient, on the way, a resource directly in front of us, or that we're in a good mood. *Brushes palms of hands briskly against each other, "That's my good deed for the day" nonsense*.

No, it is to come from a place of love even in suffering, of compassion even when feeling dejected. While it is well and good to want to earn heaven and avoid hell, it is even better to sincerely care enough for a person that we will pray for them, even if they have hurt us, that we will be happy for those we are jealous of, or that we will lift others up, with the risk of being unseen ourselves. That is the Great Commandment.

Jesus said that he will spit the lukewarm from his mouth. He also said that he will deny anyone who is not reborn, even if they do all the right "actions".

"Many will come to me on that day and say, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons, and perform many miracles?' And to them I will say, 'Get away from me, you evildoers. I never knew you.'" - Matthew 7.22-23

A Cure

At my meeting tonight, a big topic was relapsing. Several of the more prominent recovered members, who take on sort of teacher roles, talked about there being no such thing as a "relapse": that it's a catch phrase from the past twenty years or so, and that the word used before that was "slip".

Their point was that there ought to be no insinuation that something was lost (sobriety), because something was never gained (recovery). It really inspired me, and I immediately began to contemplate what sobriety really is. In the program, we believe that there is only one solution to alcoholism, and that is connecting with God through the Steps. In other words, the cure is spiritualism, and the premise is that if we follow the clear set of instructions as outlined in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, we will recover from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. We will not "relapse".

About two hours later, on a completely unrelated note (but God is in the details), I was speaking with a teacher who was talking about a student who was having trouble with his assignments, and with three weeks left of the year, she was putting pressure on the parents to help out. She said how this student has severe problems, and I asked if the school psychiatrist does not have the tools to help him. The child cannot be helped for various reasons, one being that the school can only intercede so far without direct parental consent, to which they will not give.

I asked, was he schizophrenic, and she said no. In my ignorance I asked, what is worse than schizophrenia, and she looked away thoughtfully and paused. She lowered her brows and said slowly and quietly, that she thought he might be an actual psychopath.

I remember reading once online that the word "psychopath" was coined by a doctor in the late nineteenth century to diagnose an alcoholic, and that the term actually morphed into "sociopath", to denote the damage that was done on society. While I have been having trouble cross-referencing this, I did stumble upon a pioneer of psychotherapy, Hervey Cleckley, who is attributed for coming up with the most influential research in psychopathy in his book published in 1941, just two years after Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1939.

One thing that he noted, was that the psychopath can seem normal and engaging. This is exactly, and I mean exactly, what we read tonight in one of the stories in the book. A man named "Jim", who seemed "normal so far as we could see, except for a nervous disposition...In a few years (after he began drinking at thirty-five) he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed". (35).  It's actually eerie.

This teacher who I mentioned is so smart and compassionate. This child is so ill that he actually frightens the other teachers, but not this one. But to see that even the best don't have an explanation, this is when we start using the word "hopeless". This is the history of alcoholism, and why today A.A. is such a massive organization, even internationally, with its book translated in about every language, being read in about every culture.  It is the only antidote.

There was no solution, and so sufferers were locked away in asylums reserved nearly exclusively for alcoholics. But somehow, through a lineage of people and deliverance ministries, we now have a remedy, eighty years later. To think how this fellowship has exploded, just a few generations ago, with today there being millions upon millions of members worldwide, with every meeting following the same format. So one meeting in North America is the same in Europe or the Middle East or Russia: we can go anywhere, and we are brethren. It is incredible, it has saved lives, families, and communities. Truly, we all take it for granted. 

And I now wonder, is it possible, is it entirely possible that someone so deranged, so vicious, so seemingly soulless, could have a daily reprieve, as well?

So much of our program is about the grace of God; it's tempting to make decisions on who can be healed, and who can't, and it's easy to ignore problems, until the moment they arise. But even the demons will rise again on the day of the resurrection (2 Peter 2.4). How far can God's grace go, and do we really have the ability to choose it, or to decide who is capable of receiving it.