Music happens between the notes – Stravinsky
This has always been a powerful message for me because it makes me realize that recovery is something that truly happens between each of the Twelve Steps. No artist would ever use numbers to paint a picture; in a similar way recovery is happening in the background of the Twelve Steps.
When I am lecturing at the various treatment centers where I consult this is my constant message. In this sense, spiritual healing and recovery are discovered in the story be-hind the words. We are called to be poets.
Let me explain.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Now this is what the step says. However what does it mean? I be-lieve that this step only becomes meaningful when we see the story behind each word. Indeed it may take us to a story beyond these words.
Notice the step incorporates the concept of a fellowship – i.e. “We”. Recovery is not an isolated event. It involves a community, a group, dare I say it, a tribe.
I will never be alone again. AA cannot exist for an individual. It is one alcoholic seeking out another alcoholic, at minimum. This was the miracle that Bill Wilson discovered when he was struggling with the desire to take a drink in Akron, Ohio. He needed to find another drunk…in this case Dr. Bob.
There is a process – story behind the word “admitted”. Nobody wakes up one morning and says: I’m an alcoholic. Always there is a journey to this awareness. And if we miss out on the story, the events, then I believe we will miss the disease.
When Bill and Bob sat together on their first meeting they inevitably were led into the words “powerless” and “unmanageable”. The Twelve Steps had not yet been created and yet they were there; they existed before they were ever written down because they exist in the story of every alcoholic. The words we use are only bridges to reality!
Recovery is the story, the events, the feelings that happen behind the powerful words of each step.
Powerless: The cravings. The need to drink alcohol in order to feel good. The trials and tribulations of failure. That sense of helplessness that only an addict truly understands.
Unmanageable: The loss of jobs. A marriage on the rocks. Children in tears. That look of disgust on the faces of people that we love. A million aspects of the same story that every alcoholic lives.
And it is all happening be-tween the lines. The lines of the Twelve Steps. The lines of the Twelve Traditions. The Promises. The Big Book.
Unlike the Bible, nobody is suggesting that the Big Book was written by God. Rather it is a book of suggestions. Helpful hints that have saved a million lives. Inspirational insights. Poetry for the wounded-soul. And this is how it continues to feed us. Each time we read or listen there is always more…more to understand. Between the lines.
Dynamic, challenging, insightful and witty, Reverend Leo Booth is a minister cut from a very different cloth. He says you don’t have to be religious to be spiritual. He’s as likely to quote from the Beatles, The Velveteen Rabbit, or Oscar Wilde, as he is from the Bible. His passion is to help people discover that God and spirituality are not “out there” somewhere, but are found within ourselves and our world.