Twelve Steps offer spiritual response to terrorism
The authors of “Alcoholics Anonymous” described fear as an “evil corroding thread” and added that “the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.”
Today, we don’t have to be alcoholics or drug addicts to identify with those words. Instead, we can just follow the reports of terrorism. Reflecting on them or the terror that filled the world three years ago on 9/11 can drive us to feelings of powerlessness, resentment and fear.
These feelings had much to do with the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. The lives of the founders of this group were filled with fear. Many of them believed that they had to stop drinking or die. And it was when AA’s founders admitted their radical misery and vulnerability that they discovered a spiritual solution.
They began with Step One: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Step Two follows immediately with a solution: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Fundamental to this solution is a “personal housecleaning” aimed at identifying harms and releasing resentment and fear. Living in these feelings can lead to drinking or drugging.
In the words of the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous,” “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.” Members of AA are encouraged to identify their resentments and their part in the resentment and list them in writing.
The same suggestion applies to fear: “We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with them. We asked ourselves why we had them. Wasn’t it because self-reliance failed us?”
According to Fred Holmquist, director of The Lodge at Hazelden, a Twelve Step enrichment program, this is the core problem: “Excessive fear is a sign of spiritual unfitness, a symptom of over-reliance on self.”
The idea behind the Twelve Steps is that we cannot remove resentment and fear exclusively through our own efforts. We require the action of a spiritual process. And, each of us can define a power greater than ourselves in our own way, as any source of help outside ourselves.
As we release resentment and fear, we begin to experience the serenity described by many people in recovery from addiction. This serenity is unconditional, meaning that it does not depend on external circumstances.
Terrorism is relevant here, because it reminds us that we can’t always control what happens in the world, says Holmquist. What we can control is the integrity of our response to what happens, he adds.
“I was living and working in New York on September 11, 2001,” Holmquist recalls. “It was an opportunity for any number of responses. For some people, it was an event that pushed them over the edge to seeking a chemical solution. For others, it was an occasion to ramp up their recovery program and step up their service to other people.”
This idea is captured in many AA slogans–for example, “Accept life on life’s terms.” This slogan calls on us to stop denying the facts and ask for help in releasing all our negative responses to them. Many of us wish that the circumstance of our lives did not include evils such as terrorism.
As we let go of resentment and fear, our behaviors can also change. Even when circumstances are not changeable, we are. As the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi reminds us, we can meet hatred with love, discord with harmony, error with truth, and wrongs with forgiveness.
Of course, the AA ideal of acceptance does not call on us to remain passive in the face of evil such as terrorism. We can take every action possible, individually and collectively, to prevent it. And no matter what the results of our efforts, we can be willing to release fear and resentment, day by day.
The presence of evil in the world remains a challenge to many spiritual people. Even so, as “Alcoholics Anonymous” reminds us, working the Twelve Steps can help us outgrow fear and “match calamity with serenity.”
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