Step Eleven as as Challenge

The eleventh step says “as we understood him [God]”; it’s worth noting that we may need to increase our understanding of God. We may need to let go of abusive, manipulative or harming notions of God that were given to us at an early age.

I appreciate how the 11th step implicitly acknowledges that our limited understanding may impact our capacity for conscious contact. I try to keep that in mind for myself, opening myself up to the possibility that my understanding of God may need expanding or even correcting. I want, maybe even need, to offer you a challenge.

Where did your ideas about God come from? Were the source/s trustworthy? Knowledgeable? Informed? Healthy and well? Did they have their own unhealed wounds or misguided sources of information? Have you done your own investigation as to the nature of God?

When our pilot project recovery ministry began no one expected it to actually succeed. We didn’t ask - what if this works and people show up? We had no budget because who needs money for an 8 week pilot? But people came and stayed. At some point, I suppose in part because we were clear about the leadership of the community being Christian, people decided they wanted to get baptized. Another surprise. We asked a local church that we were affiliated with if we could use their baptismal to baptize a few folks after their normal church hours one Sunday. They agreed.

A few weeks later we trudged through the parking lot walking against the grain as worshippers streamed out in a mad dash to beat the Presbyterians to the best local brunches. Terri, a dear friend who was about to dip into those warm waters, stopped walking. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Why not? What’s wrong?” I asked. “I don’t belong here; I’m not good enough.” She replied. She was wrong. Dead wrong. She was my neighbor and friend and recovery ministry partner. She was an excellent mother, in long term recovery and possessed a heart that was pure gold walking around in a body that was adorned often with cowgirl boots and closely cropped purple hair - my favorite color. She knew how to be in long term recovery and work a spiritual program; she did not know how to go to church.

The distorted images of God foisted upon her by her traumatic past made a building with a steeple on top a riskier environment for her than the local pub. Drinking she knew how to avoid; the wrath of God was what she feared.

Meditation Moment: Look for the Light

Your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank

submission.

Be on the watch.

There are ways out.

There is a light somewhere.

It may not be much light

but it beats the

Darkness.

Charles Bukowski, “the laughing heart”

You get to choose your life. Much you do not get to choose. But you choose your life within the frame of all that is beyond you. Quietly sit and ponder this truth. Ask God to draw you near and into his light.

More on Meditation...

Tobin Hart defines meditation like this, “A third way of knowing that complements both the rational and sensory. Designed to quiet and shift the habitual chatter of the mind. To cultivate a capacity for deepened awareness, concentration and insight.” However meditation works, research is teaching us that meditation is helpful when our brain really needs to get back on track after suffering from the damaging impact of substance use disorder.

Current research on the effect of substance abuse on the brain suggests that there are five distinct areas of the brain harmed by addiction. For a fantastic explanation on this subject, I refer you to Kevin McCauley’s youtube presentation entitled “The Brain and Recovery: An Update on the Neuroscience of Addiction.” Think about it. Five. Separate. Regions. That is a LOT of brain power that needs healing and it turns out - meditation is restorative.

Plenty of good material is available for further information about meditation’s healing properties but there is one point that needs to be emphasized in terms of outcomes. The OUTCOME of our prayer and meditation practice is “none of our business” according to Reverend Joe Stabile, a United Methodist Church pastor and co-founder and Animator of Life in the Trinity Ministry in Dallas, Texas. Our INTENTION is to draw near to God and invite him to have his way with us, trusting that he loves us and desires to bless, heal, restore and inspire us.

Inspire us in what way? Simple. So that we will gain knowledge of his will for us and provide us the strength to carry it out. Not knowledge for the will of anyone else. Just us.

What freedom! What opportunity! As a stepper, every day we seek this knowledge, willingness and strength. Do we also pray for grandma’s healing or our child’s recovery - sure! But always we pray for and meditate with God for our own day’s responsibilities.

Watch the Ducks

When you are completely off balance, so much so that you are certain you will topple over - you bring the paddle down hard on the water’s surface, the way ducks bat their wings. You will feel your kayak right itself. Only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved.

Roger Rosenblatt, Kayak Morning

Last summer Pete made a spectacular airborne exit from his kayak due to the backwash of a speedboat. He could have used some paddle batting. But we did not have that skill in our toolbox. We also learned that we did not know how to re-enter a kayak in choppy waters.

The first ten steps of the 12 have required a lot of skill-building. I suppose that’s why I love the 11th step so much. We sit. We breathe. We seek. We ask. That’s it. When we are fighting for survival, we do NOT rest. We fight; we flee; we freeze; we cannot breathe. But there is such beauty in ceasing our labor and our struggle and instead, seeking conscious contact with a God who is crazy mad in love with you.

Wherever you are today, “only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved.” If you feel like fighting, fleeing, freezing or freaking out - in honor of Step 11 - take a few quiet moments and breathe. Look for the abundance in your life. Ask for what you need as it relates to wisdom and courage and power to serve.

Stumbling Blocks

For awhile accepting meditation as a practice fit for a Christian was a challenge for me; there were some things about meditation I needed to “unlearn”.

Unlearning is an essential skill set in recovery. Times have certainly changed but when I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, meditation was spoken of in harsh tones and veiled threats of damnation should a Christian dare to consider actually meditating. I NEVER bought into that fear-mongering but it certainly gave me pause when handed my first materials on the twelve steps to see the “m” word right there in the 11th step for all to see.

It seemed to me then and seems to me now that when Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray that’s as close as an endorsement for meditation as I can find short of a Super Bowl commercial bought by God himself. I know some folks still cringe at the word meditation; it’s kind of like having spiritual PTSD after all those years of unwarranted suspicion. When we host meditation workshops I still get emails asking me if I am afraid that I am going to ruin someone's life encouraging such blasphemy. How could I? What kind of pastor are you? Well, all this vitriol may be the result of meditation gone wrong, I don’t know. Perhaps there are other kinds of meditation that are not helpful?

Again, I do not know. Meditation. Listening. Seeking God only for the purpose of conscious contact and the gifts that his presence and care for us brings. This is what we teach about meditation. It’s not created to turn us into zombies or wipe out our memory banks. Its purpose is to allow us to sit quietly for some period of time as a way to acknowledge that there is a God and we are not God. We breathe. We listen. We notice. We are quiet and still enough to notice our own beating hearts and ragged breaths and leaves bursting forth in Spring for all the world to see.

And we hope. We hope that God sees us and hears our silent cry for his healing.

How can that be bad for us?