The “God Stuff”

One of the things that I have struggled with during my many years of participation in AA and NA is what some of us call “the god stuff.” The references to religion, spirituality, God, and Higher Power are everywhere in the literature and the culture of AA.  Even in the best efforts of the folks back in the 1930s, the “Chapter to the Agnostic” pretty much assumes that as soon as you start to come out of your addiction, and into the light, you will happily go back to some concept of God, albeit not necessarily the God of your childhood.

I have no concept of God. I never had a concept of God.  My mother was an agnostic, and I think my father was an atheist.  We attended the Unitarian church and we were introduced to many concepts of God from many traditions from around the world, but were never expected to accept any of them as our own.  We were not told which concepts of God we were supposed to embrace.  I came early to the idea of Atheism.  I don’t remember how old I was, but I was certainly a freethinker by early elementary school.

A poll taken in the summer of 2014 and described in an AlterNet article and later published in Salon.com says “Now according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, we know who is disliked the most. Atheists and Muslims appear to be in a statistical tie. While atheism itself is not a religion, it is often included in religious polls to help account for those who reject religion, instead of just non-affiliated believers.”

It is no wonder, that many atheists do not feel comfortable publicly discussing their atheism. If I am a member of the most hated religious group in America, but can pass, either by keeping my mouth closed or by suggesting that while not religious, I am spiritual, then why would I share my hated status with others, especially those in a program which absolutely has a significant spiritual and religious component.

I, however, do occasionally speak about my atheism in 12 step groups. Like on my sobriety anniversary, or when I see some newcomers struggling with the “god stuff” and I want to let them know that it is possible to work this program without a belief in God.  Mostly though, I discuss this aspect of my recovery program with trusted friends outside of meetings.  It has mostly been a private, sometimes lonely, an quiet quest.

This week I have an opportunity to attend the first We Agnostics & Free Thinkers International AA Convention (November 6–8, 2014 at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church in Santa Monica, California). In preparation for this experience I have found some resources to share with others who find themselves in the same dilemma I often find myself. I am a member of AA who works hard to translate everything into language that is acceptable to the Atheist that I am, and who works slightly less hard to keep that side of myself quiet as it is a matter of some shame to be a member of the most hated religious group in America.

First I want to give you the information for the Convention I am attending this weekend. If you are going please introduce yourself to me.  If you are not going, stay tuned because I plan to do some blogging about the Convention.  Also, there are plans for a second We Agnostics and Free Thinkers International AA Convention two years hence.  So, be sure to sign up for the blog on their website to stay in the loop on that!

Another blog that I highly recommend is AA Agnostica: A space for AA agnostics, atheists and freethinkers worldwide. It contains so much information, I can get lost there for hours at a time, and each time a new post arrives in my mailbox I am anxious to see what wonderful thing they have to share.  They feature a literature list, how to start an AA meeting, alternative steps and so much more.

A book that I discovered and now have a copy of on both my kindle and the kindle app on my phone is Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings For A 12-Step Life: Finally, a Daily Reflection Book for Nonbelievers, Freethinkers and Everyone by Joe C. This is a thoughtful and really lovely daily reflection book.  I think Joe C. has done a wonderful job in not making this exclusively for anyone.  It truly is for everyone.  And I am grateful to finally have a daily reflections book that works for me.

Get in touch with me here if you are going to be attending the convention in Santa Monica this coming weekend.  I am so looking forward to sharing this journey with others and look forward to making lots of great connections!

 

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Radical Recovery

In June of this year I had the privilege of leading four 12 step meetings at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Providence, Rhode Island.  I have attended recovery meetings at General Assembly in the past, and I had led a couple of meetings when General Assembly was held in Phoenix, Arizona in 2012.

The Unitarian Universalist Association Addictions Ministry Team is small and relatively new.  We are an all-volunteer organization.  Most of us have day jobs and families and other commitments, but do this work because we feel it is important.  We do this work because we feel like it needs to be done.

From the UUA Addictions Ministry website:

“The Unitarian Universalist Association Addictions Ministry is called to walk together with congregations and religious professionals to educate individuals, families, congregations and communities about the suffering caused by addiction.

Our purpose in doing this ministry is to transform cultures of misuse and abuse into cultures of healing, wholeness, and health.”

Because I lead meetings at General Assembly that I also lead in the real world— meetings that I am most familiar with—I chose to lead two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and two Narcotics Anonymous meetings at General Assembly this year.   We are very explicit that these are open meetings and members of all 12 step groups and other types of recovery, as well as respectful visitors, are welcome.

The meetings were unfortunately in a very-difficult-to-find, off-the-beaten-path location in the Dunkin Donuts Center, adjacent to the Rhode Island Convention Center.  There were no signs posted offering directions, and unfortunately, the steps, elevators and long empty hallways that led to our meeting room likely discouraged some people who tried to find us.

 

Those who did manage to find us met for four days from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  We sat in a circle, opened with the serenity prayer, shared our experience, strength and hope with one another and created a space of healing and hope as people who identified as drug addicts, alcoholics, al-anons and visitors met together with respect.  We talked about the disconnect we feel between our church lives and our recovery lives.  We talked about what it is like to have a different perspective on issues of faith than many of the people in our 12 step groups.  We talked about what it was like to not have an opportunity to talk about addiction in our church communities.  We talked about healing and helpful ways that some people have participated in bridging those two parts of their lives.

People shared.  A little.  Or a lot.  People cried.  People laughed.  These were absolutely 12 step groups. We read the steps and traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous on day one and day three and Narcotics Anonymous on day two and day four.

During the four days that our little community existed in that out-of-the-way room I felt that something very powerful was happening to us, among us. For me these meetings were revolutionary, profound, extreme, uncompromising.  Radical.   In my mind I called it Radical Recovery.  I called it that because although these were very much NA and AA meetings, we shared about our spiritual lives in a way that I have never experienced in an NA or AA meeting.   We were powerfully inclusive, allowing a young woman to talk about life with her alcoholic mother, while her relatively recently sober mother sat next to her, proud and tearful.  We held her and them in our hearts as she spoke of the pain that she had already experienced in her young life.  The anger and sadness that she was able to articulate so well.

 

 

There were a few people who said that these meetings had been the very best part of General Assembly for them.  The honesty was deep and in some cases raw.  The connections we made, however temporary, were profound.

In the midst of a larger, busy, non-stop gathering like General Assembly, we provided an oasis to those who sought one.  A place to be quiet, thoughtful, self-reflective, contemplative.  A place for one young man to share the way a group of people from his UU church meet once a month before they attend an AA meeting together.  A place to share our frustrations with the “God” language in our 12 step groups.  A place to share our gratitude for finding each other in this unlikely place, people from all over the country, people of all ages and addictions.

It was familiar and it was new. It was the same and it was different. To me it felt radical.  It was Radical Recovery.

 

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The 12 Steps, My Way (with apologies to Frank Sinatra and Bill W.)

Bill W. Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

I recently talked to someone who was in treatment for addiction.  This person reminded me so much of myself when I was in treatment over 30 years ago.  At that time, I made it a point to speak to at least one staff member at least once a day for the 29 days I was there, about the concern I had about following the program of Alcoholics Anonymous as a life-long atheist.

Frank Sinatra who sang “I Did it My Way”

I had a lot of questions, but answers were harder to come by.  The most persuasive was that if you thought of the group (the AA group, the therapy group, any group) as the Higher Power, it would work until you figured out what your Higher Power was.    As a Humanist, I could handle the power of the humans—the power of the group of humans, and if that would make me able to become a member of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, then I would go with it.

The least helpful suggestion was a staff member who told me, that it didn’t really matter what my Higher Power was, the important thing was that I had one.  The example she used was that I could have a bar of soap as my Higher Power.  I found this terribly offensive.  I thought if this Higher Power concept was so important, that it was highly disrespectful to compare a bar of soap to what many people call God.  (Just because I don’t believe in God, doesn’t mean I don’t respect people who do.)

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

In the end, I just mentally edited out the parts that I found difficult.  If I could make the references to God, Spirituality and Higher Power just vanish, then I had figured out a way to do this program.

Over the years I have done the mental editing, on the fly, as needed.  But, when the person I was speaking to in treatment was having the same problem I had with the Higher Power/God/Spirituality part of the program, I offered to write down my own version of the steps.  It was an interesting exercise, and not as easy as I thought it would be.

The 12 Steps (My Way)

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that we could be restored to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have all these defects of character removed.
7. Humbly asked for our shortcomings to be removed.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought to find peace and serenity and to be the best people we could be.
12. We tried to carry this message to other alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I understand that this is going to be really upsetting to some people, but I share it here in the hopes that if it helps one person stay sober or clean, then I have no regrets.  I meet women all the time who are struggling with the spiritual and religious aspects of this program and the other 12 step program that I am a member of, and if that is going to be a barrier to recovery, then I am glad to have published my version of the 12 steps here.

In my research for my revision of the 12 steps, I discovered a great book call The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps by Roger C.  There are 20 alternative versions of the 12 steps that reflect a wide range of philosophical, professional, religious, and cultural perspectives and traditions.  It is also a workbook for creating your own version of the steps.  I really love this book.  Thanks to Roger C.!  (Roger C. is a member of Beyond Belief, an agnostic AA group in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has a Masters degree in Religious Studies from McGill University. He is the author of many essays on recovery and is the administrator of the popular website, AA Agnostica.)

The Little Book

And I remind everyone that AA is a “suggested program of recovery”(emphasis mine) and we are encouraged to “take what we can use, and leave the rest behind.”

I embrace the message of the 12 Steps.   I do, however, find some of the language distracting.  I would hate for anyone who might want or need the message to miss it because all they can hear is language that distracts them.  I gently and respectfully suggest that you do a little editing if you need to, so you can hear the message.

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My Three Verbs

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Eat, Pray, Love has now been made into a movie starring Julia Roberts.  Both the book and movie have been getting a lot of attention lately.  I have not read the book, nor seen the movie.  I did hear the author interviewed several years ago, and have a general idea what the book is about. 

Recently I saw the following post on twitter by @slarkpope and found it an entertaining response to the book and the movie:  “ eat, pray, love, rinse, lather, slather, repeat, regret, remorse, repent, repeat, redux, binge, purge, weep, wake, bake, shake, rattle, roll. That is all.”  I reposted the tweet on facebook because I thought it was fun and snarky.

One of the responses I got from Jan Christian, friend and Unitarian Universalist minister, was that her sermon the previous Sunday had been about My Three Verbs.  I asked what her three verbs were and then decided I needed to think about mine.

I came up with: Absorb, Observe, Reflect.

I feel like these three verbs are always part of my life, but I believe that I have been a little more intentional about them during this wonderful Sabbatical Summer of 2010. 

Absorbing and Observing are kinds of reading.  Reading the landscape, reading the art, reading the people and the culture.  Being aware, soaking it all up and in.  Listening.  Feeling.  Learning.  In the past I have described myself as a “life-long learner,” partly because that is what I want to be.

This summer my reading project about atheism, humanism and evolution has been wonderful and enlightening and stimulating, and I have only scratched the surface and each new author recommends several other books that I am adding to my list. But being in other countries, and other cultures allowed me lots of opportunities to absorb and observe as well, and I had the chance to meet and be with people from a variety of points of view and places and that has broadened and deepened my experiences.

Reflecting for me seems to be multi-faceted.  Reflecting is of course internal.  What do I think, feel, believe about what I have read, seen, watched, experienced?  But it can also take more participatory forms as well.  I have been photographing my experiences and I have been blogging about my experiences.  I have been talking and indeed, having experiences with other people.  All of which are part of my reflection.

So, for the moment, I like these three verbs.  They will probably change over time, but right now, this is a way for me to be.  Absorbing, Observing and Reflecting.

I invite you to post your three verbs, either with or without comment.

Crazy Busy at General Assembly

I have fallen way behind in my blogging this week. The Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (GA) has been busy and interesting and exciting.

Over the next week I will be posting a lot about GA both here and on my other blog (Natural Selections).

Hopefully Rod will post a guest blog or two about his GA experiences as well.

So apologies for the lag in action, but this week there will be lots of posts, so stay tuned!

HUUmanists: Working Together in a Diverse and Evolving World

I picked up the mail on Monday and after glancing at it, threw it in my bag and continued to work. When the work day was over, an envelope from the HUUmanists caught my eye. I didn’t really anticipate anything in particular, but in the back of my mind, with GA just around the corner, I supposed it was a listing of events that the HUUmanists were sponsoring, or something about re-upping my membership, which if I had ever actually had, was no doubt expired.

To my surprise, and eventually my delight, it was an invitation to attend a day-long event on the Saturday of the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (June 26, 2010) at the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis. At first I was concerned that it would conflict with too many other things going on at the General Assembly itself, but after checking out the schedule for Saturday it turns out that Saturday is something of a “down” day for GA, and that this was a great opportunity for me to take advantage of. (And how perfect for me in light of my NSP project!)

Rod checked his schedule and found that he also would be available to attend this event. (Kendyl Gibbons was Rod’s supervisor for his internship at Michael Servetus Unitarian Society in Fridley, MN and she taught a week-long course on UU history at Camp Unistar that we (Rod, my Mother, Jack and I) attended.

The event runs 12 hours (from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.); it includes all three meals, transportation to and from the convention center and a great line-up of speakers.

Speakers will include: Khoren Arisian, Greg Epstein, Sean Faircloth, Kendyl Gibbons, John Hooper, Wendy Jerome, Stefan Jonasson, Bill Murry, Mason Olds, Gretchen Robinson, David Schafer, June Schafer, Dan Schlorff, Robert Tapp and Michael Werner.

I have heard Khoren Arisian and Kendyl Gibbons speak many times, and I purchased a book by Greg Epstein last week, in anticipation of hearing him at General Assembly. The others I am less familiar with, but looking forward to an interesting, exciting and challenging day with all of them.