DEPENDENT ON SPIRITUAL CONDITIONING

DEPENDENT ON  SPIRITUAL CONDITIONING

 

This morning I went to the first religious service that I have been to in over four years and it was not even a Jewish service, it was Episcopalian.  That is the denomination of our resident priest in AA, George, and since today was the first Sunday of Advent it was designated Recovery Sunday in honor of those who are in recovery, the families of those in recovery and to those in need of recovery. I thought that the intent was wonderful  for this parish to celebrate.

And in honor of this first service, our resident priest was to give the sermon on his recovery both in AA and what it meant to him as a priest specifically.  George got sober in the mid 1990's after twenty years in the priesthood and after about thirty years of drinking. It was during a spiritual crisis that he got sober. In fact, he came to AA, as is most typical, after a complete loss of spirituality.

He had become a nightly drinker, alone in his home, and he felt that although he could tend to his flock's spiritual needs well enough, he did not feel that God would ever find it in his heart to be able to forgive his deeds and misdeeds, such was the state of his spiritual condition. He was of such intellect and  perceptiveness that he could minister to families in the most dire straits and attend to their spiritual necessities capitally but when he looked in the mirror he was sure that for him God saw nothing worthwhile saving.

Then one day two members of his parish noted his despondency and aware that he drank a lot, invited him to attend some AA meetings in the very church at which he was a deacon. Such was the sinking condition of his spirituality that he agreed to accompany them.

And there, on a Saturday, in a crowded room filled with fifty men he listened.  And he heard men who were once despondent, down and out drunks, who had lost everything, money, jobs, family, who had become happy, joyous and free. How?

They had admitted that they were powerless over alcohol and their lives had become unmanageable; they came to believe that a Power greater than themselves could restore their sanity and they made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understood Him.

And all they had to do was to have a "desire to stop drinking".  And George did and has had each day since then. He found in that room and in many others, men sharing their love of one another, of the principles of how to live life without rancor, with simplicity, and understanding and to learn to live in peace with their fellow Man. Here he learned all that he had failed to learn in all the years he spent in the seminary, in graduate school and as a priest and deacon.

As a result he found that he had to radically amend his theological view of God and even his interpretation of the Bible! All because he got sober in AA. All because he had become a spiritual being in AA; all because he had come to see God in a more ecumenical way.

He saw people in the rooms from all kinds of ritual backgrounds who "accepted a God of their understanding" getting sober next to people of diametrically opposed or at least radically different religious practices. Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Christians all in a room together each sober by the grace of Gods of their understanding.

Clearly God must be great and grand and a lot more forgiving than he had previously conceived of him. So George rethought his theology. And now his God and the God of the Testaments as George reads them today is one of kindness and forgiveness and patience that is infinite. But not necessarily of infinite power to do anything to and for anybody. He does not believe that God manages the quotidian life of people. They have to do that for themselves. He is One who has bestowed free will on Man to allow Man to make choices for good or bad.

We can choose to be good or evil. We can be generous or penurious. We can be crotchety or happy. We can be drunk or we can be sober. But God will always be forgiving, for his forgiveness is infinite. He is not vengeful. But it is our choice to become spiritual.

And one of things that George found in the rooms is that like God you can always come back regardless of whether you are sober or not. For all you need is a desire to stop drinking and you are always welcomed back.  Even if you haven't yet stopped. Even if you are 'auditing' the rooms.

So George returned to the church with a renewed understanding of the love of God and the infinite patience of God's acceptance of Man; that as long as Man accepts God, God loves Man back. It is our choice.

You can listen to the stories in the rooms just to find out if you really belong there.  Because if you really are an alcoholic, you will hear your story being told, and when you hear your story, you will be saved just as George was.

What George found out when he stepped into those rooms of AA those many years ago was that he was not terminally unique; that he was just like so many of God's "lost" souls who through God's love saved so many of those drunks.

And if God could save all of those drunks, they could save George and bring him back to God too.

 

©  res  12/2/2012