Whose Lord? Whose Prayer?

The hypocrisy of choice in AA

Let me begin by pointing out the obvious: (a) the Lord’s Prayer is nowhere to be found in conference-approved literature and is not recited at the General Service Conference for very good reason (b) we do not live in Akron, Ohio in the 1930’s, (c) we are not a small group of recovering alcoholics in a small town, we are part of a global network of spiritually awakening beings, (d) most of us are not Christian, (e) Canada welcomes a quarter-million newcomers to Canada every year, the USA even more, and most of these newcomers are not Christian either. But some of them are alcoholics, and eventually some of those alcoholics will be looking for help.

The Lord’s Prayer at AA meetings is not a new topic. It has been ongoing for sometime but rears its head these days with greater and greater frequency, illustrating that it is not an issue that is going to go away, but begs some sort of resolution. It is telling that business meetings focused on dropping the Lord's Prayer often swell in numbers of well-meaning Christians who want to ensure that "group conscience" keeps the status quo.

Sure, the first members might have used the Bible and the Oxford Group literature before the writing of our basic text, but things changed - so did the make-up of AA. The Lord’s Prayer was a tradition of the Oxford Group. Theirs was a different tradition with a different purpose from ours, and for a different membership.

The purpose of any meeting is to carry the message - the message of AA, that is. Not the message of any particular Judeo-Christian deity. Incorporating the Lord’s Prayer as a standard part of an AA meeting alienates all potential newcomers who do not identify with this particular deity; not only might they not identify, but many members of AA have a shame-based experience of their Christian background. Some have even been violently abused by clergy or practitioners of that faith. I have met a few of them and heard their stories. Why, then, would some groups want to risk alienating the newcomer - the person we insist is the most important one in the room? Is this just lip service?

Surely the insistence that we all join hands and say the Lord’s prayer (the adage “for those who wish” is merely the window-dressing of freedom of belief, and practically insulting for alcoholics at a stage in recovery where they can reason and identify healthy boundaries). Held hostage by the “true believers”, members of AA have often no choice but to stand silently to listen to a prayer that may be beautiful and inspiring for some, but which in effect violates a few of the most important traditions we have - traditions one, two, three, and five.

Those who wish to say the Lord’s prayer can do so any time they wish, at any moment of the day. To expect others to listen to it at an AA meeting after trumpeting that anyone can come to understand a “higher power” in any way that works for them smacks of hypocrisy and at these meetings I smell the old brew of missionaries, obsessed even subconsciously with conversion and/or the illusion of a moral high ground. I happen to think that the Lord’s Prayer is a rich and inviting string of words that can unlock spiritual truths for those able to come to them with an open heart and recognize them as they are presented in the prayer. I also think that the

chanting of the Heart Sutra is a lovely way for Buddhists to open their fourth chakra. Repeated chanting of the universal sound “Om” can bring profound awareness and union with universal consciousness, which vibrates

at the same frequency as this sound. The mantra of Hare Krishna or Govinda Jaya Jaya can give birth to clarity and destroy ignorance and obstacles on the spiritual path. I believe that “Let It Be” by the Beatles can melt the heart and release old emotional charges, bringing spiritual meaning and awakening into one’s life. But making any of these things a set part of an AA meeting is putting personalities before principles - not everybody is going to agree with me on what I believe is the best representation for prayer, right? For the same reasons, Christians

shouldn’t expect everybody else to agree with them and continue reciting their prayer, which is not codified in AA traditions or literature. The Lord's Prayer is not part of the 12 step program. To act otherwise brings on an Orwellian twist of “all faiths are created equal, but some faiths are more equal than others”. That’s why Step 11 is a very personal endeavour.

How can we agree with this and have it written plainly in our literature, and then mock it’s vitality and strength by closing every meeting with a Christian prayer?

Saying that it is not a Christian prayer, but a “prayer for Everybody” is something one generally hears only from Christians not-so-solid in their own faith who are dedicated to preserving the status quo for their own sense of security. It’s not a prayer for Everybody if everybody doesn’t agree that it is.

Bill W. had it wrong when he said “the worst that happens to objectors is that they have to listen to [the Lord’s Prayer]. This is doubtless a salutary exercise in tolerance at their stage of progress.” It is not the role of AA to test the patience and tolerance of newcomers, but to share experience, strength and hope to help others recover from alcoholism. Rather, the removal of the Lord’s Prayer would represent a shift in enlightenment and tolerance and acceptance of the realities of our fellowship by “the old guard.”

Dear Christian: Keep your traditions, embrace them. May your faith flourish and bring you real peace, real harmony and real happiness. But remember also: while you claim your spiritual freedom and space, you must not deny others theirs. Keep the Lord's prayer for your personal prayers and for Church. Imposing this prayer on other alcoholics doesn't make your faith stronger, does it? I wish that you may become so solid in your own beliefs

that your fear dissolves and you become an advocate for removing the Lord’s prayer from all meetings you attend to help others to achieve the freedom that is such a crucial part of the spiritual revolution that is AA.

Step Three

My sponsor says that in developing the willingness required for this step, we need to develop a readiness to go beyond physical, intellectual and emotional living to allow ourselves to explore spiritual living. But how am I to even imagine this concept, let alone implement it? I am stuck in this body; while human, there is no escaping the reality of these bones, the flesh that surrounds them, and the fascia that wraps and re-wraps, hugging the whole works together beneath my miraculous skin. How am I to drop my emotions when they seem to arise of their own accord, just because I want to be willing to have a spiritual life? 

I think all alcoholics crave transcendence, and this is why we drank. As Carl Jung wrote in his letter to Bill W: The craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God...'alcohol' in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison.

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a higher power.”

Spiritual principle: Willingness

I think it is helpful at first to re-establish that in Step 2 it is neither necessary nor desirable to narrowly define the nature of my higher (deeper, broader) power. It is also ill-advised for me to get hung up on technical details of what exactly constitutes sanity - this searching for definition keeps me living in my left brain, in the world of the rational and logical, which never served me in my active addiction and which has a tendency to want to take over and fix, manage or control the areas of my life that are not flowing, i.e. that are stuck. In Step 3 I need to cultivate the willingness that will allow me to leap forward without logically understanding what the outcomes will be and absolving myself of the fiction that I can control these outcomes anyway. This leap forward, from what Joseph Campbell would describe as 'the jumping-off place' into the belly of the whale, is the 'decision' we must make in Step 3. 

The literal meaning of the word 'decide' is 'to cut off'. The way this decision is made is as unique as our fingerprints, but essentially we are cutting ourselves off from not only our old way of living, but from our old way of thinking. Clearly, this decision is an active undertaking, and is not a one-off affair. We have to make the effort to come willingly to this decision again and again, open with an honest heart (not logical head) for the transformation that allows us to live outside our comfort zone even as we slip back into it. To continually choose the path of healing, awareness, and growth requires a sustained effort to be able to let go of our old ideas at the moments when they seem to offer us the most comfort.

In a way it appears deceptively simple; the power that we have come to have some belief in through Step 2 is still here for us. All that's being asked of me, then, in Step 3, is that I drop my defences and allow that power to help me out. In order to work the rest of the steps, this willingness for a personal spiritual connection - a connection I understand to be my own. This decision to give up the illusion of control can be frightening and requires consistent practice - a daily practice. At this point, prayer and meditation might prove invaluable. I understand that it is very often heard at AA meetings that "the steps are numbered for a reason,", implying that we should do them in order. I can't find that information anywhere in AA literature, however, and it only makes sense to me that waiting until I "arrive" at Step 11 before I try prayer or meditation would be unnecessarily hamstringing my own recovery. The benefits I receive from attempting my own versions of prayer and meditation support my ongoing efforts to make the decision required of me in Step 3. 

The other thing I "cut-off" in this step is the idea that I can walk back into the faulty paradigm of my addictive thinking and behaviour, that I can somehow make the old way of life work. I cut off the idea that that house of cards can hold me any longer, that alcohol can still offer me refuge from the pain I feel. In spiritual terms, this pain is a gift, and feeling it with awareness and equanimity (as opposed to numbness and aversion) is what brings me greater spiritual insight and freedom. Cutting off this old behaviour and thinking opens up greater humility, which is, in essence, the ability to see things as they really are--not as I want them to be or as I fear them to be. Greater humility brings greater willingness to choose freedom from my rusty ideas of who I am and who I can become; in a sense, it is the process of deconstructing my own story so I am not bound by it any longer: this is why, in the Third Step prayer, we asked to be relieved of the bondage of self, which means returning to a place of not knowing. 

If I accept "not knowing," then I do not need to fix, manage and control every detail of my life. I can experiment with this step, using my craving and aversion as a diagnostic. Gradually, I see progress and my reaction time towards making a conscious decision to try something new becomes less and less. But this step, and this process, is not done in my head - for me, anyway, the logical, reasoning brain on its own is not the portal into the realm of the spirit within. I need to start with my body.

We don't hear this very often in AA meetings, but the process of "turning it over" to a higher power is, in large part, a physical one. We are burdened with toxins, fear and disease, which find their way into our physical beings where we store them up and store them up and, in active addiction (and often in recovery) ignore them. We somehow remain incapable of seeing the direct correlation between our anger and fear and our physical ailments. This is why I see the body and, particularly, the breath, as the key gateway to the inner sanctum. The breath is the bridge between the unconscious (which is never unconscious, even when we sleep) and the conscious mind -- it functions autonomically and it can also be controlled. The breath used in tandem with physical movement and awareness, accepting everything just as it is, is called yoga. I believe that yoga, as a practice, is directly in line with the spiritual principles of the 12 steps and that, in fact, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the first codified system of yogic technology, parallels (in many ways) the 12 step process. 

Willingness to let the pus come out of the wound, in emotional terms, is not always an easy state to come to, especially for someone who is so used to avoiding mental and emotional pain through the use of booze and drugs. But as we re-learn how to breathe, and give new life to our bodies by stretching them, giving them exercise, and reducing the toxins we put into them,  it is not only our physical bodies that become strengthened, but our subtle bodies as well. Locked so long in the spiral of shame and self-degredation, we enter an upward spiral in line with the law of nature, and the less we try to control this process and accept it as it comes, the more elegant and joyful it can be. Eventually we stumble naturally onto our own meditation, where the mind is alert, concentrated, focused - not relaxed and half-asleep, but vibrant. Awake. 

But we start small. Maybe with a couple of deep breaths, a positive thought, a short gratitude list. Maybe just a bow in the morning, an acknowledgement to the light that resides within, whatever name we give it. When I bow I sense that I am bowing internally as well as externally; as within, so without. In this way the connection does not escape me, even if I am at a loss to name or define it. Faith is an attitude of mind rather than subscription to a specific philosophy or dogma.

I make the decision in Step 3 to investigate this life of mine, every moment of which is precious. With the repeated practice of this step, I have come to see that every element and every dimension of life exists and thrives on the spiritual plane, even the mundane.