Twelve Steps for Catholics ~ part 17

Step Eleven

"Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."

Preparing to write about Step Eleven had me re-reading the pertinent chapter in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, a book first published in 1952 to help clarify the Steps of A.A. As we grow and change, we can read something familiar and still see completely new concepts and receive all sorts of new insights. It has been over two years since I read this chapter and I was so taken aback at the wisdom I was left speechless. It is rare for an Italian woman to be left "speechless" – a condition that usually occurs at the time of death (and I’m not even convinced death would slow our mouths down one teeny tiny bit.)

I consider myself somewhat of an expert on books written about prayer. My problem is I have a tendency to read books about prayer rather than just pray. It is one of the classic symptoms of a procrastinator. We have to make sure all proper information is gathered so we can embark on our task without fear of failure.

Procrastinators also compare ourselves with anyone and everybody. And we usually come out at the bottom of the heap. So it with no great surprise that as I am reading this chapter my little inner voice was chanting, “What could you possibly say that would be better than this?” And you know what? For once my inner voice was right. I can’t say it any better.

Since many of my readers are not alcoholics and would not be likely to have a copy of this book handy, I have decided to treat all of you to the complete chapter on Step Eleven. This will be like the old days of serial movies on Saturday afternoon. I will give you a few paragraphs each day to reflect on and hopefully put into action in your own lives. If I decide to drop in my two cents worth, which is about all it will be worth, my comments will be in red. Enjoy.

Remember: The Twelve Steps are for Everyone!

Step Eleven
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 96

Prayer and Meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God.

We A.A.’s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions of dealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time in our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic who comes along. So it isn’t surprising that we often tend to slight serous meditation and prayer as something not necessary. To be sure, we feel it is something that might help us to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of clergyman, from which we may hope to get a secondhand benefit. Or perhaps we don’t believe in these things at all.

To certain newcomers and to those one-time agnostics who still cling to the A.A. group as their higher power, claims for the power of prayer may, despite all the logic and experience in proof of it, still be unconvincing or quite objectionable. Remember I told you one of the goals of A.A. was to lead people to God? Watch how gently this is done as this chapter unfolds. Those of us who once felt this way can certainly understand and sympathize. We well remember how something deep inside us kept rebelling against the idea of bowing before any God. Many of us had strong logic, too, which “proved” there was no God whatever. What about all the accidents, sickness, cruelty, and injustice in the world? What about all those unhappy lives which were the direct result of unfortunate birth and uncontrollable circumstances? Surely there could be no justice in this scheme of things, and therefore no God at all.

*

*

*