Books I've Read(or am reading)- Twenty-One: "Steps of Transformation" by Father Meletios Webber

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One reason I've hesitated to get on with this series of "Books I've Read or am Reading" is because I knew this one was approaching and I felt a real reluctance to post on it as it is very personal to me.

I guess I might as well publicly announce on this blog that I have intimate knowledge with Alcoholics Anonymous as of this writing I have been without a drink or drug for a little over 9 years now, my anniversary being June 20, 2000 in that fellowship. I can honestly say that God used AA to literally save my life and that without this intervention, I'm not too sure I would be here right now. It had gotten really bad for me. Perhaps one day I will do a more in depth autobiography and explain much about how I ended up there.

I have not been an active member of the fellowship now since November of 2007 and my reasons are varied and lengthy. But to make it clear, I have many people I love and hold dear and whom I call "friend" today through my time there. Leaving was difficult for me and for those I sponsored and to this day I have people check up on me to see if I'm OK.

Which brings me to the book. It is very well written and has a lot of very good information. On a surface level, I could even say I endorse it. Actually, an excellent book.

However, I have some problems with Father Meletios' worldview in relation to AA and the Church and to explain them, I would need to go into my own reasons for leaving Alcoholics Anonymous. Bound up with my decision to leave are the reasons why I would have to be critical of the approach Father Meletios takes here in this book.

In my course of being in AA, as per my own peculiar make-up, I got into the guts of the program with the full force of my entire being. This is all to the good, I must say, but only because I had the back drop of the Church by which to measure and check myself.

I became associated with a group here in Las Vegas in which I devoted my life. I spent hours upon hours with the people(usually men) who asked for me to sponsor them and my method of sponsorship was to focus around a set time and place with each other around the reading of the "Big Book", the name given to the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous in which the path to "the spiritual awakening", or "vital spiritual experience" outlined in the Twelve Steps of the Fellowship.

I would stress to those I worked with that recovery does not take place with a mere acquiescence with the intellectual principles stated by the Steps. Recovery is the taking of the actions of the Steps within the context of the Fellowship.

As a quick aside, this "living of the Steps within the Fellowship" has provided some rich thoughts for me about the Church and how everything is to be related and made sense of within the context of the Church as hospital.

As I've stated already, the purpose of AA is to provide the sufferer with that spiritual experience which releases the sufferer from the bondage of active alcoholism. Now without going into too much depth, I would like the reader to know that alcoholism as AA understands it has a very specific meaning and "cure"(cure- i.e., to not be actively drinking- not that once coming to AA one can drink in a fashion that is no longer harmful).

As with the spiritual awakening experienced by the taking of the Twelve Steps provided within the context of AA the fellowship formed by those who have recovered from a "seemingly hopeless state of mind and body"(i.e. active alcoholism), so the Church as Hospital in this Fallen World provides theosis to those who live Her Life, that is Christ Himself.

Orthodoxy, correct belief or correct glory, is inextricably linked and cannot be separated from orthopraxy, that is, correct practice, without Orthodoxy being reduced to a mere theoretical belief and system.

Returning to my sponsorship, I would say that I repeated this process many times, spending hours with the guys in the text of the Big Book and explaining it and relating historical anecdotes about the founders of AA and other historical things of significance.

Now in conjunction with this, I chaired a meeting I built on Saturday evenings and titled the meeting "The Psychic Change" Meeting. "Psychic Change" is also interchangeable with "spiritual awakening" and "spiritual experience" which I have related above is the necessary component to bring about recovery from active alcoholism.

Note that I have repeatedly said "active" alcoholism for a reason. In the fellowship of AA, much gets put under the umbrella of alcoholism even in the state of not actively drinking. Bad habits and/or thought patterns that persist are often diagnosed as stemming from the conditions which brought about active alcoholism and hence a lot of emphasis is placed on inventorying ones' past and working on eliminating those defects of character with the help of God(or as it is commonly spoken of in AA, "a Power greater than oneself", a "Higher Power").

I chaired this meeting for about 5 years and the meeting itself was used to speak about how to go about getting the spiritual experience to bring about recovery from alcoholism. I approached the meeting in a very systematic way and started at the beginning of the Big Book and we worked our way through it each week a little at a time and kept the topic presented in the reading as the subject matter of the meeting.

The basic text of the Big Book is 164 pages long. Using select passages from the book, to go through one "cycle" on one night of the week, reading a little at a time, took about 1 and 1/2 years. I did this "cycle" three times.

Here is the format I created and used through which I attempted to outline in brief form what AA was all about:

F. ALCOHOLISM ADDRESSED: “ Alcoholics Anonymous began on June 10th, 1935 through a long chain of improbable events which brought together Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith. Both men were alcoholics of the ‘hopeless variety’. This means they both belonged to a class of drinkers who had a very definite and adverse reaction to alcohol. Both men found intense pleasure in the effect drinking created in them and would often return to the drink in hopes of firing their inward being. They would seek this ease and comfort to the exclusion of the normal demands of life. In other words, they fled from life and would withdraw within themselves, surrounded by the vaporous illusions alcohol gave them.
“Both men at some point gained an awareness of the destruction they were inflicting upon themselves and
upon all who loved them. They resolved to give up alcohol. Both men discovered they could not. They absolutely were unable to not pick up that first drink no matter how many times they swore they would never get drunk again. The peculiar obsession with alcohol had become ingrained into the fiber of their souls.(Their psyche had become scarred). Inevitably, against their own will and against their own judgment, they would take that first drink and for a time they would find that peace alcohol could always be counted on to bring them. And having taken that first drink, all was well, they felt alive, they could get by OK , but desperately they clung to the hope that reality would not come crashing in on them.
“Both men, no matter how drunk they became, could not escape the knowledge somewhere deep down inside that they were just not right, that something was terribly wrong with them and that pouring all the alcohol they could on top of this feeling they could, would not drown it. So they drank to oblivion to escape that gnawing guilt. Then they would wake up to face their close companions: Terror, Bewilderment, Apologies, Regrets, Remorse, Frustration, and Despair.
“Again and again the promises went out to those around them they would stop, but as if on cue, the first drink came and they repeated the whole cycle. They were doomed men, alcoholics of the hopeless variety. Doctors with the desire to see these men put down the drink once and for all threw their hands up in despair, unable to use moral psychology of that day to rearrange their thoughts, emotions, and feelings so they would not find it necessary to take that 1st drink. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith were only 2 men of a vast class of people with this kind of reaction to alcohol.
“Both men recovered completely from this condition. They had experienced a change in their soul, their personalities, a psychic change. Both men reached the place of utter despair in their own lives in their own
very individual ways and undertook a program of action that if followed closely, to the best of their own individual abilities, insured them for that one day that they would not pick up that first drink.
“The two friends commenced taking this program of action to others afflicted with the same symptoms and hallmarks of the doomed alcoholic. With much hard work a fellowship of men and women who had discovered a sure path out of alcoholism sprung up and the Twelve Steps were formally accepted. In the year 1939 the book ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ was written to bear record, without distortion, of the experience of these first 100 people who practiced a way of life that produced a psychic change, the change somewhere deep down, of their personalities.
“These people emphasize again and again that the power to change
did not originate from within their own old selves, but came from a Power ‘greater than themselves‘. They discovered, each in their own way, that self could not change self. And having discovered this Power they made a decision to begin trusting Him in the care and direction of their unmanageable lives. With this trust and willingness they began to examine their own selves and many for the first time ever saw their extreme self-centeredness. They began to see how afraid they were and became open and vulnerable with someone else. Someone knew them and understood them! They were no longer so utterly alone. Those that heard their stories helped them to see their defects and helped them to offer these shortcomings to God in the hope that He would remove these things in His own time. Of course, much hurt had been produced in the effort to live their lives without regard for anyone or anything else. Many relationships had been severely or permanently damaged. In an effort to be square with life and to be of more use to God and their fellows, they set out to acknowledge those they had hurt and sought to make right the wrong. They did not go to justify themselves.
“And having done all these things, they continued a daily practice of taking stock of themselves and setting right any new wrongs as they became apparent. They continued to seek more intimacy with God as each understood Him through prayer and meditation. Others, they knew, wanted to be free of this dreadful cycle of alcoholism so they presented this program to them in the hope they too would change from within.”

I later revised the "Alcoholism Addressed" section to the following(because it was so long and those who attended week after week had to hear it over and over):

Saturday Night MOM Group-Psychic Change Meeting
(to be used on every Saturday except each first Saturday of the month)

This meeting is based on what is to be found in the Big Book in the “Dr’s Opinion” on page Roman numeral xxviii where we read:



“” Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules. “

Through bitter experience with this alcoholic cycle as described in the “Dr.’s Opinion“, we have come to believe in the necessity of experiencing this psychic change to overcome this grim and fatal malady which once it has gotten a hold of the sufferer refuses to loose its grip until the alcoholic inevitably visits jails, institutions or the grave receives him into its bosom.

We have come to believe in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous taken in the context of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous as the means to take us to the solution, a spiritual awakening. The Spiritual Awakening sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism as Alcoholics Anonymous understands it is obtained through the taking of the 12 Steps, a series of actions spiritual in nature.
Step 12 reads: “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principals in all our affairs”.

This meeting is dedicated to focusing on the psychic change as experienced by the first 100 people and the countless others who followed their example throughout these many years.

I have given the foregoing information to let the reader know that I am very familiar with AA and hold no grudge towards it or its members.

But, from the very beginning of my attendance, I can honestly say that something just didn't jive somewhere deep down. There was a disconnect of some kind between what its spirituality is and that of Christ.(At the beginning of my time in AA, I had not yet returned to the Church and was still somewhat an Evangelical Protestant in my thinking about Christianity). I had learned to strive to judge all things according to Christ and when I returned to the Church's embrace, the disconnect only became more pronounced and difficult to bear and ignore.

One major reason for me to leave was that one can have a very powerful spiritual experience, a real one in which one's world view is forever changed without Christ. This always made me queasy but I managed to rationalize my disquiet away for a time.

I should quickly explain that a "spiritual awakening/spiritual experience/psychic change" does not necessarily denote always a sudden upheaval of previously held notions and beliefs and their uprooting to replace them with a whole new set instantaneously. More often than not, members of AA acquire the "spiritual awakening/spiritual experience/psychic change" in what AA terms of an educational variety, meaning it happens slowly over time.

There are many other reasons I left which I will not go into here and which related to my reading of "Steps of Transformation". One major one is that all spiritual beliefs are held on an equal plane. Also, even as Father Meletios mentions in the book, AA is seen as "spiritual" and "religion" is down a notch or two from the spirituality of AA. He's right, actually, in his assesment of spirituality vs. religion when understood correctly. Even in the Church one may be "religious" and never penetrate into the inner Life of the Church. However, this is no different than the many members who attend the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and never penetrate and "get it", the much needed spiritual experience needed for recovery even though in many cases they may attend meetings and be associated with AA and its life for a long time. Moreover, there is a tendency within AA to always assume that to be "religious" one cannot therefore be "spiritual".

If anyone wishes to inquire, I will gladly give more of those reasons.

But one more I wish to mention of why I left is not to be laid at the feet of AA at all. It is this. The very real threat of Modernity is felt in all places, not only within the Church but I encountered it within AA and noticed that even though AA is only 74 years old right now, yet many who called themselves members did not understand the Tradition of Alcholics Anonymous(yes, Tradition with a capital "T") and there was a battle, though not often recognized and/or voiced, between those who understood AA accoriding to its essence and the new "psychologized" approach to AA.

I bring this up as a reason for leaving because seeing this in AA and within the Church, I realized that I did not wish to fight this War against Modernity on these two fronts and decided to draw the line in the Church which I would defend to the upmost of my ability and strength.

There is a lot of rich information I would like in the future to write on this subject matter and compare/contrast with the Church but will leave it at what I have written for now.

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