A poem by George Matheson and commentary by Dave Roper, both of which embody the heart and purpose behind the 12-Steps.`
I had a call to a mission,
Signed in my heart and sealed,
And I felt my success was certain,
And the end seemed already revealed;
The sea was without a murmur,
Unwrinkled its even flow,
And I heard the master commanding,
And I was constrained to go.
I had a perfectly good draft for the Catch ready. Spent the weekend on it, fine-tuned it, even polished a sentence or two. Then, in a moment of questionable judgment, I shared it with my wife, Marti. This is always a risk. If I already suspect it’s not great, I secretly hope she’ll just nod and say, “It’s fine.” She never does.
This time, she called me out for overthinking it. Too much head, not enough heart. And she was right (as she often is). These steps aren’t about intellectual gymnastics. They’re about truth, raw and unfiltered. They’re about opening your heart wide enough for God’s light to shine in—and that kind of thing doesn’t happen in the cold, calculating corridors of the mind. That’s where justifications and excuses live. The head will argue its way into a comfortable little corner. The heart? It pulls you into something real.
Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics (sinners), and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The world is populated with friends. This is because we are all sinners, and most people, deep down in their spiritual sensibilities, know this. So if we think of the Twelve Steps as applying to sinners instead of just alcoholics, then the whole world is a potential AA meeting, or in this case, it would be an SA meeting: Sinners Anonymous.
Step 11. 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.
Did you ever think that Jesus might have utilized some of the the Twelve Steps of AA? Not because He was following the steps of course but because they are true. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He was well into what we know today as Step Eleven. It’s just that the rest of His group was asleep, so He had to go it alone. But everything He was experiencing that night in the garden is expressed in the eleventh step which reads: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God … praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Today we’re going to take this right/wrong thing to a whole new level. We’re going to give up the need to be right and conclude that the only “right” version of what we’re looking at together is what the other person actually sees. In other words, I’m going to give up my need to be right for the more noble cause of understanding the other person’s perspective.
Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible (see Step 8), except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 8 and Step 9 are connected. Step 8 is about making a list of people we have harmed and deciding if we are willing to go to them and make amends, and Step 9 is actually doing that.
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
This is when it starts getting personal. This is when we start to involve others in this process. I can spend lots of time working on myself, (I can even fool myself into believing I’m doing what is asked of me) but the minute you bring someone else into the picture it becomes more complicated. This is where accountability comes in.
Step 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Forget religion. Forget world religions. Forget atheists in foxholes. Forget what’s fair. This is the key to the 12-step program; everything builds upon this.
There are really only two kinds of people in the world. Those who insist on meeting God on their own terms, and those who realize He insists on meeting them on His; and realizing that His terms are beyond their ability to perform, they meet Him on their knees, knowing their sin, and crying out for His mercy. That’s it. It’s all in the attitude of the heart.
Step 6. Are ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
If this doesn’t hurt, it’s probably not happening.
What does it take for God to remove these defects in attitude or character? It takes a lot, because we have undoubtedly gotten very comfortable with them. We’ve been self-medicating for years. These are the judgments, rationalizations, accusations, manipulations and put-downs we have relied on most of our lives. They are the equalizers by which we try to make up for our own deficiencies in character by putting others down. We are constantly evening the moral score with other people. As long as God grades on the curve we’ll probably be okay, because everyone else is so messed up (and aren’t we glad when we find that out!).
Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Why do people keep going to AA meetings even after years and years of sobriety? Here are a few reasons.
John Fischer The Catch 