The Last Will Be First
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Deacon Paul E. Sheldon is chaplain at Recovery Center in Mobile Alabama. His master’s degree is in counseling. An investment banker and stocker broker for many years, he was ordained a deacon in 1979.
Thank you and good afternoon. So nice to be with you. I am an alcoholic, which means that I am trying to be restored to sanity: Step 2. I haven’t been drinking in a long time, but on the sanity part: that’s a work in progress. I am neurotic, paranoid, impulsive, compulsive, excessive, obsessive, and all that’s a work in progress. But it’s so wonderful because I’m insane and this program was made for insane people. As a matter of fact, so was Jesus. Listen to this: “The last are first.” That doesn’t make any sense at all. The first are first and the last are last, we know that. Where does he get, “the last are first?” Well you have to be out of your mind. You have to have you mind transcended in order to really experience that and trust that it really is the truth. So, Jesus was made for me. He’s crazy. I’m crazy. This program was made for me. So why are these things still around if they don’t make sense? And they don’t make sense. If we have to make sense out of recovery before we recover we will never recover. You have to just do it. You have to trust. So why are these things still around? It’s because they work. They heal. I would like to speak about the way of recovery and how I think it is the same thing as the way of Jesus. Recovery is a spiritual awakening: Step 12. A spiritual awakening is not so much about gaining or achieving or acquiring as it is about letting go. A spiritual awakening, or transformation, or conversion, or communion with God, or whatever you want to call it, is not so much about learning as it is about unlearning. Well this does not make any sense. We do not understand “unlearning.” That’s not part of our makeup. But Jesus cautions us about trying to make sense out of spiritual life. Luke 16: what man holds as important, God holds in contempt. If the Gospel is really being preached, part of us wants to run. If the Gospel is really being preached, perhaps part of us wants to even throw up. Letting go of what we think is important is repulsive, not to mention being terrifying. Going into the unknown is hard, but even worse, as one author puts it, is unlearning or leaving the moment. That’s what really scares us: leaving what we know, letting go.
Everyone runs from recovery until we can’t run anymore. It is not virtue
that saves us. It is not brains that saves us. It is exhaustion that saves us.
Hindu word for exhaustion: nirvana. Jesus cautions what it is that keeps us out of the kingdom of God. It is not immorality that keeps us out of the kingdom of God. Whores, mafia-type tax collectors waltz into the kingdom of God. Jesus is so scandalous. He is so embarrassing. How are we ever going to tidy Him up and make Him respectable? He is very embarrassing. The company He keeps... Why, for God’s sake, some of them may even been tacky. It is not immorality that keeps us out of the kingdom of God or spiritual awakening. It is not doing the “don’ts” or doing the “shall nots.” What is it? It’s power that keeps us out of the kingdom of God. The three temptations of Jesus in the desert all have to do with some kind of temptation to power, which He rejected. For us power is money. Position is power. Knowledge can be power. Prestige, possessions… Recovery agrees with the Gospel: it is our own power – it’s our willpower – that keeps us from God. This is ridiculous to our society and it is ridiculous to our basic instincts of survival. Recovery suggests that it is our own powerlessness that opens us to communion with God, a Higher Power, that opens us to spiritual awakening. What a reversal! It’s a miracle that any of us are here! Because this does not make sense. Why didn’t we all run away? We all wanted to, did we not?
How do we let go? How do we unlearn, so we can experience this spiritual
awakening, which is recovery? We can’t do it. Self can’t let go of self. Ego
can’t let go of ego. It has to be done to us. As a matter of fact, it is
really done despite us. We hit a bottom, then we have some kind of a
breakdown. Oh, happy breakdown! I presume we have all had one. If you haven’t
had one, may it come to you soon and may it be a whopper. Because that’s what
it takes to have communion with God. Let’s look at a man who, through his brokenness, woke up. He had an awakening and then he opened the way for so many other people to have an awakening. Here’s how it all began: In December of 1934, a 39-year-old drunk lay in a bed at Townes Hospital in New York. His name was Bill Wilson. His wife Lois was still with him, but everyone and everything else was lost. Bill described it like this: The terrifying darkness was complete. The cancer of alcoholism had consumed me in mind, spirit, and soon the body. In desperation he said, “I’ll do anything, anything at all.” Let me stop with the quote there for one second. Friends, if we ever get to a spot where we say those words, “I’ll do anything, anything at all,” and we mean it from the bottom of our heart, they might as well put you on a stained glass window. It’s like the conversion of St. Paul. You’ll never be the same again if we truly say those words from the bottom of our heart. Usually what the bottom of our heart means is desperation. As Bill says, “We need the desperation of a drowning man.” To continue with the quote and with this beautiful phrase: “and with neither faith nor hope!” Do we need faith in God? Absolutely not! Do we need to know who God is? Absolutely not. Do we need hope in the future? None. “With neither faith nor hope he cried out, ‘If there is a God, let Him show Himself now!’ Suddenly,” and here it is, this is weird, “suddenly, my room blazed with white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description.” Seconds before this man is in agony and all of a sudden, he is in ecstasy beyond description, which he says made all other previous joys pale. He goes on, “In my mind’s eye, I was on a mountain summit where a great wind blew – a wind, not air, but spirit – and it blew through me. Then came a blazing thought: you are a freed man.” Never could there have been a more enslaved man than this pitiful drunk, Bill Wilson. And all of a sudden he thought and he was free. He was free. “Gradually,” he says, “the light subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. I became acutely conscious of a presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. For the first time, I felt like I belonged.” That’s going to give me goose bumps when I say it now: “For the first time, I felt like I…” That’s all our problem, isn’t it? That’s the problem of every man and every woman, that feeling of not belonging. And we’re scrambling like crazy trying do something to make us feel like we belong and we can’t do it. It’s a gift. And Bill got it. He got it. I mean, St. Paul, eat your heart out. Nobody had a conversion any bigger than this. And maybe many of you have had a conversion as big as this, as big as anybody who ever lived. It’s amazing what we have here in this program! How many people have had such a conversion and everybody just said they were crazy? But we’re an outfit that says, “No no, God’s touched you. That bottom you hit is the best thing that ever happened to you.” Where do you hear that on Earth other than in this program? I mean, what a heck of a find we have here. He concludes, “I knew I was loved and I could love in return.” The poor man was just besieged with selfishness, all of a sudden, now he’s a lover. He thought he had met the God of the preachers, he says. Is that not one of the more bizarre episodes you have ever heard in your life? I mean, think of it! They let Bill out of the hospital. I mean if someone were to come to you and told you, “I saw a white light and spirits were flying through me!” And this poor pitiful drunk or drug addict and they were saying, “I know belong and I know I could love.” Might you not suggest that they go into the hospital? Or at least under some medication that would be the equivalent of a hospital room? Yet, this weird experience is the foundation, the beginning of AA and all other programs of recovery using the 12 steps.
Our founder — slobbering drunk Bill Wilson — was a mental, moral, emotional,
spiritual, and physical wreck, not entirely unlike some biblical heroes and
heroines we know. He was a failure and a disgrace to his family, to his
friends and to society. Yet, he experienced, personally and directly,
unconditional belonging. The leper belongs, perhaps in a way that the clean
and the spotless will never be able to belong. If you want to be first, you
have to be last. If you want to belong, you have to be an outsider.
Bill was a totally unacceptable man who experienced total acceptance and that completely reversed the downward spiral in his life. This unconditional acceptance was to become the guts of recovery. This was to be the reason why healing occurred in AA spirituality. It is the reason why people who are deeply religious come to this spiritual program to find God and healing. Unconditional acceptance. Because of Bill’s experience of unconditional acceptance, anyone coming into this program was to be received in the same way that Bill was received in his mystical experience, without any conditions. Bill’s spiritual experience was sudden and dramatic. For most of us, this sense of belonging and this spiritual awakening is gradual. But no matter, we’re not interested in perfection, we’re interested in progress. So the newcomer is not asked to morally shape up in order to be admitted and after admission, there is still no obligation to morally improve, or to make a firm purpose of amending their life. The only requirement is desire, a desire to quit the addiction. And who can prove or disprove a desire? Membership in 12-step recovery, as much as possible, is without any conditions. Again that carte blanche acceptance comes without requirement for moral improvement and in most cases moral improvement is badly needed. Morality does not lead to transformation or spiritual awakening. Morality does not lead to God. Scholars say that Pharisees and the Scribes of Jesus’ times probably had the highest moral standing of anyone in the world. Recovery chooses not to emphasize morality but rather to emphasize those steps that lead to transformation. Step 12: a spiritual awakening. That is the emphasis. It trusts that morality will find its right place in the life of each person. Bill Wilson was, because of his sickness, a moral leper before he quit drinking, and he wasn’t so hot afterwards. He was an adulterer before, and my understanding is that he continued to have an adulterous relationship afterward. Our St. Bill. You know this is a strange God we have. He uses anybody and everybody and He does not follow what we think ought to be the right way to do it. He’s messy. And to tell you the truth, He’s embarrassing.
Because of Bill’s experience of unconditional acceptance, anyone coming to the
program was to be received in the same way that Bill was received in his
mystical experience, no conditions. The unacceptable man is totally
acceptable. There are no don’ts in AA. The law is over. The tutelage is
finished. Now the Spirit reigns. The kingdom of God reigns. St. Paul would
love this thing. Sometimes I read the Scripture and I think, “My God, these
guys were all alcoholics! They all believe the same thing we do.” So the
healing and recovery is similar the style of the healing in the New Testament.
He has friends. He dines. He is intimate with sinners, not recovered sinners,
current sinners. How are we going to tidy Jesus up? He’s so embarrassing.
This all sounds very nice and compassionate and sweet. However, it also sounds very impractical. How can there be a community where there are no conditions on its members? That sounds more like a jail break than it does a growing community. You can’t have a civil society like that. You can’t have a social club or group without conditions. You can’t run a business like that. And friends, we all know you can’t even have a loving family — if it’s really a loving family — you can’t have it without conditions. If we want civility, some level of decorum, order over chaos, there must be rules, guidelines, traditions, and customs. If one lives outside those boundaries, they’re restricted, excommunicated in any community or any organization. This is proper and it’s good.
This is all we know. Human beings cannot live without conditions. Our only
experience of family, school, work, social life, civic life, is conditional
acceptance and conditional love. So, how does the program solve the dilemma?
On the one hand, we want unconditional acceptance because that’s what changed
Bill: “I belong.” He was never the same again. He was 39 years old. The next
39 years of his life, he never had another drink, and he opened up doors for
all other people suffering from this insanity. So, we want to have
unconditional acceptance, but on the other hand, we need order and structure. What he received in a mystical experience, we receive whenever we walk into AA, NA, or whatever 12 step recovery, and we are acceptable. I don’t care what our record is or what our ongoing record is, we are acceptable. I just think that is so shocking that there is such a place like that, there is such a place. The community could never be organized because organization requires conditions. Something had to be put at risk: order or healing. There was really no choice. Healing was needed so badly that order had to be put at risk. Organization had to go. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as a surprise to all who attempt to organize this slippery power. John 3: The wind blows wherever it pleases. Does it not? You hear its sound, but you can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. Don’t try to tame the Spirit. Don’t try to bottle it and dispense it. The goal of recovery is the Spirit, a spiritual awakening, Step 12. When one becomes alive spiritually or experiences communion with God — same thing — they have arrived at a new order, which sounds like chaos. It sounds like the wind, compared to good, normal society, all structured and organized.
The Big Book tries to speak of the magnitude and the unruliness of this
spiritual change by calling it a revolution: page 25 of the Big Book. It’s an
internal revolution. One’s whole attitude toward life, others, and God’s
universe changes. Carl Jung is quoted in the Big Book on page 27. He speaks of
vital, spiritual experiences. He puts it this way, also very traumatic, “They
appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements or rearrangements.
Ideas, emotions, and attitudes, which were once the guiding forces in a
person’s life, are cast aside and an entirely new set of motives and concepts
begins to dominate.” In other words, awakening turns life upside down, inside
out, topsy-turvy.
Friends, all of my problems started when I stopped drinking. Do you understand what I mean by that? I was doing good, really good, until I stopped drinking. My family looked good. The Church was sending young couples that were going to be married to us for pre-marriage counseling. We were good. I had a respectable job at a bank. I was on several committees and boards, a hospital board, a library board, chairing fund drives for worthy causes. I mean, I was good! And when I got sober, that world came down. Quite the opposite of some of the things I heard some of you others say in here. I have often envied people who had deep bottoms where they just lost everything, because I would like that. I don’t know if it made harder for me, but I know I had to wake up and realize that this beautiful marriage I had had ended up in a marriage counselor. And this job I had, I began to realize was not me. And these committees and boards I’m on, I don’t what I’m doing here. Everything changed for me. That’s just my story. I’m not saying it’s categorical for everybody. Everything changed for me. Life was turned upside down. I think a spiritual awakening — it may be slow for most of us — but it’s going to change everything dramatically. It’s more like a hurricane than it is “the wind.” We might say that a spiritual awakening, or conversion, or transformation is a messy business with a wonderful outcome. It is a wild business with a peaceful outcome. This can make a recovering person more like a mystic, like Bill was. Someone who is in direct, constant contact with God: step 11.
Organizations love mystics, dead mystics, that is. Live mystics are a pain in
the butt, because they’re independent. They have this direct, conscious
contact with God. And they’re very difficult to structure and they’re very
difficult to organize. Hanging on to the old order, our old concepts and our
old ideas of structure can hinder us and can even block out union with God. So
the Big Book puts it square to us and we read it every meeting. Page 58, all
our old ideas must be let go absolutely. All my old ideas? Yeah, all of them.
Well, some of my ideas are sacred. Let them go. They’re not worth a hoot. You
know, when we let go of something, we still have it. It doesn’t have us.
Jesus says you have to let go of everything to be My follower. You know that thing in Luke 14, I think it is. You must get rid of everything you have. I think that is the truth. That’s what we have to do to recover. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist for us anymore. When we let it go, we still have it, but it does not have us anymore. Again, Jesus pulls no punch. You might as well let all your ideas go, because what is highly valued by you, God holds as detestable. In order to be healed and make progress toward fullness of life, and that’s what we’re after. That’s what the promises are. What Jesus talks about in John’s Gospel, I believe: fullness of life. To be healed, all our priorities must turn upside down. The mysterious power we call God is a power that gives Itself to us only without conditions. Such a relationship is not in our experience. We do not understand unconditional giving. Therefore, what we do understand must be rearranged and blown away every which way as by the wind. Sounds dangerous. Is such unpredictability, such rearranging done in order to destroy all we know and all we believe? Has this recovery come to destroy our grand heritage? No, recovery has not come to destroy our heritage. It has come to fulfill it. Is it any wonder that we want to run from God? We hide by running from religion. We hide by running into religion and burying ourselves in practices and rituals and traditions. Anything to not experience the revolution, the unlearning that is a spiritual awakening or union with God. I know one of my greatest defects, and perhaps a great temptation of all religious people, is to try to make sense out of God and Jesus. We are a rational people; it’s kind of insulting to say, “You’re not supposed to understand.” But I think in reality we don’t have God, God has us, and that’s what we find out when we wake up. I guess I said the Our Father thousands of times and never ever meant it. “Thy will be done.” I never meant that! What I meant was, “I have this agenda, surely You agree, but I can’t get it done, why don’t You get behind me and push? I need power. I need power to get this agenda done.” Letting that agenda go and saying, “Thy will be done...” I’ve been in recovery since 1980 and I wonder how much I’ve really let go of that, how much I really say from the bottom of my heart, “Today, your will be done, not mine.” I hope, some percent. I don’t know, but I hope. Maybe some days more than others. The days I feel desperate, probably I’m pretty sincere. The days I feel pretty good, probably not too sincere. It’s really hard to let go and let God. God, how lucky we are. Where on earth could we come up against this challenge – let go and let God – except in a program like this. What a find this is! It was founded by babbling drunks! You know, “out of the mouths of babes?” Out of the mouths of drunkards and fools has come this replica of the Gospel put into practice! We need a notion of God. We need a notion of Jesus. We have to have that, I think. But I think it’s wise for us to wear it lightly like a loose garment. We want to say, “Oh, I do not! I know Jesus. I know my Lord.” But I think what we probably really have is His big toe. If we just let that go and step back, then the experience of the magnitude and the wonder of all this can really do something for us; but it is a matter of letting it go. If we have to make sense out of our recovery before we give ourselves to it, we will never give ourselves to it. We will never do it. Right? We will never do it. So why are AA and all 12 steps never to be organized? Because organization, which is essential to society and good, has too many conditions; and so it is too small, too narrow for the freedom that is required to receive from an Unconditional Giver. So we either repent of, that is, let go our conditioning, or there will be no healing or recovery, full life of the promises. If you think that’s crazy listen to this. In order to make room for the shiftiness of the Spirit, the unpredictability of the Spirit, AA must protect itself from anything that would encumber or make it unfree for the mission of healing. And that is its only mission: healing. So notice some similarities with the Gospel here. AA is not social, but rather its mission is to the individual, the alcoholic who still suffers. Organizations are not spiritually awakened, only individuals are. Jesus calls for a change of heart. Organizations don’t have a heart, they have bylaws. AA has no political mission. And it is not a business. How could it have a political mission or be a business and be involved in money and property? How can it do that and not have conditions? AA has no money, because as we all know, recovery has nothing to do with money or the lack of money. Addiction doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor. A poor man is blowing his brains out with cheap wine, living below a bridge. A rich man is blowing his brain out in a penthouse with expensive cocaine. Addiction doesn’t care who you are. Neither does healing. Money has nothing to do with it. So AA says no money. AA has no property. AA has no prestige. Think of the passages in the Gospel where Jesus is telling His disciples what it takes to follow Him, not praise Him. He never asks us to praise Him or worship Him. He said, “Follow Me.” Look and see what’s happened in AA. It’s all been done. In short, the community of AA with no money, property, or prestige, has no worldly power. Of worldly power, it is empty. Hindu word: nirvana. Old Testament word: barren. New Testament word for empty: virgin. It is empty of all power. And being empty, it can be filled with higher power. It can bear God and then deliver God into the world around it.
AA is free. It is free to welcome anyone. Who can threaten us? We don’t have
any money. We don’t have any property. What are they going to take? We don’t
have any prestige. We’re anonymous. How are they going shame us? How are they
going to embarrass us in front of our neighbors? The community of AA is free
to be servant. AA can be servant to anyone because it has nothing to lose. It
has let go of everything. It has let go of everything that Jesus cautioned
would keep us out of communion with God. I just think this thing is such a
miracle in our midst. We’re right in the middle of it! All I really want to do
is say, “Look what we’ve landed in!” The purity of it all!
Now, it gets even worse, even more nonsensical. AA is a place where insane people come to be restored to sanity: step 2. And yet, AA has no professionals. There are no teachers. There are no doctors. There are no experts. There are no authority figures. My God, what’s going on here? The inmates are running the asylum! The loonies are in charge here. You know, friends, this is a big gamble. Who says all these insane folks aren’t simply going to make one another more insane, rather than help one another be restored to sanity? The safety net of doctors, teachers, authority figures, had to be removed lest we begin to set up grades, examinations, conditions. So in this spiritual program we ought to call no one teacher, no one doctor. In this spiritual program, we are to call no one father. Friends, we got this baby right. Tradition 2: There is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. I think Jesus would have loved AA, loved it! Course we couldn’t let Him in. We could let Him into an open meeting, but we couldn’t let Him in a closed meeting. Unless, those rumors about being a drunkard and a glutton… well, we figured that out. I think Jesus might say this to the people of AA, “You know how the pagan rulers lorded over others, making they’re authority felt? Well don’t ever slip into that because if you ever slip into that you will be swapping healing for order and structure. Lousy swap.” And even among us peers there are no teachers. All we do is share our stories, our strength, and our hope. It is a miracle. We’re all miracles. We are. I think the only reason that I stayed in AA is that, in addition to being an alcoholic, I am weasel, sick co-dependent who is scared to death about what people are going to think about me. So the only reason I stayed in this thing all these years is that I was afraid of what the other recovering people were going to say about me if I left. I really think that’s it. I did not like it. I did not like meetings. I went through several sponsors and nothing really happened. Everything else was falling apart in my life. As I say, my family, my work, everything I was involved with, I realized this was so inauthentic with me. All these changes were coming about. I didn’t like it. I don’t know why I stayed. It’s a miracle we found this thing. It’s a miracle we stayed in it. The whole cotton-picking thing is a miracle. A group of people with no self-esteem sit in a circle and talk to one another. They leave and they all walk out with a little bit more self-esteem. Where the hell did self-esteem come from? No doctors, no teachers, no authority figures, no experts, where’d it come from? See, that’s the way this baby works. It is God doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves. It is a miracle that is happening every time we walk in the door, call our sponsor, read the daily meditation book, help another person, working our program. It is a miracle. It happens every minute we live this program. Doctors address us at the level of symptoms. Only the mysterious power that we call God, and I do mean mysterious, changes us at the core. It is unconditional grace and gift that changes us at the core. It was true for Bill and it is true for us: unconditional grace. How backwards this is. Wouldn’t it be logical to think that what a self-destructive drunk needs is some discipline, some rules and some laws or at least some conditions or an authority figure to handle him. It’s just the opposite. External discipline too often leads to compliance. Looking good on the outside, inside, repression and denial continues. The core problem for every addict is solved only by unconditional acceptance, which is the loving power Bill Wilson met when he let go. In recovery, it is internal discipline that is needed, not external authority. Internal discipline is much harder than following external authority, much harder, but that’s what we’re called to. Where internal discipline in our spiritual program leads to is openness, and the Holy Spirit loves open spaces. AA is a miracle in progress and folks, we’re part of it. … We trust that God knows and cares for us. Thank you.
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