There will be a variety--large variety--of diverse topics and presentations at The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference at Portland, Maine, September 6-7, 2013.
One important topic will certainly be the 11th Step and Quiet Time meetings today. Father Bill W., Chair of the Recovery Ministries for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas will bring a number of very useful guides and papers for participants to chew on and discuss.
To give you a taste of what's in store, here is one of the Father Bill W. presentations:
A. A.’s Pioneer
Program & the Practice of Quiet Time
Why
early A. A. recovery rates far exceeded those of today
- by Father Bill W., Chair of Recovery Ministries
for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas
In Step Eleven, we’re directed “to
improve our conscious contact with God” through the daily practice
of prayer and meditation. I’m sad to say
that for the first 20 years in my recovery the real meaning of the words “conscious
contact” seemed to elude me.
Like many recovering addicts, I’d start off my day with a brief prayer
asking God to keep me clean and sober and perhaps reading a short passage from
a favorite meditation book; but experiencing a genuine “conscious contact” with
God - or practicing a daily Quiet Time that might lead to an experience of His
presence or hearing the sound of His voice – that wasn’t any known part of my
program at all.
But then one day, I hit an emotional wall.
I didn’t relapse, but deep inside I felt acutely the emptiness I’d been trying
my best to cover over and ignore. I knew I needed something more in my
relationship with God than I’d experienced up till then. Ninety meetings in 90 days or one
more journey through the 12-Steps wasn’t likely to bring me what I craved.
I
needed to experience more intimately the Great Reality that the Big Book
promised was alive and living deep within me. Even though I was sober, I wasn’t
in relationship with God as perhaps I might be with a real friend. But, once
again, the gift of desperation re-appeared in my life and I was willing to
travel still farther down the “Road of Happy Destiny.”
It was then that I was guided to the late
Earl Husband. Earl was an A. A. archivist in Oklahoma City who opened a
spiritual door for me and invited me to come step inside. He introduced me to the beliefs and practices
of the Oxford Group. I came away from our first meeting with a number of books
and a glimpse into a program that was similar yet very different from the one I
had known in A.A. It was the program worked by the early A.A. Pioneers during
the years 1935 to 1939 – the years before the Big Book was published. The years
when there were no 12 steps and there was no Alcoholics Anonymous.
A. A.’s Pioneers had all gotten sober in
the Oxford Group. The Group called themselves “A First Century Christian Fellowship.” They set out to build a fellowship based not
on religious doctrine and dogmas that can often divide, but on a felt
experience of God’s presence that can’t help but unite. Oxford Group members
referred to themselves as “Soul Surgeons” and “Life Changers.” But the change
they sought to bring about in the world could only begin by changing one person
at a time – and that change had to begin deep within themselves. In the
spiritual laboratory of a person’s own life – a new man or woman was challenged
to engage in a simple but costly experiment. They said, “Either God is or He isn’t. Either God’s everything or He’s nothing.”
To begin the experiment, all anyone needed to do was acknowledge even the possibility of God’s existence and that, if He
existed, God could solve whatever problem the person might have (Step 2). Then they were to invite Him into their lives,
asking Him to do for them what they could not do for themselves. (Step 3)
What became our Step Three was originally
a one-time commitment inviting God (if he existed) to come into one’s life.
This was usually performed in the presence of another committed individual and
done on one’s knees. They then continued in their experiment by attempting to
live a life grounded in absolute honestly, purity, unselfishness and love (Steps
6&7). These were the Four Absolutes that lay at the very heart of
the Oxford Group program and they can still be found today in many of the 12
Steps groups around Akron and Cleveland where A.A. began. Then, with the help
of another surrendered member of the Group, they searched their lives (Step 4) and shared all the dark places
they found inside (Step 5). They
then made amends to the people they had harmed, just as we do today (Steps 8 & 9).
Finally, but perhaps most importantly,
they practiced a daily Quiet Time. They believed that anyone sincerely seeking
to know and serve God would begin to hear His still, small Voice and would be
guided onto the particular life-path that God wanted them to journey (Steps 10-11, 12). Dr. Bob and his
little band of drunks in Akron reduced this formula to:
Trust God / (1,2,3),
Clean House / (4,5,6,7,8,9),
Help
Others / (10,11 and 12).
They had no steps in those early
years, but they had found a formula that worked miracles!
As I learned more about the origins of
A.A., suddenly the years 1935 through 1939 started to come alive for me. I was
beginning to experience the Power hidden within the Steps in a wholly new way.
Those years were the time when alcoholics were recovering without the benefit of the 12
Steps (because they’d yet to be written) but they were recovering with
the benefit of a direct and felt experience of the power and presence of God arising in their
consciousness. That Pioneer Program produced success ratios far beyond the
numbers we see today. (Pioneers recorded a 75% recovery rate with half their
members finding immediate sobriety and another 25% achieving it after a
convincing but painful relapse. In Cleveland, the reported rate was higher
still. ) Interestingly, the recovery rates during this same period for New York
City were not nearly so high. (Perhaps it’s because the New York group recovery
formula wasn’t Trust God, Clean House, and
Help Others; instead, it was Don’t
Drink and Go to Meetings!)
As I read more and more about the Oxford
Group and about early A. A. Pioneer practices, I was struck by how critical the
conscious
contact idea was in bringing about the spiritual awakening that every
“real alcoholic/addict” so desperately needs to stay clean and sober. Receiving
direct guidance from God through the practice of Quiet Time formed the heart of
Oxford Group practices and it was at the heart of the Pioneer’s Program as well. As
Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers points out: “The A.A. members of that time did not consider meetings necessary
to maintain sobriety. They were simply
desirable. Morning devotion and quiet
time, however, were musts.’" (Please
don’t read this as saying “meetings aren’t important” – it’s saying that
meetings are important - but meetings alone won’t bring about the in-depth,
psychic change that conscious contact with God both can and will.)
During the second 20 years of my recovery,
I’ve done my best to learn more about these early 11th Step
practices and put them to work, however falteringly, in my life. Quiet Time
has changed my life and I’ve watched it do the same for countless other
men and women around the country. Maybe
Quiet Time is part of God’s plan for your life as well. I invite you to try the
great experiment and see.
For a
free copy of the original Oxford Group pamphlet that circulated in Akron, Ohio
in the 1930’s and suggested instructions for using it, please e-mail: RevBillW@Gmail.com
Revised
6.16.13
~
How to Begin Practicing Quiet Time ~
Preparation:
·
Commit to practicing Quiet Time for a
minimum of 10 to 20 minutes daily for 30 days.
·
Practice it each morning. (Get up
earlier if need be. If for any reason you miss a morning, that’s
quite OK, simply begin counting the 30-day period over again! If you will do
this for 30 days in a row, you’ll likely make it a practice for the rest
of your life.)
- Choose a sacred space - a quiet
place where you can be alone. It
should be comfortable and inviting.
Reserve it only for prayer, if at all possible.
·
Buy a notebook to write down your
thoughts - have it ready when you begin.
Start:
·
Sit in an upright posture. Remember
into whose Presence you are entering.
·
Read
a short passage from scripture preferably beginning
with the ones Dr. Bob and early A.A. members recommended: the Sermon on the
Mount found in Matthew 5, 6 and 7, Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians,
Chapter13 that’s know as “The Love Chapter,” and finally the Letter
of James. So much of the A.A. program came from this short section of the
Bible that A.A. was almost named, “The James Club!”)
·
Breathe deeply 2 or 3 times - let go of
all tension and worry with each outward breath.
(Add any other relaxation techniques, prayers, petitions or practices
you find helpful.)
·
Write
a question. A very honest question that captures your
real need. If you have a problem that’s troubling you where you really need
God’s guidance, write it out and ask. Here
are some examples:
1.
God, I’ve tried getting clean and
sober before – please tell me what I need to do that’s different this time. (If you’re already sober, look at other
addictions or behaviors in your life that have you stuck and ask for guidance
with them.)
2.
Heavenly
Father, I
feel so alone and separated from you and from others, please help me feel your
presence.
3.
Father/Mother
God, I’m withdrawing
/ isolating again - moving further away from my spouse (or my child). Please tell
me what to do.
4.
Lord
Jesus (or Spirit, or My Creator),
I need your guidance today as I face _______. Please show me the way so I can do your will.
(Notice the different names being
used for God. Choose the name that feels right for you.
If you are struggling to find a name, start
with “Unknown God” or “God, if you’re there.”)
·
Listen for God’s Voice, with your pen
& notebook in hand. If the
connection isn’t immediate and words do not come into your mind, use your
active imagination, especially when you’re first making conscious contact: Say to yourself, “If God were to speak to me this is what he might say:” _______________________
·
Write the words that come into your
mind. Try not to edit them. Only listen and write. (If
words come that you think are not from God write them anyway. Put them in brackets if you like and try to
re-focus on listening for God’s Voice.
In time, you will come to distinguish God’s Voice more clearly from the
voices of the ego.)
·
If
stuck, write
your own name or write, “My child” or “My precious” or some other term
of endearment that a loving Father-Mother God might use when speaking to you.
·
Stop
writing when it becomes strained.
·
Feel the
closeness of God as you experience conscious contact.
Following
the Guidance:
- Share your writings weekly with a
sponsor or with another individual who is also practicing Quiet Time. You
may find that their writings contain some particular spiritual guidance
for you or yours for them.
- Check your guidance. Does it pass the test: is it Honest,
Pure, Unselfish and Loving.
·
Act
on your
guidance – but only if it passes the test – and if it is a major move, check it
also with others who are also listening to God.
SOME HISTORICAL
REFERENCES:
·
Dr. Bob and the Good Old-Timers tells of the 1938 report Frank
Amos sent to John D. Rockefeller after studying the new A.A. movement. Amos reported
“The A.A. members of that time did
not consider meetings necessary to maintain sobriety. They were simply ‘desirable.’ Morning devotion and ‘quiet time,’ however,
were musts." (p.136)
·
Bill Wilson: “I
sort of always felt that something was lost from A.A. when we stopped
emphasizing the morning meditation.” Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (p. 178)
- In Dr. Bob’s last major talk in Detroit, Michigan in 1948, he
identified some of the spiritual principles that kept him and other A.A.
Pioneers sober:
“We
were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book.
To
some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the
Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book
of James. … The Four Absolutes, as we called them,
were the only yardsticks we had in the early days, before the Steps. I think the Absolutes still hold good and
can be extremely helpful.
I
have found at times that a question arises, and I want to do the right thing,
but the answer is not obvious; almost always, if I measure my decision
carefully by the yardsticks of absolute
honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity, and absolute love, and it
checks up pretty well with those four, then my answer can't be very far out of
the way….”
The Big Book 11th Step
instructions encourages us to “…ask God to direct our thinking” and that “we
ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought….What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually
becomes a working part of the mind.
Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with
God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all
sorts of absurd actions and ideas.
Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more
and more on the plane of inspiration. We will come to rely upon it.” (Big
Book p. 87)
A FINAL NOTE:
Sometimes people ask me,
“How do you know it’s really God’s Voice you’re hearing? How do you know it’s not just you?” My answer is that I really don’t know
- and in the end, it really doesn’t matter. If it’s me, it’s the best
part of me I’ve ever found and it’s the part I need to start listening to more
and more. It’s the small, still Voice that quiets the raucous “ego voices” of
guilt and shame, anger and fear, addiction and destruction. Those are voices I’ve
known and listened to all of my life. At 20 years sober, it was time for a
major change to my program and not just a little tweaking around the edges.
What I discovered was yet another Promise of the Big Book coming true: “When
we drew near to Him He discloses Himself to us!” (Big Book p. 57)
For a
free copy of the Original Oxford Group pamphlet write: RevBillW@Gmail.com Revised 6.16.13
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