It was Saturday evening and I was at Blue Cloud, at the door of the Research Center at 8:30. We Monks had been in the chapel singing the songs of Vigils for Pentecost. Blue Cloud is quiet at 8:30.
Then I heard it; from three directions came the sounds of Pentecost. Laughter and joy and elation and pure fun; release and relaxation, renewal and reward; it was all there. The Spirit had come, again.
Every Saturday night a line of cars comes up the hill into our parking lot. The drivers are quiet, weary, too, after work. They straighten their clothes and pull open the monastery door (it always opens outward).
They say they feel the difference right away. The cold of outside is left outside. The comfort a welcome wraps round them. The women say, “I feel safe here.” (I had never thought of it, till they said it.) What a revelation. Just being outside and not feeling safe. Outside they are a “thing” and marketable. Inside, they had respect and companionship and dignity and reserve and space.
Every Saturday night in each of three large rooms there is at Blue Cloud a cluster of AA men/women in circles. This weekend the number is larger. We are having a Retreat for men/women Recovering, and they join in. We have at least five AA retreats a year. The participants come from as far as Denver or Chicago. “I’ve got to come back. It was here that I met my ‘match’. It was here that I faced the demon in me and got a new Spirit. I have to come back.”
Just north of us on the Sisseton/Wahpeton Reservation the Tribe has a famous Treatment Center, “Dakota Pride” (698-3917). At the end of every treatment term the men/women come here for their 5th step in the treatment. I ask that they come before noon, so they can sit with us at lunch, get comfortable, find friends and then, when ready, begin in strictest privacy “to admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrong doings.”
There has never been found a more effective process for recovery from addiction than The 12 steps. We monks are only a small part of the recovery, but we know that ours is an important part.
Benedict insists that we pay special attention to the needy. There is no one more needy than the one who is in the control of the demon. We men/women monastics must be at their service.
Step 1: Admit we are powerless over alcohol – that our lives have become unmanageable.
Step 2: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand Him.
Step 4: Make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.
Step 5: Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
No one walks alone. The buy-back for an alcoholic, as for all of us, is to go to the rescue of others. The recovering alcoholic spends himself for others. Near Blue Cloud there is one man who is responsible for the thirty-five years of our retreats. His body is playing out. We know that. We are praying that God will raise up another man able to be such a model.
Listen to Step 12: having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
It was the “sharing with others” which I heard Saturday night. Clear voices and happy hearts lifted without shame. Someone had come upon them; some things had been given them: Joy, Peace, Patience, Continence, and they poured out their thanks.
I am sure you know someone who needs the 12 Steps. Maybe you do.
Don’t fail yourself; above all don’t fail your neighbor. Jesus judges you by what you do for your neighbor.
Get the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Every city library has it. Bless you!