Sermon 1 - Willingness to Understand - December 10th 2023
The following is the unedited notes I used in my first sermon.
Welcome to everyone, no matter what your addiction status is, or if you have none. Welcome to you whether you are a Unitarian Universalist, or not, or if you are curious about it. Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious movement that values a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” On this search, we listen to other theologies, keep an open mind, and find what works for us on our personal path to truth and meaning. I am grateful to the 12 steps, my Unitarian Universalist upbringing, and the continued support I get from various sources and communities, including this church, for my sobriety today. I have been sober for 21 years, I worked in the mental health field for 10 years, and I was a substance abuse counselor before I became a stay at home parent. I have a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy with a concentration in Religious Studies and Psychology from LSU. I am a lifelong UU and I grew up in Baton Rouge, LA. Today, I will share with you some insights into the first 3 steps of the 12 steps, which are often the hardest for UUs or Agnostics or Humanists and others. I chose this topic because addiction is a common issue, and the 12 step program, which helps many people, can also be challenging for some people. However, I also want to acknowledge that there are many other paths to recovery, such as The Satanic Temple’s program for atheists or Refuge Recovery for Buddhists. The 12 step literature also admits that the 12 steps are not the only way to recovery. Just like we UUs admit that we are not the only way to truth and meaning.
Candle Blessing:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. A prayer commonly heard in recovery communities. But before we can ask we must be willing to ask. Willingness is the beginning of change. Prayer is often the manifestation of willingness. One of the first prayers those in 12 step recovery are taught is to ask, “Keep me sober today.” Then at night to pray, “Thank you for keeping me sober today.” Both express willingness to be sober.
The 11th step is the step of continuous prayer and meditation. Often 12 step communities use the St. Francis prayer for the 11th step, “grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.” Seeking to understand rather than being understood is a hallmark of serenity. Notice I never said what we were praying to, who we were asking. Because it does not matter. All that matters is that we are willing to ask, willing to seek, willing to understand. Today I ask you to be willing to understand.
Sermon Outline:
My name is Camille and I am an alcoholic and addict.
My sobriety date is 12/07/2002
(What i am going to say was my original intro)
We will be talking about a hard topic but we can do hard things. Welcome to everyone, regardless of your addiction status, or lack thereof.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion, which honors and respects all the paths to truth and healing. We often listen and keep an open-mind to theologies other than our own and discern what we can keep from them, and what will not work for us personally.
I credit the 12 steps, and the continued support I find within and without 12 step communities like this church to my sobriety today. I am today 21 years sober, I had a decade long career in the mental health field, and I was a substance abuse counselor before I became a stay at home parent. I have a bachelor's degree in Philosophy with a concentration in Religious Studies and Psychology from LSU. I am a cradle UU and I grew up in Baton Rouge, LA.
Today, I am going to give a little window into the hardest of the 12 steps for many UU’s or Agnostics or Humanists and so on, the first 3 steps. However, it’s worth noting that there are many paths to recovery, including a program provided by The Satanic Temple specifically for atheists and The Refugee for those that find the Buddhist path more comforting. The 12 steps literature also acknowledges that the 12 steps are not the only road to recovery. Just as we UU’s acknowledge we are not the only path to truth and Meaning.
I chose this topic because addiction is a common issue. According to the CDC 16.5% of our total population over the age of 12 meet the applicable DSM- % Criteria for having a substance use disorder. 94% never receive treatment.
I need to say that in my former professional opinion that if you love or ever have loved someone with a substance use disorder, you can also be suffering from a substance use disorder. I say this to let you know that I see you and recovery is available to you as well.
Let me get right to my point and work from there. I believe that the 12 steps are an inclusive theology if applied as intended and interpreted properly. Despite the triggering language of the 12 steps, UU’s can still find useful things to borrow from the theology that the 12 steps provide. There is a good argument to be made that everyone can benefit from12 step work, regardless of their state of addiction or lack thereof.
the 12 steps are not only a support group. The Primary purpose of 12 step fellowships is to help others achieve recovery. The 12 steps are a theology that has a prescribed process that has the goal of creating a spiritual experience that brings about recovery.
And this is where I am going to argue that Understanding is an Experience and Only if we are willing to understand can we be open to that experience - (describe) - Eureka, Epiphany
Empirical is valuable but so is anecdotal
(Slide)
Paths to Understanding
Look for Commonalities as a path to Understanding - Story about first 12 step meeting “Look for what you relate to”
Give a disclaimer and listen for the commonalities. There is a disclaimer I need to give out of respect to 12 step communities. This disclaimer is based on the twelve traditions of 12 step communities, which are like a covenant to these communities. - we love our covenants, they love their traditions.
The last two of the 12 traditions state that “our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion, and we need to maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, reminding us to place principles before personalities.”- love their principles and so do we.
What these Traditions are saying is I am not an authority on 12 step fellowships, nor am I a spokesperson for them. There is no spokesperson or authority on the 12 steps, not even the man who wrote them was a formal authority of the 12 steps.
So When quoting 12 step literature, I will use the name of the author and not the work. I will use terms like 12 step fellowship or “in the rooms” or meeting or ”program” when referring to a recovery community rather than calling the community by name. Name will only be in a quote. Please remember that when I am quoting literature it is being used in my own context.
There are more commonalities such as we both love our committees and coffee. In fact, all 12 step meetings are created the same way UU fellowships are created, with a coffee pot, at least two people and a resentment.
One of these principles is inclusivity which is given in the 3rd tradition which states “the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.”No dues or fees, no statements of faith, not even a requirement to stop drinking, just a desire to do so. Willingness. That is the only requirement.
Let me introduce you to the writer of the 12 Steps. Bill W., an alcoholic New York Stockbroker living in the 1930s, who wrote the 12 steps with help from others. For their time, they were trying to be as inclusive as possible despite the only vocabulary accessible to them surrounding the spiritual being heavily influenced by the Christian Bible.
Bill W. got sober with the help of another no longer existing group called the Oxford Group. However, it is clear that Bill W.'s aim was inclusivity. He did not recover until he was invited to pick his own understanding of God. Then he felt that these principles should be shared with everyone. He then set about inviting the unhoused from Skid Row to the Oxford meetings, which led to the Oxford group inviting him to build his own recovery community.
From there, these spiritual principles were codified into the 12 steps and the first of 12-step literature was published with the intent of sharing these principles of recovery with the entire world. Even after much debate, Women.
Bill W.’s writing stands as evidence in his attempt to make spiritual recovery inclusively accessible. The most glaring of which is in the 3rd step itself, “As we understood him.” But I struggled to just get past step one.
Willing to Understand
Step one We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable.
Unmanageable I could admit - It was unmangablitiy that forced me into the room with that poster, but that was my Parent’s fault
but I would not admit powerlessness.
How does admitting powerlessness help? Understanding is not an intellectual exercise and it is not logic.
Acceptance can happen without understanding but often understanding cannot happen without acceptance - we have all met someone who refuses to understand
Fundamental Atheist humanist admitting powerlessness was not acceptable - vulnerability
Scientific method, Sponsor- Can you control gravity? So you can admit you are powerless over something.
What if I could give you an experiment to see if you are an addict
Repeatable experiment
I am insane - No control once I consume- No control of when I consume - even now the risk
Willing to Understand
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity
Was I willing to understand this step - Can you accept a theory?
Story of trying to explain God and then being told “Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything.” Just be willing
Then what should I believe? Examples of other things people use for God (the group)
Chapter to the Agnostic - God is a tool. Interdependence. I do not understand electricity.
We may never understand but we must stay willing to understand.still can experience understanding. Even if we think we do understand, we may not. No longer teachable and no longer willing. Stay teachable.
Understanding is an action and experience. Willingness Manifests into an Action and Action is an Experience. (Thank you) Being Understanding
Made a Decision to turn our will and or lives over to the care of God, As we understood him.
How do we act out understanding? Act as if (fake it til you make it, faith without works is dead)
I was told to just do the next right thing and trust the results - Vulnerability. Just go to any lengths to stay sober.
I was told to pray - like I said in our meditation - Prayer is a manifestation of willingness. If we are praying then we must be willing. If I am not willing, can I pray for willingness?
Sounds like a placebo effect or psychological trick. Sounds like brainwashing.
So that’s it?? Well, eventually there is a spiritual experience
The appendix that says a spiritual experience, spiritual awakening, or personality rearrangement is “the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery”
“There is a principle which is proof against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance; that principle is - Contempt prior to investigation!” ― HERBERT SPENCER
My spiritual experience - TW
I was Grover. I was vulnerable. - Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity
I used again - My solution was gone - I found no relief
I was looking down over the balcony and then I looked up
It wasn’t like a burning bush or a lightning bolt it was like a sigh
There is a solution - The people in the meetings that I related to because they described what I was feeling. But when I met them they were happy joyous and free - maybe I could be too if I did what they did.
What it is like now.
What my personal theology looks like now - I still don’t have a name for it. Practical theology. I can be vulnerable with it. My understanding is that I don’t understand. I guess that makes me agnostic. I am still a humanist, I am still a unitarian universalist. But I am not a fundamentalist. If you need a higher power you can have mine until you find your own.
When we Seek understanding rather than to be understood, we can face all mysteries. Sometimes just by turning to the next page or doing the next right thing.
The 9th step promises to illustrate sobriety can be.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us-sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
