Steps 4 and 5 of the 12 Steps: Discovering and Letting Go

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

It’s Mother’s Day, so I begin with a Mommy story. I was probably seven years old, my brother Denny would have been five. Our uncle, whose family had just moved to Florida, had sent my brother and I two genuine Seminole Indian tom-toms. Each of them was about the size of a coffee can and covered with stretched piece of rubber from an old tire tube. Genuine Indian.

For whatever reason a seven year old might have for doing such a thing, I could not resist the temptation to push a sharpened pencil through the taut rubber on one of the tom-toms- my brother’s tom-tom, which, of course, rendered it useless as a tom-tom. Immediately, I regretted what I had done, so I hid the drum up high on a fireplace, where my brother couldn’t find it. The top of the fireplace was exactly where Mom’s eyes landed first when she was trying to help Denny and stop his crying by finding his missing tom-tom.

“What happened here, Dave?” she asked holding the now holey drum out to me.

“I don’t know. How did it get up there?” I asked, ridiculously.

“Tell me,” she said. I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew, so I decided to tell the truth.

And here’s what I said. I think the only reason I remember it so well is that it was even absurd for a seven year old:

“When I came in here this morning,” I began, “I saw a mouse leaning up against a pencil and the mouse pushed the pencil into the tom-tom. I got it away from the mouse and put it up there where it would be safe.”

Now, I don’t remember my mom’s specific response, but I know my mom well enough to know she probably turned around and laughed before putting her game face back on. “That’s just silly,” she said. “Give Denny your drum.”

“Not fair,” I’m sure I said, in the great comeback known to all four to ten year olds, when they know they’ve lost, and when they know that you know that they know they’ve lost.

Later on, we all remember the routine, the lying gets a little more sophisticated, and, sometimes, amazingly and unfortunately in retrospect, they worked:

“My grandma died.”

“Somebody spiked the punch.”

“I only drank a couple.”

“I’ll never do that again!”

They get more sophisticated, so much so that we even believe some of them ourselves:

“It’s not my fault I didn’t get hired; they (the great THEY) are a bunch of idiots.”

“I drink to relax, there’s a lot of stress at work.” (Stress- the other great straw man of the modern era.)

“I can stop anytime, don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

And on and on and on. Oh, what a tangled web we weave..you know the saying. But what heavy chain and rope-bound life that tangled web becomes! It’s crippling because it’s so heavy; it’s blinding as the lenses through which we see ourselves and the world become darker and darker; and it’s dangerous as we slide further and deeper into our own now misshapen egos and away from the Image of God. From blaming a mouse- the stupidest of small lies- to living a lie, the stupidest of human actions.

It is at this point in the Twelve Steps that most people need a helper- a sponsor, a spiritual guide, a mentor, a Mom- someone who will encourage us, for however long it takes, to look back at all the missteps that got us into trouble. And someone who will recognize when we relapse into the claptrap we have come to believe about ourselves. We need someone who knows that we know that they know. And who we will learn to trust as we have maybe never trusted anyone before.

There is an interesting passage in the book of Nehemiah, that describes that period of time when the exiles returned after several generations, fro Babylon, back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was physically in ruins, as were most of their lives. They had been cut off from the Temple, from their families, from their history, and there was a whole ruined city to be rebuilt. During the rebuilding, a copy of the book of Deuteronomy was discovered. It had been lost for centuries. Deuteronomy contains an explanation of the covenant established between Godand the Israelites through Moses, while the Israelites were still wandering in the desert.

Neh 8: 7-10

…the Levites [the priests], helped the people to understand the [newly found law], while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’

When confronted with the lost truths of their ancestors, the people were ashamed, saddened over what they had lost, and how far they had yet to go. Nehemiah and Ezra were encouragers, though. They were sponsors, if you will, spiritual guides, mentors, Moms to children who had to relearn how to live within new and life-giving possibilities. Just like the child who falls off the bike and cries the first couple times, but who is blessed with a mom or dad or says “get up, try again” even when mom and dad want to protect the child from ever being hurt, Nehemiah and Ezra encouraged their people. They took the long view: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The grief would, they promised, come to an end if the people kept their eyes on the prize.

People whose lives have become defined by their weaknesses, rather than their strengths- and that certainly is the case of all addicts- need encouragement. But they’ve got to be able to accept it, first- which begins in Step One- “Came to realize our lives had become unmanageable.” That realization, that admission, leads to a recognition for the need for outside help- God, Steps Two and Three- a power greater than oneself. But there’s a difference in the Twelve Steps at this point that separates the Steps from what is happening in many churches.

In the Twelve Steps, God has clothes on. God is sitting across the table from you with a cup of coffee. God has a phone number. This program recognizes that God speaks to us best, most eloquently, and most powerfully, in the language of other humans. We need someone who will listen to us who will help us keep our eyes on the prize, like Nehemiah. We need someone who knows when the lies of addiction, when the lies of our self-serving weaknesses begin to be spoken, like Mom. We need someone who has met God and knows God and will take the time to help us become properly, and messily, introduced.

One of the mistakes made during the Reformation of the Church in the 16^th century, I think, was getting rid of the confessional booth. The Reformers correctly said that faith was a matter between persons and God, and that humans did not need to rely on the intervention of a priest for their salvation.

But humans do need a community. And some of the Reformers “go it alone” attitudes led to isolation on the part of many believers. They end up screaming at God for help, feeling as though their prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, when in fact they are simply missing the language God speaks best in- the language of other humans. We need persons around us who are willing to listen, to help, to be there when we need them.

To admit to another person, a priest who will listen, a sponsor, a spiritual guide, to admit to them the exact nature of our wrongs, is the beginning of a loooong process. It doesn’t happen in an evening. It’s a process that will be marked by anger, sadness, and the remembrance of things we hoped we would never have to think about again. But one of the mistakes we make as humans is to think we have put bad stuff behind us when, in fact, all it takes is a reminder of that bad stuff for it to drop from the clouds of our clouds of our past and become a full-fledged tornado, wreaking havoc in our present day lives… unless we get help, unless we are prepared for the inevitable tornado warnings and know what to do.

If we don’t change who we were that led us night after night to the bottle, if we don’t come to a new understanding of the detours and roadblocks that sent us careening off the paths of God, if we don’t reframe our old memories, then we will end up even deeper in the drowning pool of our addictions.

As the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest said, “I was no longer drinking from the bottle, the bottle was drinking from me.”

We need humans who are already firmly holding the hand of God, to hold on tightly to our own. We need people who will keep our eyes on the prize, and off of ourselves. And that’s where the rest of us come in.

People need people. God created us to be in community, and we must be available to each other. We need to be the carriers of God’s message of love, acceptance, and help to others. It’s not easy. It’s would have been no solution at all for Nehemiah to have told his people, “Let’s all be sad forever and give into the heartbreak of our history.” It would have been no solution at all for Mom to have said, “We’ll just have to buy Denny a new tom-tom.”

Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 6, verse 8: So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

Working for the good of all means starting to work for the good of one. That is the highest honor given to us by God: to stand in for God when necessary, to be God to the best of our abilities when someone is reaching out for God. And Moms, as a rule, I have found, do that very well. As does the Mom of my children.

Like all of you, I am thankful for all the Moms, and all the Nehemiahs I’ve encountered along the way, because they helped me on my way. Let us go and do likewise.

Amen