Three Steps Forward

The Path to Greater Love and Truth

I have been doing a lot of “stress eating” these days. Some of this is a product of semi-retirement, as I am often working from home: the refrigerator is always “open for business” and very close by. I can’t blame my eating issues entirely on this change in routine. I have a much longer history of using overeating as one of my ways to deal with things that seem out of my control. It is clear that I have far less control than I want over many circumstances in my life, but at least I can stuff my face!

All my attempts to change this pattern and lifelong habit have had very limited success.

Whenever I feel stressed, I am looking for chocolate! If that was all, I guess I would not be worried, but it does not usually stop there.

As a result, I have become more open to looking at 12-step programs. In the past I dismissed these programs, thinking that I can manage just fine on my own, thank you. I assumed that they were based on a strict formula of steps and protocols and a lot of self-control (which has never really worked for me). When I finally decided to take a look, I found something really quite different.

The 12-step literature starts by speaking directly to our condition, calling us to recognize and accept that we need help from a Power greater than our own in order to move forward. This first step cannot be skipped or bypassed. Unfortunately, like so many others, I have to repeatedly reach a really low place before I am willing to even look at this as a possibility.

I was brought up in a very self-sufficient Quaker family. “There is that of God in everyone” was at the center of my Sunday school education. It carried a highly optimistic view of human nature and our own capacity to do good. Don’t get me wrong: I believe we do have that capacity within us. The problem is that we have other capacities as well. I have found that having the capacity to do good is simply not enough. I need help from a Source greater than my own.

Coming to recognize this need for help and asking for it is not simply my problem. It is a very real and universal human problem. Our reluctance to recognize our own limitations and ask God for help is a real stumbling block for many of us who want to find ways to change the negative patterns in our lives and move forward toward good.

I needed something more than a change in thinking, a new religion, or a magic formula. I needed to be saved from the hatred, anger, emptiness, and fear that engulfed me and led me into self-destructive patterns.

Step 1: We admitted that we were powerless (over our addiction)—that our lives had become unmanageable.

The following is from The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous:

In step one, we acknowledge this truth about ourselves: our current methods of managing have not been successful, and we need to find a new approach to life. Having acknowledged this truth, we are free to change and learn. . . . Honest appraisal of our experience has convinced us [my emphasis] that we can’t handle life through self-will alone. First we grasp this intellectually, and then we finally come to believe it in our hearts. When this happens, we have taken the first step and are ready to move forward in our program of recovery.

This plain and honest description of our true condition is not just for those of us struggling with specific addictions. It gives hope and points to a new way forward for all aspects of our lives. There is a way for us as human beings to find a reliable Power greater than our own that can help us to navigate life, find the courage and strength to change, and turn toward good.

Step 1 is really a very practical step to take and does not require “becoming religious” or taking on a whole new strict set of rules for me to try to follow to the best of my own ability. This is something very different. It is an essential act, motivated by a love and forgiveness greater than our own, and discovered somewhere deep within us, leading us toward a change of mind and heart.

I don’t remember a specific moment in my own life when I “hit bottom.” I just remember recognizing that I could not continue to try to navigate my life by my own resources (including religion), and I needed the help of a Power greater than my own. The resources that I had been taught—including all the beliefs and practices of Quakerism and even the teachings of Jesus—were not enough. I mean I truly wanted to follow them, but I couldn’t. I turned to many different religious practices to try to find the answer and the power to change but still eventually came up empty.

I studied the Bible and tried to embrace the help I found in some of the words there but often found the Bible difficult to access and apply to my life, so I looked for help from those who seemed to have a better understanding. As a result I was spoon fed a Protestant evangelical “salvation formula” that was essentially powerless to change me inside and instead focused on making sure that I had the right beliefs so I could get into heaven.

This was not the salvation I was looking for. It did not help me to change the negative patterns and despair of my present-day experiences. I needed something more than a change in thinking, a new religion, or a magic formula. I needed to be saved from the hatred, anger, emptiness, and fear that engulfed me and led me into self-destructive patterns. This was the salvation I needed.

It was at this point that I found the early Quaker writings so valuable. They were accounts of people just like me that had tried to “make religion work” themselves and found that instead, they had been “sold a package of damaged goods.”

One of my favorite letters that illustrates this is by Anthony Pearson, who was a justice of the peace and a known persecutor of the Quakers. After his “convincement,” he writes to Margaret Fell expressing his Step-1 condition. From “Letters of Early Friends” in volume 11 of the 1847 Friends Library:

Dear Friend, I have long professed to serve and worship the true God, and as I thought—above many sects—attained to a high-pitch in religion; But now, alas! I find my work will not abide the fire. My Notions were swelling vanities without power or life: What it was to love enemies, to bless them that curse, to render good for evil, to use the world as using it not, to lay down life for the Brethren, I never understood; . . . All my religion was but the hearing of the ear, The believing and talking of a God and Christ in heaven or a place at a distance I knew not where.

After talking about a visit to Swarthmore Hall and his convincement, Pearson continues:

I was so confounded all my knowledge and wisdom became folly, my mouth was stopped, my conscience convinced, and the secrets of my heart were made manifest, and the Lord was discovered to be near me whom I ignorantly worshiped [from afar].

This deep and utter despair led to a complete dependence on a Power greater than themselves. It was the starting point for early Friends and birthed the living foundation on which all their practices and testimonies were built. Their convincement was a clear recognition that they could not do this themselves and it led to a true waiting, a waiting without any answers of their own.

Our foundation today seems to be very different. After all, we are much more modern and have access to so many more resources to increase our knowledge and understanding (thank goodness). Believe me; I am not interested in returning to the past.

Over these many centuries, we have learned a great deal about human psychology, mental health, and medicine. With all of the latest technology, we are also able to see things in more global terms, and have found some ways to better care for our planet. Much of this has helped us to be better human beings. So what’s all this about?

When we take a closer and more honest look, it remains clear that in spite of all this progress, we are still struggling with the basics of respecting one another, caring for one another, and loving one another. Fear, hate, greed, and lust for power remain our greatest addictions, indicating that something is still totally “out of whack,” and we don’t seem to be able to fix it.

The problem with the loss of Step 1 is that this makes it even harder to get to Step 2. In fact, the 12-step literature says that you can’t get there from here, and boy, do we need Step 2!

Do we openly pray for that divine guidance in a way that bears testimony to a Power greater than our own? When this happens, it is so healing and helpful to others, both young and old.

Step 2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I needed to be restored to sanity. I was truly lost. A long-term relationship had fallen apart, and I had been totally dependent on this relationship to try to fill the void I felt within me. I tried to numb my despair and resentment with drinking and drugs, and then I turned to religion. This left me really vulnerable, and while away at college, I became caught in the web of a Fundamentalist Christian cult. When I came to see how I had been manipulated, I was angry. I felt deceived and exploited. My parents were concerned about me. I was clearly lost and in a dangerous place. They wanted to find a way to help me. They decided to ask Bill for help.

Bill Stafford was a member of Rockland (N.Y.) Meeting, but I really did not know him that well. Long after I had left Rockland Meeting and while I was still away at college, Bill had started speaking regularly in meeting for worship. He was speaking about his life-changing encounter with the Journal of George Fox. The Journal had helped him to see and experience Jesus in a new and transformative way. He shared how finding this living experience of Jesus as a Light and Inward Guide within him had sustained him and carried him through his addictions and great suffering! My parents really did not resonate with his message (it seemed much too Christ-centered for them), but they recognized the authenticity of it and thought it might help me.

Bill was a recovering alcoholic whose life had been devastated by family tragedies. He was clearly aware of his own powerlessness and had traveled a long road through bitterness, hate, and despair. He spoke from a place of genuine humility, forgiveness, and love that rose out of his suffering and inward transformation. When I went back to Rockland Meeting, what I heard coming from Bill was a message of Life coming from a clearly humble and broken man. It spoke deeply to me. It was very different from anything I had heard in meeting before.

At his invitation, we began meeting twice a month at his home to read the Journal of George Fox aloud together with a small group of Friends. This was a life-changing experience for me. The Journal painted a clear picture of a young man who was disillusioned and in despair. He had lost all confidence in his own ability to “figure it out.” All the systems of religion he had been taught had failed him, and he found no comfort in the advice he was receiving from those both in the church and out. There were no answers, no actions to make it right. He waited because he did not know what else to do (Step 1). In his despair, God spoke to him and began to gently lead him along (Step 2).

This was something different from anything I had heard about growing up in a Quaker meeting! I was essentially taught that it all depended on me! I had the power within me to change myself and the world. There was no mention of Jesus being alive and present within me as a Light to teach me or Jesus being alive and present among us as we gather together in His name; that he could teach us as a community.

In our meetings, we talk a lot about our hopes for a transformed world and all we need to do to bring it about, but do we point to the source of this transformation or give our young people the practical steps to find it? Do we speak openly and vulnerably in meeting about our own search and need for God’s guidance and help in our lives? Do we openly pray for that divine guidance in a way that bears testimony to a Power greater than our own? When this happens, it is so healing and helpful to others, both young and old.

There are signs of hope. I read this remarkable account of movement of the Spirit among us in a recent article, “Moving in the Right Direction,” by Matt Rosen in The Friend:

What I felt led to share was that, at a very low point in my life, I had been helped and rescued by the living Christ, who, in that dark place, I found able to “speak to my condition.” I had experienced Jesus softening my heart and leading me toward greater love and truth, and had come to see how Quaker meeting was less about our ideas or goodness, and more about finding the presence of a Guide when we’re at the end of our own resources.

Finally, recognizing that I needed help from a Power greater than my own, my only option was to wait for and listen for God’s voice and inward direction. As I waited, I began to see glimmers of hope and help.

Step 3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood Him.

In simple form, the first three steps are described in the Overeaters Anonymous literature as “I can’t; God can; I think I’ll let God.”

This is not a passive process where we just accept things as they are and simply hand our problems over to God to solve. It involves a willingness to let go and let God lead us in new ways and directions way beyond our own capacities.

In very real terms, I have experienced these steps of leaving my religion(s) and my own best thinking. I grappled with my own denial, continuing to try to fix my life myself. I have experienced feeling lost, abandoned, and powerless. Finally, recognizing that I needed help from a Power greater than my own, my only option was to wait for and listen for God’s voice and inward direction. As I waited (together with others), I began to see glimmers of hope and help.

When the disciples met together after the crucifixion of Jesus, they were heartbroken, lost, and afraid. They saw no clear way forward. As they waited together, they began to hear the murmurings of the miracle of the resurrection. To their great surprise, Jesus’s promise of always being with them to lead them and guide them by his Light and Spirit became a reality in ways that they had never really understood or expected.

Christ’s Living Presence, Spirit, and Light began to be known and experienced among them in such a powerful and transformative way that they could not contain it! He is alive!, they proclaimed, and can be known in the heart! For these early disciples and for early Friends, it was not their own power that they discovered. It was not a new philosophy about the inherent goodness of human beings but something far greater and far more dependable.

The 12-step literature points to a clear way forward for us as individuals and as Friends, but it involves a willingness to change and a commitment to take the difficult first steps. It involves an honest assessment about where we are and a turning away from our present course of trying to fix it all ourselves. It involves turning toward a different path, a path that clearly testifies to a Power greater than our own. It involves taking three essential steps forward. God, give us the grace, vision, and courage to do this together.