Over 50% of our community is comprised of men and women in early recovery. Most of them were raised by family who took them to church, enforced scripture memory, embedded in their very souls a belief in God. And they struggle with substance use disorder, co-occurring disorders, and trauma. Sure, there are some who also wrestle with believing in a Higher Power. They ask hard questions like, "Where was God when....?" And the "whens" are awful - so I respect the questioning. But most have faith. This faith is filled with lots of expectations. They will recite the scriptures about faith and moving ..read more

Last week I tried to talk about surrender (the 3rd principle of the 12 steps) in a way that was concrete. I did this to help myself out, to be honest, because I struggle with abstract concepts. The best I can do, surely someone out there has said this “better,” is to think of surrender as the process of stopping fighting things which don’t serve us well. Perhaps we could think of surrendering as having a few components: the ability to recognize what isn’t serving us well and then the strength to find ways to stop engaging in whatever that thing is. One thing you could do in response to this l ..read more

We’re in a series on the principles contained within the 12 steps of AA. The third principle is surrender. This one is a bit abstract for me, I’ll confess, and sometimes I have to find a “back door” way of thinking about it in order to figure out how I would practice it. Other words that come up when we talk about surrender are things like powerlessness, letting go, even something like giving up. When I think about these ideas, and I try to find a way to be really concrete, what comes up for me is something like this: There’s a sense in which surrender means refusing to continue fighting for s ..read more

We’ve gotten confused about what hope is. We talked about this last week, a bit. We talked about false optimism, specifically. That’s one mistake we make- thinking that hope is somehow similar to optimism. Another mistake we make is believing that hope makes us feel better…or that hope is what comes to us once we start to feel better. But, biblically, there are so many examples of hope being about what happens before someone truly believes or trust that the future might be brighter than the present. Here’s an example. May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you ..read more

The last time I was at the beach I stood at the edge of the water looking at the horizon…as one does. Rather than simply starting- a question occurred to me for the first time in my life and, frankly, I was embarrassed I’d never thought of it before. “How far away is the horizon?” What I was wondering was- how far can I actually see right now? It feels like you’re seeing all the way to the end of the earth. It’s not hard to imagine why primitive people once thought the earth was flat…and why some oddballs still do (watch out or we’ll start talking about how Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landi ..read more

At Northstar Community, Scott has begun a new series on the 12 principles of AA, as suggested by one of our faithful Northstarians, Fred. Fred has over 2000 days clean and sober, so when Fred makes a suggestion, the community listens to him. Although just about everyone has heard of the 12-steps and the meetings associated with mutual aid societies like AA, NA and the like (check out Finding Nemo if you are unfamiliar), I'm not sure everyone knows about the 12-principles. The 12 principles are primarily the work of the founders of AA; early on the group had six principles. By 1939 with the pub ..read more

Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. 17 So I’m telling you this, and I insist on it in the Lord: you shouldn’t live your life like the Gentiles anymore. They base their lives on pointless thinking, 18 and they are in the dark in their reasoning. They are disconnected from God’s life because of their ignorance and their closed hearts. 19 They are people who lack all sense of right and wrong, and who have turned themselves over to doing whatever feels good and to pr ..read more

Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. When it comes to Step 12, the clearest paths for conversation are: having a spiritual awakening, carrying this message to others, and practicing these principles in all of our affairs. Today we’re going to focus on the first two of those (more or less).  I’ll give you the gist of this entire blog in a sentence: a spiritual awakening pulls us towards love of others.  It shouldn’t shock you that I’m saying this, it’s a t ..read more

Step 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Last week we talked about the fact that there are multiple possible pathways available to us to get closer to God (i.e., improve conscious contact). The one I didn’t spend much time on, because I knew I’d come back to it this week, is the fact that we can improve conscious contact with God through our relationships with other humans. Now, this is not necessarily part of step 11. I’m just using step 11 as ..read more

Step 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Last week we talked about the importance of viewing recovery as a process without end. We commit to a process that we never stop committing to. It’s an ongoing refining process. Step 11 hints at something similar: we try to inch closer and closer to contact with our higher power (God of our understanding, what have you). Specifically we’re told that improving conscious contact is the product of prayer an ..read more