Not for Ourselves Alone 

What was given to you freely, you must give away freely. —Matthew 10:8 

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.   
—Step 12 of the Twelve Steps 

Richard emphasizes how inner transformation needs to extend outward to the world: 

After teaching the gospel for over fifty years, trying to build communities, and attempting to raise up elders and leaders, I’m convinced that one of my major failures was that I didn’t ask more of people from the very beginning. If they didn’t turn outward early, they tended to never do so. Their dominant concerns became personal self-development, spiritual consumerism, church as “more attendance” at things, or, to use a common phrase among Christians, “deepening my relationship with Jesus.” Bill W. seemed to recognize this danger early on. Until people’s basic egocentricity is radically exposed and foundationally redirected, much religion becomes occupied with rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, moving alongside other isolated passengers while the whole ship sinks.  

Step 12 found a way to expose and transform that perpetual adolescence by telling us early on that we must serve others. Supporting others in their healing is not an option, not something we might eventually be “called” to after thirty-five religious retreats and fifty years of church services. It isn’t something we do when we finally get our act together. No; we don’t truly comprehend any spiritual thing until we give it away. Spiritual gifts increase only by “using” them.  

The author of the Letter of James always insists on orthopraxy instead of mere verbal orthodoxy: “To listen to the word and not obey it is like looking at your own features in a mirror, and then, after a quick look, going off and immediately forgetting what you look like” (1:23–24). For James, to “actively put it into practice is to be happy in all that one does” (1:25) and “if good works do not accompany faith, it is quite dead” (2:17). James is a unique apostle of the Twelve Step behavioral approach. [1]  

James Finley warns against the temptation to prioritize our own healing at the expense of others: 

There’s a certain temptation [as you go down the spiritual path] to say, “I’m out of here. I know it’s a troubled world, but I’m a mystic in the making. Don’t disturb me. See, I’m out of here.” There’s a temptation to think you’re finding your way into a realm of divinity or inner peace [or healing], removed from the brokenness and sadness of this world, which is really then to betray the path. Thomas Merton once said to me in the cloistered monastery, “We did not come here to breathe the rarified air beyond the suffering of this world. We came here to carry the suffering of the whole world in our heart. Otherwise, there’s no validity in living in a place like this.” What goes around comes around and it circles back around in the practice with ourselves first. [2] 

References:  
[1] Selected from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 10th anniv. ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 103–104, 105. 

[2] Adapted from James Finley, Exploring the Contemplative Dimensions of Healing Trauma (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation). Available as a free MP3 audio download. These talks were given in 2011. 

Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, bubble detail (detail), 2020, photo, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. Air is released as bubbles when water hits water. Where do we find oxygen when we’re underwater? 

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