step one
the truth about power
dave brisbin | 01.11.09
Realizing that no one gets out of childhood unscathed, that we are all recovering from something, we begin a series through the Twelve Steps of AA as an expression of our need to take concrete steps toward mental, emotional, and spiritual wholeness. The Twelve Steps were created out of the teachings of Jesus, and opening them up to a general audience and linking them back to the New Testament opens a new understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this first step, each of us must confront our need for power and control--to identify what strategies/addictions we have put in place to give us a sense of control, and to begin to admit that any such power we think we have is illusion. No one gives up power willingly, but we can give up our illusions once we realize the only power we really have is to choose to align ourselves with the true power God freely offers us.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:30, size: 5.9 mb


step two
a friendly universe
dave brisbin | 01.18.09
Continuing our series through the 12 Steps as a process of spiritual recovery, we come to the second step. After coming to grips with our powerlessness over the compulsive behavior that keeps our lives in chaos in Step One, in Step Two we come to believe in a power greater than ourselves that can restore us. What does it really mean to say we believe in God? Is what we believe really true or just what we believe? And if what we believe is not changing anything about our lives and choices, then how is it true--or how is it that we really believe. Unexplored belief is fragile, second hand, and ultimately impotent. If we've never doubted God's existence, then we haven't taken our journey seriously enough. To really explore our beliefs is to come into direct contact with God, which not only makes our belief real, but shows us that this God not only exists but cares about us and will restore us...that at its core, the universe around us is friendly.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:14, size: 7 mb


step three
serial surrender
dave brisbin | 01.25.09
At Step Three, turning our will and lives over to the care of God, we begin to see the pattern of recovery. That recovery is much more than just giving up compulsive behavior. We can't live our lives as a negative--thou shalt not--simply giving up or running from the things we don't want. To really live, at some point we have to turn and embrace the positive things that we do want. There is a difference between giving up and surrender. Giving up may be the end of resistance, but surrender is the beginning of submission, and submission is where living life as an embrace becomes possible. True surrender, really turning our will and lives over to God's care doesn't happen all at once, it's a process. When we follow the steps--all of them--we experience a serial surrender in which little by little and more and more we become the little children of Kingdom: open and vulnerable but also resilient and content.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:29, size: 7.1 mb


step four
leaving the ghetto
dave brisbin | 02.01.09
Covering the 4th Step of AA from the perspective of general recovery and spiritual growth took us to some unexpected places: the Warsaw Ghetto and the mind of C.S. Lewis during wartime Britain. Much more than just listing our defects of character in a moral inventory of ourselves, the 4th Step involves another huge piece of the serial surrender of our spiritual journeys: the surrender of our victimhood. Although many if not most of our defects are the result of woundings and betrayals at the hands of others, to hang on to our status as victims is to excuse ourselves from both the responsibility and possibility of change. Even in the face of our misery, victimhood can be a warm blanket of absolution from the hard work of transformation. Taking examples from The writings of Rabbi Shapira and C.S. Lewis, we can begin to see how even as victims of circumstance, we can choose another way--a way that includes beauty, purpose, meaning, and the presence of God in every moment.
audio [mp3] | duration: 42:51, size: 7.5 mb


step five
identity gift
dave brisbin | 02.08.09
The 5th Step of AA has us admitting to ourselves, God, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Confession? Is all this really necessary? Did Jesus have to go through the indignity of a process of purging the compulsive behavior that all of us as humans endure? The evidence from Scripture may be surprising, but shouldn't be... Jesus is the consummate model and wayshower for us, and his time in the wilderness corresponds nicely to our own. How can we ever really understand the true nature of forgiveness until we test the water with the admission of all we believe disqualifies us from the very forgiveness we seek? If another human being can accept us in our weakness, how much more can and will God? Perhaps this hardest, most humbling step can be seen as the fulcrum of the 12 Steps--the point at which the whole process starts to become real.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:48, size: 5.9 mb


step six
entirely ready
dave brisbin | 02.15.09
The 6th Step of AA is to become entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character. But if the 7th Step is to humbly ask God to remove these defects, doesn't that make the 6th Step sort of redundant? Or maybe we've missed what it really means to be entirely ready. When looked at honestly, becoming entirely ready is a lifelong process, because what are we really being asked to be ready to do is not just stop "bad" behavior--we can do that on our own. But even though certain behaviors may cease, the defects that caused those behaviors in the first place remain until we are entirely ready to look at life from a different point of view--God's point of view. Through Jesus, God is telling us that he is much more childlike than we are entirely ready to entertain; that we are his playmates in life, if we'll just surrender everything we're clinging to and come join the dance. Our destructive behaviors are manifestations of our defects and our defects are manifestations of the basic fear that infects all of us as human beings--until we have become entirely ready to surrender to a love that is perfectly complete and can take the fear out of our fear.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:48, size: 5.9 mb


step seven
humbly asking
dave brisbin | 02.22.09
The 7th step of AA: "Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings." What shortcomings? The ones we identified in Step 4, admitted to God and another human in Step 5, and became entirely ready to have God remove in Step 6. But humanly, as we look at this step and see its two component parts, the part we naturally focus on is the "God removing" part--the part that allows us to be passive recipients of God's action. But this is neither the focus of Step 7 nor the focus of Jesus' leading us into Kingdom. Far from a passive waiting for God to act, we're being shown that the "humbly asking"part is the key--an active step toward a partnership with God that removes our inability to see the truth that makes us free. Humility is not humiliation which seeks to lower our position, nor is it aggrandizement, which seeks to raise it. True humility is simply seeing ourselves and our circumstances and our God as they really are--seeing the relationships between them and us as they are. Humbly asking from such a place of truth is a definition of answered prayer.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:29, size: 7.1 mb


step eight
making shalom
dave brisbin | 03.01.09
The Eighth Step of AA states that we "made a list of all the persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all." Like raindrops falling on the glass-like surface of a pool or pond, the ripples from each drop extend, intersect, and overlap each other until the entire surface is simply vibrating with all that energy. Each choice we make, each behavior we act out, creates ripples that affect those nearest us. We live in each other's blast zones--or comfort zones, if that is what we emanate. In this step, the purpose is not really the amends--restitution, or even reconciliation...such things may be outside our control or even the realm of possibility. What this step is really asking us to do is to recognize the effect of ourselves on those around us and to begin the process of restoration. To restore ourselves to what God intended us to be is prerequisite to restoring relationships broken in the past. And even if those can't be restored, we are restored, forgiven, liberated from their effects and can begin building strong relationships right herenow.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:38, size: 6 mb


step nine
victims and perpetrators
dave brisbin | 03.08.09
The Ninth Step of AA states that we "made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others." There is a relationship, a bond between victims and perpetrators that we often don't acknowledge. It's a dysfunctional bond, but it exists nonetheless. And the deeper the hurt and trauma of the betraying act, the deeper the bond between them. The 9th Step is not really about making amends--it's not about restitution or even reconciliation, as those may be completely out of our control. When Jesus asks the infirm man in John 5 if he "wishes to be healed," he is asking all of us at the same time: right now, at this point in our lives, is it our deepest purpose and desire to be healed, whole, complete, forgiven, delivered, saved? The gift of making amends is to remove as many of the roadblocks to healing as possible--to take the force out of a victim's anger, bitterness, hurt, and resentment. And in the process of trying to help a victim heal, the perpetrator begins to heal as well, so that when Jesus asks that crucial question, "Do you wish to be healed?" Both victim and perpetrator can shout an unequivocal "Yes!"
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:13, size: 6.8 mb


step ten
again for the first time
dave brisbin | 03.15.09
The Tenth Step of AA states that we "continued to make personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it." This step is unique among the 12 Steps in that is contains no new information and may at first glance look like a maintenance step, but in actuality, it is anything but. The first 9 steps and our spiritual journeys so far have both put new tools in our hands and have stoked the desire to take real action in restoring damaged relationships. We now have the capability of seeing ourselves, our lives, and our relationships--both physical and spiritual--again as if for the first time. It's this way of living life--of taking fresh, ongoing inventory; of all things being made continually new, fresh, recreated, restored; of seeing again with new eyes and living with meaning and purpose--that is Kingdom, transformation, being born again--it's salvation itself as Jesus and his first followers understood that term--not eventual admission to heaven, but the freedom to live life again for the first time here and now.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:10, size: 7 mb


step eleven
present to Presence
dave brisbin | 03.22.09
The Eleventh Step of AA states that we "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out." A friend tells me that his father went to his death never having said the words "Good job, son." And now he's asking me, "What have I got to do to be approved by God?" I know that he's gotten his two fathers confused, but knowing our Father in heaven is much trickier than knowing our earthly fathers because the rules of heaven's love are unlike anything we experience here on earth. Knowing God, knowing what that even means is a function of the prayer and meditation that can improve our conscious contact--but what does prayer and meditation mean? Shedding our popular concepts and misconceptions, stripping prayer down to its most basic components, learning to speak God's native language, and seamlessly integrating all this into our daily moments is the difference between knowing about God and really knowing him.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:47, size: 6.8 mb


step twelve
full ciricle
dave brisbin | 03.29.09
The Twelfth Step of AA states that "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." And so at this last step, we come full circle--from accepting our powerlessness and seeking God's help to having the spiritual awakening that allows us to carry the message to others. But what is this message? Is it a verbal message? The details of the process of our journey? To really understand what a spiritual awakening is, to know if we've had one or are having one, to be aware of this awakening in our lives, is to begin to answer the question of the message we carry. Because when we begin to understand that we ourselves are the message--that the message is not spoken but lived--we begin to really carry that message to others and to practice that message in all our affairs...not as an end product but as a new beginning toward greater awakening that always brings us back full circle.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:11, size: 6.5 mb