Breathing Under Water : Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

what God forgives, they dare not hold against themselves or one another.

we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.

Yet, religion’s main job is to reconnect us (re-ligio) to the Whole, to ourselves, and to one another—and thus heal us.

For some reason, to ask “for your daily bread” is to know that it is being given.

We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.

Wisely, Step 10 does not emphasize a moral inventory, which becomes too self-absorbed and self-critical, but it speaks of a “personal inventory.” In other words, just watch yourself objectively, calmly, and compassionately.

A daily and chosen “attitude of gratitude” will keep your hands open to expect that life, allow that life, and receive life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction—but never to think you deserve it. Those who live with such open and humble hands receive life’s “gifts, full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into their lap” (Luke

am convinced that some people are driven to addictions to quiet their constant inner critic;

Addiction is a modern name and honest description for what the biblical tradition called “sin,” and medieval Christians called “passions” or “attachments.”