Recently a topic came from as Bill Sees It, page 86, where the headline reads, “Room For Improvement.” Upon reflection on that reading, I came to an awareness that literally the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous provide the room for improvement. They are the rooms for improvement. Early on my sponsor said the rooms of AA were practice for life. Learning to get along with one another in one’s homegroup is great preparation for the “world out there.”
While considering the month of July and the 7th step, “Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings,” I began to contemplate the principle of humility, a place needing improvement in my world, if not a complete overhaul. Humility was equated with humiliation. The last thing I wanted.
As time passed, new perspective brought the insight every humiliating experience brought me to where I am today, sober 34 years. Every one of those struggles of the past as well as the meeting room of yesterday, brings me closer to God. Eventually, I’ve come to bless it all.
Step 7 is a request to God to remove my shortcomings. Shortcomings are not like a headache to be taken away with Tylenol. What needs taking away is spiritual in nature. A spiritual disease requires a spiritual remedy. A remedy found in meetings – connection. A remedy found in prayer and meditation – another connection this time to God. A remedy found in making phone calls – connection to my sponsor as well as to others. More connection. Alcoholism is the big disconnect. Recovery is reconnection.
Having the humility to ask for help and raise the 1000-pound phone. To get over my ego and the fear it causes about how someone on the other end will respond. I’m grateful to the rooms for improvement; here as well as the rooms of other faith communities or the classes. The rooms of teaching and learning. And as we teach, we learn. Then what we learn we teach others, particularly in the 12 Step.
Room For Improvement encourages the reader to “step up the practice of principles.” Somehow, I instinctively balk at practice. I want to be Mick Jagger and not take guitar lessons. I want whatever it is now and not particularly have to work for it – as is said in our literature, “we often work grudgingly and at half steam.” How true!
The reading encourages us by saying, “with practice we begin to like whatever it is we’re doing.” As with going to meetings. Lord how I hated the thought of going to meetings every day. With practice I began to look forward to meetings. I began to miss the faces of friends and colleagues. I wondered how they are when I didn’t see them. Practice they say makes perfect. I don’t know about that, but I do know that practice keeps me connected. In the practice of these principles I come to gain the 9th step promises, sometimes slowly, most times glacially. They will always materialize if we work for them. After these last words you can often hear me mutter, “So get to work! That’s the catch.”
We are perfectly imperfect. An imperfection that fits with others and their perfect imperfections. So in the end, we are a great mandala. A spiritual mandala graced by God in connection with one another. Subtract one grain of sand, and the entire mandala diminishes. Our imperfections are like the stones to build a fireplace. Each stone has its own strength, its own weakness, supported by others’ strengths and weaknesses. Together we build a formation unshakable because of our connection through God.