THE SPIRITUALITY OF IMPERFECTION

"More than most people, I think, alcoholics want to know who they are, what this life is about, whether they have a divine origin and an appointed destiny, and whether there is a system of cosmic justice and love."

Bill W
As Bill Sees It: The A.A. Way of Life, p 323

Ancient thought about the paradox of being human was transported into twentieth century life by the most unlikely group imaginable: a handful of "hopeless" drunks. The founding members of Alcoholics Anonymous did not intentionally resurrect the spirituality of imperfection, nor were many of them even aware that they had tapped ancient wisdom in their search for a new way of life. And so the story of how they achieved this becomes all the more fascinating.
The historical context is important. In the mid-1930s, alcoholism was viewed by medical practitioners as a "hopeless" disease; the only cure medicine suggested was a "moral psychology" capable of inducing "an entire psychic change" of sufficient magnitude that it could overcome the "compulsion" to drink. The earliest members of A.A. knew about "hopeless" from their own experience of the disease and their previous efforts at recovery. Drawing on these experiences, as well as on their origins in the Oxford Group and on the philosophies of William James and Carl Jung, they set out to fashion a way of life that would allow them to live with their "hopeless disease," with their basic imperfection.
In this process, they re-discovered four insights that reflected the teachings of spiritual thinkers from all ages and all traditions. What they discovered were not commandments – Thou Shalts or Thou Shalt Nots – nor even suggestions, as A.A.'s Twelve Steps are sometimes presented. They found instead what might be thought of as beacons or signal lights that guide those who seek a spirituality that fits their imperfect condition, safeguarding them from the rocks, shoals, and other avoidable traps that could abort or impede their journey.
Although we can describe these guiding insights as "discoveries made for the modern age by the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous," these discoveries cannot be made for us, or for anyone else, by someone else. Nor are they ever found once and for all. For these are truths that must be rediscovered, sometimes on a daily basis, by each person interested in spirituality. Because others have gone before, the way is in some sense easier; yet it remains true that spirituality, like daily bread, comes "one day at a time." Each day requires constant rediscovery and continually new insight into what it means to be human, what it means to exist as a fully human being.
What were these "discoveries of Alcoholics Anonymous"? Four such insights can be discerned -- insights that, although they did not and do not flow in any straight-line fashion, nevertheless do reveal a pattern, a kind of order, in how they tend to be discovered . . . or at least such a pattern emerges from the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The first discovery made by those earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous was that spirituality is essential but different: essential to their recovery of human be-ing, but different from what anyone imagines it to be on first hearing that statement.
Second came the discovery that there exists a vast difference between magic and miracle, between magic and mystery -- and that spirituality involves not magic's manipulation , but the wonder inherent in mystery and miracle.
The third discovery of those earliest members was that spirituality is essentially open-ended; unable to be "grasped" or "possessed," it is more at home with questions than with answers.
Fourthly, and finally, they discovered that any true spirituality must pervade every aspect of one's existence -- that spirituality is a reality that touches everything in one's life, or it touches nothing of one's life.

Each of these discoveries comes only by experience. One "discovers" not by being told, but by doing; the spirituality of imperfection is necessarily pragmatic. And so those earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous made their discoveries by putting them into practice -- trying them on and trying them out, in the awareness that we learn first, and most, from our own successes and failures, our own triumphs and tragedies, our own story. The first A.A.s borrowed amply and widely for their Twelve Steps, but they tested everything against their own experience. "The spiritual life is not a theory," their Big Book states. "We have to live it."

Quoted in its entirety from The Spirituality of Imperfection, by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, pp 101-103; with a very minor change to the book title from which Bill W's quote is taken.