Unity, Recovery, Service. Oh My

 

I was recently talking to a friend about handguns. Yes, I love them. I love to shoot at paper targets at the range. I love to shoot little shapes into the targets, like the heart shape I shot into the target on Valentine’s Day. I was telling him my goal is to do a variety of cool shapes and turn them into greeting cards. At this, he pointed at his necklace- the AA triangle- Unity, Recovery, Service. It is situated inside a circle, which represents wholeness and completeness. I love it!  One day I will attempt to shoot the  triangle with the circle inside, and it’ll be bad ass, too. But in the meantime, it got me to thinking.
This symbol is ancient. AA didn’t just make that up, and like all things relating to AA, there was a deliberateness in choosing this symbol. Since alcoholism and addiction is a threefold disease- an allergy of the body, an obsession of the mind, and malady of the spirit- it takes the three sides of the triangle to address it, and when all of those things are put into action, one experiences the circle- wholeness, completeness. Its a beautiful thing. A circle has always represented wholeness, thus the ring we wear when we are united in marriage with another.

When I was active in my disease, I wouldn’t have known what you meant by wholeness and completeness. You would have presented it to me as a beautiful thing to aspire to, and I would have heard Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice. It sounded boring to me. Serenity sounded blah. Peace sound flat. I didn’t want it. Until I hit my actual bottom, and I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, I wasn’t interested. I was the horse, standing by the water, not thirsty enough to drink it. The relevance of that symbol would have bypassed me completely. But now that this is my way of life, that symbol is precious to me.

The more sober I am, the more I realize how important it is to stay very present to all three.  You can do the unity part of it and attend meetings and not be of service to others, and it doesn’t work to create wholeness. You can do any one of the three but without the others the pyramid will fall apart.  Recovery without the other two is not complete. I have been witnessing recently the phenomenon of the one sided triangle- people doing the ‘recovery’ bit of it, and not fellowshipping or being of service. These people end up loaded, they are the types to go to meetings upon meetings, then one day drive straight from a meeting to a liquor store. They do just enough to feel like they are doing the recovery thing, but do not push themselves into the parts where real effort is required, humility and sacrifice, which are the very foundation of a life of purpose.

I love to see people new in recovery open up to the idea of community. I love to see them wide eyed at the willingness of others to give them rides, or take their phone calls at 2am. I love to see it because its a beautiful thing to witness, and because it is teaching them what real recovery looks like. There is such amazing potential in recovery; I would go so far as to call it a spiritual revolution, a cultural phenomenon, a state of grace. Thank God it exists, waiting for the wounded to wander in with a back full of arrows. All are welcome. It is a beautiful world.