SPIRITUALITY HAS TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF OUR
RELATIONSHIP
OR WHOMEVER IS MOST IMPORTANT IN OUR LIFE.
In an interview in 1986, Gordon Grimm, a Lutheran chaplain at the Hazelden rehabilitation center, for alcoholics in Minnesota, had this to say about A.A.:
If you know anything about A.A., you cannot evade its spirituality. Spirituality is much more about humanness than about Godliness. It is about getting involved with one another. So much of our religion takes us back up to God when our purpose on this earth is primarily to reach out to others. It is the only was we have to know God. My personal belief is that we have to get involved with each other. It's what's left out of so much organized religion. For me, a lot of organized religion is escapist--"Just me in the prayer closet." In that caring dimension, the church hasn't done as well as I think A.A. has.
Spirituality has to do with a deep contact with other human beings and with the appreciation that we participate in some issues that cannot be rationally explained. For me, spirituality is how I deal with problems, pain, difficulties in my life--I don't have to escape it; there is meaning and purpose in going through rejection and change. Throughout history--all you have to do is read about the religious wars--people have been "doing God's will" by killing somebody else. That's not what spirituality is about. To me, spirituality is the living out--the putting into practice--of our greatest responsibility. That responsibility is to love. At there best, the members of A.A. are trying to live up to that responsibility. They are also living out my definition of grace: being loved when we don't deserve it. I think all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps are spiritual. The first step is as spiritual as the last.
from: Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous by Nan Robertson page 145, paragraphs 2-4