We Are Not God

They led me into Silkworth Unit at Hazelden Alcohol Treatment Center on Mother’s Day, fourteen years ago. There were 22 men between the ages of 20 and 65 sitting on couches and chairs in a big circle talking.

I asked one of my guides, “Which ones are the counselors?” He told me that counselors don’t work weekends. I thought he was kidding.

“Counselors aren’t the reason it works here,” he said. “We are. We help each other. It’s the group. That’s the way it works in here. That’s the way it works out there.”

I hadn’t flown from Texas to Minnesota to sit in a circle of failures, blabbing about what used to be. I wanted at least one bearded guy in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe, quoting Jung and handing out a reading list. I wanted to sober up from the neck up. But I would learn that I am a bundle of appetites.

I was wrong about the counselors. They were competent, but the best help I got was from my peers. They opened their lives to me and we laughed, cried, prayed, worked hard, sat in silence, accepted each other as we were and began to articulate our dreams for a new life. We listened to each other carefully, expected honesty, caught each other in lies, told the hard truth and held each other accountable in all things. We scrubbed toilets together on our knees, made a thousand pots of coffee, swept, moped, washed dishes, cleaned windows, emptied ashtrays and trash cans.

Deeper than anything, we learned that we are not God.

Most of us got sober in those 30 days. Dobb and I have stayed sober for the fourteen years.

I arrived at Hazelden three weeks after a one-car accident which nearly tore my right arm off. My roommates from Arkansas and New York helped me in and out of the shower, buttoned and unbuttoned me, carried my tray, helped me make my bed and do my daily work. Gladly.

The business of the church was being done, without the wine, on earth as it is.