Spotlight on the 12 Steps, Steps 10-12
By Chaplain Dennis Craft, AB, MDiv, JD
Drug And Alcohol Treatment Centers:
The Town Drunk
I was privileged to be asked to write a little bit about the
10, 11, and 12th Steps. I’ve
been in ministry in various capacities for many years and in
that time have come back around to what I loved to do as a
boy because I was raised to do it. I tell stories. When I preach
now, I don’t get into theological abstractions; I just tell stories.
At the drug and alcohol treatment center when I share with patients, I tell stories.
I encourage patients to tell their stories. And so, today, as I contemplate what on
earth to write, I suppose I’ll begin, and probably end, by telling
a story.
I am a hillbilly, one, maybe two depending on your
standards, generations removed from Appalachian mountain
poverty. Mom married up and I never had to know what it
was to be poor. Mom’s people were largely from in and around
Eagle Rock, Virginia. Granddaddy’s house sat back up on a
hill in a hollow reached by a narrow, steep road. At Christmas
when we’d go to visit, usually there would be ice or snow and
we’d just have to park at the bottom and walk up as best we
could, arms full of presents. Even with chains on your tires,
you would be a flatlander fool to attempt it. Only Santa Claus
got up there without hoofing it. There wasn’t but two houses
down that road, my granddaddy’s and my great Uncle
Lawrence’s place.
My granddaddy was a quiet, austere man, they tell me. He
and most of his brothers played bluegrass music. Mom still
has granddaddy’s banjo that he hand carved himself, gracing
it with mother of pearl inlays. He was a God-fearing man and
a hard worker who attended the very respectable Eagle Rock
Baptist church on Sunday mornings but would sneak out to
the holy roller church across the railroad tracks on Sunday
nights. His younger brother, Lawrence, was not of the same
caliber in the town’s eyes. Lawrence was the black sheep of
the family. He didn’t play bluegrass, didn’t go to church, didn’t
keep his place and property up, and was known as “the town
drunk.”
Mom tells me that a few times as a girl she witnessed my
granddaddy just get so frustrated with his drunken and
belligerent younger brother that he’d beat him up right there
in the road in front of the house and then throw him down the
steep bank into the woods. Mom said the family was very
embarrassed about Lawrence. You see, Virginia mountain
culture back then dictated that since everybody but the
mortician and the banker was poor, folks had to lift themselves
up with wealth of a different sort. So folks took pride in keeping
what they had clean and in decent running order. They took
pride in going to church and being good citizens, in raising
good families whose children might “do better.” In that sort of
environment, there was much hostility toward Lawrence. My
granddaddy probably thought what everybody thought, “Why
doesn’t Lawrence just repent of his sins and live like God intends
him to?”
I never got to know my granddaddy. Honest to goodness,
my earliest memory of anything is of his brass grave marker
being delivered to our house. I remember it sitting on the
floor just inside the front door. Mom said I was only two when
that happened. He was killed by a drunk driver. Granddaddy’s
death blighted my childhood. My grandmother locked herself
up in that remote house high on the hill and back in the woods
and became a recluse. Whenever the family would get together
up there, a lot of the talk would be on death and tragedy. My
Mom’s alcoholism got worse as she fell into a lifelong depression
over the loss of her dear father.
The young man who accidentally killed my grandfather was
just sixteen years old. But my family spoke his name like it
was Lee Harvey Oswald. He was coming home from a night of
drinking as my grandfather was headed out for work at the
paper mill. On those narrow, curving mountain roads, there’s
just nowhere to go if someone is in your lane. You can plunge
through the guardrail into the ether, crash into the rock wall of
the mountain, or take your chances hitting a vehicle head on.
That’s what happened to granddaddy. The young man emerged
from the wreck uninjured. My granddaddy was crushed by his
steering wheel.
A great good that came out of that tragedy was that
Lawrence swore off alcohol. He was so grieved at losing his
older brother, whom he greatly loved and admired, to the
“demon liquor” that he just stopped drinking. He straightened
up his life and started doing better. Then he put his Sunday
best on and went down to the very respectable Eagle Rock
Baptist Church. During the invitation, he went forward to
give his life to Christ and to request church membership. The
pastor took him aside after the service and told Lawrence that
he couldn’t be baptized and accepted into the church. He
was, after all, still known as the “town drunk.” He was not
respectable and probably never would be in view of all that he
had done that folks would never forget. So Lawrence left,
broken-hearted. That night, though, he went across the railroad
tracks to the holy roller church. They accepted him.
According to family tradition, Lawrence made good on his
promise never to drink again. They didn’t know about the
Twelve Steps back up in those hills in those days. I suppose he
just depended on God and white knuckled it the rest of his
life, motivated by the memory of his brother. Of course, it is
far better to depend on one’s Higher Power in the context of
the recovery community while continually working the Twelve
Step program. But Lawrence’s story is still instructive for Steps
10, 11, and 12 in many ways.
Concerning Step 10, we need to be able to have the humility,
on an ongoing basis, to do a searching personal inventory and
admit where we are wrong. Lawrence did this. He stuck up his
hand for the rest of his life and admitted his character defects
and worked on improving them. That’s more than could be said
for the very respectable religious folks at the main church in
town. Their whole approach to God and life was to avoid any
admission of wrong, to keep up apearances. Consequently, their
spirituality degenerated into what can only be quite charitable
called a vulgar and unhealthy legalism. In the name of holiness
they threw out grace and forgiveness. Such toxic religion only
feeds a drug and alcohol addiction. Perhaps it was a tender mercy of God that
Lawrence experienced rejection by them. Acceptance would have
been worse.
Focusing on the good folks at the Eagle Rock Baptist Church
who strained at gnats and swallowed camels, we see why healthy
spirituality requires that we not become stagnated in our spiritual
lives. We must continually press in to improve our conscious
contact with God, always understanding that the revelations we
receive are entirely personal. Though we certainly should share
our convictions and discoveries with others, it should always be
in a spirit of tolerance and sensible understanding that another’s
journey with God is entirely their own, not ours. If we do not
continue to grow spiritually, we will all too easily lapse into selfsufficient,
self-satisfied pride and become blind to the needs of
others. We will be devoid of the power of God. Having lost
wonder and mystery, we soon lose charity.
As I tell patients at the treatment center in lecture over and again, there is no shallow
end of the pool of spirituality. Spirituality, though it is founded
on free grace, does not come cheap. Its cost is a lifetime of daily
dedication. Faith, to put it plainly, takes work.
Finally, if we continue to work the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Steps, incidents that they
are of purposeful grace (my great Uncle Lawrence probably didn’t
have available,) then we will achieve the ongoing spiritual
awakening that is so necessary to recovery. What is that
awakening? Many could offer a better and more cogent answer
than I, but I would refer back to Lawrence’s story. Spiritual
awakening is a daily rebirth into new life. Perhaps this is what
Jesus really meant when he said, “You must be born again.”
Every day, we open our lives and will to the spiritual dimension
of life in all of its mystery and madness. Somehow by grace, we
maintain serenity throughout and grow in wisdom. While the
rest of my family chose darkness and despair over my
granddaddy’s death, his brother Lawrence, the “town drunk”
and the black sheep of the family chose life. He looked inward,
not outward. He didn’t blame anyone or hate them. And when
he made his peace with God and quit drinking, he reached out
to religion. Given the bum’s rush by respectable religion, he
found hope, love, and community among the outcasts.
Sounds like where I want to be. By God’s grace, let us take
our message of hope to alcoholics and addicts and practice our
principles not as dead dogma, but as living, breathing personal
principles built upon honesty and humility in all of our affairs.
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