12 Steps

Perhaps America needs to do the 12 steps

I have worked with people who have addictions

I have struggled with my own

And what I see now, more clearly than ever

Although I have long known it to be true,

Is that Americans are addicted to power

More specifically they are addicted to the idea that those how have power are more

Valuable

Righteous

Good

Impressive

(Pick your own word)

Than those that don’t

And that if you have power it is a virtue to use that power

To get what you want

And if you have power you are free to use it

Even abusively

No matter what the cost might be to others

It doesn’t matter what happens to other people

Other nations

Even the earth itself

As long as we feel safe, and get richer.

This addiction is powerful

Destructive

And creates fear and chaos

It generates its own “wind”

We need, I think, to do the 12 steps.

    We need to admit that we are powerless over our fear, and our lust for power and wealth, and admit that our “life” as a nation has become unmanageable.

   We need to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.  We need to reconnect with the Sacred and re-find our souls.  That will not happen through the right wing church which is an enabler, if not a co-addict.

    We must make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God, and commit to following the principles laid out in teaching such as the Sermon on the Mount

    We need to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  We need to admit when we are wrong.  Hold ourselves accountable for the damage we have created within our nation, and across the globe.  Admit we have ignored the poor, and oppressed those who are not “like” us.

    We have to admit to God, to ourselves and to another human beings the exact nature of our wrongs.

    We have to ask God to remove all these defects of character.  We can’t do this (again) if we are willing to accept defects of character (in our leaders and in ourselves) due to our fear, lust for power, and greed.

    We must find humility.  We cannot stand and say to the world, “We are the best, the smartest.  We have the best plans…”  Because we don’t (which is why our health outcomes place us at 37^th) and we have to let God not only humble us but change us.

    We have to see whom we have harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

    We need to make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.  We need to make Amends to blacks, Muslims, Native Americans, members of LGBTQI community, the elderly, the poor, the Palestinians (ah the list is long).

    Continued to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admitted it.

    Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God, praying only that we might know God, and God’s way.  And that we might have the wisdom and spiritual fortitude to live according to that way.

    Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we must seek to carry this message to the world and to practice these principles in all our affairs.