Al-Anon's Tradition 11, Jesus, and me

The idea came to me during the meeting on Wednesday, talking about Tradition 11, that the 12-Step Programme of Al-Anon is as "upside-down" and as counter-intuitive as the message of Jesus vis a vis the conduct of life. 

For example, in Tradition 11 - "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films and TV. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all AA members."

Thinking about that "attraction rather than promotion" - in today's world we have the concept of "targeted marketing," based on this, that, or the other "demographic," usually based on age and what people are doing at that particular age. This would be aggressive promotion of a product.

But the message of both Jesus and of Al-Anon is to live in such a way that one's life draws attention to the spiritual basis of a way of life (the "product"). Thus, for Jesus and for Al-Anon, the "demographic" includes everyone, everyone, irrespective of age, gender, sexual identity, race, colour, creed, or whatever else we may use to separate one portion of a population from another. 

Our whole world-view is based on this dualistic way of thinking - this group compared to that group, for example. 

But both Jesus and Al-Anon present a more wholistic way of looking at the world. And even in the emphasis on anonymity - it is not just a matter of "protecting" individuals who may otherwise be judged or stigmatised by a label such as "alcoholic," "drug addict," or some other such epithet. The message and the programme itself is about God - Source, Spirit, Higher Power, etc., etc., etc. It is not about the individual per se. The individual may be the channel for the message, but the individual is not the message. 

Hang on - I seem to have hit a small snag here!

Let me think about this for a moment! 

The feminism of the 1970s argued (amongst other things) that "the personal is political," and was it Alvin Tofler who wrote about "the medium is the message," or was that Kenneth Galbraith or someone entirely different again? Actually, it was Marshall McLuhan.

The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. 

McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message]

This would seem to contradict what I am trying to say. 

However, maybe not - if the content itself is taken to be just another medium! 

Reading further - 

For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action". Taking the movie as an example, he argued that the way this medium played with conceptions of speed and time, transformed "the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure." Therefore the message of the movie medium is this transition from "lineal connections" to "configurations".

 Extending the argument for understanding the medium as the message itself, he proposed that the "content of any medium is always another medium" - thus, the content of writing is speech, print is that of writing and print itself is the content of the telegraph.

McLuhan understood "medium" in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of "the medium is the message". A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during night time that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."

Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself - the content - and more about the change in public attitude towards crime that the newscast engenders by the fact that such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner.

 Hence in Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. As society's values, norms and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium. These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions that we are not aware of.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message]

So, then - Jesus himself is the message of the Gospel, the Twelve-Steps are the message of the Twelve-Step programme. For me to be a channel for that message, I must first have absorbed the message so that it has become so much a part of my self that, in fact, my "self" is not nearly as important as the original "message" and yet is intrinsic to it.

The two become one. The self becomes the message. The self is the message! I am the message which I convey! 

The sort of non-dualism, perhaps, suggested by what I know of mysticism from Richard Rohr and others. 

And, so, also - the importance of the spiritual principal of anonymity!

A "Whole-Body" Thing

Friday, 16 November 2012, 7.21am. Show Day 2012 - and a “Royal” Show Day, with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall in attendance. 

My surgery is done - almost a week ago, and I feel I am recovering well. 

Last night, it occurred to me that I should come to these pages again, to restore that conscious contact with God that has, at least in some part, been missing, since all this breast cancer emergency took hold. Because I was starting to wonder about the purpose of all this - why am I alive? Not just, why is this happening to me, because that is an unanswerable question, but, what is this all for? What is life all about? Is it just a matter of “being,” per se , or is there something more to it all? Looking for some raison d’etre in the middle of everything - and especially when motivation is so low, even non-existent, for doing stuff I have said I enjoyed doing. Did I really enjoy doing that stuff? Reading, writing, photography, walking, gardening, etc.? Or was it just stuff I did to keep me going, to give my self something to do? 

This morning’s reading from Daniel 12:1-3 not really all that helpful, certainly not on the face of it. “ ¹ ‘At that time Michael, the archangel who stands guard over your nation, will arise. Then there will be a time of anguish greater than any since nations first came into existence. But at that time every one of your people whose name is written in the book will be rescued. ² Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. ³ Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever. ...’” Foreshadowing the coming season of Advent, perhaps, becoming aware of the pain and suffering that exists in the world, on a whole variety of levels. 

Am I being asked to do something about relieving some of that pain and suffering? Then I wonder, what could I do? As if I am basically unimportant in the overall scheme of things, with no place, without a job to do. And then I read something like http://tinybuddha.com/blog/be-more-by-doing-less-removing-the-distraction-of-busyness/, which arrived in my mailbox just this morning! A sense, maybe, of running away from my self by being busy, by doing , rather than being , and wondering, now, if this breast cancer scare and surgery and follow-up treatment is meant to just somehow slow me down so that I can get more in touch with my self and explore further the relationships between, self, God and others - relationships that have often left me perplexed, even wanting more from them than I was getting. 

And, in the middle of getting the hook wire inserted last Friday morning - using two ultrasounds and the mammogram machine as a final resort - these words came to mind - “God, Lover of my soul, body and mind,” which was all the prayer I really needed to say, at the time. Again, when the nuclear medicine technician was putting the radioactive material into my areola, preparatory to a sentinel node biopsy, those same words - “God, Lover of my soul, body and mind.” Words from God to create calm within, words which then gradually morphed into, “Lord, Lover of my body, mind and soul,” which seems to echo, very clearly the Gospel for Sunday 4 November, the Sunday before, when I led the worship service at Durham Street - “ ²⁸ One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” ²⁹ Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. ³⁰ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is equally important: ‘ Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” [ Mark 12:28-31 (NLT) Talking about that love, that unconditional love, with a group of women from the choir, and hearing responses from other groups in the congregation - and, now, more fully realising that this love is a “whole-body” thing, and encompasses every part of my being - physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social, mental, sexual - every part of me. 

Yes, there are parts of me that are wilful and egocentric, but there is no part of me, none at all, that does not still come within the compass and embrace of the love of God for me - my Lover! Simple words, with so much wisdom and profundity in them. 7.52am.