Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP ELEVEN

the rest of us who, less fortunate, don't even know how to
begin?

Well, we might start like this. First let's look at a really
good prayer. We won't have far to seek; the great men and
women of all religions have left us a wonderful supply.
Here let us consider one that is a classic.

Its author was a man who for several hundred years now
has been rated as a saint. We won't be biased or scared
off by that fact, because although he was not an alcoholic
he did, like us, go through the emotional wringer. And as
he came out the other side of that painful experience, this
prayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel,
and wish to become:

"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace—that where
there is hatred, I may bring love—that where there is
wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness—that where
there is discord, I may bring harmony—that where there
is error, I may bring truth—that where there is doubt, I
may bring faith—that where there is despair, I may bring
hope—that where there are shadows, I may bring light—
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant
that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted—
to understand, than to be understood—to love, than to be
loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by for-
giving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens
to Eternal Life. Amen."

As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this
prayer several times very slowly, savoring every word and
trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea.
It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend