Underground Church

A little church.

That's what Alcoholics Anonymous seems to be each day as the self-help groups meet regularly, even daily, downstairs in churches across this nation.

And, they never seem to have enough chairs.

That's a good thing.  Unlike the upstairs Sunday church that has plenty of pews and fewer people these days. One has to wonder why.

Participants in the downstairs church tell stories. They get down, deep and honest in the telling.

After all, they have only "up" to go after falling flat on their face, in many cases.

The upstairs church does recount the story, also, and centers on Jesus.

But downstairs, people tell of the Twelve Steps in their own lives, up and close.  Even personal.

They tell of how alcohol, or other drugs, ravaged their lives and made them unmanageable.

And, of how a Power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity.

That's it!

After all, like the insanity of attachment disorders, even to guns, one goes under unless she or he gets help.

Ever since the '40s people have been meeting downstairs to purge and cleanse themselves of the evils of alcohol and other drugs, addictions and attachment disorders.

That's when these famous twelve steps were organized as means to healing and hope amid living ravaged lives.

Once, a woman told me that she found her way to the upstairs church after attending a 12-step meeting downstairs.

She reconnected with her Catholic roots.

Pleased and on the way to recovery, she had good news to share as she practiced the principles and twelve steps of Alchoholics Anonymous.

"A parachute has to be open to work," she told me,  "After all, a mind only works if it is open," she concluded.