The Years That the Locust Hath Eaten

Neither our literature nor the most enlightened of old-timers can fully explain or define the meaning of "forgiveness," the powerful concept at the heart of the Eighth Step. Like everything else in our spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous, forgiveness has entered my life through my heart and not my mind. In my first year of sobriety I listened with a kind of puzzled yearning to meetings where it was being discussed. To this day, I find Eighth Step meetings particularly poignant. The men and women in my regular Friday night Step meeting are so simple and direct when they speak of how they have hurt others and how in almost all cases, relationships have healed. There's no room for posturing as we speak up about our recklessness, self-centeredness, dishonesty, lost or soured marriages and families, and violence of various kinds. More than a mere chronicle of bottles and blackouts, these stories of "twisted and tangled relations" with other people bring home the lonely tragedy of alcoholism and the miracle of our all sitting peaceably there on folding chairs with the Twelve Step shades on the wall above our heads. Sometimes as I sit listening to these tales told in the language of the heart, I remember a quotation from the Book of Joel: "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten." Individual pain and guilt has been alchemized into something very grand that makes us collectively well. As a group we are at our most human in those Eighth Step evenings. And we seem to be held most closely by the Higher Power.