Feeling Shipwrecked? Insights with Lee Jarrell on Using the 12-Steps of Recovery in Spiritual Direction
Lee Jarrell calls it his day from hell. His alcohol addiction led him to a place of despair - his rock bottom. It cost him his reputation, his family relationships, and his self-respect. He felt shipwrecked. He felt powerlessness.
While you can listen to Lee share more of his sacred story here, it is talking to him and learning how this excruciating day, by God’s grace, made him a wiser and more compassionate spiritual director and overall love-filled human. Starting in September, Lee in collaboration with Retreat House Spirituality Center, will launch a four-month series Using the 12 Steps of Recovery in Spiritual Direction.
Whether you’re a spiritual director, pastor, other type of healer, a person who identifies with a faith tradition or perhaps someone with no formal spiritual language or practice, you are human. And by that qualifier alone, you might very likely benefit learning more from Lee.
“For many, if not most people, the only thing strong enough to force us out of our denial is some experience of addiction, moral failure, or some traumatic loss.”
Retreat House: Why are you feeling called to offer Using the 12 Steps in Spiritual Direction? Why now?
Lee: I wanted to share one of the very useful tools I regularly use for spiritual direction that other spiritual directors may not have as much exposure to, or experience with.
Retreat House: How do you envision this being used in spiritual direction?
Lee: The principles and practices of the 12-step recovery program give such consistent freedom-giving results with my spiritual directees that I hope to share the kind of value they bring and the circumstances where I find them most helpful.
Retreat House: Will you explain the spiritual/religious history of the 12-Step program?
Lee: An important note for all spiritual directors is that it is the absolute spiritual nature of the 12-Step program that allows us as spiritual directors to freely utilize the spiritual principles and practices with our directees, even if addiction to a substance is not a besetting issue.
Here's an example of what I mean by the spiritual nature of the program:
"The effectiveness of the whole AA program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to a "decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." Twelve and Twelve, page 34, the 3rd Step
Regardless of a person's need for an addiction recovery program, I believe that each of us as pilgrims on our own spiritual journeys can give a big "AMEN" to that statement as being true and accurate.
The entire 12-Step program was founded using the spiritual principles of life transformation from the Oxford House ministry which has an Anglican history.
The 12 Steps are profoundly biblical, spiritual, and psychologically sound, yet they are presented in language which is non-biblical on purpose.
I would NOT put the 12-Step program in the category of being "religious," as that word carries a lot of baggage. But the 12 Step-program is profoundly clear from the beginning that it is an intentionally spiritual program within every dimension.
Retreat House: What is your relationship to the 12-Step program?
Lee: I am a recovering alcoholic and Alcoholics Anonymous was one of four means of healing grace I received from God in order to be on this spiritual journey of inner-transformation into the best version of myself.
Retreat House: Many times, we think of addiction as substance abuse, but the reality is we can be addicted to many things - phones, people pleasing, work. Could you speak to this and how this offering might be applicable to working with those who aren't necessarily in recovery with drugs or alcohol?
Lee: Please read Richard Rohr's response to this very helpful question from his book Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
“Powerlessness, the state of being shipwrecked [hitting bottom], is an experience we all share anyway, if we are sincere, but Bill Wilson found we are not very good at that either [being sincere]. He called it denial. As Jesus put it, we ‘see the splinter in our brother’s or sister’s eye and miss the log in our own eye.’ This whole deceptive game has been revealed in that one brilliant line from Jesus.”
Retreat House: What is your hope and prayer for this offering?
“One of my greatest desires in this season of life is to faithfully and co-creatively bear witness to, proclaim, and declare with due honor the knowledge and wisdom I’ve received through my many failures, unhealthy choices, pain, poverty, powerlessness, and brokenness. And I believe teaching the 12 Steps is one way to do this.”
Retreat House Spirituality Center is delighted to partner with Trained Spiritual Director Lee Jarrell for a seminar this Fall on ways to incorporate the 12 Steps of Recovery into your spiritual direction practice.
Gathering times (four total sessions) VIA ZOOM:
Friday, September 3, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Friday, October 1, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Friday, November 5, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Friday, December 3, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
How will this benefit your spiritual direction practice?
Lee’s desire is to offer practical, easy to understand and helpful insights into the deeply spiritual healing principles found in the classic 12 Steps of Recovery founded in 1935 by Alcoholics Anonymous.
Lee regularly uses these principles with his directees with remarkably reliable results. He simply wants to offer them as another tool for spiritual directors to work with our directees’ longings for inner freedom and wholeness in all dimensions of life.
Lee will cover three of the 12 steps of recovery in each session. It is recommended that participants attend all FOUR sessions. Questions? Email Lee.
This interview and article was compiled by Emily Turner. She is a trained spiritual director and writer living in Dallas. You can learn more about her here. Have a story to share? She would love to hear from you.