“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him…” “What does it mean to meditate?” “How do I begin to meditate?” It was a wise decision to hold off on talking about prayer and meditation until one had experienced the preparation for this through working and living the other steps.

I have heard individuals say they take a cup of coffee and sit on their porch for ten to twenty minutes in the morning or evening and that’s their meditation. What I find missing in this form of meditation is any reference as to how, in that space of time, they improved their conscious contact with God as they understood God.

Step Eleven is about more than meditation. It is seeking through the process, or activity of meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God. Step eleven implies that we already have a conscious contact with God or Greater Power which has brought us through steps one through ten. Without our Greater Power, we would not have completed step one. let alone steps one through ten.

Richard Rohr writes that “To practice meditation as an act of faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being of everyone and everything around us is the generosity of God. God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being, such that our very presence is the manifestation of god. We meditate that we might awaken to this unitive mystery, not just in meditation, but in every moment of our lives.”

“Our very presence is the manifestation of God.” What a thought that is to sit with on the porch with a cup of coffee and ponder. “My very presence, sitting here, is the manifestation, the expression of God.” Do I see God in me? Do I see God in nature all around me? Do I see God in others? Or do I pick and choose who or what I think represents God?

When I came into the program many years ago, I had already experienced meditation. It was a meditation of absence. I could sit there and clear my head of thoughts, space out - some said. When I came to step eleven, I felt certain this step would be easy until I realized that meditation had a purpose. The purpose of meditation is to improve my conscious awareness of God; to become consciously aware of the presence of God within and all around me at all times.

“God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being…” As the saying goes, “God’s not finished with me yet.” God is creating me at all times and in all places. God is appearing to me in the form of people in authority, people who are mirror images of me prior to and since getting into recovery. God is recreating me as I learn to laugh, learn to be serious, learn to be punctual, learn to relax, learn to ‘let go’, learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness, learn to love and accept love in return.

“To practice meditation as an act of faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being…. is the generosity of God.” The endlessly reassuring realization… the nonstop realization; the perpetual realization; the unbroken realization; the persistent realization that my very being is the generosity of God. What a gift to begin or end a day, or just take a mid-day break and reflect that, at any time, without my permission, God is creating me, giving me opportunities to do the next right thing; to make better decisions, and, even if I fail, God is still creating me.

No wonder St Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.” God is seeking us out and we, unaware of it, are seeking God until we complete Step one and then God takes over and we discover we can do nothing without God. Now, in Step Eleven, we create time to be present to and with this God who was seeking us while we were looking for peace in all the wrong places. God was with us and now we are with God and God is not finished with us.

God continues to create us in His/Her image and likeness, and we assist as we do the necessary work to remove our short comings, our defects of character and replace them with virtues that mirror the God of our understanding.

Séamus D is an episcopal priest in the Greater New Orleans area.