Just as addicts never outgrow their need for a 12 step group, we do not outgrow our need to be together in diverse community and face up to our condition as addicts of the culture, who have lived in isolation and fear. There is no limit to the benefit that can be derived from the practice of sharing our true selves and listening to each other. We discover again and again, as we break open our lives, that Christ is there as well. We will continue doing this foundational work forever.

As we come to know and trust each other, and start to experience freedom from what has kept us bound, we then find that we are being empowered to extend ourselves into some place of need in the world. The question soon becomes, what might be God’s call on our life together? Having experienced such freedom and joy, how might we now become a catalyst for the freedom and joy of others? How might we help liberate some unfree, unjust system in our world?

We are just getting started, but two of the groups have begun to look at ways to work with the “Living Wage Campaign.” This is a logical choice because now we know so much more personally what it means to be the working poor as we listen to some of our comembers’ stories and struggles. We recognize more concretely this national sin, that people can be working full time and yet not earn enough to meet the basic needs of their families.

Whatever the specifics might be, as we come to know and love each other in our groups some of us currently struggling under the very real weight of injustice we will be compelled to lend our corporate strength to each other’s needs and to right some of our nation’s unjust systems.