The Spirituality of Imperfection

Kurtz's phrase names a limit to self-reliance. A person can repeatedly fail to stop drinking and still insist the next solitary attempt will work. Admitting that this strategy has failed makes room for help.

AA's first step specifies being powerless over alcohol. It doesn't declare a person helpless in every area of life. The fourth and fifth steps call for an inventory of wrongdoing and an admission to another person. The eighth and ninth require willingness to make amends, followed by direct amends where possible, with an exception when doing so would cause further injury. The steps are worth reading together.

In a later paper, Kurtz and William White describe belonging through an acknowledged inability to drink safely. Members can discuss a limitation they had been hiding. Other people can offer help, though they can't live the new life for you.

That gives storytelling a particular job. Hearing another person's account of drinking, failed attempts to stop, and recovery can make an admission less isolating. Kurtz and Ketcham extend that possibility beyond AA: an honest account of failure can help someone recognize their own difficulty.

The book opens with the rose story. These four other examples let us test its storytelling method. They are retellings and a selected passage, with sources below each card.

Their settings matter. The Hasidic pockets concern human worth before God; Moses's story concerns forgiveness within a Christian monastic community; Nan-in's concerns a student seeking instruction. None contains a religion's entire teaching.

The book's last part names six experiences. In “Recovery Spirituality” (2015), Kurtz and White explain that these emerged from listening to recovery stories. These are reported experiences, not guaranteed results.

Forgiveness is the term most likely to be misused. Chapter 15 expressly keeps responsibility for one's actions. An apology doesn't automatically repay a debt, undo an injury, or secure another person's trust. Forgiveness also doesn't require the injured person to continue a relationship or expose themselves to further harm.

The authors want readers alienated from religious institutions to be able to discuss spiritual experience. In chapter 1, they report that people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious tend to associate religion with belief, doctrine, and authority. The book puts more emphasis on experience.

That distinction explains whom they're trying to reach. It doesn't divide people into believers and experiencers. A congregation can offer mutual help; someone outside one can be rigidly certain. The book relies on stories in which experience and religious commitments are connected.

The case against requiring perfection doesn't establish that surrender is the right response to every difficulty. You can't control whether someone forgives you. You can return money you took and stop taking more. Both can occur in the same relationship.

An anthology also selects its witnesses. Finding a story about humility in several traditions doesn't prove that humility explains each tradition, or that their stories developed without contact. The anthology offers analogies, not evidence that theological disagreements disappear.

Moses's story leaves us with the hardest problem. We don't learn what the brother did or whom he harmed. Without that information, we can't know whether forgiveness was enough. The story gives the judges a reason to examine themselves; it gives the reader too little evidence to judge their decision.

The publisher's sample supplies chapter 1; the book preview supplies page references and chapter structure. Kurtz's later paper helps explain the recovery terms. The gallery links its story sources; its comments are this post's interpretation.