The Oxford Group’s 5 C’s (part 3)

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In this episode I am going to share my thoughts on the third of the five C’s list from the Oxford group the third in the list of the five C’s is:
 Contrition
 So, in the Oxford dictionary, contrition is listed as a noun and it means to be in the state of remorseful and penitent. This definition reminds me somehow, of the old “mea culpa”, hair shirts and self flagellation! This is certainly not my interpretation of the word contrition. In the first place, my God never requires any penitents for anything I do.

This word applies particularly well to the end of step five in the 12- step program. After doing all of this admitting to God, ourselves, and another human being, I went to a quiet place, and I remember thinking I was in a sort of Twilight Zone. Again, I had done a pseudo-version of these 12 steps and many times, but that last, and final time I just knew was in fact, the last and final time. I was beginning to clear away the wreckage of the past, but exactly how did I feel about that wreckage, character defects, and shortcomings. I felt strangely disconnected from them. I remember the sorrow I felt as a human being but it was the sorrow for having turned away from God. I somehow remembered what my life had been like to this point, but I somehow knew that it was all, truly, in the past. It was almost as if it had never happened.

Now, I am not advocating, in any way, a forgetting of the issues that got us to this place in the 12-step program, especially that thing (whatever it might be) that got us here in the first place. What I am advocating is the realization that God, unlike our fellow humans, hold nothing against us. My concept of God is a supernatural being who only wants to give us love and hopes for love and return. The only thing that might impede that love in return is our free will. Once I had said yes to God, and came to the end of the fifth step, any remorse I felt was that of not having surrender to God sooner.

Any contrition I felt was purely human, and once recognized, was acknowledged and fleeting.