Seeds of Grace
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A surprising and enlightening assessment of AA-its basic tenets and how it works on the spirit-by a nun and recovering alcoholic.
When Sister Molly Monahan joined Alcoholics Anonymous she was looking for the help and support she needed to stop drinking. But what she found was something more, something that surprised her: a deeper spirituality than she had ever experienced in her religious community.
How could a nonreligious group espousing the most basic of spiritual beliefs have anything to teach a nun who had already spent three decades steeped in the values, rituals, and traditions of the contemplative life? The mystery of the effectiveness of AA has yet to be explained. This book looks at that question in new, interesting, and important ways. In Seeds of Grace, Sister Molly Monahan traces her progress through the Twelve Steps and identifies the lessons that Alcoholics Anonymous has to instruct all of us about grace, forgiveness, community, and, in AA parlance, "the God of our understanding." Along the way, through a series of meditations, she shares her insights on why AA works, how it works, and how it has changed her life and the lives of millions of people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Much attention has been paid in recent years to the spiritual underpinnings of that quiet fellowship known as Alcoholics Anonymous and its famous "12-step" recovery program. Monahan, a Catholic nun and self-described alcoholic who knows the program from the inside out, writes about AA's spirituality from a refreshing, insightful perspective. In doing so, she has remained true to AA's revered 11th and 12th traditions of maintaining anonymity by using a pen name. Weaving knowledge gleaned from more than 40 years as a religious woman into her personal experience of AA, which spans 17 years, she manages to mine the depths of the program without making its members, and especially herself, appear saintly or overly pious. At AA meetings, she writes, "I heard the truth of my own feelings, faults, and sneaky motivations played back for me with uncommon honesty." The narrative draws heavily from AA's "Big Book" and the 12 traditions and 12 steps that form the program's foundation. Monahan overlays AA's principles with the purgative, illuminative and unitive stages of growth in the spiritual life, explaining how she recovered not only her sobriety through AA, but her spirituality as well. This bookDpart candid memoir, part spiritual meditationDis sure to attract readers who are familiar with AA, as well as those who will be interested purely in its message of spiritual renewal.
