The Thursday Principle: Brotherly Love

The Spiritual Principle Brotherly Love

The Spiritual Principle Brotherly Love serves as the foundation for Step Eight: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”

Brotherly Love gives us the compassion and empathy to make things right among our friends, families, colleagues and acquaintances. For if we don’t make things right, we’ll end up wrong. Again.

Brotherly Love also applies to the fellowship found in Alcoholics Anonymous. This Principle may be the best representation of what the 12 Steps can do for a person’s life. For many, Brotherly Love seems a fairy tale or the direction of a well intentioned spiritual leader. But not so for addicts and alcoholics in recovery.

Take one step inside any 12 Step meeting and you will find about as mixed a group of people in there as you would at a United Nations summit. You will see people of all races, colors, sexualities, ages and genders. You’ll see the good looking and ugly, old and young, fat and thin, with and without tattoos. You’ll see men in suits and men in pajama pants, women dressed to the nines and women in shorts and tank tops. You get the point?

The amazing thing is not that these people are all in the same place at the same time as if it were a concert, ball game or movie theater. No, the amazing this is that all these people are in the same place caring, loving, and supporting one another.

We at Healing Properties know the Spiritual Principle Brotherly Love is indeed alive and well in A.A. We also know it serves as the foundation of recovery. Without the fellowship, and the empathy and compassion A.A. engenders, we won’t have legs long strong enough to stand on.