Hi, my Name is Curt, and I'm an . . .

Part of the young seminary student’s assignment for the course on Small Group Ministries was to visit a local meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. He phoned ahead, explained his purpose and got directions, but when he arrived there was no contact person he could identify. So he stumbled into a closed session and joined a group already in process—a group that knew he didn’t belong there, but somehow permitted him to stay. What seminarian Curt Kuiper was about to experience was authentic community that would leave him thirsting for more of the same.

One of the men began to speak. The others listened—really listened. “Intently,” says Curt. “No person was ever interrupted.” In fact, the person speaking would announce when he was finished and only then would the next one begin.

This new “insider” saw men trusting each other and accepting each other. He felt their vulnerability. He marveled at the level of recognition they had of their own needs as well as their need for a higher power. “They realize how much they need each person in order to have the strength to face each day,” Curt noticed. “Overcoming, or at least beginning to control the disease, happens in community.”

This certainly flies in the face of a culture that prizes individualism, a culture that tells them to handle things “like a man,” to be that rock, that island. Curt reflected on Simon and Garfunkle for a moment and then asked me, the interviewer, this question: “But what are the last lines of that song?”

It was my turn to think. I hummed the phrases, “I am a rock. I am an island,” and answered: “And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.”

Then Curt continued, “That’s getting rid of your humanity. That means you’re sacrificing being human, because humans do cry and do feel pain! And you’re only hurting yourself more by not reaching outside yourself,‘cause if there are people out there to help you carry that burden, it’s a much easier road than carrying it yourself.”

Curt began learning this lesson in college when six guys met weekly for what they called “Prayer and Share.” He admits that allowing himself to be vulnerable was not very comfortable, but it was a place of great affirmation, healing, joy and unity. “For me,that was the closest thing to authentic community I have experienced.”

This memory was reinforced in the AA meeting. Afterwards one gentleman invited Curt for coffee and spent close to an hour addressing his questions. In fifteen years, there was only one other person permitted to sit in with this group. “It was a really powerful experience,” Curt reflected. “I didn’t realize the gift they had given me until after the experience. They allowed me to come in and taste what they were tasting.”

And it was very good.