Four cars park diagonal to each other on pebble covered road in front of the white painted church, a familiar A frame—the roof sharply angled to drop snow when need is there. Hawai’i churches have less snow than most, yet the design remains: architecture meant for colonizer’s winter exported to the tropics.

One of the marvels of Alcoholics Anonymous is how steadfast the healing dynamics radiate worldwide. Two white males (colonizers’ epitome) became exporters of spiritual health to every geologic nook and cranny on our favorite planet so far, a welcome import to all places wintry and sunny.

More evening sunset trade winds greet me when I open my car door and for this AA meeting, we have new dark-green plastic chairs; sitting outside in 85-degree weather at 7 p.m. around 20 folks gather in a long-stretched oval, a geometry refusing to yield as we hold together fast.

A few feet from the chair where I sit is a small ocean inlet and, over there, waves lap onto lava rocks big and small. What emits is a purring sound, water pouring over stone in a persistent repetition, a soothing saltwater meditation. Alcoholics Anonymous works like waves. An inexplicable force of nature, our human nature, AA laps away at the rock, meaning an alkie’s denial to resist change or the full surrender to living sober. In the big picture, or full ocean view, we can hardly say how AA is a success.

At first the anonymous aspect lends comfort since raw addiction carries deep stigma, the pervasive dynamic that shame brings, the fear of being discovered an alcoholic or addict. And I will write, then, on my experience in the rooms, as we call AA meetings, to give back what has so freely been given to me; take what you want and leave the rest. The last two phrases are pure AA lingo and I reference them since this blog will surely sprinkle in one AA phrase after the next. AA saved my life and continues saving millions of others, so sharing some insight that might resonate with a reader seems a good momentum to keep while also respecting anonymity on some levels, yes, for sure.

Nestling into my chair, I lean back, and the warm floating winds provide a sense of ease, almost drowsy comfort, the kind before taking a nap. Yet 15 minutes or so before the actual meeting, several women and I chat together alert as ever. Then the hour flows fast while we read from the Big Book, the core text published in 1939, authored by Bill Wilson, true, who stayed open, accepting much writing feedback from the original band of others also seeking the sober life. In other words, the creative conditions that visit any writing endeavor happened, meaning the just-right context that culture and history lend to a book’s purpose.

This night’s literature reading dollops a few colorful paints on the wider canvas as to how AA works. Clergy, medical doctors, psychiatrists, and others comment that AA exemplifies effective measure against fatal alcoholism in ways often less explicable as to how this recovery process stands so true. The experts often advise to give AA a wide swath since the process works—where others in the professional world often do not succeed. Expensive 30-day treatment centers, for example, require at least one AA meeting daily. Why?

When alcohol and drug use reach the tipping point, that crossover nexus where familiar habit becomes violent physical craving, dynamics to ensure isolation are usually in full force: using alone, hiding alcohol and drugs, and participating in life less—much, much less. But in the haze, a crystal-clear moment can often arrive that we call bottom. From this scratching of numbed fingernails against that big chalkboard in the sky, a primal scream into a type of black hole found in the universe, there arrives a muttering: I need help.

Many walk into an AA meeting that same day. Inside the rooms, a newcomer receives immediate welcome in myriad waves: hugs if possible, phone numbers scribbled on meeting schedules, Big Books given away for free, invites for a cup of coffee or shared meal, and ears listening carefully to offer solace words. Standing before us is a physical being in biology’s throes of addiction. Wait, though.

AAs waves of emotional support calm down this physical side of addiction. Studies confirm how, over time, prayer and meditation alter biology. Often, in a few weeks, the newcomer barely resembles him or herself as the body that first arrived at AA. Addiction’s biology needs time to clear up concurrent to AA’s potential to stabilize emotions that then become consistent for good through prayer and meditation. The AAer is now a human simply be-ing in the rooms, hanging out casual like, hanging on for dear sober life, one wave at a time.

These three aspects—the physical, emotional, and spiritual—are the potential anyone in recovery enjoys for a serene day once cared for through AA dynamics.

I can remember Thursday, 21 August 2010 when I put my hand against the eight-foot-tall window, and I made the reach for sobriety, at least as an inner conviction, an emotional bottom. On the other side of the glass swallows flew in a massive group maybe three or four hundred—not in sporadic mess, rather one fluid arrow shape.

I taught a business writing seminar for three graduate students at Keller DeVry that began at 6 p.m. The swallows appeared at the same time each evening I taught in the downtown San Francisco skyscraper on Second Street, corner of hectic Mission Street.

Standing there on the eighth floor, a wide panoramic sweep shows the original Bay Bridge (now completely redone), aged grey steel, two levels of narrow and claustrophobic road, yet the lanes stretching majestic towards the East Bay, almost a regal Bay Bridge, then.

And the adjacent skyscrapers seem close enough to touch, so close are they to the one where I stand, similar all-glass walls so polished window-cleaner shiny, while the view tumbling downward presents people as smaller insect-like creatures gliding back and forth on urban pavement, those roads and sidewalks, boxing all of us in, as concrete can do.

Yet there fly the swallows. Despite the odds they fly together for some purpose not quite clear to me as I keep watching. As the birds stay in unity, together they swirl in the pack back and forth, on schedule, too. Usually I watch for 15 minutes, mesmerized. Teaching work calls so I turn in that direction. And when I return, they are gone. They fly this way for an hour or so each Monday night that I teach, a steady routine I suppose.

Alcoholics Anonymous works in a similar dynamic. Each swallow is the recovered alcoholic who stays in flight as long as the group holds unity. If one bird were to dip, the others would swoop to catch the fallen one. So, with AA. We surround the newcomer in proactive gentle ways. And our purpose as we fly inside the rooms is sometimes less clear to others, yet simple: to restore a distraught alkie / addict’s sense of self through healing group dynamics.

To assist the newcomer’s recovery process, we often ask her or him to wash the coffee cups in the kitchen sink. A chaotic life resulting from over-drinking becomes the alkie’s way to distract from first things first: prep the coffee cup to be of service to someone else, the next coffee enjoyer. We say the AA program exists in six words: clean house, help others, and trust god. God arriving in this moment simply means squeezing several dish-soap drops into a sponge—even though the newly recovering alcoholic probably does not “want” to wash dishes but does anyway; that the resistance melts, this happens from a different power source than human “will power.”

The energy that melts resistance is god stuff in life—and to cultivate more god energy in a newcomer’s life as he or she starts over, AA provides a spiritual program of action: complete the 12 steps, go to meetings (fly like a swallow in unity), and participate actively.

One time my ten-year-old son, and a family friend staying with us, a young man in his 20s, we three launched on a hike around the Kilauea Caldera, trekking on a paved sidewalk path that circumferences an active volcano. Even though dormant for the last few months, wisps of sulfuric smoke still float upward, sky bound. Earth’s gaping terraced hole, a first shelf spreads wide inside then another land drop occurs into an abyss the human eye can only see as an initial jump-descent into black shadow. Maybe a quarter mile is the diameter. I suppose life, the magma and humankind, starts at the abyss bottom.

At one pause in the volcano curve, we spot a bird, bigger than a swallow yet smaller than a pidgin, flying back and forth. For several minutes we stand and stare. The distance flown is maybe one thousand feet, the wings beat steady, muscular against light wind. Seems impossible to determine why this one bird ventures to the same spot back and forth, over and over. No twig is in the bird’s beak. No worm dangling there. My son and young friend get bored enough to go find the restroom.

But I stay. Twenty minutes later, watching the exact same flying pattern, and still baffled by the flying routine, just slightly visible where the hard-working bird lands on a ledge, emerges another bird. My breathe catches—which is the in spire, the in breath. Then I exhale.

And in AA the sponsor to sponsee connection can resemble these two birds; the one bringing experience, strength, and hope to the other—over and over again. The sponsee can sit on the ledge as the sponsor continues through consistent repetition, in small gestures and like an ocean wave laps at volcanic rock, to be of service. The reciprocal response is when the sponsee starts the inner-work to transform her or his life from alcoholic to sobriety. So, the two move ahead in this way, completing the 12 steps together, sponsor and sponsee; the steps are one key dynamic as to why AA works so well.