Incarnational Recovery - John Edward Crean, Jr.

Recovering Benedict encourages us to nourish our physical and spiritual lives using the Rule of Benedict and the twelve-step recovery principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

As the father of Western monasticism, Benedict pulled together various strands of monastic spirituality into a single handbook for holiness. Alcoholics Anonymous presented an equally innovative way to address alcoholism based on twelve steps drawn from numerous spiritual sources.

While it took a sixth-century Italian collating various sources to produce a handbook for spiritual life, it likewise took a twentieth-century American to pull together the spiritual principles to recover one s physical life.

Our guest John E. Crean, Jr. brings both traditions together in one handbook for living: daily meditations are inspired by the down-to-earth wisdom of the Rule of Benedict, and AA s template for sobriety and humbleness.

The Very Reverend Canon John Crean is Dean Emeritus of the Diocese of Western Michigan. He taught at Yale, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Hawaii, and Grand Valley State University, where he was also department chair. John has published and presented scholarly papers on the Rule of Saint Benedict and served as coeditor of Magistra. He is currently researching and publishing on ecclesiastical history. An oblate of Saint Boniface Benedictine Abbey in Munich, John has been involved in twelve-step recovery work since 2003.