Redemption Deals With Desire

In the process of affective redemption, desire is not suppressed or destroyed, but gradually transferred, purified, transformed, set on fire. We go through the struggles and ambiguities of human desire to integration and personal wholeness. ~ Constance FitzGerald

We have addictive natures that got us here.
When we learn enough about ourselves
to get past Step One, powerless and unmanageable,
we still must deal with our urges. our compulsions.
We find a concept that will become our Higher Power
but it's not so easy that we can substitute
addiction to HP as a new obsession.
Instead we burn off the old ideas
as though they were chaff,
but more like a refiner's fire,
burning away impurities, leaving the precious,
the worthiness, so where we might before
have looked for a more worthy
though still imperfect substitute
on which to rely but find instead
the possibility of our being transfigured,
worthy, the self we used to seek
in all the wrong places.
We become an integral whole.