I’m grateful for people who surprise me. I’m grateful for letting things go. I’m grateful for what comes back. I’m grateful for seeing things differently. I’m grateful for lunch with an old friend. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Click the picture to read this on the website!!
The statue of King Jagiello in Central Park always makes me laugh—it looks to me like he’s going to war against the Upper West Side—and let’s face it, with the way things are going these days, that might become necessary. I don’t know if you’ve ridden the 4, 5 or 6 trains from 86th Street—I wouldn’t bet against us east siders in a tussle. Why is King Jagiello in Central Park? He was a Polish king and his most notable achievement was kicking quite a bit of “Teutonic” ass in the 1400’s. It was thought that the Nazis might not want to keep this statute around in Warsaw in 1939 and so it was shipped to NY for safekeeping. UWS—be ready.
I think the two most misunderstood parts of AA are the tradition of anonymity and the role of religion, I can’t begin to tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people who insist they could never get sober in the Program because of the role of God. People cite bad experiences with organized religion, the notion that AA is covert Christianity, that they’re atheists, the idea that AA requires a religious conversion to work. That is simply not true and that misconception ends up actually costing lives.
What the Program does require is a spiritual transformation and I know that seems like a pretty subtle difference. One thing that contributes to the confusion is Bill’s language. For sure, the Big Book was written by people of Christian faith traditions and that vocabulary comes through in discussions of “grace” and the appropriation of the Epistle of James: “Faith without works is dead.”1 It’s important to remember that Bill W. had not been terribly religious for most of his life. Hopefully, it does not escape notice that the title of Chapter 4 of the Big Book is “We Agnostics.”
I wrote yesterday about the role of self-knowledge in sobriety. It is a critical component of the process, but in Bill W’s case, in my case, and in lots of other cases, self-knowledge was not sufficient to confer long-term sobriety. I spent ten years trying to reason my way to sobriety. During those ten years, there was no question that alcohol was ruining my life. I had seen the people who loved me leave. I had watched hope drain out of my life. I knew for an absolute fact where I was headed. Sobriety was not a matter of “coming to believe” that alcohol was destroying my life. A thousand people could repeat those facts to me all day and all night long—it was not enough for me to get sober. The problem was that drinking was so completely woven in the fabric of my life—there was no way to just stop.
That’s why reason and intellect and recovery tools and emotional management strategies help and are important in maintaining emotional equilibrium—but none of those things were enough to get this alcoholic sober. It’s important to note that the Big Book recognizes different “types” of alcoholics and suggests that for people who have not yet gone too far down, recovery without spiritual overhaul might be possible. That was not my story. That was not Bill’s story.
If I could have just decided one day to get sober, I like to think I would have.
The consequence of Bill’s dinner with Ebby Thacher was not Bill’s conversion to an organized religion, nor was it a decision by Bill to live his life in accord with any particular religious text. When Ebby told him that he was sober because he had found God, Bill threw up exactly the same defense that so many throw up to AA:
When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory…I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good.”
Big Book, pp. 9-10
Two things changed Bill’s mind. First, he came to believe that there actually was something slightly mysterious going on with his drunk friend Ebby. Ebby, who was a way, way worse alcoholic than Bill—a real goner, had gotten sober. That was a fact. Bill had known Ebby for a long time and he knew that Ebby couldn’t have done this himself, Ebby’s sobriety couldn’t be explained as an exercise of Ebby’s will:
[H]e had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known. Had this power originated in him? Obviously, it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute; and this was none at all.2
Big Book, p. 11
The thing that brought Bill in was the notion that sobriety did not depend on the embrace of any particular God, when Ebby responded to Bill’s antipathy with “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God,” Bill realized:
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
Big Book, p. 12
Those words are italicized in the original, so Bill meant it when he said “Nothing more was required.” Bill did his Second Step when he realized a Higher Power of his own conception might be able to restore him to sanity, might be able to help him get sober. It is the process of conceptualizing a Higher Power that is capable of restoring sanity and then believing in that conception, that brings it into existence. I think we believe our Higher Power into existence when we begin to enumerate the ways he/she/it can impact our lives.
Bill W’s spiritual awakening had nothing to do with any organized religion, or any particular religious observance. It was simply being willing to acknowledge that there was some force in the world, in the universe, something greater than himself, that when humbly sought could bring calm and peace to his life. Bill W.’s spiritual awakening simply involved beginning to understand the nature of this Higher Power. My sobriety rests on the same foundation.
If you were to ask me for my understanding of God, well, the best I can do is to list some of the things I think I’ve learned as I let God, my Higher Power, into my life. This is my current list, it is highly incomplete, not backed by objective evidence and subject to revision at any time:3
God can and will listen to me
God can and will find ways for me to figure out when I’m wrong
God will put me in situations where I need to learn
God will not push too hard, but his hand is pretty firm
God will find a way to help me when I need it, but it may not be what I expected or wanted
God will let me know if things are going according to plan, but I may have to listen pretty hard
God will put people in my life unexpectedly and for reasons that aren’t always clear to me. They will leave in the same way.
God will not always show up when I think I need him
God will answer my prayers in unexpected ways
God plays the long game
God wants me to feel happy and be loved
God prefers if I stay busy
God can have a pretty warped and inappropriate sense of humor
God likes/loves irony
God can be deliberately confusing
God has plans for me
God is understanding and willing to tolerate a fair amount of nonsense
God doesn’t give explicit instructions
God is very creative
God likes basketball, too
God likes it when I listen
Of course, this conception of God is bounded by my own faith traditions, but even my conception of God does not require the acceptance of any particular religion. My sponsees and close friends in the Program span most of the major faith traditions in the world—none of that gets in the way. This is not the language of organized religion, it is a language that permits us to try and connect to the world and the people around us in a different way. It is the language of acceptance, of understanding and humility. The spiritual transformation that led to my sobriety did not arrive after I uttered certain incantations, burned particular kinds of incense or accepted the prescripts of any organized religion.
I got sober when I finally admitted I was not the center of the Universe. When I finally admitted that I, myself, could not stop drinking through the exercise of my own will power or intellect. I got sober when I realized that my reign of power had resulted mostly in pain, destruction and chaos. I got sober when I saw there was another way, when I saw other alcoholics and addicts change their lives by simply beginning to believe there was a force out there that could help them.
Bill did put this in italics, so I think it’s ok to say it again:
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Quoting the brother of Jesus in the Big Book certainly contributes to the idea that the Program is Christian-focused.
I love that Bill loved semi-colons.
I wrote about this here and would like to point out that it has provoked no bolts of lightning or plagues of locusts or toads:
King Jagiello is my higher power for today.
That’s for this! Such an important topic, I’ve seen the confusion of the God thing be a barrier of entry for many.