A Few Questions for My Higher Power

daily gratitude list 8.20.22

I’m grateful for a quiet Saturday morning. I’m grateful for seeing things so much more clearly. I’m grateful to not be heavy-laden anymore. I’m grateful for being free to write a new story. I’m grateful to be sober today.

I don’t really remember where I was going when I took this and it’s not like there’s anything special about the picture itself, but one of the things I love about New York is how there are churches all over the place, in unexpected places, tucked in between buildings. Sometimes almost hidden and there are a lot in my neighborhood. It all kind of reminded me of “The Untidy Hymn” that I wrote about yesterday.¹

I loved this line from “An Untidy Hymn:”

God hides there. In the cracks, the crevices, the corners.

All of the churches tucked away in neighborhoods here reminds me of that. Seriously, there are a lot of churches here in secular NYC and I’m learning that God is everywhere I look for God. The part I’m still working on is what that means. The critical element of the first three Steps is coming to an understanding of the Higher Power in your life and establishing a relationship with that Higher Power. One of the revelatory passages in the Big Book and a revelatory moment for Bill W. was coming to understand that he could arrive at his own conception of a Higher Power and put that at the center of his life. He realized he was free to accept or reject what others had taught him or said about God. Since our faith has to be personal, so does our conception of God.

I don’t know what God actually is and I don’t think anyone else does either. I don’t know how the system works with any kind of certainty and whatever I say about it is only my experience and your experience and mileage might vary widely. To get sober and to stay sober, I had to answer, for myself, a series of questions:

• Is there a Higher Power?

• Is that Higher Power capable of helping me stop drinking?

• Is that Higher Power capable of helping restore me to sanity?

• What else can that Higher Power do?

• Can I turn my will and my life over to that Higher Power?

• How does that actually work?

• How will my Higher Power communicate with me?

• How will I communicate with my Higher Power?²

The last five of those questions are still active projects because every day of this whole living sober thing requires engagement with them. My old self, the one who drank all the time, was mostly guided by this question:

“Can I get away with this?”

The job was not just to stop drinking. The job was to change that question. Bill W. framed it this way:

Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities. “How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.” These are the thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.

Big Book, p. 85

The “how can I best serve thee” question can be adapted for use with any conception of a Higher Power. Whatever the scheme of things, asking yourself how you can best contribute to that higher purpose probably puts you pretty close to the right spot, no matter the nature of your Higher Power. Again, this is not a project that I think is capable of completion, I see it as the work I do every day to stay connected to my Higher Power and to live my life in accordance with how that Higher Power likes things done. It helps me to keep a list of things I think I know about God:

I would love to hear what you think your Higher Power/God can do for you?³

What Can Your Higher Power Do For You?

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. An Untidy Hymn

2. For some reason, this now makes me think of writing a Jury Instruction: If you determine the answer to Question No. 1 is “Yes,” proceed to Question 2.

3. As a firm believer that there are wrong answers and dumb questions, I will tell you that there are no wrong answers here. Really.