The Real Meaning of Courage
daily gratitude list 8.25.22
I’m grateful for getting to work on something cool with good friends. I’m grateful for my Sponsor. I’m grateful for the way things open up when I let them. I’m grateful for a lovely summer. I’m grateful that when I look back now, I mostly see how far I’ve come. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I was thinking about something else that got discussed at our Big Book Study Group on Tuesday night and that is courage. We read this passage on Tuesday night:
For we are now on a different basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role he assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enables us to match calamity with serenity.
Big Book, p. 68
I’m not sure I had ever focused on that particular phrase before, but I think that needs to be a central attribute of my Higher Power, so I’m going to add it to my list:1
God enables me to match calamity with serenity.
One of the themes I notice in the Big Book is Bill’s own reluctance to be seen as a Bible-thumper. His faith is pretty evident and pretty fervid, but he always seems very sensitive about being seen as a religious zealot. But here he takes a different tone:
We can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. All [people] of faith have courage.
Big Book, p. 68
Of course, I know what the word “Courage” meant and also “Faith,” but the declaration that “All people of faith have courage,” had me a little confused.2
I was surprised to see what the OED lists as the First definition. The one that I was most familiar with was the Fourth: “That quality of mind that shows itself without fear or shrinking; bravery, boldness, valour.”3 But the First definition is:
The heart as the seat of feeling, thought.
The references are a little obscure and archaic and I’m not sure that’s how most of us or Bill meant it. But I think it fits pretty neatly. Isn’t this ultimately an exercise in letting the love, the energy, the spirit of the Universe flow into us and letting that guide us? I think that is a heart-centered activity. I’ve had more than one person give me the speech about the hardest distance to travel is the 18 inches between my head and my heart.4
Faith, to me, is believing in something even though I lack the evidence to prove it. I don’t need to have faith in gravity, but I need to have faith in God. If God is love, and that is kind of the unmistakeable message of the New Testament, and love resides in our heart, then doesn’t that mean that God lives there? Faith is believing that God lives there. That makes perfect sense to me and I can see that the connection between faith and courage gets deeper and more nuanced.
For me, getting sober has been a process of getting acquainted with the stuff that’s actually in my heart. There was a lot of stuff manufactured in my head that I believed and most of what I believed kept me drinking. Getting sober has been a process of replacing what I believed (mostly the lies I told myself ) with having faith in God. Replacing my thoughts as the driving force in my life with God’s love in my heart. I can see that maintaining the condition of the First Definition of courage, keeping “the heart as the seat of feeling and thought,” requires the Fourth Definition’s kind of courage: “The quality of mind that shows itself without fear or shrinking; bravery, boldness and valour.” Doesn’t this make perfect sense now:
All people of faith have courage.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I am probably now in the camp that favors making the language of the Big Book more accessible and less male-dominated. I think the language is beautiful in many, many ways. But, I’m not sure why Bill had to say “men of faith” instead of “people with faith,” and I get that it’s off-putting to people who aren’t used to talking to people from the 1930’s.
That is a bad-ass definition. “Without shrinking!”
I really hate that speech, by the way.
"Isn’t this ultimately an exercise in letting the love, the energy, the spirit of the Universe flow into us and letting that guide us?"
This morning multiple things I read kept pointing to yielding of self--not choosing what's best for me, but best for "the whole" or for "God's will" in my life. And I think what you wrote summed that up beautifully.
this is just so beautiful. it has taken me a fairly violent mental battle to convince myself that there is value in faith, but moving forward "without shrinking" and with valor (WHAT SWAGGER) in the orbit of allowing courage to take the reigns has been a hard won treasure.