Dear C–
You ask about my belief in a Higher Power and wonder if I mind being asked.
Not impolite at all, now that I feel I know you better and understand where such a question would be coming from — but it is not a simple answer. I am very attached to the Big Book Appendix II, 4th Edition. The educational and incremental or gradual nature of change and maturing is very true in my case. No sudden white light!
I would say I am agnostic — I don’t know that it is possible for many of us to ‘believe’ in the ways in which past generations were able to believe. But I have great respect for mystery. The writer of Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, puts it best:
“So I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention. In certain contexts the improbable is called the miraculous.”
Because the notion of a Higher Power is so exclusively AA and foreign to most people who like yourself do not know anything of AA, I am not going to go into that very much except to say that I come from a more communitarian society than you find in the West and for me the strength of communal vision, sharing and healing, the collective energy of a group working together, is probably all the Higher Power I need for now.
Alcoholism ‘bankrupted’ me in most respects and obliterated many developmental aspects of growth, emotionally, intrapsychically and spiritually, and I am very slowly finding my feet again and reconstructing my beliefs and understandings together in relationship with others doing the same thing. I expect my beliefs and ethics to evolve and change over time. I am still very new in sobriety.
With love & respect
Mary
xxMary
While I have a faith in God, and a traditional church, I feel everyone can come to their own understanding of spirituality. My own beliefs have “evolved & changed” over time. Thank you for your honesty.
Our priest yesterday ay 3 PM mass, compared our small group of 1,240 people, and the sharing, healing, and collective energy therein, is a the real Higher Power, the real “God” living within us.
Not trying to “teach” here, just reporting what I hear, and what words influence me now and then. Mary, frequently YOUR words influence my thinking–frequently translates to “daily”. OK?
This was brilliant Mary, powerful writing. So much bad in Alcohol.
I love the way you write.
Your sense of a higher power makes makes sense to me. I’m not an atheist, but I wouldn’t call myself an agnostic really either. I feel like whatever us beyond out there is something grand and mysterious and to be respected in a bone deep kind of way. Being the best me I can be, however that manifests, is giving this higher power it’s greatest tribute.
PS: Marilynne Robinson is one of the teachers at the summer writers institute I’ll be attending this summer. She’ll be teaching one of the master classes. I signed up for the advanced class this go around, but I might get brave enough to apply to the advanced one next year.