Endigar 449 ~ Making A.A. Your Higher Power
From Today’s Daily Reflections;
“. . .You can . . . make A.A. itself your ‘higher power.’ Here’s a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. . . . many members . . . have crossed the threshold just this way. . . . their faith broadened and deepened. . . . transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power. . . .” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 27-28)
No one was greater than I, at least in my eyes, when I was drinking. Nevertheless, I couldn’t smile at myself in the mirror, so I came to A.A. where, with others, I heard talk of a Higher Power. I couldn’t accept the concept of a Higher Power because I believed God was cruel and unloving. In desperation I chose a table, a tree, then my A.A. group, as my Higher Power. Time passed, my life improved, and I began to wonder about this Higher Power. Gradually, with patience, humility and a lot of questions, I came to believe in God. Now my relationship with my Higher Power gives me the strength to live a happy, sober life.
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My first experience with God was the God-man Messiah know as Jesus that I learned about from parents and sporadic visits to Church. I walked the aisle in a Baptist church to the crying song of “Just As I Am” at seven years old, and was baptized all in order to avoid Hell. I was water baptized again as a teen to be transformed, to spiritually die and be reborn into something God would accept. I was baptized a third time as a young adult Airman serving in the US Air Force. This had a bit of prophecy that went with it and a commitment from me to set my life aside to live as whatever minister God so desired. All attempts to find the ministry failed. There were indeed magical things that happened along the way, but I never really felt accepted. Finally I pushed my way into ordination and served as a minister at a small church for a short time. The chaos storm of 2003 was brewing and would culminate in my renunciation of the ordination and a complete loss of faith in my ability to connect with God. I found more demons than deity in church.
Finally, I was barely hanging on to a life in which there simply was no god. This was my spiritual bottom. I was already there when I found alcohol.
I determined to make my own rules and I was going to use alcohol and anything else I could find to make it happen. Then, like my churchian god, alcohol turned out to be an abusive deity. In this state of angry despair, I found and was found by A.A.
In the recovery fellowship I found enough protective heresies to keep my spirituality from being hijacked by centralized religion. I found enough friendship to build a basic trust in humanity and thus I could trust their personal evidence of something out there that cares. It was the God of AA that I finally connected to in a very real way. I like to call him Gomu (God of my understanding). It frees the Higher Power concept from connotations of doctrinal hoops that stand between God and I.
The group connection was a flesh and blood embrace by something that cares and something that was powerful. From that spiritual reboot, I have a faith based on intuitive knowing and a pragmatic morality that leads to spiritual freedom. Here are the names I have called my Gomu;
The Godfather, He makes an offer I cannot refuse. Alcohol was His Guido to beat me into a state of reasonableness. I had some respect for the mafia lore, so this sorta worked for a bit.
The Great Whatever. An intimate female borrowed this from the author Robert Fulghum, and I borrowed it from her.
John. Simple and associated with a small gospel given to me when I was hospitalized from alcoholic melt-down. I needed something simple. I needed a friend. I began to see that my Higher Power was not trying to trap me, but talk me in off the ledge.
Spirit-Lover. When I began to see the third step prayer as something similar to a marriage covenant. I desired something more intimate and binding.
GOMU (God of my understanding). I developed this out of a sense of great gratitude to Ebby Thatcher for introducing Bill Wilson to the liberating and powerful concept of choosing a God of your own understanding. It allows and encourages me to take responsibility for my own spiritual path. Every time I use it now, it is with gratitude to my God.
There are many other names that cropped up along the way. If I get too complicated in my approach, I strip it down to God or Gomu.
It all started when I began to trust AA with my spiritual development.
I found the wooden token design at the following site [ http://www.woodenurecover.com/Circle-and-Triangle-Welcome-Medallion_p_118708.html ]
Daily Reprieve 
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