The God of My Own Understanding...

When you hang around the rooms of AA for a sufficient period of time, or anywhere for that matter, you begin to observe certain patterns of thought, speech and action.

One of these patterns of thought and speech that I find most fascinating is the relationship that alcoholics and addicts have with a Higher Power, the way they speak of interfacing with the God of their understanding.

One of the first things that I learned when I came into AA was that I have a daily reprieve contigent on the maintenence of my spiritual condition.

I am beyond human help. SRSLY. No human power could have relived my suffering.

Realizing this, it was necessary for me to turn beyond myself, outside my previous spheres and modalities, to seek a way to rid me of this pain and anguish - to a God of my own understanding.

Rick's God, Rick's Higher Power, is perhaps one you may know or may not know. I had always believed there was a force at work in my universe, a general guiding hand that while caring, was a bit non-personal - a Divine Flight Attedant if you will.

This force, this Divine Flight Attendant, while it did keep the plane in the air and guided it around mountains and through storms preventing a fiery crash of metal from descending to Earth, it did not particular show any interest in me.

I was, to it, I thought, just a body in a seat.

One of several billion passengers on the airline of the Universe.

Then something happened.

This event is best decribed by the words of a man MUCH smarter and greater than me, "Behold I make all things new; former things are passed away."

Today, my Higher Power is much more.

So. Much. More.

The God of my understanding is not a distant impersonal force, but rather a dynamic, living being that cares deeply and is personally involved in every facet of my existance, if I am willling to let that care and involvment manifest itself.

From the smallest facets, the folding the protiens inside my cells to the largest swaths of keeping the Universe from being erased from existance in a vacuum metastablity event, for example.

And in between those points, where my world lies, the Higher Power in which I have chosen to place my belief and trust and faith in also provides for my temporal needs - food, shelter, clothing, sanity, etc.

Life today is far from perfect as I am homeless, unemployed and broke, More importantly, I  have realized, through prayer and honest introspection, that I am not alone. The program of AA has provided a social infastructure which includes people who take me for what I am - a liar, a drunk and a coward.

Today I know that I cannot MAKE my life perfect as such a thing does not exist.

Thank God for that.