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I was at a meeting in Los Angeles awhile ago, and a woman shared about her experience with finding a higher power. She was like so many of us—not-so-great experiences with religion as a younger person, no belief in any kind of God through adulthood, and no real interest in finding one once she got sober. I found myself nodding along as she spoke.
She said she got a sponsor and stayed sober for awhile. She loved meetings. Loved her sponsor. Loved the principles of recovery. Loved what recovery was doing for her and her life.
But… she still didn’t love the whole God thing. By then, she had gotten close with her sponsor and decided to use the group as a higher power. But she said the longer she stayed sober, the more she grew to admire her sponsor’s relationship with a higher power.
Her sponsor described her higher power as a hybrid nature/universe God. The universe was certainly something bigger than her, and nature was where she saw beauty and serenity and peace and truth and mystery and lots of other things she was looking for.
The speaker at that LA meeting then said something that makes me smile to this day. She said that her sponsor eventually told her, “Why not use my higher power for a little while?”
She responded, “What do you mean? Like, rent your higher power?”
And her sponsor said, “Something like that. It’ll be like a sublet. You and me living with my higher power.”
As she was telling that story, she started to laugh and she said, “Guess what? It worked! It freaking worked!”
What ended up happening is, she believed that her sponsor believed, even though she didn’t believe herself. But eventually she came to believe that she could believe, that she had the capacity to believe, and she found her own higher power. So she moved out. No more sublet!
It was a good reminder that finding a higher power doesn’t HAVE to be a painful slog. It can be a fun adventure finding a higher power that suits your needs. I’m not even sure how much it matters to figure out an exact higher power that will work for you forever. For me, it’s more about seeking a higher power forever and seeing what happens. I remember a guy from New York City who told me once he tried a different higher power every day for awhile. I’m not sure that meant 365 Gods in 365 days. But he tried Buddhism, Christianity and a few other religions. Then he tried nature, and the group, and a bunch of other things, and eventually he found something.
I’ve seen too many people who hit a wall because of the God thing, and it really doesn’t have to be a barrier. I just try to remember to keep searching, and worse case scenario, you can always rent one from someone else!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
THROUGH THE EYES OF A BEGINNER
A newcomer at a meeting I attended recently was reading the Traditions aloud. Finally, he got to Tradition Twelve and said, "Animosity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2004, by Ron W. of Schwenskville, Pa.)
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