Finding A Higher Power

I've never been comfortable with the traditional Christian language sometimes used in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (I've been sober for a while now). A major tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous is to turn to a higher power for help. I figure something is out there, I just don't know what that is. But I don't feel comfortable with the idea of a God on high who makes things happen (a lot of very bad things happen and a god who doles out bad things scares the bejeebies out of me). What works for me is to see AA as a whole as my higher power, the fact that millions of recovering drunks are out there running meetings, volunteering to answer calls, making bad meeting coffee. That God with skin on has kept me sober for years. 

I'm a big fan of the cartoonist Dan Piraro and interestingly he wrote a blog post on the subject of God that really clicked for me.  His point in that post was that we are all part of a larger creative force; we are all part of one being. Now that I can get into. Thank goodness for the second half of the Third Step in AA, God as we understood God. That part of Step 3 means all us recovering drunks get to choose a higher power that works best for us. And Piraro`s creative force sounds a bit like my AA as a whole higher power, just bigger. Maybe my higher power just changed a bit. Either way, I get to choose.

Here is the meat of what Piraro wrote:

"In a previous post, I wrote about 'the finger pointing at the Moon,' which is a Buddhist metaphor for how we sometimes fall in love with the pointing finger (religion) instead of the Moon it is pointing at (God). That rings a bell for me.  Another concept I very much like is that we are not independent individuals but small, interdependent parts of an enormous being of creative force.

It is rather scientifically undeniable that nothing in this world lives independent of everything else, and in that sense, nothing is independent; it’s all one thing. We cannot live without air, water, microorganisms, and on and on, and those things cannot exist without millions of other things. Ergo, there are no independent individuals, only pieces of worlds and systems much larger and much smaller. 

I’ve come to think of that enormous engine that continuously generates and sustains life as the symbolic Moon that so many fingers are pointing at. Does this giant, living thing have intention, intelligence, purpose? We can’t know for sure but once you start to dial into it, it certainly seems to. 

And if this enormous force of life and creativity is what you want to call 'GOD' (or 'Skippy' or 'Barbara' or 'Zardoz') that’s fine, but it is not a person living somewhere outside of here, we are something living inside of it. In fact, we are parts of it the way microbes are parts of us."

I've experienced a lot of sadness and grief in the last several years and that sadness doesn't seem to have an end. The idea of a God on high, a single, above-us entity, has never offered comfort to me. But the idea of being part of a larger whole, a sort of universe-encompassing group hug, offers me some peace. An upset friend recently indicted me of being desperate for connection--long story, she's in a bad space and I'd ticked her off, so this was her angry response. My reply? Yes, I do want connection. We all do, especially during these isolated Covid times. So if I can hunker down into the warmth of a creative force group hug, sucking up all the connection I need, I'm taking it. Thank you, Dan Piraro for your often hilarious cartoons and your most excellent thoughts on God. I needed that.  Now get on over here and get in the group hug.