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Source: Tom W. (Father) – God 101 Talks – 2 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-w-father-god-101-talks-2-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:35:02
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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. My name is Tom and I am an alcoholic, and just a bit of a drug addict, I think I still could have work there, and my family is a little dysfunctional, and I belong to a number of dysfunctional organizations, so I find, I don't, I'm glad that the program, the programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon have given me some tools to use, because I sure need to use tools pretty regularly.
I want to talk for just a moment about the Serenity Prayer, because it's a tool we use a lot, and then I want to talk about the Lord's Prayer, and then I want to talk a little bit about God, and then I'm going to turn it over to, what's his name? Also, I want you to know that I'm speaking to you with great anxiety, I have, last night at dinner I left my notebook, which has every thought I've ever thought in, and my day timer, which tells me where I'm going to be for the next four years, in the dining room, and someone picked it up, and it's in the process of getting to the information desk, but it's not there yet, so I'm just this side of throwing up.
What Catholics do in times of this is they rediscover Saint Anthony. For those of you who don't know real Catholic lore and superstition, Saint Anthony is in charge of anything that is lost, so God is busy with the Middle East, and Saint Anthony is trying to get my book down there, so I just want to encourage Saint Anthony. Saint Jude is in charge of hopeless cases, which are most of my best friends, so I turn them over to Saint Jude while God is working on the Middle East.
I used to think that the purpose of the serenity prayer was to get serenity, you know, God give me serenity, but that's not the end of the prayer. I was saying it for some time before I realized that God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Serenity is not the goal of the serenity prayer, rather serenity is kind of like step one.
Once I'm serene, I can make some decisions. Once I have some serenity, I can accept some stuff and change some other stuff, but it's really hard to make decisions when you're hysterical. So the first thing I need is some serenity so then I can make choices, and the spiritual rule of thumb that underlies that is that when you're really high, it's not a good time to make decisions. Oh baby, don't make decisions right around then, wait a while, and it's also not a real good idea to make decisions when you're really low.
I'm so depressed, I'll never do this again. A better place to make decisions is after a couple of highs and a couple of lows, and you're sort of in the middle place, and then you can make some decisions. And I didn't always know that. I used to wait until I was really high, and then I would make decisions which I could not sustain, or really low and make some decisions which then I'd regret. So anyway, just to say that.
The other prayer that we use a lot, I heard Terry talking about this once and I was actually paying attention, and it's the Lord's Prayer where we pray for a variety of things in the Lord's Prayer, and one of them is, give us this day our daily bread. Where I live, we're very innovative and creative, and we modify anything that displeases us at all. There's about 12 varieties of the Lord's Prayer that circulate where I go to drunk school.
Our Father who art in heaven, our Mother who art in heaven, our Power who art in heaven, our Creator who art in heaven, our Energy who art in heaven, there's a lot of those. And then, give us this day our daily bread, give us this day our daily strength, give us this day our daily day, there's a lot of variations on that theme too. I like the notion of daily bread, I think it's a rich one, but the problem I have with daily bread is I do not want enough bread to get me through today.
[00:05:04]
I want enough bread to get me through the next 35 years. I think daily bread is a little too insecure. And when I'm dealing with God, who I think is elusive, you know, kind of slippery and just when I've got God pinned down, the rules change. I want a lot of security when I'm dealing with God, but the spiritual tradition is we don't get a lot of security other than God. And what we're given is enough for today.
Which just between us doesn't seem like enough to me. I get anxious, I get issues, you know. So it's so much of recovery and so much of sanity and so much of having a spiritual life is learning how to be alive today and be present today. And that message is spoken by everyone from, you know, Moses to Mohammed to Jesus to even Bill W., our sainted founder. So God stuff. A lot of us work on this, you know, God is way out there and we're way down here and where do we make the connection?
And there's just an awful lot of insecurity about that. Where do we connect with God? And like I say, one of my tendencies is to run to my room by myself where I can figure it out one more time. That's not usually a very safe place for me. We talk about spirituality in AA and I'm one of those people who believe that spirituality is just full of flesh and blood. It's all about being people, which means being here.
It's not about escaping from being women and men, it's about being women and men. It's about being practical and the book on one page or another, and if I were a Baptist I'd know exactly what page, but I kind of have a generic knowledge. It says the spiritual life has to be practical or it's not worth very much. And being that I'm a little overly educated, I have a tendency to disdain practicality.
If I just get the right theory, I'm happy. And I remember when I was able to drink and use socially, we would have a couple of social drinks and then start talking about theory and really get it cleverly down pat and try to get the perfect theory that fit everything and we'd speculate like mad. And the fact was, practically my life was a disaster. My sober understanding is that connecting with the higher power concerns intimately the practical stuff in our lives.
And the practical stuff in our lives is all about relationships. When we get spiritual, whenever that is, I'm really trying to get spiritual, you're doing little spiritual sit-ups I guess, I can't quite imagine what this means. But when we're working, when we're becoming aware of that spiritual quality that is our lives, we are not going into a vacuum where we are separate and distant from everything else.
Rather, if we're paying attention to our spiritual dimension, we are talking about the quality of our relationships. And I'm figuring right now that we have four basic relationships. Number one is with our higher power. That's a major relationship. We're encouraged to take time with the higher power. Prayer meditation. Read some books. Do some reflection. Take time with the higher power. I was told this fairly early on when I went into the Order.
How do you learn things about God? You learn a lot of things about God by looking at the kinds of things God does. You learn an awful lot about a musician by listening to the music. Now there's a lot you're not going to know. How tall the musician was, I mean the important questions, you know. Who'd the musician vote for? But by listening to someone's music, you're going to learn a lot about the musician.
By looking at someone's art, you're going to learn a lot about the artist. How they work inside and what's important to them.
[00:10:01]
And I've discovered that looking at the kinds of stuff God does teaches us a lot about God. And my entry point here, my personal relationship with the higher power is that I'm sober. I mean a lot of other things are true too, but I wasn't noticing anything until I got sober or until I was gotten sober. And so a big hit for me on how do I understand my higher power, my understanding keeps changing. My understanding is based on my experience.
It's a key rule of thumb. I can't understand much that's outside of my experience. But if I can pay attention to my experience and say what has my experience of the higher power been, it's the higher power is someone who's gotten me sober and kept me sober on a daily basis. So I equate a lot of my understanding with the higher power, with the whole process of healing. It's a big deal for me. I think most of us come in with a wide variety of damaged parts and illnesses and the higher power is a source that can heal these things.
So relationship with the higher power is real important. And for those of us who can be a little negative about ourselves because we don't quite measure up, we're the wrong size, we're the wrong weight, we're the wrong color, we have the wrong parents, we have the wrong children, we're just a little unhappy with where we are. Instead of beating myself up for being a jerk or a nebbish or someone who's just never going to figure it out, it softens it a lot if I approach the higher power, I am someone who is in need of healing.
And I think that is an awful lot of what happens in steps six and seven. These defects of character. I've got to work on them. No you don't. The good news is you don't. And what defects of character are, are parts of our lives that need healing. So God heal me. It's a real regular prayer. And anything that helps that healing process I think is a good thing. So relationship with the higher power is real important.
And in the program we talk about God as we understand God. How do we understand God? Through our own experiences. When we're 15 years old we might understand God one way, when we're 35 years old we're going to understand God a different way, and when we're 95 years old we're going to understand God a different way. And that's because our experience keeps changing if you're alive. If you're not alive, it's not going to change.
You will stay the same forever. It's not a good sign. I met someone who was in ministry, going around helping other people, and he told me he hadn't changed in 30 years and he took this as a point of pride. I'm exactly the same as I was 35 years ago. And I asked him if he had called the undertaker. Because living things change. That's one of the ways you spot they're alive. And if nothing's changing, we're in trouble.
So relationship with God is an important part of the spiritual thing. The second real important relationship is our relationship with ourselves. This is crucial. And a lot of us, we'll talk, you know, we talk about the committee in our heads, you know, or I'm so confused, or I'm frequently a group, we can be very hostile. I have to learn how to be my own best friend. In fact, there was even a book out entitled How to Be Your Own Best Friend, which I read after I got newly sober and I found it helpful because it had real practical things like take yourself for walks, have lunch, you know, a lot of hungry, angry, lonely, tired stuff was in there.
I liked it. I try not to be embarrassed about who I am. I try not to be ashamed of who I am. I find that I want to have a good relationship with me. I don't always. And I, defects of character kind of get in the way there. I think a lot of recovery for many of us is simply us learning how to get out of our own way because we're not our best friends, you know. If other people treated us the way we treated us, we'd have them arrested, you know.
But we somehow, you know, be kind to others but tough on yourself. Bad rule. You know, I try to be kind to others and kind to me. Another third whole area of relationship is relationship with other people. My relationship to the higher power, my relationship to myself, my relationship with others and being that I'm a member of the human family.
[00:15:07]
And I came into recovery real brittle and real prejudiced and real narrow. Of course, I was right, you know. I wasn't narrow, I was right. But it was very toxic. I had all kinds of very… They weren't just feelings, they were beliefs about racial things, economic things, national things. And I just held on to them. And I was… My bigotry and my ignorance and my prejudice was strangling me. Even though I had elevated my bigotry and my prejudice and my narrowness to principle.
But it was killing me. And I discovered in recovery that if I was going to live, my world had to start getting bigger. And that meant I had to start including other people into my world. I was talking to somebody who's been sober for 248 days, I mean years, I mean he's just forever. Way beyond anything I can fantasize about. And he was telling me that the more he got sober, the smaller his world became and the neater his world became.
And I said, oh, that's a very bad sign. It seems to me, the longer I'm sober, the bigger my world gets and the more messy it gets. Before I joined Al-Anon, and why did I join Al-Anon, isn't AA enough for you? I joined Al-Anon because I didn't want to be a sober person who was shooting others. That's why I joined Al-Anon. But I had to learn some real basic things about other people. And one of the things is there's a lot of people, I had to say out loud, there's a lot of people I just don't like.
And this is an area where I need healing. And in recovery, I start learning how to connect with a wide variety of people. Where I got sober, in Berkeley, we really did have a wide variety of people. And we had people who were from very different traditions. Going to meetings, you know, well we have Baptists and Presbyterians and Catholics and Atheists and Jews. Well that's pretty much a normal group.
Add some Muslims and some Hindus to that group and try to say the Lord's Prayer at the end of the meeting. And well just our common prayer, Lord's Prayer. What? Some of the folks had never heard of it. So we all had to grow a little in some exchange there, learning how to get along with other people. And learning, and this was a real Al-Anon insight for me, that other people have a right to be here.
Even if I don't like them. In fact, especially if I don't like them. And I have been strongly tempted to stop going to some meetings because jerks were there. And I find it's real important for me to go to meetings where there are jerks. Otherwise I end up alone by myself in my room, right? You know, and have a direct pipeline to God. I was talking to someone about the importance of sponsorship. Even if your sponsor is as desperately in need of the program and every one of the 12 steps as mine is, it is real important to have a sponsor.
Because if you don't have someone to run stuff through, you do end up like Jim Jones. You know, I'm just me and God. Now follow my directions, God talks to me directly. Very scary. We need to have other folks to connect with. And part of my recovery is regularly looking on my own bigotry, narrowness, prejudice. And it's there. And I've been working on it for a long time. And it's there. Just push a little bit and I suddenly have issues, as we say in California.
God, self, other people. And the fourth area of major relationship that I've got is the earth. It's the planet. We're part of this. And how I relate and connect and become part of the planet is a crucial part of spirituality and has been from the beginning. It's like we're just rediscovering it, but it's real important. It has to do with stewardship. It has to do with responsibility. It has to do with sharing.
It has to do with preserving. It has to do with honoring. Now, I find there are times when the higher power feels very distant. God is far away. We're not connecting. We're not getting along.
[00:20:00]
And I feel kind of abandoned and isolated. And I might be having kind of difficulty with myself. I've disappointed myself again because I've been a jerk in four major ways in public, which is always worse. And I'm not getting along with you because the fact is you are human beings and you are disappointing me pretty regularly. So what I'll do is I'll connect with the earth for a while. And I find all of these four areas are interrelated.
And sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do is listen to another human being. Or take care of myself a little bit. Or do something that is involved with the planet. And sometimes all four relationships are working real well and sometimes one out of the four are working real well. But it's kind of a, they go back and forth. And anyway, that's how my head works. So when I'm sponsoring some folks and they're in real difficult trouble with their relationship with God, well that's fine.
How about working on your relationship with someone else? It will get you back to God. A lot of us have difficulty with the higher power. And everything else. What's helpful to believe about God? Like I said, I try to keep it real simple. In the last tape I mentioned I think God is very big. And I have to keep that notion in mind. God has to be big enough to handle my craziness. So that's important.
Number two, I find it's helpful for me to think that God has skills. A lot of times I don't. I just run out of ideas and run out of energy. And I don't know where to turn. It's helpful to believe that God has skills. I think this is a real crucial Al-Anon point. I always wanted to be very close to God. Like his advisor. You know? And when I prayed I would kind of be giving God advice. This shows you when I was first aware of this.
I wanted to be, you know, if God were Richard Nixon, I wanted to be Henry Kissinger. I mean that's the image that I had in mind. You know, whispering in his ear. Well, God does not need my advice. And I have to learn that God has skills. And God has abilities. And that more often than not God knows what God is doing. Which puts God way out of my league. Because I don't know what I'm doing a lot. I wish I did.
I look around the fellowship and I see all these people who know what they're doing. You know? And they have five-year plans. And they're organized. And it's just, you know, to rest is not to conquer. And they're just plunging off into the future. What I remember is that Stalin ruined Russia with five-year plans. You know? And I just don't have five-year plans. I kind of try to stay in the present and maybe organize a few things into the future.
Which is why I hope my day timer comes back. Please, God. And St. Anthony. But I'm baffled pretty regularly about what's going on. And when I turn it over to God as I understand God, I've got to believe God has skills. God knows what God is doing. And this might take a long time. Someone told me this and it helped take my anxiety, the edge off my anxiety. This person said, God may be slow, but God is never late.
And that helps. You know? When I get angry at God, it's frequently around God being late. And I just wish things would speed up to suit my tastes. Learning a lot about patience and learning a lot about relationship is an awful lot about the God stuff. One of the prayers we pray sometimes is for patience. It's even a virtue. In fact, I've even seen it where I go to meetings where we have real AA. We have a whole list of kind of AA approved topics.
They're out of the book and out of the literature, and it's a whole page of things that is kind of mimeographed or xeroxed. And they have topics like honesty, confidentiality, service, all that stuff. And one of the approved topics is the topic that says patience. Well, oh God, I would like to be patient right now.
[00:25:02]
Let's work on it. And I had to look up the word patient. By the way, in addition to the big book and the 12 and 12, it's real helpful to have a dictionary because there are a variety of words that I think I know the meaning to. And I happened to figure out what that word meant after a little dope. I don't know what it means. So to look up at the meaning of words, I looked up the word patient. And it's from a Latin verb, a deponent verb, patior, P-A-T-I-O-R.
And the word patient means to be able to be uncomfortable. The word patient comes from it. It's the adjectival or the noun that comes from it. People in hospitals are called patients because they're uncomfortable. It's not just because they're waiting for the doctor, which we know they are, but they're just waiting. And the virtue of patience is the ability to be uncomfortable without committing homicide or suicide.
Footnote, I think one of our topics back where we have real AA was homicide or suicide. People were a little moody. It was around the holidays. And someone's lover had just left or had moved in, I forget which, but equal crisis, right? And this person was saying, oh, I'm going to shoot myself. And we said, don't shoot yourself, shoot the other person. At least with homicide you're relating to someone else.
With suicide it's self-obsession, so get over it. I find that there are times in recovery when I am actually able to pay attention to someone else. This doesn't happen all the time. But when it happens, it's wonderful. And I think that's a sign of spirit at work, when my self-obsession becomes a little less. And I can realize that God has skills. God brings people into my life. People leave my life.
There is a huge amount of theology about God that we can get into, and there are a wide variety of points of view concerning God. How do you figure it all out? You don't. But you take what you need, and you leave the rest, and keep it real practical, and you keep it on a very daily basis. I was wondering about the third step, this turning it over. Sane people turn it over. And I asked my sponsor on one of his more lucid days, what is this turning it over like?
I mean, how do you do it? And I, of course, being I'd been to school a little too long, and when I was young and my body and emotions were confusing me, I moved into my head, which is a safer place, I thought. But I figured it's the mental gymnastic that I have to figure it out, and then I've turned it over. Spirituality is not mental gymnastics. It's behavior. It's service. It's action, regardless of what your head is saying.
So the sponsor said a lot of turning it over is involved in showing up regularly. You show up to life, to today, to a meeting, to a job, to a relationship. Show up. Once you've shown up, pay attention. A lot of having a spiritual life is being conscious, which means paying attention. I have had complete blackouts in sobriety because I've been so distracted. I've been thinking about me, which is very important, and I have no idea what's going on with you, even though you are the one who is bleeding and on fire.
I'm busy. I'm worrying about what really happened back then, and I'm concerned. I've got to learn how to pay attention to what you're saying and what you're relating to me, and what's going on around us, and what's going on inside of me, and what I'm feeling. Am I anxious? Am I awkward? Am I having anything? Am I just flat? I've got to learn how to be present. Show up. Pay attention. The third thing I need to do in terms of turning it over to God is I have to learn how to tell the truth.
I have to show up here, I have to learn how to tell the truth, which does not mean I need
[00:30:00]
to take an ad out of the New York Times, but I need to let me know what's going on. And a lot of times I don't know, which is again, why do you go to meetings and talk to people and do some writing, so I know what's going on. I remember on one occasion I was feeling emotionally and spiritually constipated, uncomfortable, so I don't know what's going on. And it had been going on for a while, several days I guess, and it was just miserable, and I had to do some writing, and I had to do some talking, and I had to try to describe it.
And after I wrote for a while, like a page, which for me is a lot, what I realized is I was afraid, that's all, just afraid. And once I was able to simply say that, it started clearing up. Learning how to pay attention to that is real difficult, and what I do, rather than pay attention to those things, is I get busy. Because if I'm busy, I'm distracted, and then the only emotion I really have room for is tired, which is not an emotion.
How are you? Tired? Gee, you've been tired a lot. Yes, I'm consistent. I think when you're emotionally mature, you're exhausted all the time. No, you're not. Emotions come and go, and knowing what's happening is real important, emotionally. Show up, pay attention, tell the truth. And number four, in this funny little process, is let go of the results. We get to do the footwork, we're not in charge of the results, who's in charge of the result?
God is, who has skills. So, as I'm wrapping up, are you getting ready to talk? Go on, I just wanted to focus you in, so he dozes. If I show up, pay attention, and tell the truth, and let go of the results, I really am leaving a lot of this stuff in God's hands. That practically is what the third step means to me. And that practically is how I live it out. And what the ultimate significance of it all is, I leave in God's hands, because that's God's job.
And somewhere in the New Testament, they talk a lot about God increasing, us decreasing. It goes back and forth a lot. But whenever I can be of service, or get out of my own way, or connect with the earth, or with another human being, or with myself in a gentle way, or with the higher power, I figure something very powerful is going on. God has skills and abilities, even though I get uncomfortable around those, if I trust those, I can have a sober life, a real life, and I think that's good news.
Last point, on one occasion, someone was saying, you know, what is God's will for us? That's a great topic, by the way, for meetings, that we had it in Berkeley one night, what is God's will for us? I wanted to hang myself halfway through the meeting. You don't want to have that as a topic with a lot of people who've dropped acid for years, because it just extrapolates way out there. We were getting so theoretical, and so abstract, and so refined, Kierkegaard was quoted, Freud was quoted, the word existential was used twice in one meeting.
I mean, it was very scary, and I just kept on wanting to do something elsewhere, you know, maybe I should join another fellowship. The meeting landed again when someone, a newcomer, raised his hand and said, I don't know what God's will is for me, but I'm hoping that any day now I'm going to stop shaking. Elect him as king of AA, you know, this is what we call a clear and simple program. Keep it real simple.
So what is God's will for us? God's will is for each of us to have a life. Whatever you need to do to have a life is God's will. Well, does God want me to have the red car or the blue car? God doesn't care, you know? God is busy worrying about the Near East, you know? Get a life, which means have a relationship with your higher power. Have a relationship with yourself, have a relationship with other people, hopefully in an ever-increasing ring, and have a relationship with the earth, and you'll be a human being, which is what sobriety is all about.
Thank you.