If you’ve never heard about AA–like me in when I was 39 years old, God showed up and brought me to meetings and the AA literature to find a new way of life. If you’d have asked me in my twenties or thirties if I would ever hold a book in divine reverence like a devout Christian, I would have thought you crazy or obsessed. I now hold the Big Book of AA as my bible.
Truth be told, I was blind to the wreckage I would create in my close relationships, based on my behaviors of self-centeredness and selfishness. I was basically obsessed with many things, and couldn’t discern why a focus on matters spiritual was actually a direction much more rewarding than where I been placing my priorities. “It takes what it takes” as many in Alcoholics Anonymous often say. How can a design for living be full of so many contradictions such that its secrets to success are to keep what I have by giving it away, by surrendering to win, and letting go of control and turning my problems over to a God that is some invisible, hard to describe creator, that can be all things to all people?
Enter the beginning paragraphs of the Third Step in AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which describes a locked door with light shining through the crack below the door: That the spiritual principle of willingness could open that door and I could step into the Sunlight of the Spirit and receive answers to all my problems? How could anyone say to me that turning my will over to a power greater than myself would remove my difficulties and bear witness to those I would help of His Power, Love, and a new Way of Life? Okay, I’ll make God a doorknob!
Boy, did get a lot of flack on that description! I didn’t mind at all. If I wanted God to be a doorknob, such that I could place my hand on it and turn it to open the door of willingness–AA’ers told me that I could choose whatever I wanted to be a symbol for the God of my understanding. And I knew I was on to something. I got excited to see how people poo pooing my God as a doorknob was just their own confusion about the Third Step. There is no judgment in divine neutrality about who my God is. I giggled inwardly to myself with a smile when I heard how unconsciously people naturally accepted a God of their own understanding, without having to think about it:
“Oh my God!”
–or in current texting abbreviation; OMG! We all say it all the time!
The Dao of Doug: A Bus Driver's Perspective 