on a roll

I've been emailing a friend of mine a lot about program, which is really making me think a lot about it. (Far more thinking than what's good for a mind to do perhaps!) But I thought I'd add it here, because it was quite enlightening to myself as I was writing it and I wanted to remember what occurred to me. (Amazing how when I'm writing, things come out that I didn't even know I had!)

We were talking about the whole interpretation thing - how to interpret all this 12-step language while removing the concept of "God" as a deity, but rather using program and the 12 steps as that power greater than ourselves that restores us to sanity. (As a side note - I don't really think of myself as an atheist, since I can't say that I believe there absolutely positively is no God, but I also absolutely positively can say that I don't unquestionably believe in a God either, and having my recovery depend on the resolution to THAT issue just isn't workable. And since the second step says "came to believe that A power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" and not "came to believe that THE power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity", I figure I'm good to go. Using program and the principles/steps of program as my higher power is "good enough."

But the translation thing sure can kick my ass! Often it seems that every aspect of program can be riddled with religious dogma, all the while telling me not to be prejudiced by the terms they use! Of course I know that I can't take the Big Book and ignore the times in which it was written. It's kind of like the Constitution - when the founders of this country came here, they were running from persecution from their home country, where they were persecuted for being christians. They wanted nothing more than to go some place where they could practice christianity and live in peace. So they hopped the pond, set up shop and wrote our Constitution really with just being able to practice christianity in mind! But because of their past experiences, they said that government doesn't get to dictate religion. So while on the one hand, they're saying "In God we trust" and other such "religious dogma" in the stuff they wrote, on the other hand, they're saying separation of church and state!

It is a fact that they set up our country specifically so they could practice christianity, but whether they meant to or not, they also set it up so you could NOT practice christianity if you so choose. And whether you believe the camp that says the founders wrote God into everything so that's where it needs to be (like my parents), or you believe the camp that says the founders wrote it so God couldn't be forced into everything - that they just happened to use "God" because that was their personal belief at the time (like me), the end result is that the plain words of the Constitution provide for separation of church and state. They certainly did it to allow for christianity, and who knows - maybe they truly said "separation of church and state" simply to allow for THEIR church (christianity) to be in the state (government)! But that's not what they said - what they said was separation of church and state. So whether they intended things to truly be as they are today, it doesn't matter. As my law professor used to say, "Even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again." In other words - they may not have intended to make things as they are, but they did and I think we're better off for it.

Similarly, I think most of the founders of AA did not intend for our program to exclude their idea of God - but fortunately for us, I think that what their personal beliefs were and what they actually wrote were just different enough that those blind pigs found themselves an acorn! They said that your higher power could be whatever conception of God you wanted, although they may have meant (or assumed) that your conception would be like theirs (initially, or eventually, whichever). Fortunately, it is only what they wrote that matters, and I think that there are enough people who have recovered using "the program" as "A power greater than" (and enough people who have NOT recovered using God, the deity, as "THE power greater than" to prove to me that "the solution" was in fact an acorn they had found!

So I guess I would say, what difference does it make what you believe about God? If you believe that the principles of program are A power greater than yourself that can restore you to sanity, the rest doesn't matter - you only need A power greater than yourself.

But as I was saying about the translation of program literature and common "sayings" - it sure can be a bitch!!! And I have struggled, struggled, struggled with it! I am getting better though. Sometimes in place of "God" I will say "principles of program" or just "program", sometimes I say "good orderly direction", sometimes I say "goodness in general" - it depends on the sentence and what makes most sense to me. For example, this is from an email that I received from someone in program who was talking about how grateful she is:

She says "Today I am grateful for a higher power that has molded me into someone that I hardly recognize" - my translation, "Today I am grateful that working program has molded me into someone I hardly recognize."

She says, "I have learned more and more how to rely on God" - my translation, "I have learned more and more how to implement the principles of program in my life." Sometimes making it too close to the exact words of the original doesn't work as well, which is why I don't necessarily say "I have learned more and more how to rely on program" - saying it that way suggests that program actually does something for me, whereas I feel more that program is a set of guidelines by which I live my life, which consequently makes my life better and keeps me away from my substance.

She says, "God brings good things into my life that I would never expect and he just drops them on me like little joy bombs" - my translation, "Because of program and the progress I have made, I have joy in my life that I would never expect, and those joyful things just drop into my life like little joy bombs." (I know - "joy bombs" - hilarious! But I'm working with what I got.)

Now here's a tougher one - she says, "I don't care, because I know God's got it covered!!" My translation, "I don't care, because it doesn't have to be covered by me!!" Or maybe, "...because I know I don't have to fix it!!" Basically, instead of saying that God is doing something, I say that I don't have to or that I can't, and instead of God's got it covered, I say it doesn't have to be covered by me or that I can't cover it.

That's actually something new that occurred to me this morning - the idea of not necessarily ADDING something in place of "God" (who or what would be the one or thing doing something instead of the deity God), but simply TAKING OUT that it isn't me. I was listening to a program speaker on CD and he was talking about what it means when someone says "in God's time." Of course the speaker's interpretation of it didn't match mine, but it forced me to think of a way to interpret that saying for myself in a way that makes sense to me. I came up with "not in my time." That's all it means to me - when something happens "in God's time," it only means that it's not happening on my time. I just have to accept that whatever it is, it is not on my preferred time line.

I think it's kind of like how Step 2 doesn't say "came to believe that THE power greater than us ..." but rather "came to believe that A power greater than us..." - it doesn't matter what the power is so long as you know it isn't you. And it doesn't matter on whose time it happens in, just so long as I know it isn't mine (either because I can't control it, don't have to, or shouldn't).

So that's all I got today ... it's kind of weird doing all this writing and putting out there, in the middle of nowhere to be read by probably no one ... but I just have to remind myself that it is the process of writing it out that makes a difference - it matters not whether anyone else ever reads it. If a tree falls in the forest, it doesn't matter whether it really makes a sound or not! What's important is that it fell - deal with the tree on the ground.