This post expands on my previous one about my Spiritual Family.
Interestingly enough, at my suggestion, my father recently turned to Steps to Knowledge: The Book of Inner Knowing. A sober alcoholic of 32 years, his previous experience had been with the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and he sent me an email called “Random Thoughts on Steps” on July 23, 2013, almost exactly one month before he passed away, in which he made a few comparisons.
I would like to share a couple here since to me they resonate with topics I have addressed in my own posts here.
The first one goes back to my post called “What is God?”
My father wrote (the bold type is his): When the 12 Steps of A.A. talks about “a god of our understanding,” it is not the dogmatic separate “Gods” of however many religions plague the world, cause factions, wars, misunderstandings, and violent death.
Bill Wilson states on p.55 in the chapter called “We Agnostics” of the Big Book of A.A:
“——–deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or another it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.
“We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He(She) was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He(She) may be found. It was so with us.”
My father goes on to address humility.
Bill Wilson defines Humility in Step 5 of “The 12 and 12” (The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous).
Humility – a word often misunderstood.
“ ………..it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.”
“What a challenge,” says Dad.
I am reclaiming my father as a member of my Spiritual Family.
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