Finding a Higher Power Part 2

Once I was able to get past the initial fact that I not only needed a higher power, but I needed to surrender to it, I did the first thing I could think of:  I went to church.

I was raised Catholic but stopped going to church when I went to college.  This happened to coincide with a big wave of scandals and a huge payment of damages to the victims of sexual abuse by priests.  But what rocked my faith the most was the fact that the priest of the mass I regularly attended was one of the people on the news for molesting small boys.  This is the man I received communion from; the man I gave confessions to.

It started out first that my faith in the Church was shaken, and then my faith in Christianity as I began to learn more of the history of the Church and the bible.  I'd always had difficulty relating to Jesus.  Not that I didn't respect his teachings, but I'd just never been able to reach a point of believing in him as my "Lord and Savior." 

So now, here I was more than a decade later trying to get back to a point of faith.  I sat in mass and found myself fighting not to roll my eyes.  I felt out of place and uncomfortable there.  I tried staying late to sit in silence in the church and pray, but I still felt like an interloper.  I didn't give up immediately.  I kept going to mass, sometimes taking my young son with me.  But the feeling that I was a fraud kept plaguing me.

So I went to my sponsor and asked for help.  She told me that if I didn't like the Catholic God, then I should just make my own Higher Power. 

In a meeting, I once heard a man share how he found his own Higher Power.  His sponsor told him to take a piece of notebook paper and fold it in half length-wise (i.e. like a hot dog).  One one side, he was to write all the things he hated about organized religion and the religious beliefs of others.  On the other side he was to write down all the good things, and the things he'd want in his own higher power.  Once this was completed, his sponsor told him to rip the sheet in half down that dividing line.  Here were the applicants for the job of his Higher Power. Now he could throw out the ass-hole he didn't like and hire the one he did.

So I started my research.  I looked into theologians like former Dominican priest Matthew Fox, Judaism, eastern religions, I even spent a good deal of time looking into paganism.  In fact, one of the most helpful books I read was Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religion by River and Joyce Higginbotham.  That book described various faith systems, ways people look at religion, and even talks about scientific findings that could support the basis of an earth-based faith.  But most importantly it taught me ways to meditate and pray that were deeply meaningful to me.

It was almost a four month process of research, meditation, and reflection that led me to the point where I now had a Higher Power with capital letters.  I was able to look back on the way that program had changed my life, and how I had changed as a result of program.  These were things I had never been able to achieve on my own.  Finally I knew I had found the belief that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  I had at last taken the second step.

Donor Organ

We are like recipients of a donor organ.  Ours was defective so we needed a new one.  The only catch is that we need to constantly be taking medicine to keep our bodies from rejecting our new organ.  In fact, we have nine medicines we need to take: 1) a plan of eating, 2) sponsorship, 3) meetings, 4) telephone, 5) writing, 6) literature, 7) action plan, 8) anonymity, 9) service.