Surrender...

In 1988, I was the Program Chair for the now defunct Columbia River Young People's Round-up, responsible for choosing speakers for that year's conference.  On Saturday night, I sat on the dais with my friends Jay and Barbara, as we introduced Sean A, from Vancouver, BC. He carried a strong message of recovery that impressed we newcomers especially. Here was a man who was funny and handsome and talked about living a rich and full life while sober.

Last weekend, Sean A spoke from the podium at the Summerfest conference in Eugene. He sat, rather than stood, and opened his talk by sharing that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He talked about how his relationship to Step 3, where we are asked to decide to turn our will and our lives over to Higher Power, had changed. I did not have the sense that this was a foxhole conversion, but more a continuation of a long relationship.

What does it mean to have a continuing relationship with God? What does it mean today that it may not have meant when I was newly sober? Back then, my relationship with Higher Power was like falling in love, an infatuation really. It was new and exciting, and I wondered what God had in store for me next. Over time, it settled into a more comfortable knowing, which is not to say that there haven't been moments (weeks, months) of doubt, of anger, of questioning.

So often I hear people share their struggles about God - to believe or not believe, to trust or not trust. The founders of AA were brilliant in their insistence that the 12 steps refer to a God of our own understanding, each to his or her own concept or lack thereof.  I am very fortunate in that I was raised with the idea of a loving and caring God. What was missing was the sense of a personal relationship,which I was challenged to define as I moved forward in recovery. And define I tried to do, until I realized that I was trying to put God in a very small box.

In "Yearnings," Rabbi Irwin Kula notes that "the word God so often trips us up," from the notion of an Almighty in the sky who keeps score, perhaps the God within, or maybe none at all. He goes on to say that our image(s) of God "become stultifying if we don't allow them to change and grow as we do." According to his studies, the graven images forbidden by the 2nd Commandment also refer to our ideas of Creator, to the places we get stuck in our limited definitions.

I am saddened by Sean A's illness, yet I am inspired by his example of service, of showing the way with grace and dignity. I reflect on what he shared about letting go. And what greater challenge of surrender than when one is staring death in the face?  I think about my own relationship with God and how that has shifted over the years, from the Santa Claus god of early recovery to the close companion who held me as I walked with my mother on her end-of-life journey, to the comforting presence I sense today.  I learn from others, both in program and not. When I am moved by a share, by a passage read, by the experience of a sunrise, that becomes a part of the God within - the still small voice. Someone once told me that if I could understand the Higher Power, I wouldn't need it. Amen to that. Today I don't have to try to figure it out.

God speed, Sean A. Safe travels, where ever this journey leads.