“My musing was interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over. He was sober. It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed. Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity. I wondered how he had escaped. Of course, he would have dinner, and then I could drink openly with him. Unmindful of his welfare, I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days. There was that time we had chartered an airplane to complete a jag! His coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility. The very thing-an oasis! Drinkers are like that. The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened? I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had got into the fellow. He wasn’t himself.”
Let’s look at what the author is saying. Go out in your mind and look at what he’s trying to describe. What is an oasis when you’re out in the desert, a desert of futility? It’s often a Mirage, right? You often end up drinking sand. Bills trying to tell us that what we think is not necessarily what is. This party might be an oasis of healing cool water, but the likelihood is it’s a mirage. The reason I point that out is because that thought came to Bill and we’re going to hear Bill’s experience and learn this meeting with Ebby was, in fact, the cool drink of water he had been searching for, because this is Bills encounter with a Power greater than himself……with a capital “P”.
Consider the words Bill uses to describe his drinking buddy, “…fresh skinned and glowing.” Regardless of how you talk or whatever, to describe your drinking buddy as fresh skinned and glowing, it’s freaking weird. Especially when we think of the context and timeframe of the 1930’s. There’s a reason that happened, right? There’s something strange in that description. This was troubling to Bill. Remember he’s drinking, got it hidden all over the house. But the experience of Ebby coming to the door was so profound, he’s trying madly to figure out what’s just happened to him.
- Have you ever been disappointed, but curious?
Bill is curious as to why his drinking buddy won’t have a drink. Have you ever not trusted when someone won’t drink with you or take a hit off the pipe? “Must be a cop”
“Come, what’s this all about?” I queried. He looked straight at me. Simply, but smilingly, he said, “I’ve got religion.”
Now, I suspect about half of you reading this right now are what people would call religious. We don’t often know the difference between relationship and religion. The other half of you really don’t care for religion. But all I want to say to you is if I’m drinking and planning to drink a lot, and someone’s coming who I think is going to party with me, and when I ask them what’s up with them, they say, “I’ve got religion.” The fun meter just went to zero, really quickly!! This is going to suck. I’m going to get a lecture from hell. In fact, I think if you see a picture of hell, it’s me at this table with this asshole. Right? Because that’s just what we know we got coming.
“I was aghast. So that was it-last summer an alcoholic crackpot; now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion. He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right. But bless his heart, let him rant! Besides, my gin would last longer than his preaching. But he did no ranting. In a matter-of-fact way he told how two men had appeared in court, persuading the judge to suspend his commitment. They had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. That was two months ago, and the result was self-evident. It worked! He had come to pass his experience along to me-if I cared to have it. I was shocked but interested.”
Think about how incredible that would be to have two men that you’d never met come to court and vouch for you. They told Ebby of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. Why do we try to sugar coat the idea of religion in the modern fellowship, by saying things like, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” We just confuse people. The religious idea is that God dwells in you. It’s that simple. All we’re saying is there’s a Power in you that’s greater than you, regardless of whether you believe it, and it’s the Power to live. Then they added a practical program of action, which proved that fact to me, through me, if I cared to go along with the idea. I’m not religious. I’m in relationship.
So, there’s the miracle. This guy can’t be sober. Yet, there he is. He came to tell Bill exactly what happened to him. We owe everyone we encounter no less, which is why we should do the steps, not because we must, but to get armed with the facts about ourselves.
Notice how Bill’s friend didn’t come to pass the meeting list or a book. He came to pass his experience of redemption onto Bill. Bill didn’t know it at the time when he opened the door and he saw Ebby standing there fresh skinned and glowing, that he had encountered the presence of the living God. Ebby had already passed it on to Bill before even one word had been spoken. That’s what happened. That’s the testimony of Bill Wilson, the famous atheist, by the way.
“Certainly, I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless. He talked for hours. Childhood memories rose before me. I could almost hear the sound of the preacher’s voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather’s good natured contempt of some church folk and their doings; his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the preacher’s right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as he spoke of these things just before he died; these recollections welled up from the past. They made me swallow hard.”
Bill is describing to us a movement in his spirit that caused him to have an emotional experience. Has that ever happened to you? Something just so moved you, that you had an emotional experience and people thought you were having emotion, but behind the emotion was a movement of the Spirit, like the revelation of Bill’s grandfather’s faith when he denied the preacher’s right to tell him how he must live. Essentially saying, “You can’t tell me how to worship my God.” He maintained that attitude until his death. That was a man who was sure of who he was and Whose he was. Those are the thoughts that came to Bill and caused him to be moved in his spirit.
- Have you ever been moved in your spirit?
- Have you ever had an emotional experience that you knew was the Spirit moving you?
It’s so important because later when they talk about God, as we understood him, we are not we. It’s these tangible sensory experiences that prove the Power to us through us, that’s the understanding we’re growing in, not doorknobs, or light bulbs, or a group of drunks, none of that nonsense people have made up over the years. The authors left us precise instructions throughout the rest of the book of how to move forward. But the first thing is a compelling testimony of depth and weight. Bill goes on to describe:
“That war-time day in old Winchester Cathedral came back again. I had always believed in a Power greater than myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. My intellectual heroes, the chemists, the astronomers, even the evolutionists, suggested vast laws and forces at work. Despite contrary indications, I had little doubt that a mighty purpose and rhythm underlay all. How could there be so much of precise and immutable law, and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in a Spirit of the Universe, who knew neither time nor limitation. But that was as far as I had gone. With ministers, and the world’s religions, I parted right there.”
Do you understand what he’s saying. Bill has moved into the knowledge that:
“I don’t believe there is no God, I just don’t like the word God, but I think there’s order to things that I can’t explain.”
He’s telling us about his evolution, from the encounter he had with Ebby, because he had been a pronounced atheist for years. He began by admitting there was something bigger than himself, but he wasn’t ready to name it. And he wasn’t ready to claim it as his own…yet.
- Have you ever had the experience of knowing there was something bigger than yourself, yet you couldn’t define it?
Half the original fellowship were atheist or agnostic. The other half were religious people, who were all similarly dying in their addictions. Yet, to a man they all agreed that this was their shared experience ….an encounter with a Power greater than themselves. Bill is talking about himself here and the experience he had.
“When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated, and my mind snapped shut against such a theory. To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching-most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded. The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute had facilitated, made me sick. I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he certainly had me.”
- How many of you can relate to Bill when he talks about being hurt by religious people and their ideas?
- How many of you have thought of them as hypocrites?
If my only example of Christ and the certainty of who Christ is, comes from other humans, I might be misled. We are sorry if you have been hurt by religious people and we invite you into our fellowship. Bill is telling you that he believes in the devil or he’s willing to believe in the devil, but he’s not really going to buy into that whole church thing. Can some of you can relate to the way his mind is working?
Bill continues to tell the story of the power of witness, the blood of the lamb, the word of their testimony, the power of witness that his friend Ebby was testifying to. I call your attention to the way in which Bill describes the encounter:
“But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!”
Have you ever heard the argument about whether we are “recovered” or “recovering” because it’s not an argument? They use the word recovered 17 times in the instructions, contained within the pages of the book. They only say recovering twice. Both of which are in the chapter to the wives about the still drinking alcoholic. This was a mining term at the time the book was written. The authors meant exactly what they said, but they just told you alcoholism wasn’t a disease back then, there was no medical condition to recover from. What he’s talking about is Redemption, raised from the scrap heap to a level of life, better than the best we’ve ever known. We are something of infinite value recovered from the scrap heap. It’s not an argument. If you haven’t had the experience, you couldn’t explain it to anyone. However, you wouldn’t need to explain it to anyone who has had the experience – The minute you spoke to one another, you’d feel the shared experience because Spirit testifies to Spirit.
Bill then begins to look inwardly, eyesight without insight is spiritual blindness. (Any time there is a question mark in the text, the authors are encouraging you to reflect on your own life.) He was faced with the thought of where this Power comes from:
Play video
“Had this power originated in him? Obviously, it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at the minute; and this was none at all.”
- How many of you don’t like to admit powerlessness?
Understand where the Power comes from. For students of the other book, I ask you to consider the story of Lazarus; (see John 11: 1-44 for further reading if you desire) “How much power did Lazarus have to come out of that grave?” We suggest that he had none until he was called. Let’s look more at the experience of the authors to determine if our experience aligns with theirs:
“That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table. He shouted great tidings…. Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed.”
You’ll often hear people talk repeatedly about the good news this book brings. But the book doesn’t bring the good news, the recovered man or woman brings the good news, as evidence of their new creation. Bill saw the evidence of this in Ebby. The evidence that a Power greater than himself had taken up residence and now began to inform his path. No one was ever expected to come to believe in Power in Alcoholics Anonymous without first seeing the miracle, feeling the power, and then coming to believe.
The goal of 12-step recovery is to WAKE UP. After you have surgery, they take you to a recovery room where you wake up. Welcome to the recovery room. Notice how Bill describes the experience and remembers his pre-war musings in the graveyard. He was frightened. He went to a church yard, getting ready to go to a very bloody battle. Then he saw a gravestone, and it was an old soldier who drank himself to death after a war. Here Bill was a soldier who’d survived the war. He had had this profound spiritual experience in that graveyard, reading that headstone. Now, here he is, having survived war, drinking himself to death in New York City. When he had these realizations, that Power came on him again; the real significance of this experience is that the Power came to him and visited him in the graveyard and now that Power is with him again. That’s very significant. To know that that’s what Bill and I are bearing witness to…Power.
Play video
“Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view. The real significance of my experience in the Cathedral burst upon me. For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me-and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so, it had been ever since. How blind I had been.”
Why do we need a manner of living?
- Because we have profound experiences and then they are blotted out by worldly clamors.
- We have perfectly functioning forgetters.
- Recovery is a manner of living which requires daily maintenance.
- Encounters with the Power are often blotted out by worldly clamors because that’s what human life consists of.