God of Our Understanding

Second Beach Slipping into the Night
Originally uploaded by Fort Photo
The speaker at my home group meeting last night is someone who I am riveted to any time I have heard him share in the rooms. His story did not disappoint. He started out saying: "I'm not going to tell the 'bottle' story - we all got here for the same reason; I'm going to tell you how I stay sober."

The most significant message from his sharing was the power of this program for every individual person who comes into AA and experiences the "God of Our Understanding". This is the pivotal moment of Step 3. It is, this speaker shared, " the chance for each one of us to have direct and conscious contact with the "force" that is present every time you step foot into an AA meeting." And it only has to be what WE understand that force to be: the God of our religion or the God of all things; the Creator; a Higher Power; the Universe; the Almighty; Allah; Elohim; the Goddess; Mother Nature; the AA fellowship. We each will have a different view and perspective and understanding AND yet, we will ALL experience the power of being in this presence that is bigger than ourselves.

The electricity in the room when he was done speaking was palpable and alive. It was if his story-telling opened up a direct God-portal which all of us entered into.  As a person having this experience, I felt this Divine energetic presence woven in the tapestry of the room -- like strands of DNA coiling around everyone and everything. It was so so real AND magical at the same time. As in the Kabbalistic MAGI phrases which follow one another:
God is the ground.
Once on the ground, God is in the air, everywhere.

After the meeting, quite uncharacteristically so, dozens of us were chatting, feeling full and energized, in the parking lot long after the meeting was over. Clusters of people were gathered who would not normally be joined -- any aspect of what keeps us separate, even among members in the same AA room had evaporated. It was a glorious sight to behold under the night's blanket of whispy clouds and a few sprinkling raindrops.

And then, as I began my morning, my teacher's passage becomes that much more illuminated after this experience last night. It goes like this:

"You are God's only child in a universe filled with only children. In the vast impersonal universe, someone is looking at you. Though you know somewhere within yourself that you are a temporary thing, soon to vanish in a cloud-chamber trail, someone is looking at you as if you were the most beautiful thing in the world."

And he goes on to finish, with this incredible line which captures our meeting's parking lot bliss: "When personal and impersonal disappear, what is left is God's eternal conversation among the stars."

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. There are no more words left, just a choir in my heart.