At the beginning, and at the end of many OA meetings they say the "Serenity Prayer". It is a shortened variation on the original prayer written by an American Protestant minister and theologan Reinhold Niebuhr, and the version we use is: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. " Then---and I know this is where we differ from other 12 step fellowships and maybe even from OA in different regions--- we add the sentence "Thy will, not mine be done."
The wording of much of the original 12 step literature passed down from the early 20th century AA founders was originally a stumbling block for me when I started attending OA meetings. Raised Catholic, I'm someone who has avoided most organized religion for most of her adult life. That being said, over a decade ago I realized I wanted to have a community to consider my spiritual life with, and so I'm a member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, a very liberal faith community that is bonded by that desire to explore spirituality without being told what we must believe. I found a lot of good people, but for some reason I never went much deeper in my search. I still stayed angry at God and scared.
So I have trouble with the G-word. Or I did, until I was told that I could conceive of God, or "a higher power" in any form I wanted. It took me a long time to realize how stereotypical and unhelpful the image of a higher power I had swallowed early on was for my emotional and physical health. The God I had created for myself was punitive and angry, cobbled together from the attitudes of the family and community I grew up in, and the popular culture. God was invoked to keep us in line in the church and me in line in my family.
As I meditate now on the possibility of a higher power that might want me to be "joyous, happy and free", I realize that this means I have to change my conception of what that higher power wants me to do in my daily life. Like this morning.
I was lying in bed with my usual dose of guilt: "Oh ugh, I should vacuum, I should rake the leaves out of the basement window well, clean out a closet, blah blah blah..." when what I really wanted was to sit in bed, drink coffee, turn on the CBC and surf the net and write. Then that phrase "Thy will not mine" floated into my fevered coconut.
I wondered "what if Thy will is for me to sit in bed with my laptop?" Not what my parents would say, but maybe by absorbing their sad conception of a higher poser (that was originally a typo but maybe it was a freudian typo) was one of the things that made my life so awful. Evidence that this may be the case is that when I do shove everything else back and do just that, I'm more in touch with my feelings and the rest of my life goes much better: I eat better, I obsess less about food, I get exercise, I keep myself straight with valued friends, I discover the joy of pedicures and running and belly dance, I get into the studio more. And paradoxically, enough of the other stuff that needs to be done, basic housework and stuff like that, seems to get done, if not enough for my old Fake God. I need to fire Fake God, and for the time being, do it daily.
The wording of much of the original 12 step literature passed down from the early 20th century AA founders was originally a stumbling block for me when I started attending OA meetings. Raised Catholic, I'm someone who has avoided most organized religion for most of her adult life. That being said, over a decade ago I realized I wanted to have a community to consider my spiritual life with, and so I'm a member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, a very liberal faith community that is bonded by that desire to explore spirituality without being told what we must believe. I found a lot of good people, but for some reason I never went much deeper in my search. I still stayed angry at God and scared.
So I have trouble with the G-word. Or I did, until I was told that I could conceive of God, or "a higher power" in any form I wanted. It took me a long time to realize how stereotypical and unhelpful the image of a higher power I had swallowed early on was for my emotional and physical health. The God I had created for myself was punitive and angry, cobbled together from the attitudes of the family and community I grew up in, and the popular culture. God was invoked to keep us in line in the church and me in line in my family.
As I meditate now on the possibility of a higher power that might want me to be "joyous, happy and free", I realize that this means I have to change my conception of what that higher power wants me to do in my daily life. Like this morning.
I was lying in bed with my usual dose of guilt: "Oh ugh, I should vacuum, I should rake the leaves out of the basement window well, clean out a closet, blah blah blah..." when what I really wanted was to sit in bed, drink coffee, turn on the CBC and surf the net and write. Then that phrase "Thy will not mine" floated into my fevered coconut.
I wondered "what if Thy will is for me to sit in bed with my laptop?" Not what my parents would say, but maybe by absorbing their sad conception of a higher poser (that was originally a typo but maybe it was a freudian typo) was one of the things that made my life so awful. Evidence that this may be the case is that when I do shove everything else back and do just that, I'm more in touch with my feelings and the rest of my life goes much better: I eat better, I obsess less about food, I get exercise, I keep myself straight with valued friends, I discover the joy of pedicures and running and belly dance, I get into the studio more. And paradoxically, enough of the other stuff that needs to be done, basic housework and stuff like that, seems to get done, if not enough for my old Fake God. I need to fire Fake God, and for the time being, do it daily.
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