Some folks get exercised at the configurations of a Higher Power that others
come up with. In my mind, the sophistication of the configuration
represents where someone is at that moment. It would be easy for me to say
that any particular configuration is really flawed or "nonsense".
But I need to remind myself where I was at the beginning of this journey.
At the beginning of my journey my thinking was seriously flawed. The only
useful thought I had was "You can't drink".

The Baltimore prologue in use in AA at the time (1965) said "A belief in a
Higher Power is indispensable to a satisfactory adjustment to life's
problems". After a month or so of not drinking, it dawned on me that that
sentence, read at the beginning of every meeting, said I was going to fail
at life (or at least never adjust to it satisfactorily -- whatever that
means).

So when I did hear someone say (and I did hear this) "My Higher Power became
a radiator cap", I knew that I could do better than that. At the same time,
I had enough respect to know that I shouldn't say that what that person
believed was dumb. So the group became my Higher Power -- for a while --
and I was relieved by that for the time being until I could get more days
sober, reconnect more of those neural pathways, and move on to a conceptual
framework that made more sense (to me). I don't think that what I was
clinging to at the time was dumb or nonsense. It was all I was capable of
at the time.

So when I hear someone say that their Higher Power is a radiator cap or the
Group, I'd be more inclined to say to them, "Hey, if it works for you right
now that is terrific but understand that most of us evolve and are still
evolving. I can almost guarantee you if you work at this thing you will
develop a new framework or two or three along the way that will gradually
make more sense and be a greater comfort for you". As my friend Shirley
says, "This is a process". And I am becoming. And I kind of like what I'm
becoming.

Thanks,
Don P