There used to be a radio program on, when I was a kid. It was called “I Love A Mystery”. That was long before TV was available publicly. So, as kids we would sit and listen to this and a lot of other programs like it.
I was thinking about that title today, because it reminds me of this spiritual pathway I’m trying to walk. I love a mystery. For me that’s it. Over the years, I’ve come to know just how little I do know. Oh, I know a lot about what I’ve read and studied about religion, theology, philosophy, psychology, spiritual writers and teachers. After all, there was a time when I studied a lot of this when I was in school. That’s where I was headed, when I picked up a drink and it was off to the races.
What I’m thinking about is faith, I guess. With faith I don’t know. Instead, I believe. Because if I knew, it wouldn’t be faith. It would be knowledge. And when it comes to the spiritual life, the only knowledge I have is what I have read or studied in the seminary and since I’ve come into the program.
To me it’s all about mystery. A mystery, as it is said, is something I don’t really know anything about. But in all mystery stories there are clues. Or, evidence. And in this program I have seen a lot of evidence. I’ve seen others, just like myself, who were utterly lost and helpless and hopeless, who have recovered from an incurable disease. Men and women, who couldn’t stop drinking themselves into insanity and death, but, who no longer drink and have had a life changing event. From total insanity from alcohol, we all have been restored to sanity.
Hard evidence, which has led to faith, not knowledge, in the mystery we all call our higher power, the God of our understanding. The glass through which I see darkly. What St. Bede called the Cloud of Unknowing. All this came, when I was restored to hope from the despair I suffered from, when alcohol failed me. It became faith in a spiritual awakening, when I was changed through the process of the 12 Steps and this program.
Looking around the rooms of AA, I see this evidence everyday. Looking back through time, at all the men and women, who recovered, lived a sober and useful life to others, and died a sober death, the evidence is so obvious, I would have to be asleep not to see it.
But AA woke me up from my alcoholic sleep walking. It made me fully aware of what a real life was all about. It gave me a second chance at life. The sober life I’m living today.
All I can say about this is that I love this mystery.