Page 31 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

10 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Cer-
tainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless.
He talked for hours. Childhood memories rose be-
fore me. I could almost hear the sound of the preach-
er’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.
That war-time day in old Winchester Cathedral
came back again.
I had always believed in a Power greater than my-
self. 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 orig-
inated 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. 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.