I grew up in a rugged Northern Ontario mining town where fighting was a spectator sport. It looked very similar to Yellowknife with buildings perched on the Cambrian shield rocks.
Our teenage hang out was a pool hall located in a musty basement cavern under a liquor store. One day, heading down the creaking wooden steps, I saw where someone had scribbled four short words on the wall. They said, ‘Smile, God loves you!’. I was stunned. I didn’t believe God loved anybody, and certainly not me. Then I turned and continued down the dark stairwell to buy some drugs from the local dealer.
In my last article, I wrote about reconciliation. For me, the first step to reconciliation was to be reconciled with myself. My own healing journey from addiction started when I got honest with my own self. The next step was to be reconciled with my ‘higher power’, or what most people call God.
I was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools. I went to church every Sunday where I saw my friends. As teens, we snuck out behind the church to smoke cigarettes. We were the cool kids. At the time, I remember how scary God seemed to us teenagers. He was an angry God of judgement. God was no fun. He was like a very serious judge out to punish people.
When I was 17, I left church and I left that angry God behind. That picture of a judgemental God made me fearful and ashamed. Fear and shame drove my addiction. To fully recover and heal from my traumatic past I had to reconcile with God. This was the second step on my healing journey.
Also when I was 17, I dropped out of school. I left home and my alcoholic parents and started hitchhiking to California. This began a long spiritual journey. I was searching for the truth. Although I left behind the fearful God of my childhood religion, I still believed there might be some kind of higher power.
On the road I met many other young people who were also searching for something. We had many questions. Why were there atomic bombs, pollution, racism, poverty, and never-ending wars (The Vietnam War was still going on)? How did the adults allow the world to get so insane? What does it all mean? I found some relief in addiction.
We all got high together. We were a community of lost souls. But I knew inside getting wasted was not the answer. It was only temporary relief. I made it to California. It was a wild and crazy place for this small-town boy.
On almost every street corner there were plenty of people offering me their version of the truth. There was the Hare Krishnas dressed in colourful robes with shaved heads. There were doomsday cults predicting the end of the world. There were preachers in suits waving around big fat Bibles and shouting at us sinners to ‘repent or perish’. There were spaced-out youth from communes giving out flowers and into free love. There were student radicals, communists, socialists, and followers of Mao Tse Tung. There were Vietnam vets in wheelchairs passing out anti-war pamphlets. And there were lots of stoned-out hippies doing drugs.
It was all very exciting and very confusing. But I found no answers.
If there was a God out there somewhere, he was probably not being peddled on the streets of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Maybe, as the ancient sages taught, I needed to look within. But when I looked within, there was even more confusion. I didn’t know where to turn. I had it up to my eyeballs with hippies, drugs, churches, preachers, and everyone else pushing their version of the truth on me. I never heard of recovery programs like Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous (AA and NA) until much later.
One night, alone in my sleeping bag, I decided to pray. My prayer went something like this: “God, if you’re really there, I have no way of knowing. You will have to show me.”
If you know the story of Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, he was in a similar predicament. He too was at his wits end. Then he had a spiritual experience. His experience led him from alcoholism to sobriety. To make a long story short, I eventually had a spiritual experience as well. Nothing too dramatic. I began to see through the fog of shame and fear. I began to understand that God was not the source of my confusion.
The writing on the pool hall wall came back to me. Those four simple words were the most profound spiritual statement of my teenage years. The pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. I started to get a true picture of a loving, higher power. Love had everything to do with it. As I discovered a different view of God, I found I no longer needed my addictions to prop me up. They had served their purpose. Time to move on.
I eventually met people just like me. They, too, sought escape from the prison of addiction. They had done all the stupid things I had done, and even worse. But they left all the shame behind. Some were in recovery programs. They showed me a concern that was non-judgemental. They were totally accepting. That’s what it took. They did not try to convert me, they were simply there if I needed them. They just listened. They didn’t preach. At the risk of sounding cheesy, love was the answer.
Twelve-step recovery groups like Alcoholics Anonymous do not define God for anyone. It’s up to each person to find their own higher power. Some find it in the beauty of nature. Others find it in the order of the Universe. Still others called this higher power the ‘ultimate good’. My Algonquin ancestors call this power ‘Gitchee Manitou’, the Great Spirit. Some find their higher power in religion or spirituality. That’s all good. There is truth and beauty in all these beliefs. They all deserve respect.
God is too big for any one group, organization, book, or religion. He will not fit into the little boxes we try to fit him into. I was happy to hear that it was up to me to name my higher power.
I prefer to call that higher power, the “Creator.” He (or She, if you prefer) is the power that creates all life. Eventually I did return to a spiritual community for support. But now I was ready. I was ready to believe the writing that was on the pool hall wall.
God really does love me. And he loves everyone else too, including addicts and alcoholics. He does not condemn. Love became the foundation of my sobriety. I finally reconciled with my higher power. I made peace with the Creator. He accepted me, and I accepted him. The next step was to reconcile with others.
Smile — God loves you!
