"Just Tell Them That I Am"

I use just about every other term for God but God itself: i.e., The Heart of Compassion; the Spirit of Recovery; my Higher Power; and, my favorite, The Great Whazoo. I don’t have anything personal against God…. I truly don’t. My reticence stems from the fact that I used the term for most of my life without understanding at all what it actually meant. I now assume that my admitted ignorance isn’t uncommon today when I speak of God. But I do hope not to cause any similar confusion about God in all God’s names, gender, religions and so on. The almost universal use of the term “Higher Power” reflects a less confusing and more direct exposure to what we mean because describes all I needed to know about God to get me going on the path of recovery. What my alcoholism taught me was that I had no power of my own to escape its grip and that I desperately needed a Power greater than myself if I was going to break through. We hear it said  throughout the ages has been that all we need to know is that there is a God and that we aren't it. While this is true it assumes that we possess  some fundamental knowledge of what God is.
That whole Egyptian thing about having to know the god's name in order to get anything out of it was busted when Moses stood on the mountain and asked, "Who shall I say sent me?" ... and the Great Whazoo answered, "Just tell them that I AM." Even the bible tells us that this was all we need to get started.

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