God in the Machine!!!

I'm embracing the AA Programme more than I ever expected to.  But, as always, I try to over-analyse.

The thing that I'm particularly struggling with is Step 3, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."; and the implications of citing God in subsequent steps, eg. "4. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."

The 'Big Book' talks quite explicitly about the Higher Power being God.  Now, I believe that there is a power driving me that I don't necessarily understand, but the literature is adamant that this is not manifested within me.  That I'm passive to some other external agent.  Why can't that power, that energy, regardless of whether it is tangible or not, be coming from inside me?  I don't consciously choose to beat my heart 75 times per minute, but something is making me do it.  Alright, granted that this analogy is a little bit obtuse, but I hope you get my point.  And, anyway, I want to take the credit for my turnaround!

I've been finding AA in the most strange places of late.  Taking into account what I've just been banging about, today's particular discovery is quite portentous.



Fawlty Ken

 Up early, as usual, I happened to have a little bout of the Squits (profuse apologies) - incidentally, I used to have them all the time when drinking; I just got used to 'em; these days it's quite unusual (ah, cue my hypochondria!).  I always have a 'bog-book' on hand for those more protracted visits, and my current one is The Bald Trilogy by Ken Campbell (all-round raconteur, philanthropist, Thespian - you'd know him if you'd seen him - crops up on telly, distinctively eccentric voice).  It's a trilogy of his one-man theatre shows that have no doubt made appearances in Edinburgh and the like.

Anyway, the passage (if you excuse the pun) I read made my brain go 'BING!'.  It is/was, as follows:

[bit of background: Ken is having a chin-wag with Hugh Hastings, an occasional acquaintance]
"Anyway, I was having a drink with Hugh in the pub one lunchtime and Hugh started talking about his acting career -
Well actually I hadn't known he'd got one -
A multi-talent: writing naval comedies, playing the piano... and now an acting career -
But this was the extraordinary thing: Hugh Hastings was only interested in playing Third Act Detective Inspectors in thrillers -
THIRD ACT DETECTIVE INSPECTORS!? -
they're the sort of part you get lumbered with, aren't they -
hardly, surely, a career goal? -
'Oh no no no!' -
Not according to Hugh -
'No!' he said. 'No' -
He said: 'The Third Act Detective Inspector is the nearest thing we have today to the fine old tradition of deus ex machina!' -
What's that!? -
Well, in order to understand deus ex machina you've got to go back in time -
Evidently the ancient Greeks, Sophocles and Co, if they'd've got their plots to such a pass that they couldn't logically resolve them -
it would be time then to call down the deus ex machina -
The deus being the god, and the machina this bunch of cogs and rope and wotnot -
And the god comes clanking down -
and with his deific powers he'd be able to put things in harmony again -
And Hugh said: 'Isn't that the same as your Third Act Detective Inspector? -
You've got two-and-a-half acts of human beings fucking up, and then Whoomph! -
The Inspector calls! -
And with his metropolitan magic he puts things back in order?
'No, no,' said Hugh, 'a Third Act Detective Inspector -
Man, it's a theophany. * -
With a Third Act Detective Inspector you can romp away with the thunder with the GLORY of any thriller -
if you know the secret' -
'Well,' I said, 'Here's another half, Hugh -
A secret? You mean there's a secret to playing Third Act Detective Inspectors?' -
'Mmm,' he said, 'oh yes -
first of all, you've got to learn the lines' -
And that was revolutionary talk in those days -
Learn the lines?
you always played a Third Act Detective Inspector with a notebook -
you'd got all your lines written in the notebook -
(poised as if to write answer - in fact reading line: -
'And where were you on the night of the fourteenth?') -
Hugh said, 'Don't even have a notebook -
And then,' he said (and this is the big one) -
'look for clues.' -
Wow -
'Where were you... (looking under hat) -
on the night of er... (finding sausage) -
the fourteenth?... (examining sausage with magnifying glass) -
Wow -

*Theophany: n., pl. -ies. A manifestation of a deity to a man in the form that, though visible, is not necessarily material. [Chambers Dictionary]"


Get a load of that!!!  A 'Theophany'!  Is an understanding of this exactly what I'm looking for?  Is that the intangible power?  Is deus ex machina what we invoke in AA?!!  And, as Hugh says, "if you know the secret": the Programme? and "...you've got to learn the lines": Steps, anyone?!!

Okay, I know, when you look for something hard enough, you can generally find it - all in the interpretation and all that.  But this is what I find without looking for it, completely unexpectedly: a dose of the old squeaky-bums in the smallest room in the house, and out pops (apart from the obvious) the very issue with AA which I've been a-ponderin'!  Now, what's all that about then?! Crackers...