[at their first AA meeting together] Catholic Church in a nutshell. All over the world, these small, starving villages with big, fancy churches. Getting bigger and fancier, while the towns dry up. Churches just popping up like fat, plump little ticks sucking the town dry.
Okay, so we can safely say you're not practicing.
That's safe. [pause] You ever heard of RR?
RR?
AA for pirates?
[smiles] Oh.
Rational Recovery. It's based more on reason and psychology. It's about empowering people instead of saying you're powerless.
So you're the higher power, is that how it works? Being your own higher power, how is that working out for you?
I haven't had a drop in four years.
Not much of a selection in prison though, is there? Alcohol isn't good or bad. Not itself. But it's people. Suffering can be a gift. It all just depends on us. What we do with it, how we react to it. So, alcohol isn't good or bad. And the same with guilt, grief, suffering. It just depends on what we do with it. What's more empowering than that?
No, alcohol isn't good or bad. But the version of me that would come out when I had enough to drink, he was bad. He was selfish and careless and he ruined my life. There is a saboteur inside of me, and I always thought, you know, we'd work it out. We'd learn to live with each other, because he wouldn't really hurt me. Not me. I fed him, so he wouldn't hurt me. And then one morning I woke up and found out he killed someone. I had killed someone. So who's to blame there? I am to blame there. And God? Well, He just kind of let it happen, didn't He? See, that's the part I cannot square. Because you're right, there is-- there is so much suffering in the world. So much. And then there's this higher power. This higher power who could erase all that pain, just wave His hand and make it all go away, but doesn't? No. No thank you. The worst part is that it lets all the rest of us off the hook. We can all just stand by and watch Leeza Scarborough wheel herself around town. We can watch Joe Collie slowly drink himself to death. We can watch so many people just slip into these bottomless pits of... of awful, and we can stand it. We can tolerate it because we say things like, "God works in mysterious ways." Like-- Like there's a plan? Like something good's going to come out of it? Nothing good came out of my drinking. Nothing good came out of me killing that poor girl. Nothing good came out of Joe Collie's drinking. And not a single good thing comes out of Leeza never being able to walk again. Nothing good came out of a metric ton of crude oil filling up the bay. And the only thing, the only fucking thing that lets people stand by, watching all this suffering, doing nothing, doing fucking nothing, is the idea that suffering can be a gift from God. What a monstrous idea, Father.
Look, there's nothing in the scripture, or in the world for that matter, that suggests God negates personal accountability. There's certainly nothing in the program to suggest that. Not at all, in fact. I believe God can take our work, even our awful works, and turn them into something else. I know He can find the good in them, and find the love in them, whether we see it or not. That I know, Riley Flynn. That I know.
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