Great treasures often come at inexpensive prices. As I’ve said before, I may not have the best spirituality, but I do insist on an inexpensive one. So, naturally, I was quite pleased, recently, to get a book, with a list price of $23.95 on the cover, for a purchase price of twenty five cents!

The book is entitled: “The Seeds Of Grace: A Nun’s Reflections on the Spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous” by Sister Molly Monahan (not her real name).

The book is an autobiographical account of this particular nun’s struggle with the disease of alcoholism. As most alcoholics discover, she could only stop drinking when she started talking to other alcoholics in the sacred space of Alcoholic’s Anonymous meetings. While I have read only a brief part of the book (my vision loss makes reading difficult), I am impressed with Sister’s struggle with a basic question: “Why is it that 30 years of prayer and discipline and living the sacramental life of the Church could not stop me from drinking, but talking to another drunk could?”

Therein lies both the mystery and the majesty of Alcoholics Anonymous. Spirituality is not in the ritual, nor is it the domain of the special few. Spirituality is for everyone willing to recognize a Higher Power in his or her life, and to surrender to that Power in the company of other people.

There are those who say that A.A. is not about will power, but about God power. In truth, it is about both. We must use our wills to choose to turn our lives over to a Higher Power. The best example of this is in Sister Molly’s recounting the story of the founding of A.A. by Bill Wilson. Here is an excerpt from that account:

“A few months out of the hospital, and still shakily sober, Bill was in the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, on a Saturday night in 1935. The hotel bar was crowded, warm and tempting laughter from it drifting into the lobby, where Bill paced back and forth, resisting the urge to go in and have a drink. Instead, he turned the other way and went to a nearby phone booth, picked out the name of a minister from a minister’s directory there, and began making phone calls to find a fellow drunk. Remembering his own experience, he knew that he needed to talk to another drunk in order to keep from drinking himself. His tenth call was to the woman who arranged for him to meet Dr. Bob, an Akron surgeon, deep in the throes of the disease. The two met, and A.A. was born. A fateful, providential choice: If Bill had gone to the bar instead of the phone booth, where might the millions of alcoholics who have been helped by the program be? Where might I be?”

My favorite sentence in that account was: “What if he had gone to the bar instead of the phone booth…? Most of us forget that our little choices have eternal meaning. Will power does work with God power. God won’t take away our free will. We have to make the right decision before God can lead us in the right direction.

Our society worships the god of individual freedom. “No one’s going to tell me what to do” is the only Creed many people believe in. “I’ve got a right to do that!” As someone has wisely said: “We know our rights better than our wrongs.”

But, in truth, how many of our lives would be different if we had made different choices: the choice to go to a bar, instead of a child’s game; the choice to sleep in on Sunday instead of going to Church; the choice to say the hurtful thing, instead of the kind thing, or just remaining silent.

If Bill Wilson had had a drink instead of making a phone call, the world would never have known, because the world would never have known him, or the organization he helped to found. We usually don’t think our decisions change history, but in truth they do. How we live our lives affects not just us, but those around us, and those they will influence. Like a stone tossed into a pool, the ripples just keep moving out.

I am told that A.A. understands God’s Will as “doing the next right thing.” I wrote this column, because I first got a book. The book wouldn’t have been there, if Sister had not chosen to write it. I hope reading this column was the right choice for you. I hope you believe that your next choice will change your history, and the history of those around you. I hope you change history for the better.