A Power Greater than Ourselves

Travelling by train on the East Coast mainline recently provided a wonderful and unanticipated trip down memory lane and an opportunity to reflect on recent years as I used to travel between London and Peterborough at the beginning and end of school terms, and between Kings Cross and Durham as an undergraduate. I have, I now realise, spent a lot of time on trains one way or another.

"This is England", I thought to myself as the train sped through vast, uninterrupted green space. Agriculture and pasture land in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Bliss. From the flat environment of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, to the rolling hills of South Yorkshire.

As I pondered the scenery (and procrastinated opening my laptop and the work I'd brought along with me), I was reminded of something I heard recently at a meeting, where someone was talking about their spiritual journey in recovery. Recovery, it is often said, is an inside job. Addiction is symptomatic of a deficit, deep within and a void the sufferer desperately seeks to fill with the wrong thing(s).

"You don't have to believe in God, just stop acting like him."

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