For the Non-Believers: A Different Kind of Higher Power

For the Non-Believers: A Different Kind of Higher Power

Not everyone walks into recovery with a belief in God — and that’s okay. AA leaves the door wide open. Sometimes, the most powerful forces walk through it barefoot.

Annette, an AA fellow, a glass blower, and a self-described non-believer, met a pair of LDS missionaries today.

They asked, “Are you a believer?”
She replied, “No, but I believe in the universe’s power of nothingness.”

The missionaries lit up. Quoted Jeremiah. Found validation in the void.

“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for Me?” — Jeremiah 32:27

It’s a rhetorical question affirming divine omnipotence — that nothingness isn’t a vacuum to fear, but a canvas for possibility. In context, the missionaries reframed Annette’s belief in “the power of nothingness” as a portal to the divine, echoing Jeremiah’s assertion that even the impossible is within reach of God.

A collision of theology and philosophy — molten silence meets prophetic certainty.

Annette didn’t debate. She just worked the glass, listened, and definitely laughed to herself when they left her studio without buying anything.

Her Higher Power isn’t artificial or anthropomorphic — it’s spacious, resonant, cosmic. It doesn’t flicker. It doesn’t short-circuit. It doesn’t need a filament to prove its existence. Its not a lightbulb.

The lightbulb metaphor is mine — a Fixer’s reflection.
It’s a little controversial in AA, where the eagerness to embrace diverse interpretations may have, over time, diluted the depth of principle.
In contrast to something invented, flickering, and dependent on design, this spacious nothingness carries real voltage.
It doesn’t demand belief. It doesn’t beg to be named.
It simply is — and somehow, that’s enough.

My own Higher Power is God.
I was baptised at the St Patrick’s College chapel, confirmed in the Catholic faith, and married Alison at the Church of Apostles in Launceston. And with another signal of grace, Launceston AA meetings are held within the Church of Apostles grounds — twenty metres from where we exchanged vows.

But maybe your Higher Power isn’t a deity.
Maybe it’s the universe’s power of nothingness, like Annette said — a spacious presence, not absence.
Or maybe it’s found in nature:

• The sea — vast, ungraspable, yet rhythmically steady. A Higher Power that cleanses without permission.
• The sun — illumination without bias. It doesn’t judge; it simply rises.
• The river — surrender in motion. It flows around obstacles instead of resisting them.
• Nothingness — not emptiness, but openness. A place for potential, pause, and presence.

And maybe AA itself becomes a kind of universe — powered not by creed, but by shared vulnerability, rhythm, and grace.
Each step a planet.
Each story a star.
You don’t have to name it. You just have to lean into it.

Because sometimes, a sculpture working with their hands, heart, mind and soul teaches us more about power than a priest.
And sometimes, the universe’s nothingness is far more reverent than a man-made object that, to me, diminishes AA’s concept of a Higher Power.

And if you begin with a belief — not in a defined deity, but in a force that moves emotion, stirs spirit, and whispers beyond logic —
you might just find yourself arriving at a traditional God, by way of smoke, silence, and sacred mischief.

He’s finalising his first book—a memoir-in-doctrine forged in the trenches of alcoholic recovery, endurance motorsport obsession, and spiritual trench marches. That book, partly teased on his Pursuit of Luck blog, is the cornerstone of a broader movement to connect practical wisdom with satirical grit, spiritual heat, and a recovery roadmap lined with breadcrumbs and tactical grace.

He hasn’t accepted a book deal yet. He’s waiting to find an agent with the right blend of shared craziness—someone fluent in spiritual paradox, recovery warfare, and satire laced with spreadsheet rigor. Because Jason’s writing doesn’t sit in a genre.

It accelerates between them. His work echoes with tones of:

• Liturgical recovery memoirs that swap incense for henna tattoos and serenity for tactical doctrine
• Fixer theology, where the Four Foundation Stones wear combat boots and surrender is something you fight for
• Business noir, told through deal sheets, war metaphors, and philosophical whiplash
• And field manuals for misfits, blending Catholic teachings with AA trench wisdom, narrated like a Wes Anderson fever dream with Mark Wahlberg voiceovers

When Jason writes, the reader isn’t just entertained. They’re recalibrated. When he speaks, the crowd doesn’t just listen. They shift posture. When he fixes, the thing stays fixed.

If you’re wondering what he does, the answer is this:

He helps people fix what they didn’t think could be fixed.

Then he points them toward grace—and lets the luck decide the tempo.