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would keep Wilson going, always reaching out for unattainable goals, for only by so reaching would he attain what — hidden from him — were God’s goals. This acceptance that his dissatisfaction, that his very “thirst,” could be divine was one of Dowling’s great gifts to Bill Wilson and through him to Alcoholics Anonymous. Another was to prove less happy from the Jesuit’s own point of view. Bill spoke of his own difficulties in prayer and his continuing problem in conveying the meaning of his “spiritual experience” to other alcoholics. There was a move afoot within the fellowship just then, he told Dowling, to change that phrase in the Twelfth Step to “spiritual awakening” — it seemed to Bill an attempt to mask rather than to clarify the role of the divine in the alcoholic’s salvation. Tartly, Father Ed offered a succinct response: “If you can name it, it’s not God.” Years later, Wilson would paraphrase the expression back to Dowling as a partial explanation of his difficulties in accepting the Catholic faith.43 +
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