One of Wales' best known poets, in that strange land of poets and druids, sheep and slate quarries, writes of his encounter as a little boy with his cousin Gwilym, who is studying to be a minister. In the barn that must serve for now as Gwilym's chapel, the little boy puts two pennies in the collection tin and then ...

I sat on the hay and stared at Gwilym preaching, and heard his voice rise and crack and sink to a whisper and break into singing and Welsh and ring triumphantly and be wild and meek. The sun, through a hole, shone on his praying shoulders, and he said: "Oh God, Thou art everywhere all the time, in the dew of the morning, in the frost of the evening, in the field and the town, in the preacher and the sinner, in the sparrow and the big buzzard. Thou canst see everything, right down deep in our hearts; Thou canst see us when the sun is gone; Thou canst see us when there aren't any stars, in the gravy blackness, in the deep, deep, deep, deep pit; Thou canst see and spy and watch us all the time, in the little black corners, in the big cowboys' prairies, under the blankets when we're snoring fast, in the terrible shadows, pitch black, pitch black; Thou canst see everything we do, in the night and the day, in the day and the night, everything, everything; Thou canst see all the time. Oh God, mun, you're like a bloody cat."

There was no AA for this little boy when he grew up and began to drink himself to death; no peace from the last three Steps for the alcoholic poet who wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Reading his beautiful poetry and prose can remind us how far we have come in Program, from this alcoholic view of a vindictive God and a meaningless life's end to the happiness and peace most of us now enjoy.