Bob Death and the water: the medium you can't see
This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, ‘What the fuck is water?’ and swim away.
Context
The parable a sober biker offers as the answer to Gately's Higher-Power impasse, and the theme's deepest image of grace. The point is not stated — Bob Death just shrugs and blatts away — but it lands as the reply to "I feel Nothing when I pray": the Higher Power Gately can't locate may be the very medium he is immersed in and therefore cannot perceive, the water no fish can see because it is everywhere. The recovery insight is that the thing keeping him alive (the days coming out clean, the fellowship, whatever answers the knees-at-dawn Please) is not an object to be found out there but the element he already swims in. It reframes his impasse as a failure of vantage, not of faith. (The medium-invisible-to-its-swimmer meaning is also communication-solipsism's — cross-ref.)