the peanut-butter sandwich became his Higher Power
whatever he silently thanked for just that particular sandwich he held and chewed, washing it down with gritty Sunny Square coffee, that thing became his Higher Power.
Context
The Higher Power made devastatingly concrete: after his first meeting the shelter's out-of-food supper is coffee and peanut-butter sandwiches — the exact meal his family ate the night he abandoned them — and whatever he silently thanked for that sandwich became his Higher Power. The doctrine's most abstract demand (find a Power greater than yourself) resolves into the humblest possible object, a charity sandwich eaten in gratitude, the coincidence of the peanut butter closing the circle from his Bottom to his surrender. The Program asks only that you be able to thank something; he found the something on white bread.