Daily Reflections, April 17th

LOVE AND FEAR AS OPPOSITES

All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 49

"Fear knocked at the door; faith answered; no one was there." I don't know to whom this quote should be attributed, but it certainly indicates very clearly that fear is an illusion. I create the illusion myself.

I experienced fear early in my life and I mistakenly thought that the mere presence of it made me a coward. I didn't know that one of the definitions of "courage" is "the willingness to do the right thing in spite of fear." Courage, then, is not necessarily the absence of fear.

During the times I didn't have love in my life I most assuredly had fear. To fear God is to be afraid of joy. In looking back, I realize that, during the times I feared God most, there was no joy in my life. As I learned not to fear God, I also learned to experience joy.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day, April 17th

A.A. Thought for the Day

Every time we go to an A.A. meeting, every time we say the Lord's Prayer, every time we have a quiet time before breakfast, we're paying a premium on our insurance against taking that first drink. And every time we help another alcoholic, we're making a large payment on our drink insurance. We're making sure that our policy doesn't lapse. Am I building up an endowment in serenity, peace, and happiness that will put me on easy street for the rest of my life?

Meditation for the Day

I gain faith by my own experience of God's power in my life. The constant, persistent recognition of God's spirit in all my personal relationships, the ever accumulating weight of evidence in support of God's guidance, the numberless instances in which seeming chance or wonderful coincidence can be traced to God's purpose in my life. All these things gradually engender a feeling of wonder, humility, and gratitude to God. These in turn are followed by a more sure and abiding faith in God and His purposes.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that my faith may be strengthened every day. I pray that I may find confirmation of my life in the good things that have come into my life.

NA - Just for Today, April 17th

Priority: meetings

Page 111

"I initially felt that it would be impossible to attend more than one or two meetings a week. It just wouldn't fit in with my busy schedule. I later learned that my priorities were [180] degrees reversed. It was the everything else that would have to fit into my meeting schedule."

Basic Text, p. 204

Some of us attended meetings infrequently when we first came to Narcotics Anonymous, then wondered why we couldn't stay clean. What we soon learned was that if we wanted to stay clean, we had to make meeting attendance our priority.

So we began again. Following our sponsor's suggestion, we made a commitment to attend ninety meetings in ninety days. We identified ourselves as newcomers for our first thirty days so that others could get to know us. At our sponsor's direction, we stopped talking long enough to learn to listen. We soon began to look forward to meetings. And we began to stay clean.

Today, we attend meetings for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we go to meetings to share our experience, strength, and hope with newer members. Sometimes we go to see our friends. And sometimes we go just because we need a hug. Occasionally we leave a meeting and realize that we haven't really heard a word that's been said-but we still feel better. The atmosphere of love and joy that fills our meetings has kept us clean another day. No matter how hectic our schedule, we make meeting attendance our priority.

Just for Today: In my heart, I know that meetings benefit me in all kinds of ways. Today, I want what's good for me. I will attend a meeting.

Thought for Today

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.   

-Martin Luther King Jr

Seen in a Alano club in Phoenix - "Magic happens in these rooms"

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

- Thomas Jefferson 

I keep coming back

Time after time

No matter where I'm at

I can't pretend

I've found something better than where I've been

Cause where I'm from

Is who I am

And no matter how far that I run

No matter how far

No matter how far that I run

Yea I keep coming back

I keep coming back

I keep coming back

- Josh Gracin  (thanks Bill C.)

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

A questioner asked the Buddha: "Life seems a tangle-- An inner tangle and an outer tangle. This generation is hopelessly tangled up. And so I ask the Buddha this question: Who will succeed in disentangling this tangle?" The Buddha replied: "When a wise one, thoughtful and good, Develops a greater consciousness, He will understand the tangle. As a truth follower, ardent and wise, He will succeed in disentangling the tangle."

- Samyutta Nikaya

Native American, April 17th

"When people live far from the scenes of the Great Spirit's making, it's easy for them to forget his laws."

-Walking Buffalo, STONEY

Society today is way off track. Unfortunately, many Indian people are caught up in these modern times. The Elders are telling us we must wake up! We must come back to the culture because this is where His laws are. If we don't follow these laws, we will be unhappy. We cannot do things just because everybody is doing them. This does not make it right. We must follow what the Great Spirit says we must do. We need to pray hard for the courage to come back and live according to the culture. It will be difficult at first but worth it in the end. We must teach our children the culture.

Great Spirit, today, let me listen to the warnings of the Elders.

Keep It Simple, April 17th

We create revolution by living it.   

- Jerry Rubin

There’s a lot wrong in the world---Child abuse, homeless and hungry people, pollution. Our old way of dealing with these troubles was to break the rules or to “drop out” by using chemicals.

Now we have a new way to change the world. We’re changing ourselves. One Day at a Time, we’re acting like the caring , responsible people we want to be. We use the ideas of the program in our lives.

We’re kinder. We’re more honest. We stand up for ourselves and for others who need our help. What if the whole world started working the Steps? What a wonderful world this would be!

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, please work through me today. Help me make the world a little better place.

Action for the Day: I’ll list one thing that bothers me about the world today. How can using the ideas of the program help solve that problem? Remember, the program tells us to look at our own behavior.

Big Book, April 17th

Chapter 3 More About Alcoholism (pg 37 & top 38)

Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?

You may think this an extreme case. To us it is not far-fetched, for this kind of thinking has been characteristic of every single one of us. We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences. But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. Next day we would ask ourselves, in all earnestness and sincerity, how it could have happened.

In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead or casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.

Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jay-walking. He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him and he is slightly injured several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Presently he is hit again and this time has a fractured skull. Within a week after leaving the hospital a fast-moving trolley car breaks his arm. He tells you he has decided to stop jay-walking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both legs.