DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
". . .OF ALL PERSONS WE HAD HARMED"
"...and became willing to make amends to them all."
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 77
One of the key words in the Eighth Step is the word all. I am not free
to select a few names for the list and to disregard others. It is a list of
all persons I have harmed. I can see immediately that this Step entails
forgiveness because if I'm not willing to forgive someone, there is little
chance I will place his name on the list. Before I placed the first name
on my list, I said a little prayer: "I forgive anyone and everyone who
has ever harmed me at any time and under any circumstances."
It is well for me to contemplate a small, but very significant, two-letter
word every time the Lord's Prayer is said. The word is as. I ask,
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us." In this case, as means, "in the same manner." I am asking to be
forgiven in the same manner that I forgive others. As I say this portion
of the prayer, if I am harboring hatred or resentment, I am inviting
more resentment, when I should be calling on the spirit of forgiveness.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
"We have an allergy to alcohol. The action of alcohol on chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy. We allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. We cannot be reconciled to a life without alcohol, unless we can experience an entire psychic change. Once this psychic change has occurred, we who seemed doomed, we who had so many problems that we despaired of ever solving them, find ourselves able to control our desire for alcohol." Have I had a psychic change?
Meditation for the Day
Ask God in daily prayer to give you the strength to change. When you ask God to change you, you must at the same time fully trust Him. If you do not fully trust Him, God may answer your prayer as a rescuer does that of a drowning person who is putting up too much of a struggle. The rescuer must first render the person still more helpless, until he or she is wholly at the rescuer's mercy. Just so must we be wholly at God's mercy before we can be rescued.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may be daily willing to be changed. I pray that I may put myself wholly at the mercy of God.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
The Power of love
Page 231
"We begin to see that God's love has been present all the time, just waiting for us to accept it."
Basic Text, p. 47
God's love is the transforming power that drives our recovery. With that love, we find freedom from the hopeless, desperate cycle of using, self-hatred, and more using. With that love, we gain a sense of reason and purpose in our once purposeless lives. With that love, we are given the inner direction and strength we need to begin a new way of life: the NA way. With that love, we begin to see things differently, as if with new eyes.
As we examine our lives through the eyes of love, we make what may be a startling discovery: The loving God we've so recently come to understand has always been with us and has always loved us. We recall the times when we asked for the aid of a Higher Power and were given it. We even recall times when we didn't ask for such help, yet were given it anyway. We realize that a loving Higher Power has cared for us all along, preserving our lives till the day when we could accept that love for ourselves.
The Power of love has been with us all along. Today, we are grateful to have survived long enough to become consciously aware of that love's presence in our world and our lives. Its vitality floods our very being, guiding our recovery and showing us how to live.
Just for Today: I accept the love of a Higher Power in my life. I am conscious of that Power's guidance and strength within me. Today, I claim it for my own.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"The wise don't expect to find life worth living; they make it that way."
--Anonymous
God is an enabler
Whether brokenhearted,
or spirits grim and dim…
God enables me,
to give it up to Him.
When faced with indecision,
as fear unfurls it’s wicked wraith,
it is He who will enable me,
to draw upon my faith.
While in my darkest hour…
I will not fret or flee,
Nor shall I crawl or cower,
God… will enable me.
For only He empowers me,
from all that may befall,
God is an enabler,
...the Greatest one of all.
Gordon R
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Native American
"Praying to seek a vision, to seek truth is always right. Truth builds upon itself - as the true mark of a warrior who conducts himself/herself accordingly - so that its beauty may shine in the faces of our children."
--Barney Bush, SHAWNEE
We move toward and become like that which we think about. What we think about creates our vision. If our thoughts are wise and good, then our vision becomes strong and truthful. If our thoughts are junk, then our vision becomes contaminated, so it's important to be aware of what we are thinking about. As I live my vision, my children watch and they will live their lives the same way. We need to live the walk of the Warrior. We need to walk in beauty and respect.
Oh Great Spirit, give me a vision for today. Let me see truth. Let me walk in beauty. Let my heart guide me in truth. The law says the truth shall set you free. Let me be free today.
Keep It Simple
If there is no wind, row. --- Latin proverb
At times, staying sober will be easy; at other times, it will be hard. But we must do what is needed to stay sober. Having a hard week? Go to extra meetings. Feeling alone? Call a friend and ask if you can get together. Feel like drinking? Go to a safe place until the urge passes.
We have no choice. We must row when there's no wind. If not, we'll fall back into our addiction.
If we work hard, we'll stay sober. Plus we'll grow as spiritual people. Hard times test us and make better people. But this will only happen if we keep our Higher Power and our program close to our heart.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me remember that I grow during hard times. I pray that I'll accept and use what You've given me each day.
Action for the Day: Today, I'll list five things I learned from my program in hard times.
Big Book
Chapter 11 A Vision For You (pg 157 & top 158)
Two days later, a future fellow of Alcoholics Anonymous stared glassily at the strangers beside his bed. "Who are you fellows, and why this private room? I was always in a ward before."
Said one of the visitors, "We’re giving you a treatment for alcoholism."
Hopelessness was written large on the man’s face as he replied, "Oh, but that’s no use. Nothing would fix me. I’m a goner. The last three times, I got drunk on the way home from here. I’m afraid to go out the door. I can’t understand it."
For an hour, the two friends told him about their drinking experiences. Over and over, he would say: "That’s me. That’s me. I drink like that."
The man in the bed was told of the acute poisoning from which he suffered, how it deteriorates the body of an alcoholic and warps his mind. There was much talk about the mental state preceding the first drink.
"Yes, that’s me," said the sick man, "the very image. You fellows know your stuff all right, but I don’t see what good it’ll do. You fellows are somebody. I was once, but I’m a nobody now. From what you tell me, I know more than ever I can’t stop." At this both the visitors burst into a laugh. Said the future Fellow Anonymous: "Damn little to laugh about that I can see."
The two friends spoke of their spiritual experience and told him about the course of action they carried out.
He interrupted: "I used to be strong for the church, but that won’t fix it. I’ve prayed to God on hangover mornings and sworn that I’d never touch another drop but by nine o’clock I’d be boiled as an owl."
Listen to Learn, Learn to Listen
AA Grapevine December 1992
When I first attended AA meetings in 1964, I was an active priest. I was puzzled at first when they said that AA was a spiritual, not a religious, program because I tended to use these two words interchangeably. I gradually learned that "religious" referred to organized religion. AA was not a denomination. It was not affiliated with the Roman Catholic or Episcopal or Lutheran Church, or with any organized religion. But it was spiritual. All of the Twelve Steps were very spiritual.
I was told in the beginning, politely and not exactly in these words, to leave my roman collar at the door. The idea was that I came here not as Father M., but as Bernie, an alcoholic. I was advised that priests and other professional people usually had difficulty in the beginning with the program. It was a simple program, and we tended to complicate it. Being highly educated, we tended to be philosophical, to analyze, to look for causes, to ask for reasons why. I was asked if I had managed to stay sober by myself, and when I said no, they said, then do it our way. You have always wanted to get sober and stay sober, but you didn't know how. We'll show you how. But you have to listen.
When you go to a meeting, they said, don't come at the last minute and hang out at the back of the room and off by yourself. Come early, put out your hand and say to someone: Hello, my name is Bernie. Sit up front, in the first row, where you can see and hear the speaker. And take the cotton out of your ears. Even if you're the pope or the president of the United States or the chairman of the board of General Motors or a godfather in the Mafia, take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth and listen. Try to identify with the speaker, especially with his or her feelings.
You would think it would be easy to listen, but I had to learn how. You listen in order to learn, and you learn to listen. I remember attending an AA meeting with thirty people sitting around two long tables put together. I happened to be sitting next to the speaker and in the discussion he called on me first. When he came to the last person, that person started off by saying, "Father, do you remember teaching English in a certain high school twenty-two years ago?" He turned out to be a former student, who had a well-known author for a father and was himself a political reporter for a metropolitan newspaper. I remember saying, "Here we are, teacher and student, back in kindergarten together, and learning the ABCs of how to get sober and stay sober."
I recalled then what Jesus did when his twelve apostles were arguing among themselves about which one of them was the greatest. He called a child over and placed him in their midst and said "Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
It took me a long time to get long-term, unbroken sobriety. I went through many detoxes and rehabs and attended hundreds of meetings for many years. Eighty to ninety percent of the time I was sober, or dry, but I couldn't put it all together. From a daily drinker and periodic drunk, I became, in AA, a periodic drunk. Finally, at the last rehab, at a staff meeting, the director asked me, "Why did you come here?" And I said, "I want to find out why so many others come into AA and get and stay sober right from the very first meeting." (I was thinking especially of an AA group in the East Village of Manhattan which was attended by many street people. They didn't go to detoxes or rehabs, they didn't have jobs, but they went to a meeting every day, often two or three meetings a day, and they listened and they did what was suggested, and they got sober and stayed sober.) I don't know exactly what happened, but from that time on I haven't had a drink; it's almost thirteen years.
I had some therapy in which I was told that I had a chronic case of obsession-compulsion, guilt, anxiety, and neurotic perfectionism which went by the name of scrupulosity. I said to the director of a rehab for alcoholic priests that scrupulosity had given me more trouble for more years than alcoholism had ever done and that if I didn't crack the scrupulosity, I had no guarantee of long-term sobriety, or of inner peace, or of any success in the work I did. He said what I later heard so often in AA: If you have a drinking problem, you have to put it first.
Two years after coming into AA, I was ex-claustrated --put "outside the walls" --by the religious order to which I belonged. It was somewhat similar to a wife getting a restraining order from a judge that said the husband had to stay away from the house. After I was ex-claustrated, I felt like a doctor or lawyer who at age fifty had lost his wife and children through divorce as well as lost his license to practice medicine or law. I went for eight years before I asked formal permission to become a layman.
I don't mean to suggest to others to get a divorce or leave the active priesthood, but sometimes it might be the circumstances in which we are living that have to be changed. In my case, after nine years on my own--of being neither fish nor flesh, neither priest nor layman--I made a decision to get married. That was over fifteen years ago and it will soon be thirteen years since the last drink. The best thing I did during all that time was to keep close to AA and the Fellowship. Somewhere along the way the obsession to drink was lifted, the compulsion passed, and the miracle happened. Thanks be to God, to my wife, and to AA.
Bernie M.
New York, New York
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