DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Let's all pause for a moment of silence and remember those who were tragically killed on this day 20 years ago.
Mychal's Prayer:
Lord, take me where
You want me to go;
let me meet who
You want me to meet;
tell me what
You want me to say; and
keep me out of Your way.
Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM
"the Saint of 9/11"
September 11, 2001
A sober alcoholic and member of AA for 23 years before his death
at 1 World Trade Center
Daily Reflections
MAKING AMENDS
Above all, we should try to be absolutely sure that we are not delaying because we are afraid.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 87
To have courage, to be unafraid, are gifts of my recovery. They empower me to ask for help and to go forth in making my amends with a sense of dignity and humility. Making amends may require a certain amount of honesty that I feel I lack, yet with the help of God and the wisdom of others, I can reach within and find the strength to act. My amends may be accepted, or they may not, but after they are completed I can walk with a sense of freedom and know that, for today, I am responsible.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
Continuing the answers to the question of how a person can live without liquor and be happy, we say: "You will be bound to the other A.A.s with new and wonderful ties, for you and they will escape disaster together and all will commence shoulder to shoulder the common journey to a better and more satisfactory life. You will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will become happy, respected, and useful once more. Since these things have happened to us, they can happen to you." Have these things happened to me?
Meditation for the Day
God manifests Himself in human lives as strength to overcome evil and power to resist temptation. The grace of God is that power which enables a human being to change from a useless, hopeless individual to a useful, normal person. God also manifests Himself as love-love for other people, compassion for their problems, and a real willingness to help them. The grace of God also manifests itself as peace of mind and serenity of character. We can have plenty of power, love, and serenity in our lives if we are willing to ask God for these things each day.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may see God's grace in the strength I receive, the love I know, and the peace I have. I pray that I may be grateful for the things I have received through the grace of God.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Bend with the wind
Page 265
"We learn to become flexible.. As new things are revealed, we feel renewed."
Basic Text, p.102
"Flexibility" was not a part of the vocabulary we used in our using days. We'd become obsessed with the raw pleasure of our drugs and hardened to all the softer, subtler, more infinitely varied pleasures of the world around us. Our disease had turned life itself into a constant threat of jails, institutions, and death, a threat against which we hardened ourselves all the more. In the end we became brittle. With the merest breath of life's wind we crumbled at last, broken, defeated, with no choice but to surrender.
But the beautiful irony of recovery is that, in our surrender, we found the flexibility we had lost in our addiction, the very lack of which had defeated us. We regained the ability to bend in life's breeze without breaking. When the wind blew, we felt its loving caress against our skin, where once we would have hardened ourselves as if against the onrush of a storm.
The winds of life blow new airs our way each moment, and with them new fragrances, new pleasures, varied, subtly different. As we bend with life's wind, we feel and hear and touch and smell and taste all it has to offer us. And as new winds blow, we feel renewed.
Just for Today: Higher Power, help me bend with life's wind and glory in its passing. Free me from rigidity.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure
until he begins to blame somebody else."
--John Burroughs
I BELIEVE BUT CAN NOT SEE by James Patrick M.
I believe in powers I can not see
How can that be?
People say something happened to me
What did I do? What did I see?
It wasn’t electricity or gravity.
Maybe the Men in A A Sobriety?
So I see, I see There is no mystery
Unseen is seen, when results are seen
Flip a switch, lights turn on.
I see the light, the power not.
Results are clear. Power works
No need to be seen.
Not so scary, but it is true
I believe a Power has come to me
Not so easy Must ask and ask
Really not a hard task
But I must believe
Then I will achieve
The Power is with me now.
Never before, it just happened to me
Why now? Because I believed?
Believe or not, I can shout
Alcohol was My Power but is no longer about
No need for The Drink
My Higher Power is what I need
Now I can be Happy, Joyous and Free you see
I believe in what I can not see
I have achieved, so follow me
I can not believe this happened to me.
Now I turn my will and my life
to something I can not even see
I do believe in a Power much greater than me
Do you see and believe what is impossible to see?
James Patrick M.
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
If you students of the Way wish to become Buddhas, you need study no doctrines whatever, but learn only how to avoid seeking for and attaching yourselves to anything.
-Huang Po, "Zen Teaching of Huang Po"
Native American
"Listen to all the teachers in the woods. Watch the trees, the animals and all living things - you'll learn more from them than from books."
--Joe Coyhis, STOCKBRIDGE-MUNSEE
Nature is a living example of how communities live in harmony. If you go into the forest or mountain and sit still and watch, ask yourself, what lessons are being taught? Then watch how the animals conduct themselves. The trees could represent diversity. The flowers could represent people. Notice how everything in nature assists one another. See how balance works. See how conflict is handled. Can you see acts of forgiveness? Can you spot respect? Nature is full of wisdom if wee will only consider her to be our teacher.
My Creator, today let me learn from nature.
Keep It Simple
This above all: To thine own self be true. --- William Shakespeare
What does this saying mean: “To thine own self be true”? Hadn’t we thought only of ourselves before recovery? The answer is no. That wasn’t the real us. Each of us lost touch with our real self because of our addiction. We lost our goals, our feelings, our values. We chased the high. In this way, we lost our spirit. We became addicts.
With sobriety, we find ourselves again---and it feels great! We stop playing a role and become ourselves---and it’s wonderful. We follow our dreams and beliefs, not some addictive wild goose chase. We are again free to be ourselves. Thank you. Higher Power.
Prayer for the Day: Today, I pray to be myself, to know all of me. I can trust myself because my spirit is good.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll pray: “thine own self be true.”
TWELVE STEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Five (pgs 59-61)
Our next problem will be to discover the person in whom we are to confide. Here we ought to take much care, remembering that prudence is a virtue which carries a high rating. Perhaps we shall need to share with this person facts about ourselves which no others ought to know. We shall want to speak with someone who is experienced, who not only has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other serious difficulties. Difficulties, perhaps, like our own. This person may turn out to be one’s sponsor, but not necessarily so. If you have developed a high confidence in him, and his temperament and problems are close to your own, then such a choice will be good. Besides, your sponsor already has the advantage of knowing something about your case.
Perhaps, though, your relation to him is such that you would care to reveal only a part of your story. If this is the situation, by all means do so, for you ought to make a beginning as soon as you can. It may turn out, however, that you’ll choose someone else for the more difficult and deeper revelations. This individual may be entirely outside of A.A.—for example, your clergyman or your doctor. For some of us, a complete stranger may prove the best bet.
The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. Even when you’ve found the person, it frequently takes great resolution to approach him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place you may require all you’ve got. Happily, though, the chances are that you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your mission is carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the conversation will start easily and will soon become eager. Before long, your listener may well tell a story or two about himself which will place you even more at ease. Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, something else of great moment is apt to occur. Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God. And even those who had faith already often become conscious of God as they never were before.
This feeling of being at one with God and man, this emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a resting place where we may prepare ourselves for the following Steps toward a full and meaningful sobriety.
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