Daily Reflections
September 13
REPAIRING THE DAMAGE
Good judgment, careful sense of timing, courage and prudence – these are the qualities we shall need when we take Step Nine.
-TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 83
To make amends can be viewed two ways: first, that of repairing damage, for if I have damaged my neighbor’s fence, I “make a mend,” and that is a direct amend; the second way is by modifying my behavior, for if my actions have harmed someone. I make a daily effort to cause no further harm. I “mend my ways,” and that is an indirect amend. Which is the best approach? The only right approach, provided that I am causing no further harm in so doing, is to do both. If harm is done, then I simply “mend my ways.” To take action in this manner assures me of making honest amends.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
September 13
A.A. Thought For The Day
“No one is too discredited, nor has sunk too low, to be welcomed cordially into A.A., if he or she means business. Social distinctions, petty rivalries and jealousies are laughed out of countenance. Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to us. In A.A., we have true democracy and true brotherhood.”
Meditation For The Day
When you call on God in prayer to help you overcome weakness, sorrow, pain, discord, and conflict, God never fails in some way to answer the appeal. When you are in need of strength for yourself or for the help of some other person, call on God in prayer. The power you need will come simply, naturally, and forcefully. Pray to God not only when you need help, but also just to commune with Him. The spirit of prayer can alter an atmosphere from one of discord to one of reconciliation. It will raise the quality of thought and word and bring order out of chaos.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may bring peace where these is discord. I pray that I may bring conciliation where these is conflict.
Walk In Dry Places
September 13
Learning to Cut my Losses
Honesty
Business people speak of “cutting their losses” when it becomes clear that a venture is going sour. As recovering alcoholics, we need to practice the same principle when we’re obviously on the wrong track.
If a resentment is developing, for example, the sooner we spot it and clear it out, the less damage we suffer. In the same way, we may be engaging in selfish but destructive behavior, or perhaps something that borders on being illicit or dishonest. We minimize our losses by admitting the wrong and getting back to our basic principles of living.
In cutting our losses, the usual barriers are pride and self-deception. While these shortcomings will probably always dog us, we at least have experience in dealing with them, or we wouldn’t have made any progress in sobriety.
If a course of thought or action isn’t working out well, perhaps it’s time today to cut my loses in order to get back on the right track.
Keep It Simple
September 13
People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy.
–Oliver Goldsmith
If we had to get well by ourselves, we’d be in trouble. We’ve already tried this route. We need to learn a new way to live, not the old way we already know.
That’s why we have sponsors in Twelve Step programs. Sponsors are one of the best things about our recovery. We pick people who are happy and doing well in recovery. Then we copy them. We copy them because sponsors are special people who have what we want. They have sobriety. They have happiness. They have common sense. They have peace and serenity. And they will help us get those things too. We learn a new way to live from them.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me pick good models. Help me copy what works for them.
Action for the Day: If I don’t have a sponsor now, I’ll work today on getting one.
None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got here because somebody bent down and helped us.
–Thurgood Marshall
Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
–Henry James
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
–Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Listen or Thy tongue will keep Thee deaf.”
–American Indian Proverb
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
September 13
MINORITY
“The greatest good of a minority of our generation may be the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the long run.”
– Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr.
I belong to a minority. I am a recovering alcoholic. I use a spiritual program that keeps me sober a day at a time. I have a God that I can understand today. I do a daily inventory and make amends when appropriate, and I feel good about myself.
This spiritual program is reaching out to the world: gamblers, overeaters, cocaine addicts, the families of addicts, the children of compulsive people; obsessive people can all be helped by this daily program of acceptance.
Perhaps the recovering drunk has stumbled upon a miracle that can bring the world back to God!
Lord, the more I talk about my “difference” with people, the more they and I feel the same.
One Day At A Time
September 13
ABSTINENCE
“It’s a funny thing about life.
If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best,
that’s what it will give you.”
–W. Somerset Maugham
When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?
When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!
One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat. ~ Christine S.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
September 13
“The most important thing you can do during the course of the day is to pray.”
–Joe Coyhis, STOCKBRIDGE-MUNSEE
There are many things we do during the day that are important. There are many places we have to go and there are many things to accomplish. The old ones say, the most important thing we can do is remember to take the time to pray. We should pray every morning and every evening. In this way we can be sure that the Great Spirit is running our lives. With the Great Spirit we are everything but without Him we are nothing. All Warriors know their greatest weapon is prayer. To spend time talking to the Creator is a great honor.
Great Spirit, thank You for listening to my prayers.
Journey to the Heart
September 13
Surrender to Your Feelings
Sometimes we think being strong means not giving in to our emotions. But that’s not strength, that’s denial and resistance. Real power comes from being vulnerable enough to feel whatever you feel.
Keep going, we tell ourselves. Don’t give in, This will pass… But the only way to pass through these times is by feeling what we feel. The longer we fight and resist our emotions, the longer the situation will continue that is triggering them.
We may not see the lesson until we feel the feeling. We may not see the issue, the next step, the way out or the way through until we give in, feel our emotions, then release them. It’s not enough to talk about them, although that will help bring them into consciousness, into the light of day. But talking about our feelings is different from surrendering to and feeling the emotional energy.
Feel the feeling, then release it. Now your soul and the universe can move you forward into new circumstances, into growth. An issue to work on– such as freedom, forgiveness, acceptance, love, or valuing some part of ourselves or our lives– may naturally and automatically emerge. If we pay attention to the process by which we grow, we will clearly see that each step of the way– feeling our feeling, accepting it, and then releasing it– triggered the next step of growth. Soon we will see that we are learning a new lesson. We are on our way again.
There is magic in allowing our feelings to pass through us, magic in giving in. There is power, more than we think in being vulnerable enough to feel what we feel.
Touchstones Meditations For Men
September 13
Mothers give sons permission to be a prince but the father must show him how…. Fathers give daughters permission to be princesses. And mothers must show them how. Otherwise, both boys and girls will grow up and always see themselves as frogs.
–Eric Berne
Relationships with our fathers have been central in shaping our characters. We catch ourselves saying what we heard our fathers say, or doing something we know they did. Many of us have had pain and resentments in these relationships. We wanted more time than they gave us, or we longed for praise but got criticism, or we were never sure we measured up to them.
Some of us can change our relationships with our fathers. We can do it, not by asking them to be different, but by being our full adult selves with them. This new experience is the doorway to a new aspect of our selves. Many of us cannot change our relationships with our fathers, but being with our sons and daughters in ways that nurture their growth is another chance to redo for ourselves what we missed.
My father’s importance to me is a fact I must surrender to. I will take what he has given me and grow with it.
Daily TAO
September 13
ARBITRARY
Meaning in life is arbitrary.
Why ruin the universe with rigidity?
Why do we make the choices we do? After all, we do not have unlimited freedom to do things. We find ourselves constrained by our gender, our race, our economic circumstances, our personalities that were shaped both by genetics and the random processes of life. Furthermore, we find that other people have their own ideas of what we should be doing, and they constrain us still further.
A person born into one culture will have entirely different options that one born into another. They may both lead valuable lives, but they will most certainly differ in many respects. The meaning that they find will come from different palettes. We cannot say that one person’s life is more valuable than another’s.
Of all the people who have lived, have any of them been truly “better”, than another? We see in their lives only the exercise of preferences, not differences of inherent meaning.
All meaning in life is arbitrary. It is not tied to god, family, or self unless we define it as such. Nothing in life gives us meaning in and of itself. It is we who assign meaning to objects and relationships. We all try to make the structure of our meaning pretty, but in the end, there is no escape from the feeling that it is all arbitrary.
It might be better not to ruin the universe with our own patterns.
Daily Zen
September 13
Food and clothes sustain body and life
I advise you to learn being as is.
When it’s time, I move my hermitage and go,
And there’s nothing to be left behind.
–Layman P’ang (740-808)