Daily Reflections
October 30
LIVE AND LET LIVE
Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don’t have to share it? That’s the spirit of “Live and Let Live.” The Serenity Prayer reminds me, with God’s help, to “Accept the things I cannot change.” Am I still trying to change others? When it comes to “Courage to change the things I can,” do I remember that my opinions are mine, and yours are yours? Am I still afraid to be me? When it comes to “Wisdom to know the difference,” do I remember that my opinions come from my experience? If I have a know-it-all attitude, aren’t I being deliberately controversial?
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
October 30
A.A. Thought For The Day
I have real friends, where I had none before. My drinking companions could hardly be called my real friends, though when drunk we seemed to have the closest kind of friendship. My idea of friendship has changed. Friends are no longer people whom I can use for my own pleasure or profit. Friends are now people who understand me and I them, whom I can help and who can help me to live a better life. I have learned not to hold back and wait for friends to come to me, but to go half way and to be met half way, openly and freely. Does friendship have new meaning for me?
Meditation For The Day
There is a time for everything. We should learn to wait patiently until the right time comes. Easy does it. We waste our energies in trying to get things before we are ready to have them, before we have earned the right to receive them. A great lesson we have to learn is how to wait with patience. We can believe that all our life is a preparation for something better to come when we have earned the right to it. We can believe that God has a plan for our lives and that this plan will work out in the fullness of time.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may learn the lesson of waiting patiently. I pray that I may not expect things until I have earned the right to have them.
Walk In Dry Places
October 30
Who is a winner?
Staying Sober
Newcomers in AA are urged to “stick with the winners.” But who is a winner?
A winner in AA is one who finds sobriety and represents principles that help others find and maintain sobriety. Any person who can help others is a winner.
The losers are people who don’t make enough of a commitment to find and maintain sobriety. It may not be their fault. On the other hand, some losers eventually become winners.
It is not our purpose to apply ratings to various individuals, whether they’re winner or losers. We must know, however, that we cannot benefit from the suggestions of people who do not stay sober. We are looking for the path of recovery, not the road to ruin. The winners are people who can help us in our recovery.
I’ll spend as much time as possible with people who want to stay sober. I have no intention of joining anyone on the road to ruin.
Keep It Simple
October 30
The universe is full of magical things waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
-Eden Phillpots
How nice to have the fog lifted! Sobriety lets our wits grow sharper. We can go after our dreams and ideas. We can listen to music and sing. We are part of the magic of the universe. At times we may not feel very magical, but we are. Our spirits hold much magic. Sobriety is magic. We work at making the world a better place. In doing so, we get magical powers. Power that heals and comfort others. Power that heals and comforts others. Powers to understand things that before we could not. Powers that let us see the world as we’ve never seen it. Enjoy the magic and use your powers wisely!
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, let Your magic enter and fill my heart.
Action for the Day: I’ll list four magical powers I have from being sober.
“There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment.”
-Orison Swett MardenHumility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
-unknownA well-spent day brings happy sleep.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
October 30
FOOD
“Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing.”
-James Thurber
It may seem strange to many but for years my belief system revolved around my eating. I believed that if I could eat I would be okay. Food for me was both the pleasure and escape. I lived to eat. Feelings, good and bad, were surrounded and stuffed down with food. Some people drank to hide, used cocaine to escape — I ate to avoid the problems in my life.
Seeing was deceiving for me because I refused to accept the reality of my eating. I covered myself with clothes, avoided the beach, rarely looked at my body. I saw only what I wanted to see — and I was dying. Now I choose to face reality. This for me is the meaning of spirituality. I choose to show my love for me by loving my food, making choices around what I eat and eating slowly. Today I choose to talk about my problems, rather than eat them.
God, help me to accept my daily bread with gratitude and abstinence.
Daily Inspiration
October 30
Be inspired to try something new and much of what you dream can become your life. Lord, thank you for giving me the freedom of choice, and grant me the courage to experience my opportunities and create new ones.
Worse than being a quitter is the one who is afraid to begin. Lord, grant me the courage to believe in myself and the ability to focus on what I can do, not what I can’t do.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
October 30
“My children, you have forgotten the customs and traditions of your forefathers. You have bought guns, knives, kettles, and blankets from the white man until you can no longer do without them; and what is worse you have drunk the poison firewater, which turns you into fools. Fling all these things away; live as your forefathers did before you.”
-Pontiac, ODOWA
We need to think as our forefathers did.
They knew the culture and the customs.
The culture taught them how to live in harmony with each other.
We need to think like this again.
We must be God-reliant.
We don’t need the firewater. This liquid is very destructive to our native people. It kills our spirit. Our Indian people are happiest when we are spiritual. When we depend on anyone or anything else, we get off track. We need to talk to the Elders and find out what the old ways were. We need to ask them to teach us the culture, the tradition, and the customs. This will help us become whole again.
My Maker, guide my path as you did my ancestors.
Today’s Gift
October 30
You have three choices: keep on fighting, ignore each other, or make up and be friends.
—John Knoblauch
Once there were four sixth-graders – two boys and two girls – who started to fight even though they’d been friends for years. One morning at the bus stop, the boys started playing keep-away with the girls’ shoes and wouldn’t give them back. One of the mothers called the school.
Later that day, the counselor called them in and asked them what the fight was all about. They said they didn’t really know.
“Well,” said the counselor, “it doesn’t really matter why you started fighting. Right now, you’ve got three choices: keep on fighting, ignore each other, or make up.”
The group chose to ignore each other, after discussing it among themselves. They were happy to be able to stop fighting. About the time of winter vacation, they decided to be friends again.
What conflicts can I resolve by letting them be?
The Language Of Letting Go
October 30
We have a real life of our own. Yes, we do.
That empty feeling, that sense that everyone except us has a life – an important life, a valuable life, a better life – is a remnant from the past. It is also a self-defeating belief that is inaccurate.
We are real. So is our life. Jump into it, and we’ll see.
Today, I will live my life and treasure it as mine.
Touchstones Meditation For Men
October 30
That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge of the nature of things.
—Frithjof Schuon
Most of us have very narrow, limited ways of understanding what happens to us. We are generally practical men, and if something goes wrong we immediately begin to think of how to fix it. We take a cause-and-effect approach to understand the events around us rather than a circular or symbolic approach. Perhaps we turn quickly to blaming instead of asking what is the meaning or the message in what is happening. We see our own experience as the center of events. We forget that our lives are only today’s expression in a line of generations before us.
We become too self-satisfied with our ways of understanding the world. It may be comforting to think we understand what is going on. When we let go of that comfort and open ourselves to a more profound awareness, we enter the spiritual realm. Here we learn that facts are not enough to achieve truth. We begin to understand that love – in the form of connections with all of creation – is where we find the most profound meaning.
I am a part of the whole universe, and my relationship with my Higher Power will open me to profound knowledge.
Daily TAO
October 30
AGING
Mist and snow blot out the world.
Bony trees are thinly fleshed with ice.
A couple laughs below a stone monument,
But behind a bristled hedge,
A cloaked woman sings a dirge.
Old age is lonely.
Dreams of those I’ve buried haunt me.
Was I ever ready to shoulder this mantle?
It smothered a carefree youth.
Now neither parent, lover, nor friends have I,
And great fame is as distant as spring’s leaves.
Dear youth, do you ever think of getting old? If you did, then you might value your time even more. Dear oldster, do you ever think of your past? Of course you do. You wonder if you did the right things.
How ironic this life is! What a tremendous bind we are born into! When young, we do not understand the dreariness of old age. When we are old, we are not permitted to go back in time. When vitality flows freely, we haven’t enough wisdom. When we have gained wisdom, fate has made us too weak to take action.
Oh, I know. The purpose of following Tao is to be well adjusted. The secret of Tao is to know how to pass into old age gracefully. Yes, I know. But may I not still reflect on the poignancy of it all?