Daily Reflections
January 8
DO I HAVE A CHOICE?
The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically nonexistent.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p.24
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
January 8
A.A. Thought For The Day
Everyone who comes into A.A. knows from bitter experience that he or she can’t drink. I know that drinking has been the cause of all my major troubles or has made them worse. Now that I have found a way out, I will hang on to A.A. with both hands. Saint Paul once said that nothing in the world, neither powers nor principles, life nor death, could separate him from the love of God. Once I have given my drink problem to God, should anything in the world separate me from my sobriety?
Meditation For The Day
I know that my new life will not be immune from difficulties, but I will have peace even in difficulties. I know that serenity is the result of faithful, trusting acceptance of God’s will, even in the midst of difficulties. Saint Paul said: “Our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may welcome difficulties. I pray that they may test my strength and build my character.
Walk In Dry Places
January 8
Finding New Values
Restoration
Recovering alcoholics sometimes waste time and energy brooding over lost opportunities, and we do have a record of many lost opportunities! Bill W., the co-founder of AA, once made it big on Wall Street before crashing in the 1929 cataclysm. He later drank away two wonderful chances for a comeback. Most of us can recall similar opportunities we lost by drinking. We can eliminate these regrets by practicing gratitude for the recovery we have made. Without rationalizing, we can remind ourselves that few opportunities would have benefited us if we had continued to drink.
We can take comfort, too, in the clear evidence that there’s a wonderful restoration going on in our lives. While not every one gets aback a lost job or rebuilds a business, manly of us do find sufficient prosperity and productive work in our new lives. Some even find satisfying second careers or businesses after getting sober. Best of all, most recovering people discover that sobriety gives them the ability to appreciate their opportunities without worshipping material success.
I will make the best of my opportunities today and see them as stepping stones toward a more abundant life. I will not regret the past, because it brought necessary lessons.
Keep It Simple
January 8
Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the light, even though for the moment you do not see
–Bill W.
At times, we’ll go through pain and hardship, At times, we’ll have doubts. At times, we’ll get angry and think we just don’t care anymore. These things can spiritually blind us. But this normal. Hopefully, we’ll be ready for those times. Hopefully, we will have friends who will be there for you. Thank God for these moments! Yes, hard times can make our spirits deep and strong. These moments tell us who we are as sober people. These moments help us grow and change. Spirituality is about choice. To be spiritual, we must turn ourselves over to the care of our Higher Power.
Prayer for the Day: God, help me find You in my moments of blindness. This is when I really need You.
Action for the Day: Today I’ll get ready for the hard times ahead. I will list my friends who will be there for me.
Dig within. There lies the wellspring of good: Ever dig and it will ever flow.
–Marcus AureliusWhat are you going through in your life right now? Don’t feel you’re the only one. Open your eyes. Open your heart to your connections with your larger family. Let them share their stories with you. Let them share their strengths, hopes, fears, and joys. Stop looking for what’s different and what makes you separate and apart. Go on an adventure of discovering your common bonds.
–Melody Beattie“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
–Mother Theresa“Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don’t miss it.”
–Leo Buscaglia“Any fool can try to defend his mistakes–and most fools do–but it gives one a feeling of nobility to admit one’s mistakes. By fighting, you never get enough, but by yielding, you get more than you expected.”
–Lawrence G. Lovasik
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
January 8
MUSIC
“I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”
— Igor Stravinsky
It is okay not to “understand”.
A miracle is not to be understood but experienced. So much in life we will never understand and there is growth in confusion. We are not perfect. We will never be perfect. The mystery of life is exactly that — a mystery.
As an alcoholic I often sought to appear “as God”. I had to have an answer for everything, even if I made up the answer! Not to know was humiliating for me because it took away control, my need to be in charge, my hopeless and exhausting quest for perfection. With the failure to be perfect came the guilt, shame and anger.
Today I am able to live with life’s daily confusions — and it’s okay!
Daily Inspiration
January 8
Smooth seas don’t make skillful sailors. Lord, teach me as I am able to learn so that I may grow from my difficulties and become the person You intended.
Know that you can do even if things are not always easy. Lord, in You I have the support of an unlimited power source and can accomplish great things because You strengthen me.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
January 8
“Native Americans are essentially calling for righteousness. By this they mean a shared ideology developed by all people using their purest and most unselfish minds.”
–Lorraine Canoe/Tom Porter, MOHAWK
The Native way is to first focus on decisions that will be good for the people and then for yourself. Righteousness means “to think right.” Our way is to consider the good of all first. This helps our minds to be unselfish and pure. This it the spiritual way. This can be very hard to do because the world we live in says to take care of yourself first. A man of God cannot be taken advantage of unless it is the will of the Creator. The Creator really controls everything. To have a good future, the people must gather in a circle and pray for the highest good for the people.
Great Mystery, today let me love instead of being loved. Le me be giving instead of receiving. Show me the advantages of having a giving heart.
Today’s Gift
January 8
Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light
—Theodore Roethke
All flowers begin with the potential to grow and blossom. Yet in winter, perennial flowers are buried under the snow. Inside the dark earth, they are patiently waiting for their time to bloom. For the flowers, faith is believing that spring will return. It is carrying the light of summer deep in their roots so that even in times of cold and dark, there is hope that they will bloom again.
When spring does return, they shoot out of the ground and burst into blossom. In times of light, they drink it deep into their roots – deep enough to sustain them through the next season of darkness. We can do the same, keeping the memory of good times deep within us, so that when we’re feeling low, it will keep our faith in the happy future strong.
What helps sustain my faith today?
Touchstones Meditation For Men
January 8
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
—Henry David Thoreau
Nature confronts us with its beauty in a flower or a furry animal. The awesomeness of nature is in a lightning bolt or a majestic mountain. Every variety of tree has its own uniquely textured bark. Each annual ring in a tree trunk is a natural record of the growing conditions in each year it grew. These things remind us we are not in charge, and we are moved by the experience.
This wildness is everywhere around us, and we are renewed by it when we interact with it. At night, in the city, we look up and see the ancient moon. When we live with a pet, it reminds us we are creatures too. We are part of this larger whole. We don’t just appreciate nature – we are nature. When we open our eyes and learn to be a part of it, it renews and lifts our spirits.
Today, I will notice my relationship with the sun and moon, with the plants and animals in my world.
Daily TAO
January 8
WORK
The woodcutter
Works in all seasons.
Splitting wood is both
Action and inaction.
Even when it is snowy, the woodcutter must split wood. Unless he does, he and his family will not stay warm, and those who depend upon him will not survive. But the woodcutter does not work simply on a piecemeal basis. He labors in concert with the seasons : He worked hard to store wood prior to the first cold so that he would have the luxury of merely splitting kindling now. His work seems slight in one season, because he was industrious in the previous one.
When he splits wood, he must place the log on the block and raise his axe. But he must strike the wood with the grain, and he must let the axe fall with its own weight. If he tries to chop across the grain, his effort would be wasted. If he tries to add strength to the swing of the axe, there would be no gain.