Daily Reflections
December 28
SUIT UP AND SHOW UP
In A.A. we aim not only for sobriety – we try again to become citizens of the world that we rejected, and of the world that once rejected us. This is the ultimate demonstration toward which Twelfth Step work is the first but not the final step.
-AS BILL SEES IT, p. 21
The old line says, “Suit up and show up.” That action is so important that I like to think of it as my motto. I can choose each day to suit up and show up, or not. Showing up at meetings starts me toward feeling a part of that meeting, I can talk with newcomers, and I can share my experience; that’s what credibility, honesty, and courtesy really are. Suiting up and showing up are the concrete actions I take in my ongoing return to normal living.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
December 28
A.A. Thought For The Day
A.A. may be human in its organization, but it is divine in its purpose. The purpose is to point me toward God and the good life. My feet have been set upon the right path. I feel it in the depths of my being. I am going in the right direction. The future can be safely left to God. Whatever the future holds, it cannot be too much for me to bear. I have the Divine Power with me, to carry me through everything that may happen. Am I pointed toward God and the good life?
Meditation For The Day
Although unseen, the Lord is always near to those who believe in Him and trust Him and depend on Him for the strength to meet the challenges of life. Although veiled from mortal sight, the Higher Power is always available to us whenever we humbly ask for it. The feeling that God is with us should not depend on any passing mood of ours, but we should try to be always conscious of His power and love in the background of our lives.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that today I may feel that God is not too far away to depend on for help. I pray that I may feel confident of His readiness to give me the power that I need.
Walk In Dry Places
December 28
Rehearing Rejection
Fortitude
The possibility of rejection exists with almost everything we do, if we are free to choose. We might not like rejection, but we want the same freedom to reject others. As freely choosing people, we need to turn down ideas or proposals we don’t like.
One thing we should never do, however, is rehearse rejections before they occur. If we do this, we may give up even before we have attempted what we hope to accomplish. In effect, we will be killing our hopes even before others have a chance to review them. This is always a ticket to failure.
Rejection is really a feedback mechanism that reports information we ought to have. It tells us either to change our approach or to seek acceptance elsewhere. It is not evidence that we’re completely unacceptable.
Our problem with any single rejection may be that it causes us to recall all the rejections we ever had. We can learn to see any rejection as a normal event that can be beneficial if we accept it properly.
I’ll not let any fear or visualization of rejection keep me from actions I ought to take today. I am an acceptable person, and there is a place for what I have to offer.
Keep It Simple
December 28
If You Walk With Lame Men You’ll soon Limp Yourself.
-Seaman McManus
Before recovery, we kept company with people who were as sick as us, or worse. We got angry and made fun of people who were trying to improve their lives. They scared us. They were like mirrors that reflected how spiritually lost we were becoming. Now we walk in the crowd we avoided. Now we have values. We have spiritual beliefs. Living up to these values and beliefs can be hard. We need to be around people who live by their values. In recovery, we learn that we need others. Remember, the first word in Step One is we. We need good people in our lives. We need friends who will not tell us what we want to hear, but what we are doing wrong.
Prayer for the Day: Sometimes I act like I need no one. Help me pick my friends wisely, for my life is at stake.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll pick one friend, and we’ll talk about how we can better help each other.
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
-Charles A. Beard“Learn from the negative as well as the positive, from the failures as well as the successes.”
-Jim Rohn“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson“If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening.”
-Marge Piercy“In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature’s way of forcing change–breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place.”
-Susan Taylor
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
December 28
HUMOR
“Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”
-Romain Gary
Today I laugh at myself. Today I need to laugh at myself in order to stay sane. Today I choose not to take myself too seriously.
When I tell jokes about the alcoholic, I am not belittling the person. I am making fun of the disease that nearly killed me. For me to live with the disease, I need to be able to laugh at the disease in this way I stop it from having power in my life.
Also I catch something of the symptoms of the disease in the jokes: the grandiosity, arrogance, manipulation, insanity, ego, selfishness and exaggeration. The joke allows me to face reality with a smile.
O God, thank You for the healing gift of humor.
Daily Inspiration
December 28
Do not run ahead of the Lord, but walk with Him, pray for His guidance and listen to His answers. Lord, let me put Your will first in my life.
Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord and receive the fullness of His blessings. Lord, I thank You for the gifts that I have received and ask forgiveness for all that I have done wrong.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
December 28
“I believe that being a medicine man, more than anything else, is a state of mind, a way of looking at and understanding this earth, a sense of what it is all about.”
-Lame Deer, LAKOTA
The Medicine Wheel explains different ways of looking at the world. The four directions are the East, the South, the West and the North. In the East is the view of the eagle-the eagle flies high and sees the earth from that point of view. The South is the direction of the mouse. Moving on the earth, the mouse will not see what the eagle sees. Both the eagle and the mouse see the truth. The West is the direction of the bear-the bear will see different from the mouse and the eagle. From the North comes the point of view of the bison. To be a Medicine Man you must journey through all points of view and develop the mind to see the interconnectedness of all four directions. This takes time, patience and an open mind. Eventually, you understand there is only love.
Great Spirit, today, allow my mind to stay open.
Today’s Gift
December 28
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading – It vexes me to choose another guide.
—Emily Bronte
We journey across many intersections in our lives. Some may point in two directions, while others lead off in several. Our choice of direction can be difficult, especially when our friends choose a road we know to be dangerous. When this happens, we can choose to go our own way without them. If they begin to tease and taunt us about our decisions, may we remember that they are as scared as we were about their friends’ reaction. We are not, after all, living for someone else. If we would be leaders, we can be assured that true leadership comes from following our own directions with confidence that it’s right for us, not from fear of losing others’ company.
We can let others live their own lives without us, if their direction is not for us. We can walk away with pride, satisfied in the knowledge that we refused to allow other people’s fears change our decisions.
How have I gone my own way recently?
Touchstones Meditations For Men
December 28
He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.
—Goethe
Many of us grew up trying to please our fathers and feeling we never got the approval we needed. Perhaps our fathers couldn’t feel pleased with themselves. Now it is time to take stock of ourselves and ask whether we are perpetuating the pattern in our own lives. If we still feel unhappy with ourselves, we may never be satisfied with anyone else either. Spouses, children, bosses, even the parking lot attendant may receive the brunt of our self-disapproval. We don’t totally change these patterns in an instant. We change them one day at a time.
Today, we have before us a small piece of the future. We can begin by treating ourselves decently. Maybe we can’t feel a strong sense of personal approval yet, but we can give ourselves some basic respect. We can start by remembering we have the love of God. We can affirm at least one positive thing about ourselves. After some positive reflection, we will have more to give to others.
Today, I will give myself approval for at least one thing.
Daily TAO
December 28
EMPTINESS
Dust cannot gather
If there is no mirror there.
Some people have compared a pure soul to the unsullied brightness of a perfect mirror.
Others have retorted that if there is no mirror there in the first place, then there cannot be anything to be sullied. The soul is empty.
We should not think of our souls as discrete and separate from the rest of creation. We are indeed one with everything, so there is no need to think of our souls as isolated entities. Thus, it is the concept of the soul as separate being that is empty.