Daily Reflections
January 26
RIGOROUS HONESTY
Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect – unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 24
I am an alcoholic. If I drink I will die. My, what power, energy, and emotion this simple statement generates in me! But it’s really all I need to know for today. Am I willing to stay alive today? Am I willing to stay sober today? Am I willing to ask for help and am I willing to be a help to another suffering alcoholic today? Have I discovered the fatal nature of my situation? What must I do, today, to stay sober?
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
January 26
A.A. Thought For The Day
As we became alcoholics, the bad effects of drinking came more and more to outweigh the good effects. But the strange part of it is that, no matter what drinking did to us, loss of our health, our jobs, our money and our homes, we still stuck to it and depended on it. Our dependence on drinking became an obsession. In A.A., we find a new outlook on life. We learn how to change from alcoholic thinking to sober thinking. And we find out that we can no longer depend on drinking for anything. We depend on a Higher Power instead. Have I entirely given up that dependence on drinking?
Meditation For The Day
I will try to keep my life calm and unruffled. This is my great task, to find peace and acquire serenity. I must not harbor disturbing thoughts. No matter what fears, worries and resentments I may have, I must try to think of constructive things, until calmness comes. Only when I am calm can I act as a channel for God’s spirit.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may build up instead of tearing down. I pray that I may be constructive and not destructive.
Walk In Dry Places
January 26
Pray For Potatoes
Faith and Works
One of the sayings heard at AA meetings is “Pray for potatoes but grab a hoe.” This says that both prayer and action are needed to get favorable results in our lives.
But recovering alcoholics do not really need to be told to “grab a hoe.” One of our problems is that we often worked too hard for certain ends, only to lose out in the long run. What we really need to know is that our prayers work with our actions to bring about good results. The saying should be “Pray for potatoes and grab a hoe.” Faith and actions are both needed.
In the strong belief that God is working through us, we can do our own work with confidence and gratitude. Our own efforts are strengthened when we know that we are not alone. We may even receive inspiration and new understanding as we continue on this path. Changes in our lives will turn out to be positive and beneficial if we remind ourselves that God is in charge of the process.
Under the right conditions, potatoes grow in a miraculous way. Other projects will also come to maturity in our lives under God’s direction.
I will be grateful for the opportunity to work today. Moreover, I will know that a Higher Power is living and working in my life.
Keep It Simple
January 26
The best way to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm.
–Swedish proverb
During our illness, we hurt others. We hurt ourselves. We messed up a lot.
So, a lot of us come to recovery not trusting ourselves very much. The truth is, as addicts, we couldn’t be trusted.
But in recovery, we can be trusted again. We can again live and love ourselves. We do this by finding our spiritual center. This is the place inside of us where our Higher Power lives. We turn our will and our lives over to this spiritual center. We do as our spiritual center tells us. And from our spiritual center, we’ll find our values. We’ll live better lives. We’ll come to trust ourselves again.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, thank-you for helping me believe in myself again. I’ll treat myself with love and kindness. I know You want me to.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list four ways I couldn’t be trusted during my addiction. I’ll also list four ways I can now be trusted.
He who has fed a stranger may have fed an angel.
–The TalmudLook for God’s image in the people you meet.
–Robert E. Lea“It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.”
–Jimmy Buffet“It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.”
–Josiah Stamp“One can easily understand a child’s fear of the dark, but what is the greatest tragedy in life is the grown man who is afraid of the light.”
–Plato
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
January 26
FAITH
“The ablest men in all walks of modern life are men of faith.”
— Bruce Barton
It is important for those of us who have been crushed by the disease of addiction to have faith that life will get better. We stopped “using” or being co-dependent because the behavior was destroying us. Our lives were disintegrating in negative behavior and attitudes. Now we have chosen a different way to live.
Today I seek to find God in my freedom of choice, my ability to change. I have faith in the daily belief that my life will get better so long as I avoid those things that hurt me. My faith enables me to change.
O God, my faith in me reflects my belief in You.
Daily Inspiration
January 26
We can show God that we truly love Him by the way we speak and live. May I be inspiring, Lord, and may everyone that I meet find You.
Avoid negative thinking because this leads to unnecessary worry. Lord, I rely on You to guide and sustain me and I know that with You I can move easily around life’s obstacles.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
January 26
“All life is a circle.”
–Rolling Thunder, CHEROKEE
The atom is a circle, orbits are circles, the earth, moon, and sun are circles. The seasons are circles. The cycle of life is a circle: baby, youth, adult, elder. The sun gives life to the earth who feeds life to the trees whose seeds fall to the earth to grow new trees. We need to practice seeing the cycles that the Great Spirit gave us because this will help us more in our understanding of how things operate. We need to respect these cycles and live in harmony with them.
Great Spirit, let me grow in knowledge of the circle.
Today’s Gift
January 26
Nothing is more difficult than competing with a myth.
— Francoise Giroud
Sometimes we think we need to try and be something we’re not. Maybe we feel pressure from friends to behave or dress like someone else. All we need to do is remember when we were younger and dressed in our parents’ clothes and shoes. We pretended to be grownups, and it was fun for a while. Then the huge shoes on our feet grew clumsy and uncomfortable and the mountain of rolled-up sleeves kept falling down and getting in the way. Soon we grew tired of the game and stopped pretending. Today when we start feeling the pressure to be someone else, let’s remember how hard it is to play a role that doesn’t fit us.
What can I do today that is most like me?
Touchstones – Daily Meditation For Men
January 26
Within every man there is the reflection of a woman, and within every woman there is the reflection of a man. Within every man and woman there is also the reflection of an old man and an old woman, a little boy and a little girl.
— Hyemeyohsts Storm
This Cheyenne teaching reminds us of our connections – inside ourselves and with other people. Reading this passage, we are seeing it partly with the eyes of that small child who first learned to read. And perhaps, looking in the mirror today, we can see the traces of the old men we are becoming. We have been close to our mothers or sisters or lovers and have found parts of ourselves in them. By gently welcoming the children we once were, the old men we will be, the part of us that has a woman’s outlook, we become wiser, stronger, and more spiritual.
We don’t need to be frightened or disrespectful of the parts of ourselves that don’t feel 100 percent virile. We can have virility and many other sides too. Such awareness creates peace with ourselves.
I will notice the reflection of small children in old faces, old people in children’s faces, and men and women in each other.
Daily TAO
January 26
ADORATION
Images on the altar,
Or imagined within :
We pray to them,
But do they answer?
The wise tell us how important adoration is. So we kneel before altars, give offerings, and make sacrifices. In our meditations, we are taught to see gods within ourselves and to make supplications to receive power and knowledge. This we do with great sincerity, until the masters say that there are no gods. Then we are confused.
The statue on the altar is mere wood and gold leaf, but our need to be reverent is real. The god within may be nothing but visualization, but our need for concentration is real. The attributes of heaven are utopian conjectures, but the essence of these parables is real. The gods, then, represent certain philosophies and extraordinary facets of the human mind. When we devote ourselves to gods, we establish communion with these deeper aspects.