Daily Reflections
June 29
A RIPPLING EFFECT
Having learned to live so happily, we’d show everyone else how. Yes, we of A. A. did dream those dreams. How natural that was, since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists. So why shouldn’t we share our way of life with everyone?
-TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 156
The great discovery of sobriety led me to feel the need to spread the “good news” to the world around me. The grandiose thoughts of my drinking days returned. Later, I learned that concentrating on my own recovery was a full-time process. As I became a sober citizen in this world, I observed a rippling effect which, without any conscious effort on my part, reached any “related facility or outside enterprise,” without diverting me from my primary purpose of staying sober and helping other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
Twenty-Four Hours A
Day
June 29
A.A. Thought For The Day
The program of Alcoholics Anonymous involves a continuous striving for improvement. There can be no long resting period. We must try to work at it all the time. We must continually keep in mind that it is a program not to be measured in years, because we never fully reach our goals nor are we ever cured. Our alcoholism is only kept in abeyance by daily living of the program. It is a timeless program in every sense. We live it day by day, or more precisely, moment by moment – now. Am I always striving for improvement?
Meditation For The Day
Life is all a preparation for something better to come. God has a plan for your life and it will work out, if you try to do His will. God has things planned for you, far beyond what you can imagine now. But you must prepare yourself so that you will be ready for the better things to come. Now is the time for discipline and prayer. The time of expression will come later. Life can be flooded through and through with joy and gladness. So prepare yourself for those better things to come.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may prepare myself for better things that God has in store for me. I pray that I may trust God for the future.
Walk In Dry Places
June 29
Willingness is the
Key
Strong Desire
Although willpower alone does not work in overcoming alcoholism, there is a place for the will, or willingness, in the search for a happy sobriety. Things can happen if we are willing to let them happen. More important, progress often depends on our willingness to give up what stands in our way. It also requires our willingness to take the actions necessary for success.
This same willingness, so vital to finding sobriety, is also applicable in other areas of our lives. The pioneers of AA suggested that getting sober required being willing to go to any lengths. This is the key to other achievements and to the overcoming of problems besides alcohol.
We often have to put up with unpleasant conditions simply because we do not want to change them badly enough. For example, we may dislike the unpleasant coughing and risks of smoking, but lack the willingness to quit. We may brood over lost opportunities, but be unwilling to take advantage of the opportunities we have now.
The key to constructive change in our lives is willingness, and that applies to other matters as well as to alcohol. I’ll try to be honest today about what I really want. I will remind myself that if I want something badly enough, willingness is the key to action and to success.
Keep It Simple
June 29
I don’t believe in the life afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
—Woody Allen
Most of us have many questions about a Higher Power. Sometimes we have more questions than answers. No matter how much we believe about God, there are always questions. Why do bad things happen if God is good? Does God punish people?
Is God called Jesus, Buddha, the Great Spirit? Perhaps we’ve chosen a name for our Higher Power, or maybe we haven’t. Yet, we know there is some Power great than ourselves that’s helping us in recovery.
We know what we need to know about God for today. We know how to ask for help, and how to accept help.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to know You more clearly. There’s much I’m not sure about. For now, I will act as if the help I get comes from You.
Action for the Day: I’ll think of three ways my Higher Power has done just the right thing for me.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
–Helen Keller
The butterfly often forgets it was a caterpillar.
–Swedish Proverb
Don’t reckon your eggs before they are laid.
–Italian Proverb
Father Leo’s Daily
Meditation
June 29
RISK
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it.”
–Mark Twain
I need to risk in life. I need to try again. I need to face life and not run from it. Early in my sobriety I was scared to try new things because I was afraid I might get hurt. I was afraid to express my feelings. I hid in the idea of simply “not drinking”.
Spirituality is about being willing to reach out into new areas, engage in new and different relationships, enjoy the richness of God’s world. As I grow in sobriety I develop the capacity to react differently to painful situations and overcome them. I learn that mistakes can make for new conquests. That lasting joys and achievements are born in the risk.
Teach me to overcome yesterday’s sorrows with today’s optimism.
Daily Inspiration
June 29
Spend less time trying to understand the behaviors of others and more time on the reasons you do things. Lord, help me to know myself better because then it will become possible to change the habits I don’t like and improve on the ones I do.
Many of God’s gifts are in the form of opportunities that we must recognize and then act upon. Lord, I will never say that You don’t answer my prayers, but I will pray that I will recognize Your answers.
Elder’s Meditation
of the Day
June 29
“We forget so we consider ourselves superior. But we are, after all, a mere part of the creation and we must consider to understand where we are and we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant. Somewhere and only there is a part and parcel of the creation.”
–Chief Oren Lyons, ONONDAGA
Every human being gathers information from the center of a circle. If we are not careful, we soon think we are the center of all things. Therefore, it is easy to become self centered. Once we become self centered we start to think we are above all things and therefore superior. But we are really only one part of a great whole.
The universe is all connected. Each part is here to do something special and according to its design. We are here to honor and respect the job of each part. We are neither above nor below anything. We need not be ruler over anything, we need only to live in honor and harmony with the system.
My Creator, help me to view and conduct myself in a manner of respect, dignity and honor to all creation. Let me see You in all things.
Today’s Gift
June 29
Let us open our natures, throw wide the doors of our hearts and let in the sunshine of good will and kindness.
—O. S. Marden
Kindness is among the gifts we can most easily spread among others. The more we give of kind words and deeds, the more we discover that kindness is like a burning candle which lights many other candles without losing a trace of its own brightness. Our kindnesses are assets, which return unexpected dividends when we invest them in the happiness of others. Kindness is the very basis of love. It softens the most severe anger and gladdens the hardest hearts.
No kindness is too small to win and hold the affection of others because it is made up of gentleness, love, generosity, unselfishness, and caring.
What kindness do I have to offer today?
Touchstones
Meditation For Men
June 29
A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anger is a human emotion that gets us in touch with our energy and our vitality. But like any good thing, it can also be used in hurtful ways. When we examine the role anger has played in our lives, some of us can see where we used it to intimidate and dominate others. Maybe we can recall being terrified by someone else’s anger or even by our own. Some of us denied our anger and covered it with excessive helpfulness.
Examining the place anger has had in our lives is one of the doorways we must pass through to regain our full masculine spirit. We learn to set aside the anger we used to cover fear or hurt. We express it respectfully and honestly when we feel it in a relationship. Expressing anger does not have to be abusive or rejecting. It can mean we care enough to be fully involved and we will not leave after we express it. We can learn to hear others in their anger rather than attempt to control or evade their message. In the process we are invigorated and feel healthier because we are claiming a larger part of ourselves.
Today, I will first be honest with myself about angry feelings. Then I will find respectful ways to express them.
Daily TAO
June 29
Force
A sword is never sheathed
Until it has tasted blood.
A good swordsman
Is seldom seen with a sword.
Many centuries ago, there was a wanderer who was constantly chased by assassins. He was the best swordsman in the country. His challengers wanted to overcome him and thereby establish their own fame. Although the swordsman had long ago repented his killing and had renounced his status, he was still considered the best.
Over and over, his enemies came for him, and just as many times he defeated them using things at hand – umbrella, fan, sticks. He did not draw a real sword for he knew he was far too lethal when armed.
So it is that the wise remain humble so that others are not aroused against them. They avoid conflict whenever possible. If trouble comes to seek them, they use only the bare amount of force in return. To go further is to fall into excess.