Insights from A.A., Zen, Native American Wisdom, and Personal Experience

CHOOSE TO HAVE A GOOD DAY

With love, Stretch

Daily Reflections

EQUALITY

Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence, we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 565

Prior to A.A., I often felt that I didn’t “fit in” with the people around me. Usually “they” had more or less money than I did, and my points of view didn’t align with theirs. The prejudice I had experienced in society only proved to me just how phony some self-righteous people were. After joining A.A., I found the way of life I had been searching for. In A.A., no member is better than any other member; we’re just alcoholics trying to recover from alcoholism.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

When you come into an A.A. meeting, you’re not just coming into a meeting, you’re coming into a new life. I’m always impressed by the change I see in people after they’ve been in A.A. for a while. I sometimes take an inventory of myself, to see whether I have changed, and if so, in what way. Before I met A.A., I was very selfish. I wanted my own way in everything. I don’t believe I ever grew up. When things went wrong, I sulked like a spoiled child and often went out and got drunk. Am I still all get and no give?

Meditation for the Day

There are two things that we must have if we are going to change our way of life. One is faith, the confidence in things unseen, the fundamental goodness and purpose in the universe. The other is obedience: that is, living according to our faith, living each day as we believe that God wants us to live, with gratitude, humility, honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. Faith and obedience, these two, will give us all the strength we need to overcome sin and temptation and to live a new and more abundant life.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may have more faith and obedience. I pray that I may live a more abundant life as a result of these things.

Thought for Today

“Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.”

–Napoleon Hill

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

Attachment is the mind stuck to an object.

-Lama Zopa Rinpoche, The Door to Satisfaction

Native American Wisdom

“Sacred sites and areas are protection for all people—the four colors for man—and these sites are in all areas of the earth in the four directions.”

–Traditional Circle of Elders, NORTHERN CHEYENNE

The Elders say that values come from the Mother Earth. Different places and areas around the Earth have different values. The Water people live in harmony and know the values that correspond to that particular part of the Earth. The Desert people know the values of the desert and respect and live in harmony with that part of the Earth. The Woodland people know the values of their part of the Earth and live in harmony. If you live in harmony with the Earth, you will live a life that is full of values. We should have great respect for the Mother Earth.

Grandfather, today, let me learn values from Mother Earth.

Keep It Simple

God is not a cosmic bellboy. — Harry Emerson Fosdick

We have to laugh when we look back at the times we treated God like our servant. Who did we think we were, ordering God to do something for us? But we got away with it. God even did some of the things we asked. Now we know that our Higher Power is not a servant. As we work the Steps, we know we don’t give orders to our Higher Power. We don’t expect God to work miracles every time we’d like one. We’re asking our Higher Power to lead us. After all, who knows what is best for us—our Higher Power or us? Our Higher Power has many wonderful gifts for us. Our Higher Power will show us goals, help us live in love and joy, and give us strength.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, show me ways to help others as You’ve helped me. I’m grateful that You love me and help me.

Action for the Day: Today, I’ll make a list of times my Higher Power has helped me out of trouble.

Big Book

Chapter 1 Bill’s Story (pg. 12 & top of pg. 13)

Despite the living example of my friend, there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me, this feeling was intensified. I didn’t like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind, or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

My friend suggested what, then, seemed a novel idea. He said, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?”

That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness, I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course, I would!

Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.

The real significance of my experience in the Cathedral burst upon me. For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so, it had been ever since. How blind I had been.

KCB,

Patricia