Ponderables 3/23/2020

DAILY PONDERABLES Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

https://www.recoverytapers.com/  (good resource for quarantiners) Daily Reflections . . . AND NO MORE RESERVATIONS We have seen the truth again and again: "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." . . . If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. . . . To be gravely affected, one does not necessarily have to drink a long time nor take the quantities some of us have. This is particularly true of women. Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 33 These words are underlined in my book. They are true for men and women alcoholics. On many occasions I've turned to this page and reflected on this passage. I need never fool myself by recalling my sometimes differing drinking patterns, or by believing I am "cured." I like to think that, if sobriety is God's gift to me, then my sober life is a gift to God. I hope God is happy with His gift as I am with mine. From the book Daily Reflections © Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day A.A. Thought for the Day Strength comes from the fellowship you find when you come into A.A. just being with men and women who have found the way out gives you a feeling of security. You listen to the speakers, you talk with other members, and you absorb the atmosphere of confidence and hope that you find in the place. Am I receiving strength from the fellowship with other AA. members? Meditation for the Day God is with you, to bless and help you. His spirit is all around you. Waver not in your faith or in your prayers. All power is the Lord's. Say that to yourself often and steadily. Say it until your heart sings with joy for the safety and personal power that it means to you. Say it until the very force of the utterance drives back and puts to naught all the evils against you. Use it as a battle cry. All power is the Lord's. Then you will pass on to victory over all your sins and temptations, and you will begin to live a victorious life. Prayer for the Day I pray that with strength from God I may lead an abundant life. I pray that I may lead a life of victory. From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day © Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation

NA - Just for Today God's gifts Page 85 "We do the footwork and accept what's being given to us freely on a daily basis." Basic Text, p. 47 Our relationship with our Higher Power is a two-way street. In prayer, we speak and God listens. When we meditate, we do our best to listen for the will of our Higher Power. We know that we are responsible for our part of the relationship. If we do not pray and listen, we shut our Higher Power out of our lives. When we think about our relationship with our Higher Power, it's important to remember which one we are: the powerless one. We can ask for guidance; we can ask for willingness or strength; we can ask for knowledge of our Higher Power's will-but we cannot make demands. The God of our understanding-the one with the power-will fulfill that half of the relationship by giving us exactly what we need, when we need it. We need to take action every day to keep our relationship with a Higher Power alive. One way we do this is by applying the Eleventh Step. Then we remember our own powerlessness and accept the will of a Power greater than ourselves. Just for Today: In my relationship with my Higher Power, I am the powerless one. Remembering who I am, today I will humbly accept the gifts of the God I understand. From the book Just for Today © Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Thought for Today Spirituality AA is a spiritual program and a spiritual way of life. Even the first half of the First Step, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol," is a spiritual experience. An AA member needs more than physical capabilities; he needs the use of his full faculties as a human being to hear the message, to think about it, to review the effects of the past, to realize, to admit, and to accept. These processes are activities of the mind, which is part of the spirit. Thought to Ponder . . . Only those who see the invisible can accomplish the impossible. AA-related 'Alconym' . . . K I S S = Keeping It Simple, Spiritually. Sobriety is God's gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to Him!

Buddha/Zen Thoughts All the faults of our mind – our selfishness, ignorance, anger, attachment, guilt, and other disturbing thoughts – are temporary, not permanent and everlasting. And since the cause of our suffering – our disturbing thoughts and obscurations – is temporary, our suffering is also temporary. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche, "Ultimate Healing:

Native American "We must relearn how to cry. A strong man cries; it is the weak man who holds back his tears." --Archie Fire Lame Deer, LAKOTA Indian men and other men should really meditate on this Elder's saying. So many men have been taught it is unmanly to cry, to show emotions or to feel. When people cry, the Elders say there are two types of tears – one type will taste salty; the other type will taste sweet. One is caused by pain, and the other is caused by the release from the pain, or joy tears. A strong man knows himself and knows his relationship with the Great Spirit. The release of tears is a spiritual act. Our bodies are designed to cry. We should honor our bodies and use them as the Creator intended. Great Spirit, Grandfather, today, teach me to cry.

Keep It Simple If anything, we have tended to be people who have wanted it all now. To hope is not to demand.    ---On hope Maybe we were a bit demanding. Maybe we were a bit impatient. Maybe that’s why we such little hope. Hope is believing good will, even in bad times. Hope is knowing that “this too, shall pass.” Hope is knowing that no mater how afraid we are, God will be with us. Hope is knowing we never have to be alone again. It is knowing that time is on our side. Hope is giving up control. Hope is knowing we never had control in the first place. Hope is believing in ourselves. Hope is what our program is all about. Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, in our program we share our experiences, our strengths, and our hopes. Thank you for giving all three of these to me to share. Action for the Day: I will share my hope for the future with myself, my Higher Power, and my friends. I also will share this with someone who has lost hope.

Big Book Chapter 1 BILL'S STORY (pg 10) He talked for hours. Childhood memories rose before me. I could almost hear the sound of the preacher's voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather's good natured contempt of some church fold and their doings; his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the preacher's right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as he spoke of these things just before he died; these recollections welled up from the past. They made me swallow hard. That war-time day in old Winchester Cathedral came back again. I had always believed in a Power greater that myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. My intellectual heroes, the chemists, the astronomers, even the evolutionist, suggested vast laws and forces at work. Despite contrary indications, I had little doubt that a might purpose and rhythm underlay all. How could there be so much of precise and immutable law, and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in a Spirit of the Universe, who knew neither time nor limitation. But that was as far as I had gone. With ministers, and the world's religions, I parted right there. When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory. ******************* AA Grapevine November 2007 Who Is A Member Of Alcoholics Anonymous? The origins of our Third Tradition  By Bill W.   The first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous makes this brief statement about membership: "The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. We are not allied with any particular faith, sect or denomination, nor do we oppose anyone. We simply wish to be helpful to those who are afflicted." This expressed our feeling as of 1939, the year our book was published. Since that day all kinds of experiments with membership have been tried. The number of membership rules which have been made (and mostly broken!) are legion. Two or three years ago the Central Office asked the groups to list their membership rules and send them in. After they arrived we set them all down. They took a great many sheets of paper. A little reflection upon these many rules brought us to an astonishing conclusion. If all of these edicts had been in force everywhere at once it would have been practically impossible for any alcoholic to have ever joined Alcoholics Anonymous. About nine-tenths of our oldest and best members could never have got by! Who'd Have Lasted? In some cases we would have been too discouraged by the demands made upon us. Most of the early members of AA would have been thrown out because they slipped too much, because their morals were too bad, because they had mental as well as alcoholic difficulties. Or, believe it or not, because they did not come from the so-called better classes of society. We oldsters could have been excluded for our failure to read the book Alcoholics Anonymous or the refusal of our sponsor to vouch for us as a candidate. And so on, ad infinitum. The way our "worthy" alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the "less worthy" is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another! At one time or another most AA groups go on rule-making benders. Naturally enough, too, as a group commences to grow rapidly it is confronted with many alarming problems. Panhandlers begin to pan-handle. Members get drunk and sometimes get others drunk with them. Those with mental difficulties throw depressions or break out into paranoid denunciations of fellow members. Gossips gossip, and righteously denounce the local Wolves and Red Riding Hoods. Newcomers argue that they aren't alcoholics at all, but keep coming around anyway. "Slippees" trade on the fair name of AA, in order to get themselves jobs. Others refuse to accept all the Twelve Steps of the recovery program. Some go still further, saying that the "God business" is bunk and quite unnecessary. Under these conditions our conservative program-abiding members get scared. These appalling conditions must be controlled, they think. Else AA will surely go to rack and ruin. They view with alarm for the good of the movement! At this point the group enters the rule and regulation phase. Charters, by-laws, and membership rules are excitedly passed and authority is granted committees to filter out undesirables and discipline the evil doers. Then the group elders, now clothed with authority, commence to get busy. Recalcitrants are cast into the outer darkness, respectable busybodies throw stones at the sinners. As for the so-called sinners, they either insist on staying around, or else they form a new group of their own. Or maybe they join a more congenial and less intolerant crowd in their neighborhood. The elders soon discover that the rules and regulations aren't working very well. Most attempts at enforcement generate such waves of dissension and intolerance in the group that this condition is presently recognized to be worse for the group life than the very worst that the worst ever did. After a time fear and intolerance subside. The group survives unscathed. Everybody has learned a great deal. So it is, that few of us are any longer afraid of what any newcomer can do to our AA reputation or effectiveness. Those who slip, those who pan-handle, those who scandalize, those with mental twists, those who rebel at the program, those who trade on the AA reputation--all such persons seldom harm an AA group for long. Some of these have become our most respected and best loved. Some have remained to try our patience, sober nevertheless. Others have drifted away. We have begun to regard these ones not as menaces, but rather as our teachers. They oblige us to cultivate patience, tolerance and humility. We finally see that they are only people sicker than the rest of us, that we who condemn them are the Pharisees whose false righteousness does our group the deeper spiritual damage. Ours Not to Judge Every older AA shudders when he remembers the names of persons he once condemned; people he confidently predicted would never sober up; persons he was sure ought to be thrown out of AA for the good of the movement. Now that some of these very persons have been sober for years, and may be numbered among his best friends, the old-timer thinks to himself "What if everybody had judged these people as I once did? What if AA had slammed its door in their faces? Where would they be now?" That is why we all judge the newcomer less and less. If alcohol is an uncontrollable problem to him and he wishes to do something about it, that is enough for us. We care not whether his case is severe or light, whether his morals are good or bad, whether he has other complications or not. Our AA door stands wide open, and if he passes through it and commences to do anything at all about his problem, he is considered a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He signs nothing, agrees to nothing, promises nothing. We demand nothing. He joins us on his own say so. Nowadays, in most groups, he doesn't even have to admit he is an alcoholic. He can join AA on the mere suspicion that he may be one, that he may already show the fatal symptoms of our malady. Of course this is not the universal state of affairs throughout AA. Membership rules still exist. If a member persists in coming to meetings drunk he may be led outside; we may ask someone to take him away. But in most groups he can come back next day, if sober. Though he may be thrown out of a club, nobody thinks of throwing him out of AA. He is a member as long as he says he is. While this broad concept of AA membership is not yet unanimous, it does represent the main current of AA thought today. We do not wish to deny anyone his chance to recover from alcoholism. We wish to be just as inclusive as we can, never exclusive. Perhaps this trend signifies something much deeper than a mere change of attitude on the question of membership. Perhaps it means that we are losing all fear of those violent emotional storms which sometimes cross our alcoholic world; perhaps it bespeaks our confidence that every storm will be followed by a calm; a calm which is more understanding, more compassionate, more tolerant than any we ever knew before.   Bill W.