today's readings

July 1

Daily Reflections

THE BEST FOR TODAY

The principles we have set down are guides to progress. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 60

Just as a sculptor will use different tools to achieve desired effects in creating a work of art, in Alcoholics Anonymous the Twelve Steps are used to bring about results in my own life. I do not overwhelm myself with life's problems, and how much more work needs to be done. I let myself be comforted in knowing that my life is now in the hands of my Higher Power, a master craftsman who is shaping each part of my life into a unique work of art. By working my program I can be satisfied, knowing that in the doing the best that we can for today, we are doing all that God asks of us."

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

In following the A.A. program with its twelve steps, we have the advantage of a better understanding of our problems. Day after day our sobriety results in the formation of new habits, normal habits. As each twenty-four-hour period ends, we find that the business of staying sober is a much less trying and fearsome ordeal than it seemed in the beginning. Do I find it easier as I go along?

Meditation For The Day

Learn daily the lesson of trust and calm in the midst of the storms of life. Whatever of sorrow or difficulty the day may bring, God's command to you is the same. Be grateful, humble, calm, and loving to all people. Leave each soul the better for having met you or heard you. For all kinds of people, this should be your attitude: a loving desire to help and an infectious spirit of calmness and trust in God. You have the answer to loneliness and fear, which is calm faith in the goodness and purpose in the universe.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may be calm in the midst of storms. I pray that I may pass on this calmness to others who are lonely and full of fear.

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As Bill Sees It

The Reality of Spiritual Experiences, p. 182

"Perhaps you raise the question of hallucination versus the divine imagery of a genuine spiritual experience. I doubt if anyone has authoritatively defined what a hallucination really is. However, it is certain that all recipients of spiritual experiences declare their reality. The best evidence of that reality is in the subsequent fruits. Those who receive these gifts of grace are very much changed people, almost invariably for the better. This can scarcely be said of those who hallucinate.

"Some might think me presumptuous when I say that my own experience is real. Nevertheless, I can surely report that in my own life and in the lives of countless others, the fruits of that experience have been real, and the benefactions beyond reckoning.

Talk, 1960

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Keep It Simple

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.---Step Seven In Step Six, we got ready to give up our shortcomings. In Step Seven, we ask God to remove them. Thereis onecatch. We humbly as God to remove them. Being humble means we remember who we are: human beings who need God's help. Being humble means not pretending we're God. We admit we need God's help. Being humble means seeing ourselves as we are. We're a small but important part of God's plan. We can change much, but only God can change some things about us. This is why we ask. Being humble is not a weakness, but a true strength. Prayer for the Day: God, please remove my shortcomings. Action for the Day: Throughout the day, I'll pray to God to remove my shortcomings.

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Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition

The Vicious Cycle

How it finally broke a Southerner's obstinacy and destined this salesman to start A.A. at Philadelphia.

After the tire job came the thirties, the Depression, and the downhill road. In the eight years before A.A. found me, I had over forty jobs--selling and traveling--one thing after another, and the same old routine. I'd work like mad for threeorfourweeks without a singledrink, save my money, pay a few bills, and then "reward" myself with alcohol. Then I'd be broke again, hiding out in cheap hotels all over the country, having one-night jail stands here and there, and always that horrible feeling "What's the use--nothing is worthwhile." Every time I blacked out, and that was every time I drank, there was always that gnawing fear, "What did I do this time?" Once I found out. Many alcoholics have learned they can bring their bottle to a cheap movie theater and drink, sleep, wake up, and drink again in the darkness. I had repaired to one of these one morning with my jug, and, when I left late in the afternoon, I picked up a newspaper on the way home. Imagine my surprise when I read in a page-one "box" that I had been taken from the theater unconscious around noon that day, removed by ambulance to a hospital and stomach-pumped, and then released. Evidently I had gone right back to the moviewith a bottle, stayed there several hours, and started home with no recollection of what had happened.

p. 225

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Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Eleven - "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."

Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God. We A.A.'s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions of dealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time in our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic who comes along. So it isn't surprising that we often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really necessary. To be sure, we feel it is something that might helpus to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of clergymen, from which we may hopeto get a secondhand benefit. Or perhaps we don't believe in these things at all.

p. 96

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I welcome solitude into my life today. I welcome the peace, serenity, wisdom and spirituality I find when I take that special time for me. --Ruth Fishel

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. --Robert Louis Stevenson

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." --Norman MacEwan

We're not invited into relationship with God at a deeper level in the absence of our challenges, but in the midst of all of life, including our challenges. Difficulties provide us a chance for greater closeness. Every situation in life carries with it an incredible opportunity for sweetness, depth and wonder. Receive every experience today as an opportunity and a gift. --Mary Manin Morrissey

"It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song, But the man worth while is the one who can smile, When everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is troubled, And it always comes with the years. And the smiles that is worth the praises of earth, Is the smile that shines through tears." --Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. --Josh Billings

"Character is what you are in the dark." --Dwight L. Moody

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Father Leo's Daily Meditation

BELIEF

"Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you understand." --St. Augustine

For years I tried to understand my behavior around alcohol and I only came away more confused. Sometimes my efforts to understand led me into dishonesty and manipulation. I drank because I was lonely, angry, happy, overworked or because I had problems with my parents. You see, I tried to understand "why"!

Science has no definitive answer as to why some people are alcoholic other than to postulate the disease factor, with the emphasized advice, "Don't pick up the first drink." So today I don't understand why I am an alcoholic. I also believe that I can never drink alcohol without having alcohol problems. This cherished belief keeps me sober and gives me a God I can understand; a life that I can love; and a world I can live in.

Oh yes -- and I can remember where I have been today!

Help me to believe in what I know and to be content with the imperfection of my knowledge.

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"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms;ifitwerenotso,I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." John 14:1-3

"Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path." Psalms 119:105

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Daily Inspiration

It's easy to give up, but no matter what the outcome is, if you do your best, you are always the winner. Lord, may I truly realize that it is the way I participate in life that counts for me.

Example is the best way to teach. Lord, may I teach Your goodness by the way I live my life.