Latest / Sober Readings / Experience: The Best Teacher
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Friday, the 3rd of July. Happy Friday, everyone. Let's begin today's episode with the Serenity Prayer. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. From Daily Reflections, July 3rd. Experience the best teacher. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. That's from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous page eighty seven. Some say that experience is the best teacher, but I believe that experience is the only teacher. I have been able to learn of God's love for me only by the experience of my dependence on that love. At first, I could not be sure of his direction in my life, but now I see that if I am to be bold enough to ask for his guidance, I must act as if he has provided it. I frequently ask God to help me remember that he has a path for me. From twenty four hours, july three, AA thought for the day. In the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were only two persons. Now there are many groups and thousands of members. True, the surface has only been scratched. There are probably 10 million or more persons in America alone who need our help. More and more people are making a start in AA each day. In the case of individual members, the beginning has been accomplished when they admit that they are powerless. And turn to a power greater than themselves, admitting that their lives have become unmanageable. That higher power works for good in all things and helps us to accomplish much in individual growth and in the growth of AA groups. So ask yourself today: Am I doing my part in helping AA to grow? The meditation for the day. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Only in the fullness of faith can the heart sick and faint and weary be satisfied, healed, and rested. Think of the wonderful spiritual revelations still to be found by those who are trying to live the spiritual life. Much of life is spiritually unexplored country. Only to the consecrated and loving people who walk with God in spirit. Can these great spiritual discoveries be revealed? Keep going forward and keep going in righteousness. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may not be held back by the material things of the world. I pray that I may let God lead me forward. Today's daily meditation from Touchstones Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over. That's a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Many situations require fierce persistence, but in others we need to start over. Early in recovery, most of us haven't had a good way of knowing the difference. Perhaps with every challenge we tried harder and held on tighter. Our codependent relationships and our addictions had been our escapes. Often we long for some clear directions from God to tell us now is the time to let go, or now is the time to persist. This is not how we hear from our higher power. We can practice being less automatic in rising to every challenge. We can learn to see the wisdom and vitality in starting over. Certainly our recovery is a good example. Gradually we develop our contact with our higher power to help discern the difference. As we do, we develop more options for leading healthier lives. Today, I will not automatically persist with a challenge. I will notice when I have an opportunity to let go. And for today's final reading, let's finish up chapter two in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Chapter two, remember, is titled Recovery The First Legacy. And this was a speech that Bill W. was giving and where we left off, Bill W was talking about how they were breaking away from the Oxford groups. So we'll pick it up there. Out in Akron, wonderful friends continued to show up. In the forefront of these was T. Henry Williams and his wife Claris. Oxford groupers also. They and Henrietta had repeatedly tried to help Dr. Bob. On several occasions, they had gone far in discussing their own personal defects with him in order to get some kind of closer identification with him. This had impressed him a great deal and had doubtless made him. Far more ready to work with me when I showed up. I had met T. Henry at the time of the proxy fight, and as a result of the shakeup, he had lost a fine job. He was big-hearted enough, nevertheless, to let us alcoholics come to his house for meetings, along with his Oxford group friends. I'm afraid those early problem drinkers often gave the Williamses a bad time. Ranging from jarring glimpses of life in the raw to cigarette burns on their carpets. But T Henry and Clarice always treated us with great generosity and kindness, and none of us can ever forget the inspirational atmosphere of their home and their spiritual influence on that first frightened little group of Akron alcoholics, each wondering who might slip next. It was not until later and well after the AA book was published that our Akron memberships were Withdrew from the Oxford groups and finally from the home which had sheltered them so well. T. Henry and Clarice Williams will always be counted in the front rank of AA's pioneers. Gradually the New York and Akron groups began to multiply. From New York we began to reach out toward Philadelphia and Washington. In Akron they began to have visitors from Cleveland. Clarice and Dorothy and Abby and all those grandfolks. The AA ferment had begun to work and spread. In 1937, I went back to Wall Street for a brief stretch. In the fall of that year, another depression hit the US and I was suddenly out of a job. I went west, where I tried Detroit and Cleveland for another position in the financial business. Nothing turned up, but this trip gave me a much needed chance to visit Dr. Bob and Akron. It was on a November day in that year when Dr. Bob and I sat in his living room. Counting the noses of our recoveries. There had been failings galore, but now we could see some startling successes too. A hardcore of very grim, last gasp cases had by then been sober a couple of years, an unheard of development. There were twenty or more such people. All told, we figured that upwards of forty alcoholics were staying bone dry. As we carefully rechecked this score, it suddenly burst upon us that a new light was shining into the dark world of the alcoholic. Despite the fact that Ebbie had slipped, a benign chain reaction, one alcoholic carrying the good news to the next had started outward from Dr. Bob and me. Conceivably, it could one day circle the whole world. What a tremendous thing that realization was. At last we were sure. There would be no more flying totally blind. We actually wept for joy, and Bob and Anne and I bowed our heads in silent thanks. Then came a mighty sobering thought. This knowledge, this precious know-how, was still in the hands of too few of us. Must every alcoholic come to New York or Akron in order to get well? No, that would never do. That would be impossible. How then could we spread our message? Ruefully, we remembered that alcoholics, even when sober, are far from being grown up people. All of us could still be terribly erratic characters. Would the forces that everywhere divide society finally invade and smash us up, just as they had invaded and destroyed the promising Washingtonian group movement among alcoholics a century before? How could we possibly hang together and cling to our new lifeline? This line whose strands were woven of medicine and of religion and of our own experience. Could we carry the message to the distant alcoholic? Could we grow rapidly and soundly? We saw that we had a grave responsibility. Fortunately, we found we had great faith too. Faith that we could go farther, perhaps much farther. But I must confess that as we sat there that afternoon in Dr. Bob's living room, We could not see at all how these riddles might actually be answered. Yet tonight, only eighteen years later, thousands of us in this vast auditorium can see and hear and touch one another. Bound in the unbreakable kinship of a common suffering and a common worldwide deliverance, we know at last that Alcoholics Anonymous is safe. Even this great gathering is only a token representation of us all. Of AA's thousands of groups, of our 200,000 members in 70 U.S. possessions and foreign countries, this host, we think, is but the first fraction of multitudes still to come. With that tonight, Dr. Bob could stand here among us to voice all that we now feel so deeply. Indeed, we who know him well can almost see and hear him now. With us, we know that he is exclaiming, What hath God wrought? And that's the end of chapter 2, the end of Bill W's speech. At the end of chapter 2 here, there are the twelve traditions listed, so I'll go through and read those. These are the 12 traditions of AA. 1. Our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. 2. For our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority: a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern. three. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. four. Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. Tradition five. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. six. An A group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. Tradition seven. Every AA group ought to be fully self supporting, declining outside contributions. eight. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. Tradition nine AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. ten. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues. Hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Tradition eleven Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. And finally, tradition twelve. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. And to many of us in AA, those traditions are just as important as the twelve steps in AA. So I hope you enjoyed that final reading from chapter two of Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. I will begin chapter three in the next few days. So that's gonna do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to my website, sobereadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.