Latest / Sober Readings / Making AA Your Higher Power
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Happy Monday morning, everyone. Welcome to Sober Readings. Today's Monday, the 15th of June. Let's get started 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. Today's reading from Daily Reflections Making AA your higher power. You can make AA itself your higher power. Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. Many members have crossed the threshold just this way. Their faith broadened and deepened, transformed. They came to believe in a higher power. And that's from the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages twenty seven and twenty eight. No one was greater than I, at least in my eyes, when I was drinking. Nevertheless, I couldn't smile at myself in the mirror, so I came to AA, where with others I heard talk of a higher power. I couldn't accept the concept of a higher power because I believed God was cruel and unloving. In desperation, I chose a table, a tree, then my AA group as my higher power. Time passed, my life improved, and I began to wonder about this higher power. Gradually, with patience, humility, and a lot of questions, I came to believe in God. Now my relationship with my higher power gives me the strength to live a happy, sober life. Today's reading from twenty four hours, June fifteenth, AA Thought for the Day. In AA, we have three things Fellowship, Faith, and Service. Fellowship is wonderful, but its wonder lasts just so long. Then some gossip, disillusionment, and boredom may come in. Worry and fear come back at times and we find that fellowship is not the whole story. Then we need faith. When we're alone, with nobody to pat us on the back, we must turn to God for help. Can I say thy will be done and mean it? The Meditation for the Day There is beauty in a God guided life. There is wonder in the feeling of being led by God. Try to realize God's bounty and goodness more and more. God is planning for you. Wonderful are his ways. They are beyond your knowledge. But God's leading will enter your consciousness more and more and bring you ever more peace and joy. Your life is being planned and blessed by God. You may count all material things as loss if they prevent your winning your way to consciousness of God's guidance. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may earn the rewards of God's power and peace. I pray that I may develop the feeling of being led by God. The daily meditation from touchstones. A father is a thousand schoolmasters. Louis Niser. We carry our fathers within us in ways we may not notice. When we do notice this in our thoughts and actions, We can use this relationship as a source of strength. When we hear a critical mental message saying we didn't perform well enough, is it a father's voice? When we feel a sense of strength and peace, are we in touch with our childhood knowledge of fatherly love? When we doubt our ability to get along with a partner, are we relying on what we learned in our childhood homes? Perhaps we can recast our father son relationship in adult terms. Were our fathers too removed from our lives for us to know them? Maybe we can see now that a father's love was there, but was overshadowed by the demands of survival or by a misguided life. If we are forever seeking our father's approval, we may need to find the ways in which they are truly human and imperfect like us. Making peace with them, whether face to face or in the memory of a relationship, empowers us with their strengths and And grants us the adulthood we deserve. I will make peace with my father in my mind, and his strength and that of his father will be a wellspring in my life. And finally today, a reading from the Grapevine dated February of 2021. And this little writing is called Crackpot's Welcome. At our recent Sunday Traditions meeting, we read the twelve and twelve and discussed our third tradition. In that chapter, there's a list of protective regulations for acceptance into Hel Alcoholics Anonymous, which in the beginning came out of worry that the AA groups were fragile. We were resolved to admit nobody to AA but that hypothetical class of people we termed pure alcoholics. The paragraph lists all the people they would exclude and again says, Yes, sir, we'd cater only to pure and respectable alcoholics. We got to laughing in our meeting, thinking about comparing Bill W. and Dr. Bob to the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who with his lamp went looking for an honest man. We pictured Bill and Bob going along the streets of Akron in New York City, swinging their lanterns, looking for the pure and respectable alcoholics. Our fledgling society had been anxious and fearful, thinking that crackpots would destroy the fellowship. They also wondered what other people would say about us if we did let in odd people. Apparently, it had not yet come to be common thought that what other people think of us is none of our business. Where would we all be if Bill and Bob hadn't come to the conclusion with the third tradition that The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. And there is a period at the end of that sentence. God inspired genius. Carol K, Sarasota, Florida. And I love that they mention in here one of my favorite lines in the whole program, which is what other people think of me is none of my business. And with that, I'll end today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please hit the like button. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, just send me an email at soberreadingswithscot at gmail.com and we can make that happen. ⁓ if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, and click the donate button. So again, thank you all for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch 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.