Latest / Sober Readings / Making Amends - 9/11 Commemoration
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome back to Sober Readings, everyone. My name is Scott. Today is Friday, September 11th. Let's get started today 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 Amends. Above all, We should try to be absolutely sure that we are not delaying because we are afraid. That's on page eighty seven of twelve steps and twelve traditions. To have courage, to be unafraid, are gifts of my recovery. They empower me to ask for help and to go forth in making my amends with a sense of dignity and humility. Making amends may require a certain amount of honesty that I feel I lack, yet with the help of God and the wisdom of others, I can reach within and find the strength to act. My amends may be accepted, or they may not, but after they are completed I can walk with a sense of freedom and And know that for today I am responsible. Today's reading from twenty-four hours a day. September eleventh, AA Thought for the Day. Continuing the answers to the question of how a person can live without liquor and be happy, we say You will be bound to the other AAs with new and wonderful ties, for you and they will escape disaster together, and all will commence shoulder to shoulder the common journey to a better and more satisfactory life. You will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will become happy, respected, and useful once more. Since these things have happened to us, they can happen to you. And the question is, have these things happened to me? The meditation for the day. God manifests Himself in human lives as strength to overcome evil and power to resist temptation. The grace of God is that power which enables a human being to change from a useless, hopeless individual to a useful, normal person. God also manifests himself as love, love for other people, compassion for their problems, and a real willingness to help them. The grace of God also manifests itself as peace of mind and serenity of character. We can have plenty of power, love, and serenity in our lives if we are willing to ask God for these things each day. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may see God's grace in the strength I receive, the love I know, and the peace I have. I pray that I may be grateful for the things I have received through the grace of God. And for today's final reading, I'm gonna read out of the grapevine from January of 2002. Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. And on that day, I was serving on active duty, stationed in Alaska, and that day changed not only my life, but obviously the lives of almost everyone in the world. And so I wanted to commemorate that by reading this story out of the grapevine from January of 2002, and it's titled The Group at Ground Zero and it's written by Richard S. from New York, New York. It's lunchtime on an early October day in New York City, and we're nearing the end of an AA meeting. The room we're in is much like any other AA meeting room, transformed by its everyday use by the twelve steps and traditions, the slogans, a large preamble, a table with a literature rack, and a small library of AA books and grapevines. There's a chalkboard, however, that reveals that not everything here is quite so ordinary. For it's crammed with people's names and home groups written on each day. And most of the AA members in the room are men who've arrived in hard hats and boots, which they had to wash off before entering the building. The weary looks on their faces tells you they they've come right off the job. Just look out the window and you'll see from where. Lines of trucks and construction equipment move slowly past, kicking up a gritty, dull grey dust. Everyone is wearing face masks or gear or protection of some kind. And at the corner, city police and national guard stop passerby and check their IDs. You see, two short blocks south of here lie the ruins of the World Trade Center. And yet today the twelve of us have gathered in this room to have an AA meeting. At what's come to be called the Ground Zero Group. It's not a group in the usual sense. We have no regular meeting schedule. No group officers or meeting chairs, and everyone hails from a home group somewhere else, sometimes far removed from the city. But it is an AA room even so and a very special one at that. Most times the meetings simply materialize when enough AAs have walked in and joined the two volunteers who are always here twenty four hours a day in six hour shifts. Earlier this morning, for instance, Four of us listened to a reading from Daily Reflections and then began a round robin discussion. The meeting grows and shrink as people show up or are called away by their pagers. That's the way it goes here at Ground Zero. The message of recovery sprouting up suddenly for a few precious minutes before it's time to go back to the dreadful toil outside this room. It was two weeks ago when the first three of us volunteers arrived here at Respite Center one, a Red Cross facility that's housed in a classroom building several blocks into the red zone. We posted a few hastily scribbled friends of Bill W signs at the entrance and put a hand drawn circle and triangle on the classroom door. Respite center one is a busy place. There's a cafeteria downstairs, and other services, including sleeping areas, are scattered throughout the building. So even we try our best to keep our presence anonymous and yet accessible. Accessibility, in fact, is precisely why we're here. Exhausted from long shifts and stressed by a search for survivors who are seldom found, the AAs working at Ground Zero desperately need AA meetings they can get to readily. One of the liaisons with the Red Cross got wind of this and passed the request on to her colleagues in mental health division. They in turn contacted AA's General Service Office, who then contacted me because I currently serve as the area chair for a cooperation with the professional community. It's another example of AA's long tradition of working with professionals outside the fellowship to bring the message of recovery to alcoholics wherever it's needed. The request for meetings also was passed on to Dorothy D., who chairs the New York Inner Group Institutions Committee. Which brings AA meetings into various local facilities. In two days, she and I had gathered a group of volunteers together at the Red Cross headquarters for processing so that they could gain access to the red zone. That first day, only three of us managed to get badges, but soon the others were processed as well, plus many more since then, so that now we have a large group of volunteers and a list of many more eager to help. The first man who walked into the room that night looked around at us and blinked, so surprised that he could hardly smile. He told us how glad he was to see us, how he and others knew they needed to get to AA meetings, but were usually so exhausted when their shifts ended that all they could do was make it home. Soon others showed up, and even though at that time the room was rather bare, just the fact that we were here seemed to lift some awful weight off them. That night five men, whose sobriety ranged from many years to seven months to just two days, joined us for a meeting. One of the men qualified, and then he talked about Bill's story in the big book, about Bill's remembrances of what he'd read on a tombstone at Winchester Cathedral while on his way to war. That story, he said, had sustained him throughout the recent tragedy. As I sit here two weeks later, I recall what others have shared. The young man who one day simply Simply said, I found another body part, or the crane operator who can't get out of his mind the memory of the shoes he kept finding, laced up, but with no one in them. As in AA meetings all over the world, these men are sharing their experiences, horrific as they may be, leavened with the strength and hope that only an AA meeting can deliver. When they can't stay long enough for a meeting, we'll simply chat a while until they have to go. Sometimes I've returned to the room to find someone just sitting there quietly, recouping his inner resources. There's even one guy who drops by just to be in a safe place where he can call his sponsor on his cell phone. The lunchtime meeting, which is as close as we've gotten to a regular scheduled one so far, is over now, and from here I'm going downtown to respite center three, on the other side of where the Twin Towers once stood. We began to hold meetings there a few days ago and I'm going to drop off some grapevines and see if anything else is needed. It's in a hotel that is much closer to the worst destruction, and since the building isn't completely open yet, we can use our meeting room for only half the day. But it's more accessible for those who work at the south end of the red zone. We've set that room up with single volunteers and four hour shifts from noon to midnight. I can't walk there directly because I can't go through the area where the towers fell. So instead I walk over to the river behind the World Financial Center. It's a splendid day, unusually warm for the fall, and as I wend my way downtown, I'm suddenly filled with gratitude. Autumn is my favorite time of the year and it's peaceful here, with the sun shining off the Hudson River. I'm grateful for this service too, because a few weeks ago I was sinking into a low. Like many of us in this city, I was probably suffering from some form of stress disorder, though I wasn't anywhere near the disaster when it happened. Shortly after planes were allowed back in the air, however, I was obliged to fly out west for the funeral of a cousin who had died of cancer. Tough stuff to deal with under any circumstances, but I've been sober long enough to pay attention when I found myself slipping into lethargy and a sense of helplessness. That was when the call from GSO came through, and since then I've been swept up by the work and had no time for feeling low. I don't know how long the meetings will be needed as the red zone keeps shrinking and the work shifts are getting shorter. That doesn't matter though because the service is so rewarding. Not just for the meetings, as powerful and moving as they are, but also for the outpouring of support we've received. So many generous, good hearted AA volunteers have helped us out and And now letters, some even with donations, are beginning to arrive at Inner Group in support of the Ground Zero Group. And when the word got out on the internet as to what we were doing, messages of encouragement poured in from all over the world. I've rounded a corner and right in front of me is one of those impromptu shrines that have popped up all over the city. Posters with photographs of the missing are attached to wrought iron fence with flowers, most of them wilted now. Scattered everywhere. Mixed among it all are hundreds of little stuffed bears, wedged between the iron bars or tucked beneath the foot of the fence. The police who are standing at the corner are watching me, but as the tears well into my eyes, it occurs to me that they must have cried here too, or somewhere else, perhaps in one of our meeting rooms. So as I read the names and messages, I go ahead and let myself cry until I'm through. Back out on West Street at last, I pause before going into respite center three. From here I can see the site on which the Twin Towers once stood. It's a vast square of unrelieved destruction, with men and equipment scattered over the heaps and hollows of the wreckage. Far off I can make out the still recognizable fragments of the tower walls, lying like enormous broken eggshells on the ground. Even in the golden October sunshine, everything here is grey. Steam and smoke still seep from the debris, and the air is thick with sickly, sweet smell of chemicals and hot metal. And then in my mind I see the AA rooms that have taken root here, one on each side of this grisly scene. I think of the goodwill our traditions have earned us, how we drunks who had once sunk so low, have recovered and learned to work not only with one another, but with those outside our fellowship. I think of how we've spread our message throughout the world and how the results can be seen right here in these AA rooms, seeds of life amid all this desolation. And despite the horror of what lies in front of me, I know that no matter what takes place on this earth, as long as the hand of AA is there, together we can get through it, one day at a time. And that was called The Group at Ground Zero, so beautifully written by Richard S. In January of two thousand and two. I hope today you'll reflect on the events of nine eleven and say a prayer for the victims, the survivors, their families, the first responders, and everyone else whose lives were forever changed by those terrible attacks. May we honor their memory by being grateful for the day we have been given, by showing a little more kindness and compassion to the people around us, and by never taking the people we love for granted. And for those of us in recovery, may we remember that staying sober today gives us the opportunity to be present for our lives and for the people who need us. Whatever today brings, we don't have to drink over it. We can stay close to our program, close to one another, and simply do the next right thing. One day at a time. And that's all for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope something you heard today stays with you and helps you along your journey. If you enjoyed sober readings and would like to help support the podcast, you can drop a dollar in the donation basket using the link in the show notes. And always, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Be good to yourself and others, and have a great day today. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.