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Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Hello everyone and welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Thursday, the 10th of September. My name is Scott. I am glad you're here with me for today's readings. 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 wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections, Recovery by Proxy. They will always materialize if we work for them and it has the promises in quotes. And that's a line from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous page eighty four. Sometimes I think making these amends is going too far. No one should have to humble himself like that. However, it is this very humbling of myself that brings me that much closer to the sunlight of the Spirit. AA is the only hope I have if I am to continue healing and gain a life of happiness, friendship, and harmony. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day, September ten, AA Thought for the Day. Here are answers to the question of how a person can live without liquor and be happy. The things we put in place of drinking are more than substitutes for it. One is the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. In this company, we find release from care, boredom, and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. Among other AAs, you will make lifelong friends. You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties. And today's question: Does life mean something to me now? The meditation for the day. Do you want the full and complete satisfaction that you find in serving God and all the satisfactions of the world also? It is not easy to serve both God and the world. It is difficult to claim the rewards of both. If you work for God, you will still have great rewards in the world. But you must be prepared to sometimes stand apart from the world. You cannot always turn to the world and expect all the rewards. That life has to offer. If you are trying sincerely to serve God, you will have other and greater rewards than the world has to offer. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may not expect too much from the world. I pray that I may also be content with the rewards that come from serving God. Today's reading from Day by Day, Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts. September ten comparing We are proud of the fact that if someone wants to join the program, personal details don't matter age, occupation, gender, and sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, race, religious preference, and so on. Yet we may still find ourselves judging the kind or severity of another's addiction. How can we possibly judge another's pain or problems or recovery needs? And why bother? Don't we have enough pain and problems of our own? Have I stopped judging others? Higher power, help me to see that comparing separates me from myself and others. I will practice accepting all my fellow travelers in recovery today by and you fill in the blank. And for today's final reading, let's go to As Bill Sees It. Today we're reading from page twelve: Seeking Fool's Gold. Pride is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves and upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and a place in society becomes the primary object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses. That's on pages forty eight and forty nine of the twelve and twenty. I may attain humility for today, only to the extent that I am able to avoid the bog of guilt and rebellion on one hand, and on the other hand, that fair but deceiving land which is strewn with the fool's gold coins of pride. This is how I can find and stay on the high road to humility, which lies between these extremes. Therefore, a constant inventory which can reveal when I am off the road is always in the world. And that's from an article in the grapevine dated June of nineteen sixty one. And so that's it for today's readings. Let's go back to the reading from Day by Day, and let's finish this line together. It says, I will practice accepting all my fellow travelers in recovery today. By and for me, I would finish that by saying, by meeting them where they are rather than where I think they should be. Meeting people where they are rather than where I think they should be reminds me that everyone's recovery belongs to them. It can be easy for me, especially after spending years around recovery, to develop opinions about what someone else should be doing, how many meetings they should attend, whether they should have a sponsor, how they should work the steps, or how seriously they should be taking their sobriety. But the moment I start measuring someone else's recovery against my own expectations. I'm moving away from acceptance and toward judgment. So meeting someone where they are means allowing them to have their own journey. Maybe they're struggling with something I worked through years ago. Maybe they believe something different than I do, or their recovery doesn't look anything like mine. I can still listen. I can still encourage them. I can share my experience without insisting that they follow it. Sometimes the most helpful thing I can offer another person isn't advice at all. It's simply the feeling that they are heard, respected, and welcome. It also reminds me of something important about my own recovery. I didn't arrive where I am today all at once. There were people who were patient with me when I was stubborn, confused, afraid, or unwilling. They didn't demand that I become the person they thought I should be before they accepted me. They met me where I was and walked beside me for a while. Today I can try to offer that same grace to the next person. I will practice accepting all my fellow travelers in recovery today by meeting them where they are rather than where I think they should be. And so that's all for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you heard something today that stays with you and helps you today or along your journey. If you'd like to be a guest on the show and share your experience, strength, and hope, or even join me for a reading, there's a link in the show notes to send me an email. I would love to hear from you. If you enjoy 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. Every little bit helps and keeps the show going and allows me to continue sharing these readings. You'll also find a link to the Sober Readings website in the show notes where you can learn more about the podcast and stay connected. And as always, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Be good to yourself and others today. Have a great day, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.