Latest / Sober Readings / Giving Up Insanity
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Hey everyone, welcome back to Sober Readings. Today is Sunday, the 12th of April. Let's begin 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. And before I get started on the readings today, I'd like to say hello to all our listeners in Vietnam. That country had the highest number of listeners for the last seven days. So welcome, and thank you for listening. So let's get to the readings. Today's reading from Daily Reflections. Giving up insanity. Where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane. That's a line from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 38. Alcoholism required me to drink, whether I wanted to or not. Insanity dominated my life and was the essence of my disease. It robbed me of the freedom of choice over drinking and therefore robbed me of all other choices. When I drank, I was unable to make effective choices in any part of my life and life became unmanageable. I asked God to help me understand and accept the full meaning of the disease of alcoholism. Today's reading from 24 Hours, April 12, AA Thought for the Day. This sober world is a pleasant place for an alcoholic to live in. Once you've got out of your alcoholic fog, you find that the world looks good. You find real friends in AA. You get a job. You feel good in the morning. You eat a good breakfast and you do a good day's work. And at night, you come home to a family that welcomes you because you're sober. So ask yourself, Am I convinced that this sober world is a pleasant place for an alcoholic to live in? The Meditation for the Day. Man's need is God's opportunity. First, I must recognize my need. Often this means helplessness before some weakness or sickness and an admission of my need for help. Next comes faith in the power of God's Spirit, available to me to meet that need. Before any need can be met, man's faith must find expression. That expression of faith is all God needs to manifest His power in my life. Faith is the key that unlocks the storehouse of God's resources. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may first admit my needs. I pray that then I may have faith that God will meet those needs in the way which is best for me. And for today's final reading, we're going to the grapevine from December of 2020. Who remembers the year 2020? So on the front of this magazine, it says, what a year. In an unprecedented year, members reinvented the way we meet and are connecting with AAs around the world like never before. And wasn't that the truth for 2020? All right, so this article was written by someone bringing a meeting into a prison and it's titled Inside Raymond. Recently, at an AA meeting in my area, I happened to see the grapevine annual prison issue, July of 2018, with the headline, Free on the Inside. Wow, those words brought forth a lot of old memories and increased my gratitude once again. My husband and I used to travel from Canada to southern Texas for the winter months, from 2003 until his death in 2016. I've gone there myself a couple of times since he passed. I found that there is an amazing AA community in that part of Texas. In December 2010, I was sitting at a district meeting in the South Padre Island, Port Isabel area, where I heard a speaker named David say that members were needed to help bring AA meetings into Willisie Prison in Raymondville. I felt that God was touching my heart and saying in no uncertain terms that I needed to help out. I went up and asked the speaker if he thought a woman from Canada would be able to help. Let's find out. It turned out, yes, indeed, I'd be able to participate. Before long, a few of us drove off together for Gatesville, Texas, to do our official prison training. A short time later, I started helping out with that prison meeting, which was called Free on the Inside. The drive from South Padre Island to Raymondville is an hour and a half long. We had some great meetings before and after the AA meeting. and on the road to and from the prison. Each week about 50 prisoners attended the meeting. During the week of Christmas we got permission to bring food into the prison for a special celebration. We stopped on our way and got milk and various sodas as well as all kinds of delicious Mexican pastries. The milk seemed to be their favorite of the treats. Without exception, each week the men thanked us a lot. Some even said, God bless you, when we were leaving. The prison chaplain told us that he saw a big difference in the men's attitudes and participation at the other regular prison activities after they attended their AA meetings. One of the biggest impacts of doing this kind of service for me was an increase in my own gratitude. That gratitude began with the sound of the gates clanging shut behind us as we went inside and again after we left. That clanging when we were outside again was my own special free on the outside feeling. I will always be grateful for those years in Raymondville." That was written by Helane D. in Sudbury, Ontario. And I know some of you have your own really good stories about the COVID year and what happened with your meetings. So mine, real quick, I'll tell you that we had this meeting that I went to every morning at 6 45 a.m. and when they shut the church down, ⁓ the meeting went to Zoom. We went online. And, you know, we all had to figure that out. No one knew anything about Zoom or how to work it. But we finally did. We got to it and the Zoom meeting started up. But a friend of mine and I wanted to meet in person to do this meeting. It's just different on Zoom and I think everybody knows that. So anyway, there was this big garden outside of our church. And so this friend of mine, and it turned out to be like three or four of us toward the end. But for a while, it was just two of us. would connect to the meeting from our phones ⁓ over Zoom, but we were sitting out in this garden and it was, you know, over the winter time for a lot of the months. So it's freezing. So we ended up bringing tarps and enclosing this place that we were sitting and brought a heater. And that was quite the experience, but it was ⁓ definitely better than not having any interaction with people other than on the computer screen. So I'd love to hear your stories about ⁓ Zoom meetings or about what happened. over COVID. Send me an email at soberreadingswithscott at gmail.com. So that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed the show and if you did, please do me a huge favor and hit that like button and hit that share button and comment also. And ⁓ if you're someone who loves reading sober literature, I'd love to have you as a guest on the show. ⁓ You can even pick out whatever reading you'd like and we'll read through it and then talk through it. Just shoot me an email at sober readings with Scott at gmail.com and we can certainly make that happen So if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings Just go to sober readings comm and click the donate button So again everyone, 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.