Topics – August 21
1. Daily Reflections
WE JUST TRY, p.242
My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive.
The Best Of Bill, pp. 46-47
2. In recovery, we can more easily forgive ourselves for past actions when we realize they came out of a misguided attempt to meet basic needs. A starving person will seek out garbage. Starved as we were for necessities of life, we sought a form of garbage. The good news in AA recovery is that sobriety will help us meet basic needs in the right way.
3. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Tradition Four – “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.”
When A.A.’s Traditions were first published, in 1946, we had become sure that an A.A. group could stand almost any amount of battering. We saw that the group, exactly like the individual, must eventually conform to whatever tested principles would guarantee survival. We had discovered that there was perfect safety in the process of trial and error. So confident of this had we become that the original statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence: “Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.”
pp. 146-147
4. Reflection for the Day
After we take an inventory, determining and admitting the exact nature of our wrongs, we become “entirely ready,” as the Sixth Step suggests, “to have God remove all these defects of character.” Sure, it’s easy to feel like that and be “entirely ready” on a morning-after, but we know in such desperate moments that our motive may be remorse rather than repentance, induced more by a throbbing head than a contrite heart. The further we get away from the last addictive binge, the better the wrong-doing looks – more innocent, possibly even more attractive.