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Growing in God and Sobriety!

Psalm 56:3-4
What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

Matthew 6:20-21
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Personal reflection on this scripture-I use to obsess about wanting more! More this, more that, more earthly possessions...Of course I always heard the saying "you can't take that with you when you die" But like most every good message, I couldn't hear it until I could hear it. Hoarding material things as a way to fill the emptiness won't ever sustain me..."stuff" made from China, shipped by amazon at a click of a button...is a temporary fix. Attachment to these items, working long hours to obtain more crap, taking time away from loved ones or investing in others, investing that time toward God that I would have been investing on a car payment. The things of this world doesn't fill and empty soul. What's more important...my soul or buying more crap? It's a decision.


My Prayer for the Day
"Heavenly Father, I thank You for teaching through AA and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, how to Trust You. I didn't even know You Father! How could I trust somebody I didn't know? Thank You for blessing me with AA-that all I had to be was willing to believe in something beyond my own thinking mind. Thank You Father for showing me that it was MY thinking mind that got me drunk for all the years. It made all those bad decisions sober. It kept me in bondage to self....Thank You Father for freeing and for saving my soul! In Jesus name-Amen"

Today’s action
  • Today I will set a day of the week (I do it on Sunday) where I commit myself to not spending any money that entire day
  • Today I will go through my crap and see what I can donate or sell. If I sell it, I will give that money to a organization that helps people
  • Today I will ask others how they are, and mean it...THEN, watch this....I will actually l-i-s-t-e-n to what they say and not wait for them to finish so that I can start talking!!! In fact, I won't even say one thing about myself....I will honor God today and not draining others with my complaining or expectations.
  • Today I will keep track of how many times I say "I" or "I want". Then I will ask God to remove my selfishness

10th Step
"God remove the Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear that has cropped up in my life right now. Help me to discuss this with someone immediately and make amends quickly if I have harmed anyone. Help me to cease fighting anything and anyone. Show me where I may be helpful to someone else. Help me react sanely; not cocky or afraid. How can I best serve You - Your will, not mine be done. AMEN" (p. 84-5 BB) "How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done." (p. 85 BB)`



Podcast of he Day
Mike Chase/Steps 1,2&3 Gulf Stream Group's 3rd Gratitude Day 2016
6 Speaker’s Journey Through The 12 Steps
Listen to more AA Podcast http://podbay.fm/show/438992195


12 x 12 onTradition 11
“Our public relations policy is based on attraction
rather than promotion; we need always
maintain personal anonymity at the
level of press, radio and films.”

"In the beginning, the press could not understand our refusal of all personal publicity. They were genuinely baffled by our insistence upon anonymity. Then they got the point. Here was something rare in the world—a society which said it wished to publicize its principles and its work, but not its individual members. The press was delighted with this attitude. Ever since, these friends have reported A.A. with an enthusiasm which the most ardent members wouldfind hard to match."
"There was actually a time when the press of America thought the anonymity of A.A. was better for us than some of our own members did. At one point, about a hundred of our Society were breaking anonymity at the public level. With perfectly good intent, these folks declared that the principle of anonymity was horse-and-buggy stuff, something appropriate to A.A.'s pioneering days. They were sure that A.A. could go faster and farther if it availed itself of modern publicity methods. A.A., they pointed out, included many persons of local, national, or international fame. Provided they were willing—and many were—why shouldn't their membership be publicized, thereby encouraging others to join us? These were plausible arguments, but happily our friends of the writing profession disagreed with them."
Hil's blah-
We live in a world with no anonymity- period! People voluntarily tell the everyone where there are, who they are with and what they are having for dinner. Although I have no problem with civilians knowing that I am a recovered alcoholic...it's nice to know that my anonymity is respected in AA.


Big Book There is a Solution....Continued
"Why does he behave like this? If hundreds of experiences have shown him that one drink means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it he takes that one drink? Why can’t he stay on the water wagon? What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?"

"Perhaps there never will be a full answer to these questions. Opinions vary considerably as to why the alcoholic reacts differently from normal people. We are not sure why, once a certain point is reached, little can be done for him. We cannot answer the riddle.
We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this."

"These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk."

"Once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they often suspect they are down for the count."

Hil's blah-
Yeah...once in a great while we will actually tell the truth!! Lying is probably the worst defect there is. My mom would look at me with such disgust knowing damn well I was lying. I went to such great lengths to defend the lie. To cover up the lie. Jumping through all kinds of hoops to justify and to rationalize the lie. I would lie about stuff I didn't have to lie about!!! Once it's removed the freedom you get takes on a entirely different meaning. When yes is yes , and no its no, there is zero reason to lie. We get free from people pleasing which pleasing no body but out ego


AA History and Notable Pioneers
IN REMEMBRANCE OF "EBBY"
by Bill W.
  In his seventieth year, and on the twenty-first of March, my friend and sponsor "Ebby" passed beyond our sight and hearing.

On a chill November afternoon in 1934 it was Ebby who had brought me the message that saved my life. Still more importantly, he was the bearer of the Grace and of the principles that shortly afterward led to my spiritual awakening. This was truly a call to new life in the Spirit. It was the kid of rebirth that has since become the most precious possession of each and all of us. As I looked upon him where he lay in perfect repose, I was stirred by poignant memories of all the years I had known and loved him.

There were recollections of those joyous days in a Vermont boarding school. After the war years we were sometimes together, then drinking of course. Alcohol, we thought, was the solvent for all difficulties, a veritable elixir for good living.

Then there was that absurd episode of 1929. Ebby and I were on an all-night spree in Albany. Suddenly we remembered that a new airfield had been constructed in Vermont, on a pasture near my own home town. The opening day was close at hand. Then came the intoxicating thought: If only we could hire a plane we'd beat the opening by several days, thus making aviation history ourselves! Forthwith, Ebby routed a pilot friend out of bed, and for a stiff price we engaged him and his small craft. We sent the town fathers a wire announcing the time of our arrival. In mid morning, we took to the air, greatly elated -- and very tight.

Somehow our rather tipsy pilot set us down on the field. A large crowd, including the village band and a welcoming committee, lustily cheered his feat. The pilot then deplaned. But nothing else happened, nothing at all. The onlookers stood in puzzled silence. Where were Ebby and Bill? Then the horrible discovery was made -- we were both slumped in the rear cockpit of the plane, completely passed out! Kind friends lifted us down and stood us upon the ground. Whereupon we history-makers fell flat on our faces. Ignominiously, we had to be carted away. The fiasco could not have been more appalling. We spent the next day shakily writing apologies.

      Over the following five years, I seldom saw Ebby. But of course our drinking went on and on. In late 1934 I got a terrific jolt when I learned that Ebby was about to be locked up, this time in a state mental hospital.

      Following a series of mad sprees, he had run his father's new Packard off the road and into the side of a dwelling, smashing right into its kitchen, and just missing a terrified housewife. Thinking to ease this rather awkward situation, Ebby summoned his brightest smile and said, "Well, my dear, how about a cup of coffee?"

      Of course Ebby's lighthearted humor was quite lost on everyone concerned. Their patience worn thin, the town fathers yanked him into court. To all appearances, Ebby's final destination was the insane asylum. To me, this marked the end of the line for us both. Only a short time before, my physician, Dr. Silkworth, had felt obliged to tell Lois there was no hope of my recovery; that I, too would have to be confined, else risk insanity or death.

      But providence would have it otherwise. It was presently learned that Ebby had been paroled into the custody of friends who (for the time being) had achieved their sobriety in the Oxford Groups. They brought Ebby to New York where he fell under the benign influence of AA's great friend-to-be, Dr. Sam Shoemaker, the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church. Much affected by Sam and the "Oxford Group" Ebby promptly sobered up. Hearing of my serious condition, he had straight-way come to our house in Brooklyn.

      As I continued to recollect, the vision of Ebby looking at me across our kitchen table became wonderfully vivid. As most AAs know, he spoke to me of the release from hopelessness that had come to him (through the Oxford Groups) as the result of self-survey, restitution, outgoing helpfulness to others, and prayer. In short, he was proposing the attitudes and principles that I used later in developing AA's Twelve Steps to recovery.

      It had happened. One alcoholic had effectively carried the message to another. Ebby had been enabled to bring me the gift of Grace because he could reach me at depth through the language of the heart. He had pushed ajar that great gate through which all in AA have since passed to find their freedom under God."
Acts 26:25
"But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."