AA Thoughts For Today - November

[bluidkiti]

AA Thought for the Day

November 19

Countless Vain Attempts

Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been
characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink
like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control
and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal
drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many
pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, (More About Alcoholism) p. 30

Thought to Ponder . . .
When we try to control our drinking, we have already lost control.

AA-related 'Alconym'
A A = Absolute Abstinence.

~*~A.A. Thoughts For The Day~*~

Commitment
"No matter how much one wishes to try,
how can he turn his own will and his own life
over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is?
A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed.
Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock,
and have the door ever so slightly open,
we find that we can always open it some more."
c. 1967AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 122

Thought to Consider . . .
If you always do what you've always done,
you will always be where you've always been.

*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
H O W = Honest, Open, Willing

*~*~*~*~*^Just For Today!^*~*~*~*~*

Ingredient
From: "Me An Alcoholic?"
Here I found an ingredient that had been lacking in any other effort I had made to save myself. Here was - power! Here was power to live to the end of any given day, power to have the courage to face the next day, power to have friends, power to help people, power to be sane, power to stay sober. That was seven years ago - and many AA meetings ago - and I haven't had a drink during those seven years. Moreover, I am deeply convinced that so long as I continue to strive, in my bumbling way, toward the principles I first encountered in the earlier chapters of this book, this remarkable power will continue to flow through me. What is this power? With my AA friends, all I can say is that it's a Power greater than myself. If pressed, all I can do is follow the psalmist who said it long before me: "Be still, and know that I am God."
2001, AAWS, Inc., Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 386-387

*~*~*~*~*^ Grapevine Quote ^*~*~*~*~*

"The best university for me -- the best school, the best teaching -- was in analyzing mistakes that I'd made and problems I created because of these mistakes. Not my successes."
Warsaw, Poland, October 1996
"A Smiling Man, A Happy Man,"
AA Around the World

~*~*~*~*^ Big Book & Twelve N' Twelve Quotes of the Day ^*~*~*~*~*

"God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your
morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still
sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But
obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it
that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come
to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, A Vision For You, pg. 164~

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.”
~Alcoholics Anonymous page 30

Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
-Alcoholics Anonymous p.58

And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one.
-Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions p.26

Misc. AA Literature - Quote

More than most people, I think, alcoholics want to know who they are, what this life is about,, whether they have a divine origin and an appointed destiny, and whether there is a system of cosmic justice and love.
It is the experience of many of us in the early stages of drinking to feel that we have had glimpses of the Absolute and a heightened feeling of identification with the cosmos. While these glimpses and feelings doubtless have a validity, they are deformed and finally swept away in the chemical, spiritual, and emotional damage wrought by the alcohol itself.
In A.A., and in many religious approaches, alcoholics find a great deal more of what they merely glimpsed and felt while trying to grope their way toward God in alcohol.

Prayer for the Day: Make Me -
God, who touchest earth with beauty,
make my heart anew;
with thy Spirit recreate me,
pure and strong and true.
Like thy springs and running waters,
make me crystal pure;
like thy rocks of towering grandeur,
make me strong and sure.
Like thy dancing waves in sunlight,
make me glad and free;
like the straightness of the pine trees
let me upright be.
Like the arching of the heavens
lift my thoughts above,
turn my dreams to noble action:
ministries of love.
God, who touches earth with beauty,
make my heart anew;
keep me ever by the Spirit,
pure and strong and true.