PoM Office 13
An old friend of mine, Ellen Bass, was in the national news today.
She wrote “The Courage to Heal” and, for my money, she’s America’s first female saint.
To my profound amazement, after her work was written about on the cover of Time magazine in 1993, she abruptly stopped her work with women survivors of childhood sexual abuse…and devoted herself to poetry.
Honestly, after The Courage to Heal (one of the seven most influential books of my life, along with the Big Book and the Bible) I was hard pressed to see how she could match that contribution to humanity’s evolution…but she persisted, and now, 28 years later, she is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Go Ellen, go…show ‘em what recovered girls can really do.
PoM Office 14
Step 10
“All generous spirits are ambitious”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
I don’t know if I was generous before I got to AA.
Much more likely that I was a “liar, cheat and a thief”, as they say.
But, I did learn to be generous with my time and whatever wisdom I had learned from other people.
And, it is true…I am ambitious.
I have strived to succeed externally…and found that my ambition needed to be redirected inward.
There, ambition was good. It drove me hard to conquer any and all disease in me.
But, when I turn it outward it destroys my peace of mind with narcissistic comparisons with others.
Step 11
HP,
I turn over my desires around success to You. I will be grateful for what You have made me.
Amen
PoM Office 15
A prayer from Steve D. the adult, to Steve the teenager:
Steve,
You don’t have to do anymore. You can rest.
Steve D.
PoM Office 16
“Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than in his body.”
Alcoholics Anonymous p.23
I thought that the main problem I had was drinking when I came into AA 40 years ago… and my life got immeasurably better when I stopped drinking.
But from another line from our primary text it says that, even before I started drinking, that I had “the warped life of a blameless child”.
How is my life warped?
When I didn’t get what I wanted I felt self-pity or depression, which is anger turned inward.
There is no peace of mind where there is self-pity or depression.
Antidotally, I can choose to be grateful instead of self-pitying and I can choose to be honest about my anger instead of shoving it down inside of me and turning it in on myself.
So, surprisingly, honest anger helps me to step up to peace of mind…when the possibility of depression exists.
And I am grateful for that.
PoM Office 17
HP,
Save me from my workaholism.
My wife and I have observed the Sabbath for four years, as the ancient Jews did.
Help us do that again, just for today.
I will as Workaholics Anonymous says: try to have “Unstructured events, without goals”, just for today, three hours at a time.
I feel sure you can run the world today without our help…