Recovery Thoughts and Quotes 5/1

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AA Just For Today

Conference

From "The Three Legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous":

In the late 1940s "[m]ost of the nonalcoholics on the Board at the time had been institutional [non-profit organization] men. Bernard Smith on the other hand was a businessman and lawyer. From the time he had joined the Board, three years earlier, he had always favored corporate management for the A.A. office and an elected conference to sit with the Trustees as the final plan of service structure for Alcoholics Anonymous. …"

Chairman Leonard Harrison appointed "Bernard Smith Chairman of the Trustees' Committee on the proposed Conference … [despite] their differences of opinion. …

"Bernard Smith has a remarkable faculty for persuasion and negotiation. Moreover, his ideas about a conference had already taken a deeper hold than any of us realized. … [H]e took up the task of convincing the Trustees’ committee on the Conference. … [H]e put this question to the committee: Shall we set up this Conference of delegates, or shall we forget about it? To my astonishment the committee unanimously said, 'Let’s give the Conference a try.' It seemed like a miracle."

© 2001 AAWS, Inc.; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, pg. 212

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AA Thought for the Day
(courtesy AAOnline.net)

~ Correction: Yesterday's quote was from p. 206 in the Big Book. ~

May 1, 2008

Wise Investment

The wisest investment I can make is to continue to give myself entirely to AA
and place my life on a service basis.
It is, in my experience especially important to devote time on a daily basis
to the practice of our Eleventh Step,
maintaining that daily connection with the source of all life
through prayer and meditation.
This, it is guaranteed, will transform loneliness into aloneness, or all-oneness
in the best sense of the word.
The AA Grapevine, May 2008, p. 27


Thought to Ponder . . .

Service is spirituality in action.


AA-related 'Alconym' . . .

A B C = Ashtrays, Brooms, Coffee.

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AA 'Big Book' - Quote

We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of moral psychology was of urgent importance to alcoholics, but it's application presented difficulties beyond our conception. What with our ultra-modern standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge. - Pg. xxvii - 4th. Edition - The Doctor's Opinion



"'There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which
is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in
everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to
investigation.'"

~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Appendice II, Spiritual
Experience, pg. 568~


"If there be divorce or separation, there should be no undue haste
for the couple to get together. The man should be sure of his
recovery. The wife should fully understand his new way of life. If
their old relationship is to be resumed it must be on a better basis,
since the former did not work. This means a new attitude and spirit
all around. Sometimes it is to the best interests of all concerned
that a couple remain apart. Obviously, no rule can be laid down.
Let the alcoholic continue his program day by day. When the time for
living together has come, it will be apparent to both parties."

Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others, Page 99

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Misc. AA Literature - Quote

Willingness Is the Key

No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly 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.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.

TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 35

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Member Submitted Quote

If you try to do too much, you will do nothing. - ( P.D. Ouspensky & G.I. Gurdjieff )

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Choices

"During the day, we can pause
where situations must be met and decisions made,
and renew the simple request:
'Thy will, not mine, be done.'
If at these points our emotional disturbance
happens to be great,
we will more surely keep our balance,
provided we remember,
and repeat to ourselves,
a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed to us
in our reading or meditation.
Just saying it over and over will often enable us
to return to the surest help of all--
our search for God's will, not our own,
in the moment of stress."

Bill W., Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 102-3
As Bill Sees It, p. 78

Thought to Consider . . .

"As we go through the day we pause,
when agitated or doubtful,
and ask for the right thought or action."
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 87

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12 x 12 Quote

"These little studies of AA's Twelve Steps now come to a close. We
have been considering so many problems that it may appear that AA
consists mainly of racking dilemmas and troubleshooting. To a certain
extent, that is true. We have been talking about problems because we
are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to
share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it. For it is
only by accepting and solving our problems that we can begin to get
right with ourselves and with the world about us, and with Him who
presides over us all. Understanding is the key to right principles
and attitudes, and right action is the key to good living; therefore
the joy of good living is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step." (Twelve
and Twelve, Step Twelve, pg. 125)