Sunday, December 26, 2021

 


Made a Decision 


   (44)   


Parts of the following blog were printed in a blog last April, but a lot of you hadn't started reading these blogs then, so I thought it might be time to recycle it. 


It might help you men understand your sisters in sobriety a bit more, too. That can only be good. 

             



                 Women in the “Fellowship.”


(Dictionary: "Fellow - noun - informal meaning - a man or boy.")


Women in AA should always remember “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous was written in an earlier time, penned by white men for white men. 


A lot of my friends in recovery are neither white nor men and I've witnessed first hand some of their problems with our AA literature.


AA's Founding Fathers initially weren’t even sure women could get and stay sober in the AA program, as evidenced in the following written in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:"

"... In the beginning we could not sober up women. They were different, they said ..."


And we are different, in ways I'll get to a little further on.


But first:


I was a working journalist when I got sober. During my first year or two in recovery I absolutely wanted to rewrite the Big Book. I thought the language in there was dated at best and sexist at worst.


But I was still living a life on fast forward for much of my early recovery, so I never found the free time to tackle a project that size.


I appreciate HP's hand here in keeping me so busy, because over time I have learned everything a woman needs to stay sober is already right there in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous,” just as it was written.

We just have to become open enough to receive it.


Even so, being female, I’m pleased that in recent decades other recovering women have written books geared more toward helping women in recovery.

Among them, the book A Woman’ Way Through the 12 Steps, by Stephanie S. Covington, has become a recovery classic that has helped scores of women. Its chapters on Relationship and Sexuality are worth the price of the book alone.

I also believe the most important thing a woman in recovery can do for herself is to join an all woman AA group - or to start one if necessary.

 I’ve helped start three of them, two in the USA and one in the UK. The UK group faded away, as did one in the states, but the one in Savannah, Georgia - now more than 35 years around - remains a big healthy group.

(When I arrived in AA I was told all you needed to start a new group was "a resentment and a coffee pot." Clearly I knew a lot about resentment as I've started, or helped start, ten AA groups, most of which are still thriving.)

 Women’s groups themselves have been around since the 1950s, by the way, so if you are trying to get one started in your own area don’t let anyone bully you into thinking they’re something “new.”

 My sisters-in-sobriety are vitally important to me and my own recovery, but I adore the men in AA, too. Nearly all of the people around me in my early recovery were men. Without them I would never have stayed sober.

The courage, direction, compassion and humour of those men in my first AA group propped me up and got me safely through my weakest moments. I will always remain in their debt.

And there are many lovely men in my life in AA today, including my Sunday Guys, three men I absolutely count on to guide me further along in my sober journey.

But many men in AA still sometimes get all huffy when local women decide to form a group just for them.

They'll give all kinds of reasons why a women's group isn't necessary, too. I've heard them all:

They'll say a woman alcoholic is no different from a man alcoholic, or ...

that women think they're special (dangerously "unique") in thinking they might need their own group ...

and some men will even more bluntly ask, "What's so damned secret you women can't talk about it in a regular meeting?"

(I suspect those same men fear we want our own meeting just so we can talk about them! Relax fellows, we don't.)

The fact is we still live in a male-dominated society where something as basic as equal pay for equal work continues to remain controversial.

That condescending kind of stuff rankles at a very deep level. Men seldom give much thought to this, but trust me, women do.

I'm going to digress here (as I often do) and leave AA for a moment to tell you about a social study of men and women that may help shed a little light on this subject of male/female differences and needs:

Each person in that study was asked what they most feared regarding the other sex when they were involved in an intimate relationship.

Most of the men questioned said they feared if they let themselves be vulnerable their woman partner might ridicule or laugh at them.

Contrast that with the majority of the women who confessed their biggest fear was their partner might at some point become angry enough to kill them.

With that information in mind we will return now to the subject of recovery.

While it is obviously true that both men and women can become alcoholics, the results of "our" disease - and our fears - can impact our lives in very different ways.

All drunks are shamed by the society they live in, but until they’ve reached the lowest point in their drinking men are perceived as “someone who just doesn’t know when to quit.” 

Women at that late stage (or often long before) are perceived as bad women. Period.

A drunk man staggering along the street is even today often seen as a figure of fun, someone to be laughed at. (That "funny drunk" in the movie or TV sitcom is always a man.)

A woman staggering from drink along a street is seen as disgusting, even as a viable target for sexual assault. 

Once while drunk I managed to hide from a group of men with that intent who were themselves too drunk to find me. I learned there's some truth to that phrase "scared sober." I wasn't suddenly sober, but I managed to become very alert - and stay hidden.

Women alcoholics who live with physical abuse in their homes often turn to the bottle for comfort, thereby inviting a whole new level of verbal abuse, too.

When told regularly we are "terrible mothers, rotten housekeepers, lousy cooks, disgusting, fat, lazy bitches, whores, scum ..." - or worse - we don't walk away from that unscathed. A woman who finds she can not stop drinking feels like a shameful failure already, so verbal abuse of that kind just adds to her existing mountain of self-loathing.

I have been a member of regular AA groups in several countries and in every one of them there have been women who never spoke. They were always there, they listened, they continued to stay sober, but they never spoke aloud in a meeting.

They couldn't.

These were women who had been abused as children by male family members and later (often when quite young) went on to marry abusive men. Their voices had been silenced by men all their lives.

It was only when those women became members in women's groups, and came to believe their thoughts and feelings had some value worth sharing, that they began to speak.

I have known such women. I have sponsored such women. So I am now, and always will be, a champion of women's AA groups.

Because here's the best news.

Once the silent women discover their self-worth inside their women's meetings, they then venture out into regular AA meetings.

They bring with them a powerful wisdom and level of compassion that benefits everyone in our program of recovery.




Sunday, December 19, 2021

 

For the record, I was working on another blog topic entirely today - one you'll see next week - but I've just decided to repost the blog that ran right before Thanksgiving in the states. It's all about staying sober through the holidays and since we're now right smack in the middle of them, it can't hurt to read it again.


Made a Decision
 
(40)

                                  Tiz the Season

πŸŽ„πŸ•›πŸ•πŸΎπŸ•ŒπŸŽ‡⛪🎁🍷


    Happy Upcoming Navihanukwanzasolstikkah ... also known as the start of the season for meetings-about-staying-sober-while-surviving-the-holiday(s). 

In the run up to the holidays these meetings are held because ghostly and ghastly memories of holidays past start to dance through our heads along with fears about the holidays just ahead. 

These fears are especially strong in those who haven't yet faced a sober holiday season. But, as in most things, the holidays are just another paper tiger once we face up to them by having a plan in place to get through them. 

Making our sober plan is more important than getting cards in the mail, buying candles, or wrapping presents.

 The first part of that plan is to step up our attendance at meetings throughout the holidays. We're fortunate this year in having 24/7 meetings available to us on Zoom around the world. 

I should note there are also a small number of A.A. members who will go into the holiday season with perhaps a bit more confidence than is warranted. Confidence is a good thing, but it's always a good idea to be on guard against the cunning, baffling and powerful nature of our disease.

As it points out in the book, "Living Sober, regarding the "biochemical, unchangeable nature of our ailment:"

"Alcoholism respects no ifs. It does not go away, not for a week, for a day, or even for an hour, leaving us nonalcoholic and able to drink again on some special occasion or for some extraordinary reason - not even if it is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, or if a big sorrow hits us, or if it rains in Spain or the stars fall on Alabama. Alcoholism is for us unconditional, with no dispensations available at any price."


Over the holidays we'll probably be invited to parties where people will be drinking; or we'll have to get through another session with family members who drink (often the way we did); or we'll be tempted seemingly beyond hope by all the Christmas "cheer" ads on television that can spiral us downward into depression. 

(More on this fake cheer stuff further along in the blog.)

Even holiday chocolates filled with genuine booze can be a booby trap when we don't pay attention! When in doubt about the candy - or the big bowl of holiday punch - ask!!!

First and foremost, get in touch with your own personal brand of Higher Power before you head out to a holiday event. It's the way to renew your courage and to know with that kind of backing you will be victorious over any situation you may encounter.

If we're single and invited to a plus-one party, we can take along a friend in recovery. Decide with them on a signal and excuse for leaving beforehand should one of you start to get uncomfortable. Long time couples can use this same plan.

Family gatherings can be more tricky. While one or two people there may be supportive of your sobriety, others - especially those who drink like we did - may feel threatened by our sobriety. They're the ones who mock our "inability" to drink while forcibly pushing "just one glass" at us. 

The key here is to let people know on arrival that you have another holiday party to go to after this one. (No one needs to know your other gathering is an AA meeting). Then get the basic must-do part of the visit out of the way (exchanging gifts, eating dinners, lighting candles, whatever) before heading out as soon as possible to your "next holiday party."

Everyone knows there are many parties around the holidays, some of them on the same afternoons or evenings, so the "next holiday party" ploy outlined above works equally well for quickly escaping the often dreaded office party.

If you drive, take yourself to holiday gatherings alone whenever possible. You can then leave immediately should you decide you're getting too uncomfortable with all the "holiday cheer" going down the throats of those around you. 

As for all those seasonal "Hallmark Moments" on the telly mentioned earlier  - the ones where perfect families gather around perfect tables filled with perfectly cooked comfort foods ... or joyfully exclaim over perfectly-wrapped, perfect gifts from comfy couches in perfectly decorated living rooms ... they don't exist. 
Tell yourself that. 
No one - NO ONE - has families like that. 

Most of us have families where in close quarter situations there's at least one snarky member verbally trashing other relatives while others argue about politics (with and without fist fights), get drunk, apologise for the undercooked vegetables, or otherwise devote their time to making everyone else feel uncomfortable.

Some of us have families supportive of our need to stay away from booze and other mind-altering chemicals, but many of us do not. Usually our non-alcoholic blood kin can't even stand up in our shoes, much less take a walk in them. They continually say things like, "I really don't get it. Surely you can have just one?" 

Others at the family party, the ones worried about their own drinking, are made very uncomfortable by our sobriety because they don't want to look at their own intake. We are seen as a danger to them. We're the family odd one they'd happily not have to spend time around.

Sometimes our family members can't let go of the person we were when drinking. We remain the butt of the family jokes because they hold tightly to resentments made at those long ago ruined family events.

We, after all, were the embarrassing ones who knocked over the tree, blew out the sacred candles, punched our father-in-law, fell asleep at the table, upchucked in the sink, made a pass at somebody's partner ... We've put those memories behind us (or don't even remember them), but others have not. They still watch us warily for more of the same. In their eyes we will always remain the family bad guys.

Under the burden of all that baggage, family gatherings - or just family, period -  often remain the hardest place to navigate in our sober lives. 
Or, as I once heard in a meeting, "If it's not one thing, it's another. If it's not another, it's your Mother." 

The good news is, we now have another family - our A.A. family - to validate, support, encourage and get us safely through the holiday season and all other life events. 

Our A.A. family members "get us." We don't have to explain our discomfort at being surrounded by people drinking, trays full of drinks on offer, and people gulping down drinks while eyeing us like we're the weird ones. 

All the meetings about holiday hazards help get us centered for the tinsel-strewn days ahead. There will be people in them who have lived through all the dangers of holidays past and still stayed sober. They assure us if they could do it, we can do it. And they're right!
 
A.A. members in our holiday meetings are there to share their experience, strength and hope on how to safely get through "the most wonderful time of the year" ... 
                        and to top up their own sober resolve in the process.

    So go laugh and be merry. The holidays only roll around once a year after all - Thank God!



Sunday, December 12, 2021

 


Made a Decision
(43)

"V
eni, Vidi, Velcro . . . 
I came, I saw, I stuck around."

Perhaps my Higher Power's greatest personal gift to me, on that lucky day when I arrived in AA, was to render me teachable - perhaps for the first time in my life.

By that time alcohol had beaten my every effort to control or quit it, so I had become willing to do what I was told. 

Also, once inside the rooms of AA, I saw what those around me had - and I wanted it.  I didn't just want a piece of it, either. Being an alcoholic who then lived by the motto - "More is better " - I wanted all of it. 

(And I wanted it in a paper bag to go, so that I could get on with my life and not have to keep going to all those meetings. I soon learned it doesn't work that way.)

I was told in meetings, "Don't leave AA before the miracle happens." 
I wanted my miracle  
(not yet realizing my being safe and sober in AA was in itself a miracle), 
so purely by the Grace of God I became willing to "go to any lengths" to get it. 


 How about you?

                      Are you convinced?
                          Are you still wondering if you really are an alcoholic?
                               Are you teachable?

Here's an AA saying that may apply: 
           "If you think you have a problem with alcohol, you probably do." 

People without an alcohol problem don't sit around wondering if they have a problem with alcohol. Untreated alcoholics, do.
People without an alcohol problem really don't spend much time thinking about alcohol - period. 

Here's how our Big Book defines it:

"When you honestly want to quit drinking and find that you can't, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably an alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer."  Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

So what does that kind of defeat feel like? 

According to our AA World Services, it feels a lot like the way I felt when I got here: "Defeated, and knowing it, I arrived at the doors of A.A., alone and afraid of the unknown. A power outside of myself had ... guided me through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous.
"Once inside A.A. I experienced a sense of being loved and accepted, something I had not felt since early childhood. May I never lose the sense of wonder I experienced on that first evening with A.A., the greatest event of my entire life."

To keep that feeling, to be IN and stay IN the program of AA, requires commitment and courage. Grit, if you will, plus the determination to do what's necessary to stay sober and improve one's life (and the lives of others) in the process.

As the inspirational author Darlene Larson Jenks so truthfully wrote: 
"To do nothing is failure. To try, and in the trying you make some mistakes and then you make some positive changes as a result of those mistakes, is to learn and to grow and to blossom." 

All of us in AA are "blossoms" living on borrowed time, time we would not even have had without the grace of God and our program of recovery.

Most of us, with some exceptions, arrive in AA in middle age with the emotional age of teenagers, because our maturing process ended when we began drinking and drugging.

(We won't believe we're middle aged, either. But if you get sober- say - in your 40s, isn't that more than halfway to being 80-something? Do the maths!)

Do we want to make up for the time we've wasted in the past? 
Do our lives now have a sense of purpose? 
Are we going to make what time we have left count for A.A.?
I sure hope so, because none of us knows how much time we have left. 

I realize this may sound a bit grim, but being a genuine old person I can promise you old age will also arrive for you one day, and it won't slowly creep up on you, either.
 Old age arrives in the blink of an eye. 

Example:
Let's say you are now a "middle-aged" youngster, still feeling good, frisky, and able to get into all kinds of trouble without much effort, even without the use of mind-altering chemicals. You might have more soreness than you used to on the day following some hard physical work, but it's no big deal ... 
And then ...
You happen to own a pickup truck and one sunny day you decide to clean out the truck bed. You get in, sweep and make it ready to hose out. You start to jump down to get the hose, but suddenly your brain shouts, "Whoa."
    Standing on the tailgate looking down at what is suddenly a great distance, you decide it might be better to sit down and slide off it onto your feet.

                              Congratulations! 
              Your doorway into old age has just arrived!

 Or at least - with hindsight - that's how it arrived for me. Your future will hold something similar and, I can promise you, it will arrive a lot sooner than you expect it to.
So the big question is -  are you going to stay sober to do all the things you want to do - and should do, and can do - before your time runs out?

We all can, especially when we don't forget our one days at a time will eventually come to an end. 

But staying focused isn't always easy. We often become so busy with "life" we forget the only reason we have our busy productive life is because we are sober. 
(A quote I like reads: "Don't let the life AA gave you take you away from your life in AA.")
Or we can put off doing today what we think we'll get around to doing tomorrow, because time is such an easy thing to piddle away. 
Learning to budget our time - like our money - is an important part of recovery. 

We can get full value out of each and every sober day just by daily doing-the-doing that we learn and practice in A.A. 

              It's all worth it, too, because living a sober life rocks - at any age!

Sunday, December 5, 2021

 


Made a Decision

(42)

                                  Meeting Makers Make It


I once thought, after I had been sober for a few years, that I didn't need to go to more than one meeting a week.
 (Yes, I really thought that). 
So I did that for a while. Before long that became one meeting every other week. Eventually I was only getting to meetings sporadically, when I felt like it. 
Shortly after that I became suicidal.

Surviving that experience taught me that I absolutely need meetings, regular meetings, lots of meetings. I still need them. I always will. 
I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I want to stay there.

 What I now find most interesting is when I was out there experimenting with how few meetings I might need, I had no memory of all those times I'd heard a person returning to AA after a slip who said they drank after "I quit going to meetings."

I need a home group to hold me accountable and I need to be there whenever it meets. I need additional meetings, too, because my blind-spot kind of head can so easily forget I have a chronic, terminal illness - one component of which is mental illness. 

We, of course, also need to follow all of AA's other suggestions for staying sober and for getting a high quality life in the process; like getting a sponsor, working the steps, doing service, sharing when asked, etc. 
But meetings need to be right there on that list, preferably near the top. 

 Book, step and service work build the scaffolding beneath our ongoing recovery. Meetings are our medicine. The insights we get there, along with the laughter, are the cherries on top that makes the medicine taste better. 

All meetings are good for us. Even the ones we find a bit boring can teach us something about patience and tolerance (which most alcoholics have in short supply).

A great meeting, on the other hand, is one of the best experiences we can have in recovery. It offers us laughter, friendship, service, recovery ideas to put to work in our own lives, along with the gifts of giving and receiving love.

We'll leave a great meeting knowing others have learned something new from us about applying AA principles and we will have received constructive ideas to use for enhancing the quality of our own sobriety. 

Meetings can be the quick fix for minds that need what they need when they need it. I can't count the number of times I have arrived at a meeting stark raving mad and left afterwards stark raving sober, in other words restored to what passes for sanity in my head. 

I wrote the following in an earlier blog about meetings being our ongoing first aid for our alcoholism and I stand by it:

"... start watching the faces of your friends in recovery when they arrive at a meeting wearing stressed or angry faces. Watch as their expressions change over the length of the meeting, first smiles, then even laughter. By meetings-end everyone leaves relaxed and filled with renewed hope. Medicated! 

"I recently heard someone say in a meeting, 'Sometimes my Higher Power needs to have skin on it.' Mine does, too. While I have many lovely moments of silent communion with the God of my understanding, I only actually hear God's direct messages to me when they are spoken by other AA members in meetings."

Many of us have returned to in-place meetings, but many of us have not. Some of us who now have friends in AA all over the world are doing both. 
The time of Covid has given us the gift of Zoom meetings and what a boon they have been and still are to us all! One click opens meetings to us on a global scale. If you don't find that exciting I wonder what it might take to excite you? 

Besides - surprise, surprise - online meetings are not new. (Neither, BTW, are women's meetings which have been around since the 1950s). 
Here's what our Big Book has to say about going online. You'll find the following in the Foreword to the Fourth Edition, right there in the first section of your book:

"Taking advantage of technological advances, for example, A.A. members with computers can participate in meetings online, sharing with fellow alcoholics across the country or around the world. Fundamentally, though, the difference between an electronic meeting and the home group around the corner is only one 
of format. 
"In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.'s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics. Modem-to-modem or face-to-face, A.A.'s speak the language of the heart in all its power and simplicity."

During my own time in A.A. I've noticed the truth in that old A.A. adage, "Meeting Makers Make It." People I see week after week and month after month, I tend to also see in meetings year after year. 

But recently I've heard a new phrase - "I'm taking a break from A.A." - a sentence said over their shoulders by those who walk away from meetings. I wonder if they think their alcoholism will take a break, too? 
Spoiler alert - it won't.

The lucky ones will return to meetings, more battered by their disease and - hopefully - more teachable. 
Some won't make it back. Their obituaries will read they died from "a short illness" ...  "in a car wreck ... "from natural causes" ... and so on. 
Alcoholism is seldom, if ever, mentioned in obituaries (along with deaths by domestic violence), but it's often the underlying cause of those kinds of untimely deaths all the same.

Meeting Makers, in addition to racking up long-term sobriety, also tend to be people who eventually accomplish goals in other areas of their lives. They become motivated to do better things, like going back to finish school or adding some more degrees. Sometimes they write books, or organize workshops, or charities, take up skiing, parachute out of airplanes - or even learn to fly them.

Filled with sober new self-confidence, AA members regularly have mid-life career changes, often embracing work in medicine, especially in addictions recovery, social work, or to fill some other need in the mental health field. 
Many enter their first ever long-term satisfying romantic relationships, get married, have children, or build a healthy loving relationship with partners who stuck with them through their years in addiction.

 We'll hear about such accomplishments and think, "If they can do that, I can do that," and then we do. We are able to accomplish our new goals because we have established a pattern of action by staying sober. We learn to apply the same tools of recovery in building better lives for ourselves. 

When we go to meetings and work the program we change our outlook, our goals and our accomplishments. As a good friend of mine with long term sobriety said recently, "If I go to meetings for 30-plus years and don't change for the better, I'd be a shit student." 

 I'm going to leave you now with that thought. After writing all the above - and losing 2/3 of the copy forever from "the cloud" (a black cloud!) at one point ... I need a meeting.


  

Sunday, November 28, 2021

 


Made a Decision

(41)

                               Prayers and Some A.A. History


You wouldn't think A.A. members would fight about prayers, but they have - and they do - and they will  - because we're nothing if not a contentious bunch.

At almost every meeting we hear that we are to pray "only for the knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out!" So confusion about prayer shouldn't be an issue, but we often make it so because - in addition to being contentious - we alcoholics are also able to complicate the inner workings of an anvil.

Both Bill W. and Dr. Bob believed God had saved them from the hell of alcoholic drinking. Our founders were Christians (although to their great credit they never tried to shove that down our throats), so they quite naturally plugged various prayers into the A.A. program where they felt prayers were needed. 

 Thus we find the Third Step prayer:

  "God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life."

And the Seventh Step prayer: 

 “My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.”

(I just learned my computer doesn't know its scripture. It keeps trying to change all thy-s, thou-s and thee-s into thighs, thousands and trees. Bloody heathen).

You'll find many Christian-like prayers throughout A.A.'s literature, always with that qualifier that we're praying to "God as we understand Him." 
(BTW - "Her" works in that last sentence instead of "Him," too. Many women in recovery use it). 

In early recovery I was no big fan of the often then-quoted Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi ("Lord make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring ... etc. etc."). I called it the co-dependent prayer, along with a number of other disrespectful things. 

I also took exception to that prayer because to me it was so obviously a Christian prayer, although no one else seemed to mind. So I was especially annoyed when they eventually took The Lord's Prayer out of meetings because, "they" said, it was "a Christian Prayer."

"Seemingly it's possible to have it both ways in A.A.," I said, scathingly. 

I did scathingly well in my early recovery when I was always willing to give you a "piece" of my mind with no "peace" behind it. (Good news: I hardly ever "scather" anymore.)

For a long time into my early recovery meetings began with the preamble, then the Serenity Prayer and then ended with The Lord's Prayer:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

Then a few groups started ending their meetings by using the Serenity Prayer. As more and more meetings began doing it, I started questioning the reasoning behind it and was told by others (scathingly) that The Lord's Prayer was "too Christian" and the Serenity Prayer was not. 

It's true when people asked Jesus how they should pray he offered them The Lord's Prayer as a template, but nowhere in the prayer itself does it mention Jesus. I had never even considered it a Christian prayer, but others certainly did.  Apparently members have been fighting about its use almost since the beginning of A.A. 

Here's what Bill Wilson himself had to say about its use in a letter written in 1955: 

“Of course there are always those who seem to be offended by the introduction of any prayer whatever into an ordinary A.A. gathering. Also it is sometimes complained that the Lord’s Prayer is a Christian document. Nevertheless, this Prayer is of such widespread use and recognition that the argument of its Christian origin seems to be a little far-fetched.

"It is also true that most AA’s believe in some kind of god and that communication and strength is obtainable through his grace," Bill continued. "Since this is the general consensus, it seems only right that at least the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer be used in connection with our meetings. It does not seem necessary to defer to the feelings of our agnostic and atheist newcomers to the extent of completely hiding ‘our light under a bushel.’ 

"However, around here, the leader of the meeting usually asks those to join him in the Lord’s Prayer who feel that they would care to do so. The worst that happens to the objectors is that they have to listen to it. This is doubtless a salutary exercise in tolerance at their stage of progress.” 

Commenting about Bill's letter after they started getting questions about how to handle members who refused to stand during recitation of the Lord's Prayer, the A.A.'s General Service Office noted the issue had been controversial in some circles since the 1940s. Their solution was: "Participation–or non-participation-in recitals of the Lord’s Prayer should be considered a matter of personal conscience and decision.” 

(I remind you that we alcoholics are a contentious bunch, but while we "are not saints," the General Service Office folks generally are.)

 My brother (sobriety date April 3, 1981) and I recently got into a discussion about the prayers used in A.A. Since we've both read a lot about the early history of Alcoholics Anonymous, it became quite a lively discussion. Here's a bit of history for you on The Serenity Prayer that he sent me afterward:

"The Serenity Prayer as said in meetings - 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference' - is just the first verse of the prayer known as the Serenity Prayer. 

 The rest of the prayer reads as follows:

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardship as the

Pathway to peace.

 Taking, as He did, this

Sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make

All things right if I

Surrender to His Will;

 That I may be reasonably happy

In this life, and supremely

Happy with Him forever in

The next.  

"The Serenity Prayer was written in 1929 by Karl Reinhold Niebuhr, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, who lived between (1892-1971). The prayer became more widely known in 1941 after it was brought to the attention of A.A. by an early member who came upon it in an obituary. Bill Wilson and his staff liked the prayer and had it printed in modified form. It has been part of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since. 

Before it was modified, the original text for that first verse read:   "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other."

And while the "we" version of the Serenity Prayer still confuses me when it's used (my friend Lisa will vouch for this), I quite like this next version and often use it at the personal level: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one that I can, and the wisdom to know that person is me."

There's a non-Christian poem/prayer occasionally heard in meetings that was written by KΔ€LIDΔ€SA, a fifth-century Indian dramatist and poet (literary figure of the Sanskrit tradition who set the standard for classical Indian poetry and drama). His poem entitled Look to this Day is every bit as valid now about living one day at a time as when it was written:

Look to this day.

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth, The glory of action, The splendor of achievement

Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream.  And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day.


            I no longer think it matters in what religious tradition a prayer originated. What matters is using the prayers that most resonate with us in our daily lives. Perhaps the most important prayers are the ones we will actually do.

My friend, Butch W. (deceased), once told me, "More things are wrought by prayer than we would ever believe possible." I think he was spot on. As the Big Book itself tells us: "Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer."

In 1990, A.A.'s World Services embellished that statement by adding we have much to gain in keeping an open mind along our spiritual journey. Our sobriety is enriched and our practice of the Eleventh Step is made more fruitful when we use both the literature and practices of the Judeo-Christian tradition, along with the resources of other religions. 

My brother told me poetry and prayers have been "my two guiding lights for coping with the uncertainties of life. Both give direction for daily living life on life’s terms, turning the good, bad or ugly into learning opportunities for spiritual growth. Both have given me much stability and peace of mind on my journey."

 To which I can only add - Amen!