A Daily Meditation Book for Recovering Alcoholics

Readings

Reading One:

"The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being." 12 X 12, p. 53

The most important thing I did, before sobriety, to fix myself was to get married. I just knew that was the answer. I would no longer be different. I would join society. She would.....

When the glow wore off I was left with one more reason why there was something wrong with me. It wasn't that she gave me cause to criticize. The problem was that marriage did not do what I desperately needed it to do. The glow gradually changed to tolerance, to disdain, finally to apathy.

AA made me work on myself. It took me years to accept myself as being precious - to God and to myself. Gradually, I saw my wife as getting better. She still isn't what I was looking for all those many years ago. But, remember, the guy who was looking then was pretty sick. I found I am where I want to be. Others have to move on. Moving on is right for them.

Our mutual growth was slow because our investment in each other was based in sicknesses, the diseases of alcoholism and alanonism. And, these sicknesses were so cellular, down to our very roots. The healing path required time as well as effort.

The point is that my effort heals me and has a healing effect on us.

Reading Two:

"Tolerance" BB, pp. 19, 67, 70, 83, 84, 118, 122, 125, 127, and 137 (citations limited to first 164 pp.) "God will constantly disclose more ..." BB, p. 164

The Big Book was written in the 1930s. At that time, discrimination, a form of intolerance, was prevalent. Blacks, hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics - all were looked down upon. The world, including us, thought of an alcoholic as the unwashed wino in the alley. Discrimination and intolerance did not apply. Scorn was a better word. We were looked down upon as alien beings.

The Big Book then told us that, when we get sober, we need to be tolerant toward the scorners. We had to be tolerant to our families, who were really our victims. What an upheaval!!

Now that decades have passed since the Big Book was written, we can and do look at its wisdom from a calmer perspective. The word "tolerance" can be seen as coming from a superior position. After all, we are better physically. We are even better spiritually. Aren't we now better enough to be able to be tolerant?

Look more closely at an AA gathering. It matters not whether you have been to prison. It matters not that you haven't been to prison. Divorce, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnic and religious backgrounds - none interferes with our love and respect for each other. Rather than reaching, and stopping, at "tolerance", we have advanced to the stage of: "Oh well, what does it matter?"

Our next growth area will be to extend the "Oh well" attitude to everyone.
Remember, God's willing to help.