Search

"I still don't have answers for all the eternal questions, like why bad things happen to good people, or why babies die. But I have found that life works better when I focus more on how I am contributing to God's world than musing about what he is or is not doing in mine."

“I still don’t have answers for all the eternal questions, like why bad things happen to good people, or why babies die. But I have found that life works better when I focus more on how I am contributing to God’s world than musing about what he is or is not doing in mine.”

“In this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our old-time attitudes of ‘all or nothing’ will have to be abandoned.”

“In this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our old-time attitudes of ‘all or nothing’ will have to be abandoned.”

“In this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our old-time attitudes of ‘all or nothing’ will have to be abandoned.”

“I have an AA friend, a good and gentle soul. He recently joined one of the great religious orders, one in which the friars spend many hours a day in contemplation. So my friend has plenty of time to take his inventory. The more he looks, the more unconscious self-deception he finds. And the more astonished he becomes at the elaborate and devious excuse-making machinery by which he had been justifying himself. He has already come to the conclusion that the prideful righteousness of ‘good people’ may often be just as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good. So he daily looks inward upon himself and then upward toward God, the better to discover just where he stands in this matter of honesty. Out of each of his meditations there always emerges one dead certainty, and this is the fact that he still has a long way to go.”

“I have an AA friend, a good and gentle soul. He recently joined one of the great religious orders, one in which the friars spend many hours a day in contemplation. So my friend has plenty of time to take his inventory. The more he looks, the more unconscious self-deception he finds. And the more astonished he becomes at the elaborate and devious excuse-making machinery by which he had been justifying himself. He has already come to the conclusion that the prideful righteousness of ‘good people’ may often be just as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good. So he daily looks inward upon himself and then upward toward God, the better to discover just where he stands in this matter of honesty. Out of each of his meditations there always emerges one dead certainty, and this is the fact that he still has a long way to go.”

“I have an AA friend, a good and gentle soul. He recently joined one of the great religious orders, one in which the friars spend many hours a day in contemplation. So my friend has plenty of time to take his inventory. The more he looks, the more unconscious self-deception he finds. And the more astonished he becomes at the elaborate and devious excuse-making machinery by which he had been justifying himself. He has already come to the conclusion that the prideful righteousness of ‘good people’ may often be just as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good. So he daily looks inward upon himself and then upward toward God, the better to discover just where he stands in this matter of honesty. Out of each of his meditations there always emerges one dead certainty, and this is the fact that he still has a long way to go.”

“Spirituality makes it possible for me to work for others and to try and help them. It can give me the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings even when I don’t think I need a meeting, to speak up when my alcoholism wants to keep my pain to myself, to talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in my group about painful matters I would rather keep hidden.”

"Spirituality makes it possible for me to work for others and to try and help them. It can give me the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings even when I don’t think I need a meeting, to speak up when my alcoholism wants to keep my pain to myself, to talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in my group about painful matters I would rather keep hidden."

“Spirituality makes it possible for me to work for others and to try and help them. It can give me the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings even when I don’t think I need a meeting, to speak up when my alcoholism wants to keep my pain to myself, to talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in my group about painful matters I would rather keep hidden.”

“It surprises some people that AA members continue to attend meetings after years of recovery. But I find at least three good reasons for this practice: first, it helps me maintain and enhance my personal sobriety; second, I can contribute to, and benefit from, AA's caring community; and finally, I can stay close to the spiritual ideas which are the basis of our Twelve Step program.”

“Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived.”

“Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived.”

"Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived."