Photo: SXC

Not sure what to do? Here are a few ideas:

• You can head to freerice.com and donate some food to people in an underdeveloped nation.
• Grownups can watch a movie like Beyond Rangoon that shows how hard it is to live in a country that doesn’t offer the freedom we have in the US. (This excellent movie starring Patricia Arquette is rated R and is not something I’d recommend for family viewing!)
• Keep an eye on freedom’s progress by visiting a site like Freedom House to see where freedom is being threatened.

How do you help keep freedom alive?

Post from: Blisstree

Happy Independence Day!

Image: sxc.hu

I found one in my grandmother’s memorabilia trunk.  It represented her son, my Uncle Charles, who served in that war and came back alive.  These flags, a blue star on white background surrounded by a red border hung in the windows of families who had a member fighting for our country’s freedom.  (More stars if more than one person was in the war.)

If the soldier was killed in war, a gold star was hung above the blue and if injured a silver star instead.  Thus also originated the term “Gold Star Mothers” who lost a son or daughter in the war.

Supposedly Army Captain Robert Queisser, of the 5th Ohio Infantry, designed a service flag to honor his two sons who were serving in the military during World War I.  These flags symbolize brave men and women in all our wars.

Nowadays, they’re made as flags, banners, pillows and quilts, to keep in mind the military men and women serving to keep us free.

Post from: Blisstree

Learning About Patriotic Service Flags

Freedom From Prejudice

“We do not and cannot recover alone. Some members can remember being unwelcome in other fellowships. Some of us recall sitting alone with a White Booklet waiting for another addict to show up at a meeting so that we could have our own NA group. Another addict, any addict, was exceedingly welcome. As we have become prosperous, laden with choices of where to recover and with whom, we have allowed the defect of prejudice to assert itself and, more sadly, to live in our hearts.

While it is possible for us to walk through the doors of NA with the defects of character which promote attitudes of hostility toward others, over time these defects make recovery difficult if not impossible. As a defect, prejudice shares some of the same characteristics as our disease. It is based in fear, self-centeredness, suspicion, and intolerance. These qualities represent our disease rather than the spiritual process of recovery in NA. Our program is carried from one addict to another without regard to anything but the desire to recover from our disease.”

Could be applied anywhere. Read the entire bulletin – click on the title above.

Post from: Blisstree

A Neat Thought From Narcotics Anonymous

Daily Reflections

“Now I was stuck on Step Six and, in despair, I picked up the Big Book and read this passage. I was outside, praying for willingness, when I raised my eyes and saw a huge bird rising up in the sky. I watched it suddenly give itself up to the powerful air currents of the mountains. Swept along, swooping and soaring, the bird did things seemingly impossible for mortal birds to do. It was an inspiring example of a fellow creature ‘letting go’ to a power greater than itself. I realized that if the bird ‘took back his will’ and tried to fly with less trust, on its power alone, it would spoil its apparent free flight. That insight granted me the willingness to pray the Seventh Step prayer.”

And since I had an elementary knowledge of God and His word, I consider this seriously;

How much more does God love me than He loves a bird? Besides, how does a bird know to let go in order to find freedom like what was described. If a bird can find such a freedom and the God I understand provides the bird that freedom simply because the bird let go, what might I experience were I to let go too?

Post from: Blisstree

How Does The Bird Know?

I haven’t paid attention all that often – usually only when I need to the most. Like now.

Today’s Daily Reflection;

“We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction.”

Emotional deformities – that’ll stop ya’!

The response to the reflection says;

“Today I am no longer a slave to alcohol, yet in so many ways enslavement still threatens – my self, my desires, even my dreams. Yet without dreams I cannot exist: without dreams there is nothing to keep me moving forward.”

If I left the talk there I’d ignore the solution…

“I must look inside myself, to free myself. I must call upon God’s power to face the person I’ve feared the most, the true me, the person God created me to be.”

Whom I know only so slightly…

“Unless I can or until I do, I will always be running, and never be truly free. I ask God daily to show me such a freedom.”

I’m tired of running. I’d like to be free. It feels so much better.

I have a dream.

Post from: Blisstree

Never Give Up The Dream

Freedom From Bondage

If, for nothing else, how to be rid of a resentment.

This story, and the wise counsel of the oldtimers who were in my life at a time I needed them the most, went a very long way to helping me understand it is better to be about love than to be about hate!

A small bit of wisdom first – offering a dictionary definition: “Rationalization is giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity.”

From page 551 (4th ed.);

“As I said earlier, self-pity and resentment were my constant companions, and my inventory began to look like a thirty-three-year diary, for I seemed to have a resentment against everybody I had ever known. All but one ‘responded to the treatment’ suggested in the steps immediately, but this one posed a problem.”

As I continued reading I identified very strongly except that mine was a father rather than a mother.

“This resentment was against my mother, and it was twenty-five years old. I had fed it, fanned it, and nurtured it as one might a delicate child, and it had become as much a part of me as my breathing. It had provided me with excuses for my lack of education, my marital failures, personal failures, inadequacy, and, of course, my alcoholism. And though I really thought I had been willing to part with it, now I knew I was reluctant to let it go.”

My resentment towards my father was almost identical in the fact that it was a bullet-proof vest to wear to excuse away my failures and alcoholism also! But an oldtimer fortunately pointed out to me that my father hadn’t poured not one single drop of alcohol down my throat, not one…

“One morning, however, I realized I had to get rid of it, for my reprieve was running out, and if I didn’t get rid of it I was going to get drunk – and I didn’t want to get drunk anymore. In my prayers that morning I asked God to point out to me some way to be free of this resentment. During the day, a friend of mine brought me some magazines to take to a hospital group I was interested in. I looked through them. A banner across one featured an article by a prominent clergyman in which I caught the word resentment.”

Yep! No coincidences there right?

“He said, in effect: ‘If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.”

The most traumatic circumstances of my life, those that caused me the most emotional upheaval, have lost their bitterness because of this wisdom from a person I can so deeply identify with when she says (speaking about her childhood);

“I concluded too that if I never allowed myself to love anybody or anything, I could never be hurt again. It became second nature for me to remove myself from anything or anybody I found myself growing fond of.”

Ironically – today’s struggle… though the bitterness towards my father and my ex has disappeared, today I find I am able to move on and away from intimacy with “great aplomb.” (sarcasm)

Post from: Blisstree

Freedom From Bondage

Really??? Think about this. Unacceptable to you??? I thought we stopped playing God in recovery.

From page 100;

“Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go into their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all. Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so.”

My guess is that the commenter wants us to live out our lives in some sort of fishbowl without social contact at all.

“We must meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status.”

Does it appear that our commenter has a bit of a challenge with their spiritual status? Looks like it to me…

Post from: Blisstree

Must Not Go Where Liquor Is Served?

From page 129;

“If the family cooperates, dad will soon see that he is suffering from a distortion of values.”

A Distortion of Values

Distortion is a misrepresentation of the truth. That certainly works for me!

“He will perceive that his spiritual growth is lopsided, that for an average man like himself, a spiritual life which does not include his family obligations may not be so perfect after all.”

True – so true…

“If the family will appreciate that dad’s current behavior is but a phase of his development, all will be well.”

Possibly, unless, through him, the disease has sickened them badly enough they’re also suffering from perception deception and don’t have/want to have, a recovery program. Then there will be no appreciation.

“In the midst of an understanding and sympathetic family, these vagaries of dad’s spiritual infancy will quickly disappear.”

Would have been nice…

Post from: Blisstree

Perception Deception

From The Language of the Heart: Bill W’s Grapevine Writings, page 315;

“Paradoxically, though, we can achieve no liberation from the alcohol obsession until we have become willing to deal with those character defects which have landed us in that helpless condition.”

Sometimes I’m amazed how easy it is for me to see something in someone else yet not be able to see the same defect in myself. I often wonder if my childhood was truly that bad and these defects developed to the extent that they’re so difficult to remove that I had to have God’s help! Yet, I’m not unique…

“Even to gain sobriety only, we must attain some freedom from fear, anger, and pride; from rebellion and self-righteousness; from laziness and irresponsibility; from foolish rationalization and outright dishonesty; from wrong dependencies and destructive power driving.”

Oh heck, without much fanfare I’m sure I have all of them to one degree or another…

“In this freedom quest, we are always given three choices. A rebellious refusal to work upon our glaring defects can be a ticket to destruction. Or, for a time, we can stay sober with a minimum of self-improvement and settle ourselves into a comfortable but often dangerous mediocrity.”

Dammit Matt! You told me you thought I had gotten some bad suggestions and here I find you yourself had given me one! “Strive for mediocrity”… I think not!

“Or we can continuously try hard for those sterling qualities which can add up to greatness of spirit and action – true and lasting freedom under God, the freedom to find and do His will.”

Yeah…

[Graphic credit - Angels Collection]

Post from: Blisstree

Freedom Under God – The Choice Is Ours