I’m trying to figure out what I think about dating anniversaries.
Some couples celebrate anniversaries while they are dating.  There seem to be a lot of variations in these anniversaries and I have no idea what the right answers are for determining these.  How often do you celebrate?  It could be every week, month, year?  And even more importantly, how do you decide on your official day to celebrate?  Is it the first meeting, date, kiss, night you slept together, or day you decided to be exclusive?
There are are really so many possible answers to all of these questions and infinite …read more

Father Joseph Martin passed this morning at Ashley in Harve de Grace, Maryland.
His chalk talks taught me so much and I’ll take them with me and pass them on where I can. To paraphrase one very important thought that works so well for me;
“There is one undeniable fact about my past – I can’t change it. I can only commend my past to the mercy of God. There is also one undeniable fact about my future – I have one, I just don’t know how long it will be. I can only commend my future to the providence of God.”
From …read more

I’m going to take a few liberties with some of A.A.’s literature…
From pages 32-33 in the 12&12;
“To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the loveaholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most L.A.’s, he/she is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him/her, and have found the riddle’s answer. The answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when we really hadn’t. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, …read more

Bill W. spoke through his Grapevine writings in August, 1945. This is just one of many things he said* that I find interesting;
“Personal glorification, overweening pride, consuming ambition, exhibitionism, intolerant smugness, money or power madness, refusal to admit mistakes and learn from them, self-satisfaction, lazy complacency – these and many more are the garden variety of ills which so often beset movements as well as individuals.
While we AA’s, as individuals, have suffered much from just such defects, and must daily admit and deal with them in our personal lives if we are to stay sober and useful, it is nevertheless …read more

If there were someone who could offer you an answer to something you’d been suffering from for a long time and hadn’t yet found a way out, what would you say to them when they presented it to you?
From the foreword to the Second Edition of the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous;
“So far, upon the total problem of several million actual and potential alcoholics in the world, we have made only a scratch. In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic …read more

I heard something else this past weekend. I consider the “level” I heard it at and that motivates me to offer this…
What Is Alcoholics Anonymous?
“We are a fellowship of men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking and have found ourselves in various kinds of trouble as a result of drinking. We attempt – most of us successfully – to create a satisfying way of life without alcohol. For this we find we need the help and support of other alcoholics in A.A.”
That’s what AA is! Anything else is personal opinion or profundity pushing (be careful …read more

Old-Timers Prayer
God, keep me from thinking I must share in every meeting, no matter the topic. Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details and give me wings to get to the point. Remind me to guard confidences and to keep still when I feel it is necessary to speak up for someone’s own good.
Release me from the need to straighten out everybody else’s thinking and program. God, I ask for the grace to listen to newcomers. Please help me to remember the patience with which others listened to me when I was new.
Please seal my lips to …read more

Avail us nothing…

I first published this last year. It remains true.
January 7th’s Reflection speaks of turning points. Sometimes they are beginnings and sometimes they are endings. I can understand that. I don’t like it but, then again, it doesn’t matter whether I like them or not, everything will unfold the way it was meant to.
Thy Will, Not Mine Be Done

God Bless Jim Croce…
January 06, 1990. Under God’s guidance Alcoholics Anonymous not only tugged on this “superman’s cape” but yanked it off exposing to me the fallacies of my then belief system.
Today I am grateful. I don’t have everything I want but I surely want everything I have. What I have is priceless.
R.I.P. Matt M. I’ll continue to attempt some level of repayment for this debt of gratitude knowing I’ll never repay enough. Thank you Rick T. You will always be a light for me.
And thank you all for all the opportunities you keep giving me to practice these principles.

A poem by Jack McC called simply “Drunks” (thanks again Alex)

We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later when somebody complained about the smell.
We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide
and we probably didn’t know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.
We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, distended and there was nothing they could do.
We died in cells, never knowing whether we were guilty or not.
We went to priests, they gave us pledges, they told us to pray, they told us to go and sin no …read more