Blog entry for:

with others, what has been given to me.
a funny thing happened at the meeting last night. as it is the week of my clean date anniversary, i passed around the coin that was given to me, by one of the men i sponsor. at the end of the meeting it had not made its way back to me, and had actually ended up in the pocket of the FNG, who was at his very first meeting. joking around, i said that was one way to get XIX years clean, hugged him and said keep coming back. i am certain there was no malicious intent or malice in the action, just did not know what to do and once it was explained to him, it made perfect sense. so i guess that is one thing i was not willing to give away last night! 😜
the reading spoke to me on another level this morning, but it goes back to what one of my peers shared about last night. they went on and on about a single line in the reading yesterday, they paraphrased the line “either we surrender everything to our program, or we will lose our recovery” into if one keeps ANY secrets, one WILL use. i, too, often misread or overthink a sentence or phrase in something i read and go off on a tangent, then in the end, i end up like the Gilda Radner's, Saturday Night Live character Emily Litella, saying, never mind.
this morning what i zoomed in on, as there really was a point to everything that i have prefaced this with, was “the free gift of love that our Higher Power had for us.— i do not need to go on with how my concept of a HIGHER POWER is this or that, or does or does not possess this or that, all i need to say, is that line does not quite jibe with my spiritual path. when i calmed down enough to sit down and be quiet, i realized that that i was missing the point. i had read into something that was not there and if i pulled back and looked at the larger picture, i could see that NEVER MIND, was the thing to say.
what i finally felt was that the POWER that fuels my recovery, provide for me the OPPORTUNITY to get everything i need, and even some of the stuff i want. opening myself up to that POWER, fills the place in me that NEEDS to be filled and if one chooses to, one could certainly call that love. my whole journey to my spiritual path was fraught with this kind of peril. not from my peers, not from the literature but from me, interpreting what i read and overthinking what was on the written page. what i am sensing now, is that what i NEED to give away tonight is the knowledge that my right to find a spiritual path, is unassailable and sacrosanct. by extension, so it that of my peers, whether they have decades clean, or just one day. it is my job to inspire them to seek, especially those who are in a similar situation to me, namely they chafe under the yoke of the Western view of how the spiritual path is aligned.
with that in mind, even though i woill not act upon it for many hours, it is time to move forward with my day and walk out into the real world and take care of bidness. it is a great day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞