If the Great Spirit wanted men to stay in one place He would make the world stand still; but He made it to always change, so birds and animals can move and always have green grass and ripe berries, sunlight to work and play, and night to sleep.
The American Indian's spiritual knowledge teaches that God has a rhythm and a benevolent purpose for the earth. How we relate to the changes, which overtake us, is central to our spiritual lives. With our overdeveloped will, we still fight change in many ways. We fight the aging of our bodies by oversensitivity to our thinning hair and increasing grayness. We refuse to accept the end of summer by pouting and getting depressed about the cold. We try to hasten the time when our children are more independent and then hold them back when they get there. Peace comes with trusting the Great Spirit to bring changes in their natural progression. The extent of our willfulness affects our serenity - but not the progress of change.
God, help me accept the changes in my life.
The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.
The "shoulds" of our lives can be found all around us. We should wear our seat belts. We should not cry. We should go to our meetings. These "shoulds" usually serve as good guides for us, but they can intrude upon us. If we give them power, they only condemn us and give no useful help. At times we jump toward the "should" because we don't have the courage to live with the insecurity of being human.
If someone at work gets an unfair shake, it takes courage to speak up and say what we think. We may have an impulse to reach out to a stranger, but it takes courage to do it. When an inner feeling emerges from our honesty, fear may prompt us to avoid it, and we need to call on our courage. That is how we fulfill the uniqueness of each of us.
I am alive as a man and a human being. I will not shy away from opportunities to express my humanity.
The struggle of the male to learn to listen to and respect his own intuitive, inner promptings is the greatest challenge of all. His ... conditioning has been so powerful that it has all but destroyed his ability to be self-aware.
Men strive to be successful with mechanical, physical, and powerful things. Some of us have succeeded in those supposedly "male" ways and others haven't. But whether we have or not, most of us have poured our energies into those directions and neglected the other way of being strong men. We may not have learned how to be gentle and helpful fathers, sensitive lovers, or men in tune with our own spirits and feelings. Many of us never learned to recognize what we feel.
Perhaps we were taught to stand up for ourselves. But have we learned to stand up for our right to have feelings? Do we stand up for our right to be learners and to make mistakes? Do we stand up for our right to be aware and to be the men we find ourselves to be, rather than what others tell us we should be?
I will become more aware of my inner-self as a growing man on this uncharted journey.
Much as I long to be out of here, I don't believe a single day has been wasted. What will come out of my time here it is too early to say. But something is bound to come out of it.
These words, written by a man imprisoned for standing up against the Nazis, speak to us today about our own lives. We too long for release, and we cannot see where things will lead us. His spirituality is heroic; it inspires us. We do not know just where our lives will lead or what the outcome will be. But we can know our lives are taking us in the right direction. We make our choices today and stand up with all our energy for the honesty and dignity, which this program provides.
We choose to trust life. In each tiny detail of this day we move forward, asserting our faith and seeking to know and do the will of a Power greater than ourselves.
I will open myself to the will of my Higher Power as I move forward on the path, living with my unrevealed future.
I, God, am your playmate! I will lead the child in you in wonderful ways for I have chosen you.
Our relationship with our Higher Power is not all solemnness. Facing the pains and guilts and grief's of our codependent relationships and our addictions might lead us to think recovery is only serious business. Not so!
This program liberates us from the heaviness by facing it. We are not meant to stay stuck there. Recovery teaches us to enjoy life. Our Creator has concocted a world of many pleasures and delights to play in. As we progress in our recovery we learn to let our hair down and play. Some of us have become more able to enjoy good-natured roughhousing with our children. Maybe we have become more free to joke and banter with friends. Our spiritual lives grow with good-natured fun.
I am grateful for the child who still lives in me. He keeps alive my delight in the world.
Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.
We owe our brothers and sisters in this program our honest feedback. And we need the same honesty from them. There are times in meetings when it would be easiest to give someone sympathy and privately mutter to ourselves, "He isn't facing the bitter truth." That sympathy avoids a confrontation, but it doesn't give the healing medicine of honesty. In the same way, we may long, at times, for someone to give us warm strokes, and what they give instead is a bitter pill.
The most important thing we have to give one another is the truth of what we see and hear. We don't have to tell them what to do. We don't have to have all the right answers. But we do have the obligation to speak up about how things look to us. And we need to listen without defensiveness when others are honest with us.
Today, I will say what I see and hear. I will listen to other people's honesty with me.
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
We may have spiritual experiences in our daily lives that we don't think of as spiritual. For many of us, music lifts us from the practical and mundane circumstances of our lives into communion with the universe. One man may like to listen to country music on the radio, another one might play the piano, and another may go to rock concerts. For each of us, music is a different world from the reasonable, hard data, task-oriented world we usually live in. Music touches our feelings and speaks to us in a special language. It brings us back to special times in the past, perhaps recalls a night of fun and excitement or a person we shared a song with. Music lifts our spirits and opens us to deeper feelings we weren't in touch with. Many of us meet our Higher Power through the music we love.
Today, I will make room for the restorative powers of music in my life.
If the Great Spirit wanted men to stay in one place He would make the world stand still; but He made it to always change, so birds and animals can move and always have green grass and ripe berries, sunlight to work and play, and night to sleep.
