Some things, he’s square on about.
Tag Archives: A.A.
It’s OK to be OK.
My core belief is fairly obscure.
I never supposed anyone would attack it directly.
“The wrongest verse” revisited
Proverbs 3:5-6:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not unto your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will direct your paths.
I need to re-think this.
When prayer backfires
One is unlikely to understand this without first reading “From my diary: Learning to pray.”
Bookmarks:
1. Don’t come uninvited.
2. You don’t need an invitation to love people.
3. Name names.
4. Word for word.
5. What you “see” is what you’ll get.
[Conclusion]
I consulted several Wikipedia articles in preparation for this post. All turned out to have been written by people who are hostile toward reports of anything that might involve a spiritual world.
As much as I try to give credit to all points of view, I cannot adopt the same position. My earliest memories are of the conviction that there is more to the world than we perceive with the five senses. Since I began practicing silence, I have seen auras. I have had precognitive visions and telepathic dreams. I was compelled on one occasion to pray for my worst enemy, only to learn later she’d just been through an event I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. In the fall of 1990 I was compelled to pray day after day for a woman I’d not met and had never heard of; only to find, when I moved to another state in January ’91 to attend grad school, she was one of my classmates and had an intense interest in healing prayer, as I also did. To deny these facts, I’d have to lie to myself more than I’m willing to.
There’s still the puzzle of unanswered prayer.
Continue reading When prayer backfires
The Twelve Steps
THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Copyright A.A. World Services, Inc.
(Originally posted 11/30/13.)
on air talent, talk show host, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
Alcoholism basics
(A message I sent family on 26 April 2006.)
Disease, or sin?
To the best of my knowledge, the “disease theory of alcoholism” began with Dr. Robert Silkworth, at the time of St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, coincident with the beginnings of A.A. “Dr. Bob” referred to the condition as an “allergy”; for whatever reason, these folks’ bodies respond to this substance differently than others’ do.
This theory and its ramifications are, today, largely taken for granted throughout the scientific world. Whatever the disease’s cause, behavioral strategies are needed, too, if the subject is to manage the disease and live a normal life. The same is just as true of diabetes or near-sightedness or hay fever.
The competing view, that drinking problems reflect sin or some kind of moral deficiency, still has its grip on the popular mind. The predicaments that problem drinkers create for themselves and for others, are bad enough in and of themselves without the added burden of this stigma. My late father insisted until his last lucid day, that it was all a question of “will power.” I remember visiting Mom at home sometime prior to 1990, and finding on the bookshelf different books by Hazen G. Werner, an Ohio Methodist bishop whom my father fervently admired, and finding certain passages that my father had marked wherein the author discounted the disease theory and blamed it all instead on, as it were, sin. I shook my head at the untold, needless damage such words do.
Continue reading Alcoholism basics
* When prayer backfires
One is unlikely to understand this without first reading “From my diary: Learning to pray.”
Bookmarks:
1. Don’t come uninvited.
2. You don’t need an invitation to love people.
3. Name names.
4. Word for word.
5. What you “see” is what you’ll get.
[Conclusion]
I consulted several Wikipedia articles in preparation for this post. All turned out to have been written by people who are hostile toward reports of anything that might involve a spiritual world.
As much as I try to give credit to all points of view, I cannot adopt the same position. My earliest memories are of the conviction that there is more to the world than we perceive with the five senses. Since I began practicing silence, I have seen auras. I have had precognitive visions and telepathic dreams. I was compelled on one occasion to pray for my worst enemy, only to learn later she’d just been through an event I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. In the fall of 1990 I was compelled to pray day after day for a woman I’d not met and had never heard of; only to find, when I moved to another state in January ’91 to attend grad school, she was one of my classmates and had an intense interest in healing prayer, as I also did. To deny these facts, I’d have to lie to myself more than I’m willing to.
There’s still the puzzle of unanswered prayer.
Continue reading * When prayer backfires
* The Twelve Steps
THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Copyright A.A. World Services, Inc.
(Reblogged 04/20/17.)
on air talent, talk show host, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
* Alcoholism basics
(A message I sent family on 26 April 2006.)
Disease, or sin?
To the best of my knowledge, the “disease theory of alcoholism” began with Dr. Robert Silkworth, at the time of St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, coincident with the beginnings of A.A. “Dr. Bob” referred to the condition as an “allergy”; for whatever reason, these folks’ bodies respond to this substance differently than others’ do.
This theory and its ramifications are, today, largely taken for granted throughout the scientific world. Whatever the disease’s cause, behavioral strategies are needed, too, if the subject is to manage the disease and live a normal life. The same is just as true of diabetes or near-sightedness or hay fever.
The competing view, that drinking problems reflect sin or some kind of moral deficiency, still has its grip on the popular mind. The predicaments that problem drinkers create for themselves and for others, are bad enough in and of themselves without the added burden of this stigma. My late father insisted until his last lucid day, that it was all a question of “will power.” I remember visiting Mom at home sometime prior to 1990, and finding on the bookshelf different books by Hazen G. Werner, an Ohio Methodist bishop whom my father fervently admired, and finding certain passages that my father had marked wherein the author discounted the disease theory and blamed it all instead on, as it were, sin. I shook my head at the untold, needless damage such words do.
Continue reading * Alcoholism basics
o Jacob’s Ladder 08/14/13
(Originally published 08/14/13 at Trojan Horse Productions.)
Prayer for myself often takes the form of imagining myself climbing up a ladder out of a pit, the pit being my current circumstances of poverty and homelessness. Getting out at the top represents a return to the normal life of the American mainstream. I didn’t start with a ladder in there, but I decided to add one to symbolize the various structures and tools that others have made available to me — and eliminate the possibility of clawing at loose earth.
Here begins a list of “rungs” on the ladder that I’ve become aware I need to “overcome.” Each one takes effort, exertion, to get over. I will update this list from time to time as I learn of others.
| 1. | Fear of the unknown. See From my diary: Learning to pray. |
| 2. | Jealousy of others who seem to be prospering more quickly than I am. Details here. |
| 3. | Times of despair. I guess, from time to time, they’ll happen. Details here. |
| 4. | Incidents of utter selfishness. Details here. |
| 5. | Moments of unusual hardship and sacrifice. Details here. |
| 6. | Cut loose the losers. Continue reading o Jacob’s Ladder 08/14/13 |
The Homeless Blogger 