Discussion Meeting Topics

1. Acceptance
2. Accepting My Alcoholism
3. Act As If
4. Action
5. Addictive Personality
6. Adversity
7. Agnostics (We Agnostics)
8. Amends Beyond “I’m Sorry”
9. Amends, Making Hard Amends
10. Anger
11. Anniversaries
12. Anonymity
13. Asking for Help
14. Attitude

Gace of God

It’s been proved that we alcoholics can’t get sober by our willpower. We’ve failed again and again. Therefore I believe there must be a Higher Power, which helps me. I think of that power as the grace of God. And I pray to God every morning for the strength to stay sober today. I know that Power is there because it never fails to help me. Do I believe that A.A. works through the grace of God?

Meditation for the Day
Once I am “born of the spirit,” that is my life’s breath. Within me is the life of life, so that I can never perish. The life that down the ages has kept God’s children through peril, adversity, and sorrow. I must try never to doubt or worry, but follow where the life of the spirit leads. How often, when little I know it, God goes before me to prepare the way, to soften a heart, or to overrule a resentment. As the life of the spirit grows, natural wants become less important.

Prayer for the Day
I pray that my life may become centered in God more than in self. I pray that my will may be directed towards doing His will.

From Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Spot-Checking

As Bill Sees It   p. 132

A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of disturbances can be of
very great help in quieting stormy emotions. Today's spot check
finds its chief application to situations which arise in each day's
march. The consideration of long-standing difficulties had better be
postponed, when possible, to times deliberately set aside for that
purpose.

The quick inventory is aimed at our daily ups and downs, especially
those where people or new events throw us off balance and tempt us
to make mistakes.

12 & 12, pp. 90-91

Lighting The Dark Past

Cling to the thought that, in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have- the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert misery and death for them.

Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 124

No longer is my past an autobiography; it is a reference book to be taken down, opened and shared. Today as I report for duty, the most wonderful picture comes through. For, though this day be dark-as some days must be- the stars will shine even brighter later. My witness that they do shine will be called for in the very near future. All my past will this day be a part of me, because it is the key, not the lock.

© Alcoholics Anonymous World Services

                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Traditions Checklist

These questions were originally published in the AA Grapevine in conjunction with a series on the Twelve Traditions that began in November 1969 and ran through September 1971. While they were originally intended primarily for individual use, many AA groups have since used them as a basis for wider discussion.

Copyright © The A.A. Grapevine, Inc.

Practice These Principles . . .

Tradition One: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon AA unity.

• Am I in my group a healing, mending, integrating person, or am I divisive? What about gossip and taking other member's inventories?
• Am I a peacemaker? Or do I, with pious preludes such as “just for the sake of discussion,” plunge into argument?
• Am I gentle with those who rub me the wrong way, or am I abrasive?
• Do I make competitive AA remarks, such as comparing one group with another or contrasting AA in one place with AA in another?
• Do I put down some AA activities as if I were superior for not participating in this or that aspect of AA?
• Am I informed about AA as a whole? Do I support, in every way I can, AA as a whole, or just the parts I understand and approve of?
• Am I as considerate of AA members as I want them to be of me?
• Do I spout platitudes about love while indulging in and secretly justifying behavior that bristles with hostility?
• Do I go to enough AA meetings or read enough AA literature to really keep in touch?
• Do I share with AA all of me, the bad and the good, accepting as well as giving the help of the fellowship?

Thought for the Day May 1st

The A.A. program is one of charity because the real meaning of the word charity is to care enough about other people to really want to help them. To get the full benefit of the program, we must try to help other alcoholics. We may try to help some body and think we have failed, but the seed we have planted may bear fruit some time. We never know the results even a word of ours might have. But the main thing is to have charity for others, a real desire to help them, whether we succeed or not. Do I have real charity?

Meditation for the Day

All material things, the universe, the world, even our bodies, may be Eternal Thought expressed in time and space. The more the physicists and astronomers reduce matter; the more it becomes a mathematical formula, which is thought. In the final analysis, matter is thought. When Eternal Thought expresses itself within the framework of space and time, it becomes matter. Our thoughts, within the box of space and time, cannot know anything firsthand, except material things. But we can deduce that outside the box of space and time is Eternal Thought, which we can call God.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may be a true expression of Eternal Thought. I pray that God's thoughts may work through my thoughts.

Insight is cheap.

For years we kept ourselves in a split condition: With one part of our minds we looked at ourselves and said, "I do some self-destructive things because I don't believe I deserve love." When we became involved with unsuitable people or abused our bodies, we said, "I am punishing myself - I am expecting too much - I neglect my own needs."

We may see clearly how and why we get in our own way. But unless we have faith in a power greater than ourselves, we won't step aside. We won't let go. We'll do the same thing and "understand" ourselves in the same ways. We may even use our "insight" to keep ourselves stuck - to protect ourselves from the risk of change.