Maintaining the Gift with Good Conversation

Scribbled on the bottom of the page I asked myself,

“How can you have a relationship without a conversation?”

The page is from the chapter in the 12&12 on Step 11.

Listening to others comment in a step meeting both comforts me that others struggle with prayer and meditation, and convicts me that I can do better connecting with God and seeking His will for my life and the power to carry it out.

Prayer is simply talking to God – meditating is listening, I heard again in the meeting. And we read: when I stop demanding my terms and ordering God about, I see how He guides my life – and in hard times, or easy, I see new lessons for living and have new resources for courage. (The 12 & 12, page 104-105)

A soul who is too busy to pray is busier than God intends, a wise friend told me. It’s been better than any mirror to show me why I mess up.

In my busyness, and subsequent exhaustion, I rush – meditating and praying that borders on Seinfeld’s Yada-Yada, Yada. This isn’t working the 11th step!

God’s will for me is to enjoy Him and the life He has given me, and, with His help, be useful to the people he puts in my path. Meditation and prayer teaches me His mind, and lets me share my heart with Him – both require openness and willingness for me to come into the light of His presence for our little chats. There,

“. . . we can bring new vision, action and grace to bear upon the dark and negative sides of our natures. It is a step in the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God’s help. Yet it is only a step. We will want to go further.” (The 12 & 12, page 98)

The dark and negative sides are no fun. But the Light shines brightest in the darkness! Put your big girl pants on, ask for and take His help! I say I’ve turned my life and will over to God’s care. I understand Him to be Christ the Lord, who died for our sins, and lives to pray for us.

Thank you God for this great Gift. Forgive me for failing to unwrap it, care for it and use it. And thank you for teaching others to pray so I might learn too. Help me to meditate on their thoughts.

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace

• that where there is hatred, I may bring love
• that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness
• that where there is discord, I may bring harmony
• that where there is doubt, I may bring faith
• that where there is despair, I may bring hope
• that where there are shadows, I may bring light
• that where there I sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than be comforted — to understand than to be understood – to love, than be love. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life. Amen. ~ St. Francis of Assisi

$3.00 Worth of God By Wilbur Rees

I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please;

 not enough to explode my soul or disturb my peace —

but enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.

I don’t want enough of God to make me love an enemy;

I want ecstasy, not transformation;

I want the warmth of the womb; not a new birth.

I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.

I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please.

Comments, thoughts, questions . . . .

Thank you for reading!

Love in Christ,

Sober and Grateful