Just to take some time to follow up on yesterday’s thoughts. The one concerning the Prayer of St. Francis. The one Bill W. included in the 12&12, as he was writing the thoughts on the Eleventh Step.
Every time I go back to the Eleventh Step in the 12&12 I remember what Bill later wrote years after he had written those thoughts in that book. He said that after he had read what he had written he felt like a beginner. And I have often identified with his words, as he said many would. How right he probably is.
The practice of prayer and meditation is not easy for someone like me. Just as it must have been difficult for him. The discipline required and the effort each and every day to follow through can be pretty tough for some of us. I know it is for me. Like I said yesterday that I had found that I had drifted away from that prayer. Not so much the memory of the thoughts, but the exact wording and the exact meaning.
What had happened of late made me grateful for the reminder I was given by one of our members, who talked about the Prayer. It drove me back, like Bill, to read the Eleventh, particularly that prayer. As I read it I was moved to remember everything. It opened the door to the Second Step for me again. The spiritual way of life I need to offer me the solution I so desperately needed.
This morning I couldn’t avoid opening the book again and studying and saying that prayer. It told me exactly what my thinking needs to be. Not perfect, but do-able, if I will only stop and think about it and then change my way of thinking. In other words, as Bill pointed out, to meditate. My guess is that is what struck Bill, as he read all of this again.
A reminder to me that no matter how long I’m “doing” this program, I will always be far from perfect in any part of it. Not so much a spiritual being as a human being with all my faults available to me each and every day I am sober in this program. A great reminder that about all I am able to do each day is present myself to my Higher Power and turn my sober life over to Him. Then to hope and trust in Him to do for me what it is I cannot do for myself and to make myself available to practice this program.
Anyway I was thinking how calm everything began to become once more. Far from perfect but better. I can only hope, as I find myself stumbling and bumbling my way through this life, that I can remember what it is I need to do each and everyday. To persevere and never quit. To build the hope I find in this way of life and begin to have faith and trust in my Higher Power. And to come to discover a way of loving others. To have the compassion needed to pass what I have been given on to another sick and suffering alcoholic. Not always the new person, as I have discovered in myself and many of those I have come to know along the line.
The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.