Got a call this weekend from a woman, who asked if she could pick me up and take me to a meeting. I agreed. So, she came today and we went to a meeting together. I’ve known her for pretty much all the time I’ve been back up here. About a dozen years. She came in around the middle seventies. It was quite a ride and we spent time talking after the meeting at lunch. We talked a lot about the early days…or daze; whatever the case may be.
A lot of it centered around the spiritual awakening and the conscious contact. What it was like for each of us to come to this program and to come to. We both agreed that the awareness of the fatal nature of this disease was an important factor in our recovery. It was the central incentive to the need to stop drinking and to find a way to do this.
For both of us it was, we agreed, like it was at the beginning.&nbs!
p; We talked about the program and what it meant for each of us. It was like it was, when we both rode around to meetings with a car full of members and everybody talking about one thing; the program. The thrill of being free from alcohol. The freedom we all experienced initially. The freedom we continue to experience after all these years.
We talked about what it must have been like for Bill and Bob in those early days of their recovery and the writing of the Big Book and the discovery of how it worked. The need, as it happened with Ebby, having had a spiritual awakening to pass it on to someone else, who needed it, as Bill did. And the need Bill had to pass it on, after his awakening, to Bob, after his initial lack of success. And Bob, realizing that it was necessary to pass it on to a third person. And how each of us, after our own awakening, desire to pass it on to others.
How important this process is for each of us individually, to pause an reflect on what has happened to each of us over the years. To go back and remember what it was that brought us here. Not just reflect in a vacuum, but to take it to someone else and hear their own experiences on this subject. The mirror we hold up to each other and to see our own reflection. The renewal of the enthusiasm for that which saved our lives and restored us to what we always hoped to be.
None of this was a lamentation of what seemingly was lost over the passage of time, but a renewal of hope for what is and maybe what will become. Because we talked about how we’ve changed and how we are able, as a result, to handle the changes we’ve witnessed over the years. The importance of prayer and meditation. The importance of applying spiritual principles to all of our affairs, including what we witness ! as “changes” in the personality of the meetings. How do we deal with the “personalities” we see and hear. As Fern once said, AA doesn’t change, but the people do.
How refreshing. I felt refreshed.
Ned