Talking. There’s nothing like it to clarify and cleanse our minds. To open the mind to the spiritual. An old friend of mine once said, the alcoholic lives to talk and talks to live.
Today an old friend of mine drove up here and visited with me for a few hours. And what did we do? We talked and talked and talked. We talked about the program, we talked about God, we talked about the spiritual life, we talked about the 10th Step, we talked about our character defects and our assets. If I were to sum it up, it was really a prayer and meditation.
To me it was a lesson in how to practice the 1st Tradition. About the We of the program and that we can’t stay sober by ourselves. In fact, we did talk about the Traditions and what they mean to us. What our study of them has opened us up to and how they are applied to the groups and ourselves personally.
Practicing these principles in all of our affairs came, when we were talking about living with others on a daily basis. That brought up a lot of the problems we have in trying to practice what we so often preach. Or, as someone once said, preaching what we practice. There’s a big difference.
Of course we talked about the old days, back when we each came in and all the old timers we knew back then. Talking about old friends we rarely see, but with whom we stay in contact.
All in all, it was about sobriety and sober living. It made both of us grateful for having found this program and our getting sober and being able to stay sober.