Posts Tagged: twelve-step affirmation

“LOVING GOD, MYSELF, AND OTHERS IN AN AS-IS WORLD”

On June 12, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Today, my twelve-step affirmation is as follows:

“Today, by God’s grace, I will do one good thing, do it as well as it deserves to be done, and then move on to the next good thing.  Good things fall under three broad categories:

  1. Good things that express my love and respect for God directly to God.
  2. Good things that express my love and respect toward other people and all of creation.
  3. Good things that express my love and respect toward myself.”

The first and third category are the hardest to understand.  What does God really need?  God seems pretty self-sufficient to me.

However, God might not need anything from me, but he might enjoy some things from me.  It is a beautiful dawning to what promises to be a hot summers day.  I feel that God would enjoy it if I took a walk with God.  So, I will!

But for me, the second category is the easiest to understand, and the most difficult to do.  I like people, as long as they do precisely what I want.  (They almost never do.)  I like creation and reality, as long as creation and reality conform to my fantasies.  (They almost never do.)

Have you ever been to a used car lot, and seen a sticker on a car that read AS IS”?  That means that the car has no warranty.  As the old saying goes, “Ya pays your money, and ya takes your chances!”

All of life, every day and every relationship is “AS IS.”

And God is as God is.  God is abundant and complex, but God is not a smorgasbord.

The serenity prayer is well-known, even beyond twelve-step programs.  However, there is a longer version that is beautifully true, though less well known.  Here it is.  Pray this prayer today, and I’ll try to do the same!

”

God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change…
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.“

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“Internet Disconnection”

On May 8, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

 

 

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

No internet access.  I am too stingy to pay the $7.95 per day for further internet service.

Good!  I’ll discover that I can live without checking my e mail and googling stuff every few minutes.

I am rereading Thoreau’s Walden.   I have serious doubts that Thoreau would be on Face Book.  If Henry David Thoreau were alive today, would he be on line?  I doubt it.  Would Thoreau blog?

Hummmm . . .

Still, here I am journaling on my computer.  Is even that a good idea?

And, of course, my cell phone still works.  I just called my twelve-step sponsor to report and speak my affirmation for the day.

The Delphic Oracle, according to Socrates (according to Plato) had an inscription that read, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Our modern slogan seems to be “The uncommunicated life is not worth living.”  The word “uncommunicated” was not in my computer’s dictionary until I added it.  However, the notion is most certainly in our unofficial collective psyche.

Perhaps my little experiment in living this disconnected life will help me to live out a more meaningfully connected life.  Perhaps it will free me up to live out my affirmation today.  “Today, by God’s grace, I will allow yesterday to be what it is: yesterday.  I will live in the now, choosing to be loved by God, and choosing to love God, other people, and the whole world.”

Perhaps it is in solitude (or, at least, in thoughtful conversation with another or a few others) that we attain something worth sharing, worth communicating.  Maybe, periodic and regular disconnection might help us to be more profoundly connected.

 

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