Daily Reflections: A Book of Reflections by A.A. Members for A.A. Members

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At home or at work, though, it can be a different story. It is in situations arising in both of those areas that the little day-to-day frustrations are most evident, and where it can be tough to smile or reach out with a kind word or an attentive ear. It’s outside of the A.A. rooms that I face the real test of the effectiveness of my walk through A.A.’s Twelve Steps. JANUARY 5 Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Then we have of course Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life by Joe C. which was published in early 2013. We (my girlfriend and I) have been using various readers for a few years, and we were grateful when we found Joe’s book. This truly is a fact in my life today, and a real miracle. I always believed in God, but could never put that belief meaningfully into my life. Today, because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I now trust and rely on God, as I understand Him; I am sober today because of that! Learning to trust and rely on God was something I could never have done alone. I now believe in miracles because I am one! JANUARY 2

AA daily reflections are thoughtful reminders that accompany every day in the calendar year to guide and inspire people in recovery. They also serve to act as part of a routine so members can reflect on their progress and how much work they still have to do. The texts are taken primarily from Alcoholics Anonymous literature, but they can come from other sources. They are also usually accompanied by a member’s personal reflection on that passage. What Are The Alcoholics Anonymous Daily Reflections?Over the decades, several genuine efforts were made to have such a pamphlet approved and published by the General Service Conference. They all failed. Here’s a little theory I will be developing in future writings. It has to do with the relationship between AA fundamentalism and Big Book sales. If you have been sober since 1985, AA was fifty years old, always growing and the Big Book was everywhere. Bob P and Barry L both spoke at the convention in Montreal; both had walked shoulder to shoulder with Bill W. But when Bill died the Big Book hadn’t yet sold one million copies. It would not be until the Big Book’s 34th anniversary (1973) that it sold one million. Then five years later (1978), two million and in Montreal we cooed at the three-millionth book being presented in The Olympic Stadium. It took 34 years to sell one million and now AA sells one million per year. One relevant finding in these studies is that, compared with different levels of participation in the AA program, the more intense and structured programs (like those using AA quotes) were found to produce better results than those who only participated in meetings and nothing else.

Once I became sober, I began to see how wasteful my life had been and I experienced overwhelming guilt and feelings of regret. The program’s Fourth and Fifth Steps assisted me enormously in healing those troubling regrets. I learned that my self-centeredness and dishonesty stemmed largely from my drinking and that I drank because I was an alcoholic. Now I see how even my most distasteful past experiences can turn to gold because, as a sober alcoholic, I can share them to help my fellow alcoholics, particularly newcomers. Sober for several years in A.A., I no longer regret the past; I am simply grateful to be conscious of God’s love and of the help I can give to others in the Fellowship. JANUARY 15 I am not so envious of other people, nor am I so jealous of other people’s possessions and talents. When I was drinking, I was secretly full of jealousy and envy of those people who could drink normally, who had the love and respect of their families, who lived a normal life and were accepted as equals by their friends. I pretended to myself that I was as good as they were, but I knew it wasn’t so. Now I don’t have to be envious any more. I try not to want what I don’t deserve. I’m content to live with what I have earned by my efforts to live the right way. More power to those who have what I have not.Prior to its writing, AA had asked for article or comments from the membership. Its purpose seemed to me to be to supplant a 24 Hour A Day book published by Hazelden that had widespread use in AA and that was even more heavily Christian in nature. My soul is restless till it finds its rest in Thee.” A river flows on, until it loses itself in the sea. Our spirits long for rest in the Spirit of God. We yearn to realize a peace, a rest, a satisfaction that we have never found in the world or its pursuits. Some are not conscious of their need, and shut down the doors of their spirits against the spirit of God. They are unable to have true peace. The article is about AA’s Daily Reflections book. I care very little about this publication, AND I agree with life-j’s own assessment: All in all, the book is offensive. All the more since it was not put together in the 1930s or 40s, but in more modern times. Offensive in light of the requests non-believers have made for material to support our recovery better, starting more than a decade before publication of this book. Not possible, apparently. But more of this religious stuff? No problem, it seems. Hopefully the times will be changing.

AA-approved literature is available in several formats and languages and is often distributed to participating chapters worldwide. Newcomers can ask their AA sponsors about it or find them either online or in hard copy versions at local bookstores, meetings, or institutional settings. Take May 19, “Giving Without Strings”. A bit naïve like much in this book is, but otherwise much in tune with the strong core aspects of the program – until they throw in “my life is full of a loving god of my understanding…” – a piece which could just as well have been left out, and the reflection would have said exactly the same with respect to its applicability to the real world. Anyway, I will try to support this in the following. I eventually got statistical, though it took a couple of hours, and I divided the daily entries into 3 groups. I did not single out the perhaps 50 entries which were about the traditions, and those were more likely to be of a secular nature: I’ve used over 30 daily reflection books over the years & a few years ago when I started to go through the AA Daily Reflections book. I found it to be a little on the weak side compared to many other ones I’ve worked with. I didn’t find it worth my time so I moved on to another one. I asked around about it & was told by a friend at GSO that when they were putting together the book & asking for submissions to be included from members of the fellowship, they didn’t get much of a response. The normal editing process for a book like this would be that they get more submissions than they need & then they exclude the weaker ones & include the better ones. In this case they didn’t do that because they didn’t have more than needed, they just had about 365 of them so they just included them all, whether they were inspirational/profound or not. That explains why my experience with the book is that it’s not something I would recommend to my Sponsees.I credit this book with much of the fundamentalism that has taken root since its publication. Many places where I find myself in meetings it is read at the beginning, and its overwhelmingly god-laden material sets the tone for the whole meeting. I even sometimes go to a Living Sober meeting where the first half, or more, is taken up with discussing the daily reflection, as are all the other meetings there during the week. Results in an awful lot of god talk before we can get to the Living Sober part. And then there is this article on attempts to get AA literature for agnostics and atheist in AA: An AA Pamphlet for Agnostics: The 1980s. The simple truth is, whether Banting and Best, Stabler and Biletnikoff or Wilson and Smith, none of them knew for sure how or why together, they were greater than the sum of their parts.

This last year we used Forgiving & Moving On by Tian Dayton. We weren’t particularly happy with it, though it did help us look at how forgiveness is every bit as important as making amends. Still too much god stuff, though not as bad as the Daily Reflections, so it got us through this last year’s mornings. For the new year so far we don’t have anything. So for myself, and for all of us I would like to ask all of you to tell about your favorite daily readers, it would be a good resource for us to have a list of them. The DR Text Is Meant to Act as a Complement to the “Big Book,” as It Focuses on Other Areas of Recovery Like: I live in the middle of the mid-American, red-stated heartland, aka Trumplandia, surrounded mostly by farmers and folks who supply farmers with what they need to grow corn and soybeans. Except for one secular AA meeting, I attend a couple of mainstream, Christian-oriented meetings, where the Daily Reflection is always read.Most traditional AA members today ignore, or do not know about, how radically Bill Wilson especially, but even Dr. Bob, changed before they died during the later years of their recovery, which can be seen in the article Relevant Quotes for Secular AA that is here on AA Agnostica. Recently I marked 30 years as a sober atheist member of AA. And locally our Freethinkers Meeting of AA will celebrate our first anniversary on the first Monday in February.