Читать книгу Spiritual Awakenings II - Группа авторов - Страница 9

Alcoholics may be granted, as we are told in our literature, not a cure, but a temporary reprieve, contingent on our spiritual condition.

Funny about that word “reprieve.” Official definitions range from an offhand “to give relief for a time” to the more chilling “a temporary suspension of the execution of a sentence, esp. of death.”

A death sentence. This is always a shock to read, yet all of us who have suffered, who have seen others die at the hands of our rapacious creditor, know how dangerous it is to shrink from that reality—our reality. We are spared daily, however, given twenty-four hours worth of grace, most often by doing a few significant things and joining others at our simple gatherings.

These are stories of power only gained by acknowledging our powerlessness. “I felt myself move with a new power, courage, and faith that, by the grace of God, I have acquired as a result of working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,” says one alcoholic, as she finds the courage to make financial amends to the government. Here’s a man on the run, twelfth-stepped by a cab driver, another who found his wife in AA on Thanksgiving, another who only started drinking when he lost his wife, and a woman who drank to celebrate her decision to go with “AA all the way!”

Here’s an inmate who woke up from drinking shaving lotion to cry, “Lord God, if you are there, take this life of mine and run it.” Here’s a woman who, after twelve years of sobriety, is still looking outside of herself for a reward. “Meditation has become a daily gift of self-love,” a former inmate reports. And more than one of us has found great cyber-fellowship: “The greetings and cheerfulness on the screen made me feel safe,” one young girl says.

Enjoy these stories of spiritual reprieve, as varied, colorful—and powerful—as what takes place in our precious “rooms of AA.”