AA Thoughts For Today - August

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AA Thought for the Day

August 19

Progress
"Day by day, we try to move a little toward God's perfection.
So we need not be consumed by maudlin guilt for failure to achieve
His likeness and image by Thursday next. Progress is our aim, and
His perfection is the beacon, light-years away, that draws us on."
- As Bill Sees It, p. 15

Thought to Ponder
Spiritual progress isn't what gets us sober, it's what keeps us sober.

AA-related 'Alconym'
K I S S = Keeping It Simple, Spiritually.

~*~A.A. Thoughts For The Day~*~

Progress
"Many of us exclaimed,
'What an order! I can't go through with it.'
Do not be discouraged.
No one among us has been able to maintain
anything like perfect adherence to these principles.
We are not saints.
The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress.
We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection."
1976AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60

Thought to Consider . . .
Progress always involves risk.
You can't steal second base with your foot on first.

*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
S T E P S = Solutions To Every Problem in Sobriety

*~*~*~*~*^Just For Today!^*~*~*~*~*--

Things We Dreamed
Tradition Six: An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside
enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Here are some of the things we dreamed. Hospitals didn't like alcoholics, so we thought we'd build a hospital chain of
our own. People needed to be told what alcoholism was, so we'd educate the public, even rewrite school and medical
textbooks. We'd gather up derelicts from skid rows, sort out those who could get well, and make it possible for the rest
to earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantined confinement. Maybe these places would make large sums of money to
carry on our other good works. We seriously thought of rewriting the laws of the land, and having it declared that
alcoholics are sick people. No more would they be jailed; judges would parole them in our custody. We'd spill AA into
the dark regions of dope addiction and criminality. We'd form groups of depressive and paranoid folks; the deeper the
neurosis, the better we'd like it. It stood to reason that if alcoholism could be licked, so could any problem.
1981, AAWS, Inc., Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 155-156

*~*~*~*~*^ Grapevine Quote ^*~*~*~*~*

"What I have learned in the past twelve years is that my relationship with God and my spiritual practice is the only
answer, even when I'm not sure of the question."
North Hollywood, California, September 2005
"Where's My Reward?"
Spiritual Awakenings II

*~*~*~*~*^ Big Book & Twelve N' Twelve Quotes of the Day ^*~*~*~*~*

"The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, More About Alcoholism, Page 30~

"Perhaps there is a better way--we think so. For we are now on a
different basis; the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We
trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the
world to play the role He assigns. Just to the extent that we do as
we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 68~

"Our liquor was but a symptom."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 64~

"Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man,
woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured
by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form
or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and
miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as
old as man himself."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, We Agnostics, pg. 55~

“We relax and take it easy.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous p. 86

“It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend says.”
-Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions p. 100

Misc. AA Literature - Quote

Everyone must agree that we A.A.'s are unbelievably fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so much;
fortunate that we can know, understand, and love each other so supremely well.
These attributes and virtues are scarcely of the earned variety. Indeed, most of us are well aware that these are rare
gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a common suffering and a common deliverance by the grace of God.
Thereby we are privileged to communicate with each other to a degree and in a manner not very often surpassed
among our nonalcoholic friends in the world around us.
'I used to be ashamed of my condition and so didn't talk about it. But nowadays I freely confess I am a depressive, and
this has attracted other depressives to me. Working with them has helped a great deal.

Prayer for the Day: God, I'm tired of what I was, and how I was. I've thought real hard on this, and I've prayed too. I'm ready to live a new kind of life, a life for You. I know now more than ever that I need your help in this and all things and I'm asking for it with an open heart. Take away all of my defects, and replace them with your love and strength. Fill my heart with the desire to serve only You. Thy will be done. Amen.