Episode 184 -- January 17, 2022

Meditation Monday: Living Means Changing

The selections for this Meditation Monday are entries for the third week of January from three enduring recovery resources: Each Day a New Beginning, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, and Easy Does It. These brief meditations each speak to the theme of change and transformation as characteristics of a well-lived life. In recovery we can embrace whatever comes our way, look the world in the face without shame, and step into each day with hope and courage.

Each Day a New Beginning

One cannot have wisdom without living life.
— Dorothy McCall

Living life means responding, wholly, to our joys and our pitfalls. It means not avoiding the experiences or activities that we fear we can't handle. Only through our survival of them do we come to know who we really are; we come to understand the strength available to us at every moment. And that is wisdom.

When we approach life tentatively, we reap only a portion of its gifts. It's like seeing a black-and-white photograph of a beautiful flower. Our lives are in color, but we must have courage to let the colors emerge, to feel them, absorb them, be changed by them. Within our depths, we find our true selves. The complexities of life teach us wisdom. And becoming wise eases the many pitfalls in our path.

Living life is much more than just being alive.
I can choose to jump in with both feet.
Wisdom awaits me in the depths.

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

AA Thought for the Day
In AA we're all through with lying, hangovers, remorse, and wasting money. When we were drinking, we were only half alive. Now that we're trying to live decent, honest, unselfish lives, we're really alive. Life has a new meaning for us, so that we can really enjoy it. We feel that we're some use in the world. We're on the right side of the fence, instead of on the wrong side. We can look the world in the face instead of hiding in alleys. We come into AA to get sober and if we stay long enough, we learn a new way of living. Am I convinced that no matter how much fun I got out of drinking, that life never was as good as the life I can build in AA?

Meditation for the Day
I want to be at one with the Divine Spirit of the universe. I will set my deepest affections on things spiritual not on things material. As we think, so we are. So I will think of and desire that which will help, not hinder, my spiritual growth. I will try to be at one with God. No human aspiration can reach higher than this.

Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may think love, and love will surround me. I pray that I may think health, and health will come to me.

Easy Does It

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
— Joan Baez

Our life in recovery brings us a new attitude toward change. We remember the heartbreaking battles we fought as we resisted each new opportunity to change. We held on to old habit patterns even if they produced great pain in our lives. Somehow we found what we thought was a safe place in our addiction and our hopeless condition.

Our recovery has opened our eyes to a new world. We know deep in our hearts that our Higher Power wants only good things for us. We understand that change is to be welcomed like each new season. Our program teaches us that the unknown is not to be cursed, that God is revealed to us at such times. We come to trust our recovery.

I know that times of trouble will be followed by times of calm. I now welcome the changes that come into my life as new opportunities.

Hazelden meditation books offer a brief reading for every day of the year. Today's selection from Each Day a New Beginning is from January 22, and the meditations from Twenty-Four Hours a Day and Easy Does It are both from January 20.

About the Author:
Each Day a New Beginning was written by Karen Casey
Twenty-Four Hours a Day was written by Richmond Walker
Twenty-Four Hours a Day It was written anonymously

Each Day a New Beginning © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation
Twenty-Four Hours a Day © 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
Twenty-Four Hours a Day © 1982, 1990 by Anonymous
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