Through the Red Door Blog

In the early days of the Church, when the front door of the parish was painted red it was said to signify sanctuary – that the ground beyond these doors was holy, and anyone who entered through them was safe from harm.

In the lives of many recovering people, it is through these same red doors that sanctuary is found on a daily basis. Initially that sanctuary may not have started in the rooms with high vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows, but in the basements and back rooms of churches where 12-step meetings are held.

This blog was created for recovering people to share the experiences they found walking through those doors of safety, refuge and peace.

 
To submit a entry to the blog, please click here for the details or contact us at info@episcopalrecovery.org.

  • 01/17/2024 8:01 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    At a recent 12-Step meeting the topic was New Year resolutions. As I thought about the topic, I first felt guilty, because I had not made any or even thought about it. But then I remembered all the broken resolutions I have made over the years. What I have learned in my recovery is that I cannot resolve to do anything to change myself. I do not have the will or strength to bring about the desired changes in my life.

    So what, do I just give up making myself a better person, or trying to stop bad behavior?

    My understanding of change comes from 12-Step recovery and scripture. I have learned that most change happens slowly and involves struggle. If I want to change any aspect of my life, I need to follow the principles of the 12 Steps—first surrender and trust God, then a willingness to examine my issue and why I have it, then a confession to God and another person—but there is more. There is a process of becoming willing to finally let it go. And then when I fully realize I do not have the power to bring about this change, I humbly ask God to remove it. That is when God does for me what I could not do for myself.

    This long painful struggle is designed into humanity. When God rescued Israel there was a lengthy process of back and forth between Moses and Pharoah and it was not until there was this long terrible struggle that they were finally set free.

    Joseph had to go through his brothers trying to kill him, and then live as a slave, then as a prisoner for something he did not do. Through this long painful struggle Joseph was used by God to keep his people safe and deliver them from a terrible famine.

    God is at work in our struggles to bring about healing. Change is happening in my life all the time and when I am struggling, I know it is because God is doing a good work in me. I will be better for it on the other side. I just need to be patient and trust.

    After all, our ultimate deliverance came after an exceptionally long wait, then a bloody and painful death and resurrection. Awful but also magnificent.

    Our world is in a struggle right now that requires some momentous change. The change will come I believe, but not until we have gone through the terrible struggle. All good things have come through pain and struggle—but they do always come. I do not like it, but I trust it.

    Blessings to you in the new year as you struggle with the changes you seek in life.

    God’s peace
    Ed T.

  • 01/10/2024 10:32 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Many years ago, I heard Fr. Joe Martin tell the story of a man who was leaving home to go to his evening A.A. meeting. On the way out, his son asked him to play “Catch.” The man said he did not have time as he had to go to an AA Meeting. “Can’t you miss just one meeting?” the son asked. “Miss a meeting? And then get drunk? Is that what you want?” The son relied “it makes no difference, you’re never here anyhow.” Fr. Martin’s response to this story is, “First things first and then Second things first.”

    First things first: understand your disease, go to meetings, read the Big Book, get a sponsor, work the steps, and live the program.

    We’re told to go to ninety meetings in ninety days. We’re told “Go to one hundred and eight meetings in 180 days.” We’re told “If you drank every day, then you need to be at a meeting every day. In other words, get an understanding of this disease into your head. But it doesn’t have to take a year-long absence from one’s family to get this into one’s head.

    As we get into sobriety and the family, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances see that we are serious about our sobriety, then it’s time to put second things first, put family first. Yes, there are those who say if you begin to miss meetings you’ll drink again. That’s not true for the majority of us. I’ve missed a lot of meetings, and it did not cause me to drink. What did happen was this, when I began to go to meetings again, I found myself more relaxed, happier, at peace. There’s something in these meetings that impacts us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially.

    The meetings are not therapy, but they are therapeutic. If I don’t drink for another month, I’ll have forty-five years active in the fellowship, (2/2/24) . That said, I remind the newcomers at the end of a meeting that what all of us have is today and that is based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.

    When I first began attending AA meetings, I attended a lot, and I mean, a lot of meetings, but for all the wrong reasons. I spent over four years white-knuckling it as a dry drunk. That is no way to survive. It certainly wasn’t living. I was a single dad with custody of my thirteen-month- old daughter and was a single dad for ten years. When I was blessed with my spiritual awakening I learned about this disease and did all I could to improve my spiritual condition. I found a Power greater than myself that restored me to sanity. Then I was able to give the name “God” to that Higher Power and begin the processes of cleaning up my life by working steps four through twelve. It was then, I believe, that having had the spiritual awakening, I began to live the program.

    Living the program is how we learn the balancing act of family and other commitments in life. We begin to live mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially and all of this impacts us physically.

    Living the program, practicing the principles in all aspects of my life gives me the freedom to decide when and which meetings to go to. When out of town and in a new environment, a meeting becomes part of that experience.

    By the time the Steps were written, Bill W. and others had done some serious reflection on how they got sober and the balancing act of integrating meetings with the rest of our life’s commitments. It was not either/or, but both/and.

    First things first is a morning “Thank You” to our Higher Power, a cup of coffee and some quiet time to ground ourselves on the gift of today. Second things, getting to work, kids to school, meetings, groceries, car maintenance, and all the other things that may fall into our lap. We create time for the sacred hour of Fellowship in the morning, noon, or late evening.

    A book, written a few years ago, had the title “First, make your bed.” For us in recovery it could be titled “First, talk to your Higher Power.” It is that conversation, or lack of it, that can make a difference to the remainder of the day.

    As we begin this new year, it may be an opportunity to review our values and ask ourselves are we putting first things first, and then are we ready to put second things first.

    Séamus D.

    Seamus is a retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.


  • 01/04/2024 8:01 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    I’m sitting tonight in an assisted living facility writing a paper on my family’s history to be read to a group that gathers to hear papers by its members. For no reason, this thought raced across my mind: “I’d worked the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous for years and I recalled my ups and downs and that I was finally able to surrender to my depth of being and to work the Steps, all of them, one-by-one.”

    This stopped my focus on my paper so I checked my emails and found one from Lucy asking if I could write something for “Red Door … “Yes of course” said I, then the thought, “About what?” … But it really wasn’t too hard to come up with something: acceptance.

    If there is anything to learn about living in assisted living, it is that “acceptance” is the key to serenity. If we don’t take that path, we wilt and crumble—physically, mentally.

    To understand the Program, we had to accept our addictive living, else we’d die. We had to face that reality and twist it into something positive, for yes, I am a sinner. I’m an addict but I saw that our Higher Power was always with us offering a hand of assistance if we but reached out, if we but surrendered our ego-driven ways and reached for something better—a way of life, of love, fellowship, concern for those still suffering, a way for us to check ourselves so we didn’t become so self-impressed that we’d fall victim once again to our demons.

    The Program gives us ways to work through those ups and downs and to correct our behavior. Easy-peasy? …’course not, but we are called to keep at it, to work the Steps each day, to address mistakes and to move on. What a blessing.

    Strange, isn’t it—a simple program for complicated people and it all came from a Higher Power through Bill W and Dr. Bob in that Gatehouse at the Seiberling Estate in Akron, just two drunks talking to one another.

    My take-away? Get to a meeting, work with someone, and whatever happens, keep coming back for as someone said, “Sinners are Welcome.”

    Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati, 1-4-24.


  • 12/28/2023 4:35 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    My family went to my grandparents’ house for Christmas dinner. After they both died, we went to my Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob’s. They lived in the same town as my grandparents and had lots of room. The grownups would eat buffet style in the living room and the kids (I had lots of cousins and 3 sisters) would eat in the basement at the ping pong table.

    Before dinner there would be lots of loud visiting time and what I came to know—lots of drinking—EXCEPT for my Aunt Sally. She would sit quietly in the living room and visit with folks. Often someone would ask: Does Sally have her Tab? (Tab was the precursor to Diet Coke). I remember wondering why so many of my adult relatives wanted to know this. I don’t really know why I always noticed all the attention my relatives had about Aunt Sally’s drink.

    As a young adult I learned that Aunt Sally was an alcoholic. Her disease started when she was young, and her system had a terrible time with it.  She had blackouts and seizures. Apparently, she was too drunk to go to her own mother’s funeral. In the 40’s there was little that could be done but to have her go to a hospital and dry out, which she did repeatedly. I learned all this indirectly through comments made here and there. No one really talked about it.

    By the time I was 10, she was sober. No one in the family talked about it. She never talked about it, but later I found out she had been in AA. I think the family (many of whom I believe were also alcoholics) believed that only Aunt Sally was an alcoholic and that their drinking was normal. My family was a whisky and wine in crystal glasses type of alcoholics. The only thing they did to acknowledge Sally’s drinking and then sobriety was to make sure she had her Tab. I believe she was the only adult at those Christmas dinners who wasn’t drinking heavily.

    Fast forward to when I was 36 years old, drinking daily, and Christmas is coming, and I am falling apart. I was angry, irritable, and very discontent.  My anxiety was out of hand and all I could do was to figure out a way to drink and not have it show. Our elegant Christmas dinner that year was tense, though I think some of the friends who came (by then I lived 300 miles from my family) didn’t think anything was amiss. I was the one though who kept going to the kitchen to get another bottle of wine.

    By the end of January, I knew I had to do something. One of my oldest friends was two years sober and one of my sisters was sober as well. I went to see my sister and she took me to many AA meetings—it was my version of a treatment center. I returned to Seattle, my home, and my life got better and better.

    When Christmas came around again, I wanted to have a big dinner. It was my first sober Christmas. I looked at the crystal wine glasses in the china cabinet and felt sad. What would I do with these goblets now that I didn’t drink? I took my sadness to a meeting and talked about it and shared that I didn’t know what to do—a few people laughed and I didn’t understand why. One woman came up to me after the meeting and said with a smile that she understood but wondered: “Have you ever thought that you could drink some other liquids in those glasses other than wine”? Then I laughed—“no, I never thought of that!”. I was sober! 

    I could have a wonderful Christmas and be honest about my sobriety and I could fill beautiful glasses with juice or something else. I toasted my Aunt Sally, who had long since died, that Christmas with a Diet Coke in a beautiful crystal wine glass and thanked her. Now I understood on some level why I so remembered her drinking her Tab. She was planting a memory that I would need 26 years in my future.  —Libbie S.


  • 12/20/2023 5:45 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Job 11:18 And you will have confidence, because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.

    Over four years ago (this was written in 2008) I lost my job. At first, I was confident this was a momentary setback, that a new and better situation was sure to turn up. After several months of looking without success, and on the verge of losing my unemployment, I was getting scared. I had foolishly failed to significantly adjust my living expenses and my savings were dwindling. Feeling depressed and frustrated, and uncertain what to do next, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days visiting a friend in New York City. What better place to forget my troubles and have a little change of scene. I rode the bus (amazingly cheap transportation!) and slept on my friend’s couch. My troubles, of course, came right along on the trip, and soon the fears returned and, with next to no money to spend, I just wandered around Manhattan. This aimless wandering when I was feeling fearful and anxious was dangerous for me. As a recovering alcoholic there was a real danger, I would suddenly decide a drink would make me feel better, take a turn into some anonymous bar, and lose the sobriety I had worked on for thirteen years. Drinking again would mean a slow and steady descent into a living hell. As I walked down Second Avenue with this self-destructive impulse growing inside of me, I remembered that the national office of The Episcopal Church was at 815 Second Avenue. I figured there must be a chapel in the building somewhere, and I decided to stop there and pray.

    When I entered the chapel there was one other person seated there. I closed my eyes to meditate, and I said a prayer. I continued to pray in silence with my eyes closed, but I was aware that others were entering the place. Then a woman began to play the piano and sing. She was very talented, and I love good music, so I stayed rather than leave. The thought did enter my mind that maybe some service was about to start because by now there were others entering the room. But I was near the door and thought I could exit once things started in earnest. I looked around to see that the chapel was filling with around thirty people, all women.

    It was surely God's hand pushing down on my shoulder that kept me in my seat once they started the prayers for the day. This was no sedate Episcopal Noonday Prayers service but rather a circle of black women swaying, singing, and praying with hands in the air. I’m a child of my church, and I’m generally uncomfortable with extemporaneous and spirit-guided praying, but this group had me spellbound.

    Then one of the women came to me and asked me what had brought me there that day, what was it that was weighing on my mind? The words “I need a job” tumbled out of my mouth. I thought I would faint from the sensation of lightness and release I was feeling.

    The women had me stand in the center of their circle as they surrounded me, placed their hands on my shoulders and head, and prayed that God would give me strength and courage to find my way to new life. I felt like I was swimming in warm, clear water and I wept.

    I don’t remember much about the rest of the service although there was a sermon preached on the verse from Job I read at the start of this story. Afterwards many of the women came up to me and hugged me. Then I realized that they were putting dollars in my shirt pocket!

    I wasn’t actually broke at the time, and I thought I should refuse the money, but it was so freely given that I had to accept it. The last person, the woman who asked me what was troubling me, gave me this small New Testament as she said goodbye. The next day I was on the bus back to Columbus. I renewed my job search, and I was working again within a couple of weeks.

    Life is all about change. Sometimes those changes feel a lot like death, and we simply have to accept that. Trusting in God is not our only option when we walk these valleys full of shadows, but it is the only option I’ve tried that releases me from fear and offers me a new life of abundance. God does not exempt us from enduring life's darker moments, but God does travel with us through those darker times and is there even when we have difficulty finding a Divine Presence. Jesus felt a moment of desperation and fear in the garden before his arrest and trial, and he prayed to God for deliverance. Later Jesus prayed a prayer of abandonment on the cross just before entrusting his spirit to God. He taught us to pray "Thy will be done" and that is how I try to end my prayers now. Practicing resurrection... for me it is the only way to live ...an abundant life.
  • 12/13/2023 7:30 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Ever since I started my life in the 12 steps in the fall of 1984, I've had a sponsor. And I have always had sponsors who are kind and encouraging and patient. Thank goodness I was never told to “take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth” because certainly at the beginning that would have sent me flying out of the room. I had a tough exterior but inside was soft as whipped cream and as fragile as a windowpane. For all my educated vocabulary and posture, I was scared and vulnerable. I would have been crushed by any kind of silencing or we-don’t-need-you-here-ing. But always, my sponsors have been women who can see through any bravado and understand who I am and what I need…acceptance and understanding.

    I started out in Al-Anon and it was there that I learned that people who grow up in alcoholic homes can suffer negative residual effects from that upbringing. In homes beset by chronic illness, as alcoholism is, there’s often a lack of stability, understanding, or encouragement. When a parent is unwell and not able to offer the nurturing that a child needs, a child will often think that they don’t deserve nurturing or stability, understanding, and encouragement. In those early days in Al-Anon, I felt great relief and immense joy to find out that I was not alone. I was not the only one who had an exterior that appeared mature and capable and an interior that was scared and lonely.

    It didn't take me very long to realize that not only did I need Al-Anon but also AA because my own personal substance use was out of control. So, I have done the steps in both Al-Anon and AA over the years and I have talked with my sponsors about character defects. It seemed pretty harsh and not very helpful to call parts of myself defective. My first sponsor told me that her understanding of character defects was that they were “defense mechanisms that you've outgrown.” I decided to do a little research on what defense mechanisms are. In layman's terms because I'm not a psychologist, a defense mechanism is an unconscious way people cope with stuff that they can't acknowledge or handle because it hurts too much to face what’s going on.

    One of the biggest ones that I used (and probably still use, even in recovery) is the defense mechanism of denial. I can deny reality by just saying something is not as bad as it is, whether it’s my personal behavior or a situation that I'm dealing with or the way I have been treated.

    There are other defense mechanisms, such as repression (not remembering events or feelings) and projection (saying someone else is doing the mean things that you’re actually doing,) but as we grow spiritually in the program, as we grow to love ourselves and accept ourselves as we really are,  we don’t have to defend ourselves against reality. We can cope with “life on life’s terms.”

    In recovery, we begin to accept all of ourselves—the strong parts and the weak parts, the mature and the childish, the brave and the scared. That's what Steps Six and Seven are really all about. They’re about asking God to bring to consciousness these unconscious automatic behaviors and attitudes so that with our sober and serene brains we can deal with reality.

    Luckily, the reality we have to deal with is that we are beloved children of God. No matter what we were told by someone who was ill, we are not useless, worthless, or unwanted. We are beloved children of God. The defense mechanisms that we developed before we had maturity, sobriety, serenity, and compassion are behaviors and attitudes that we can let go of now because we're safe.


  • 12/07/2023 5:18 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    From the beginning, communication in A.A., has been no ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. Because of our kinship in suffering, and because our common means of deliverance are effective for ourselves, only when constantly carried to others, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.* I won’t go so far as to say that when I came into A.A., I didn’t have a heart. I did. However, it was a selfish and self-centered heart that heard and responded to what made me feel good. I enjoyed the Fellowship, and, at some level, I wanted what those in the Fellowship had, but there was a wall between me and them; there was a blockage between my head and my heart, and I was unaware of it.

    I was much more comfortable in my head. I wanted to learn about the disease of alcoholism. I wanted to learn about addiction; about the spirituality of the program; the history of A.A. and especially the founders. If I knew all that then I might not need A.A.

    The problem was that the more I learned the more convinced I was that I had this disease of which I was in denial even though I had confessed to my boss “I think I have a drinking problem.” And., a few months later, stated “I think I need to go to treatment.” That was the day he was planning on doing an intervention.

    The helpful information was useful. Now I could talk about the disease with a sense of authority. I could talk about Bill W. and Dr. Bob, and (mis)quote them. I told sufficient of my story to feel I belonged and yet, I did not feel connected to the story I was telling. It was not me as I thought I knew me. I was not carrying a message or the message to another alcoholic. I was sharing at a superficial level. There was no way I could connect with people who had been in jail, had multiple DUIs, and many other issues related to their abuse of alcohol.

    After one noon meeting, I asked the chairperson, “Why is John asked to come here so often and tell his story. I practically know it by heart. Is this his way of getting out of jail for a couple of hours once a week?” His response was, “What is your problem with John?” I quicky responded that John was an emotional wreck. That led to an “intervention” of sorts. Over coffee, this person let me know that, from his listening to me, he concluded that I was more locked up within myself than John was in Jail, and that I wouldn’t recognize a feeling if it sat on my lap.

    I was angry. I felt insulted. How dare this individual tell me I was locked up inside myself and that I wouldn’t know a feeling if it sat on my lap. I knew however, he was telling the truth that I did not want to face. He essentially told me what the therapist had told me to do in treatment, take the books you are reading and apply them to myself.

    I preferred to think of myself as being different. I had not lost a job, a vehicle, a roof over my head. Now, as I read the books, I began to identify emotions that I had buried for so long. Feelings of loneliness; emptiness, low self-esteem, resentments, jealousy, self-pity, and more. Now, instead of listening at the meeting to catch those phrases that said “you don’t belong here” I was hearing statements with which I could identify. “That sounds like me,” “I know how that feels.” Now I was truly listening to all that was being shared. I was listening with my heart.

    Now I had a “kinship in suffering.” I knew how these individuals felt and, even though we had different jobs, and different consequences, the emotions matched—loneliness is loneliness, low self-esteem is LSW, self-loathing is self-loathing no matter where we are on the socioeconomic ladder or the place of employment.

    These men and women whom I wanted to think were so different from me, were the ones who helped me connect the dots together as they carried the message to me, and it was not an intellectual journey. It was the language of the heart that, once I learned it, I felt different, I felt alive, I did not need alcohol of any kind to be who I am and who I want to be. The language of the heart connects us to one another as Dr. Bob said of Bill W” He spoke my language.”

    *As BILL SEES IT. 195.

  • 11/15/2023 6:30 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    My daughter was two when I got sober. I went away for a week to visit my sister who was sober, and she took me to many meetings. It was my ‘treatment center’. Those first six months were not terrible, but I knew I had to get to meetings. A few meetings had childcare, and my then husband watched her often. I went to as many meetings as I could during the day when she was in daycare. I was working really hard to connect with the program. It never occurred to me that my daughter had any awareness of something being different. I believed I had been able to be just as attentive and loving as I had ever been. I was, what most people called a high bottom drunk, so I also believed that my drinking had never really affected her.

    One day when she was three, she was playing and got out the play purse that she had. She asked me if I knew where her ‘keys’ were. She had a set of old keys that we had given her so she could pretend to lock the door or drive a car. She went to the closet where her coats hung on hooks low enough for her to get to them. She got out a coat, sort of put in on (it may have been upside down) and marched out of the kitchen/playroom towards the front door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I’m going to a meeting,” she said brightly. I chuckled and was so surprised to hear her say that. I had no idea that she tracked my going to meetings. She couldn’t get out the front door, so I stayed in the kitchen making dinner. I could hear her in the living room talking but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After ten minutes or so, she marched into the kitchen and said: “Oh, I feel so much better!”. She knew! She knew that when I got home from a meeting, that I felt better and was BETTER. She knew I was in a better mood and perhaps kinder and more loving with her. She KNEW!

    Years later at a meeting, I told this story after we were reading from The Family Afterwards in the Big Book. In that moment I realized that my behavior BEFORE I got sober had affected her and I was clueless. I felt some shame but also knew that my behavior changed rather quickly after I got sober, enough for her to recognize that Mommy felt better and that something called ‘meetings’ helped, and it helped her as well. Meetings make all the difference!

  • 11/01/2023 6:58 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    In Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill wrote: “Almost without exception Alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and the people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn’t quiet belong.”

    It took me a while to acknowledge the depth of loneliness I experienced throughout my life. I was in denial of it because I had to be, after I got to college, the center of much of what was going on. For this reason, for the most part, I thought I was integrating really well with my fellow students. But I wasn’t.

    When I got into sobriety and truly began to work the steps and live the program, I realized just how lonely my life had been. As I reviewed my life I can remember being with local boys and girls at a football game, enjoying the game, but not really part of the group.

    I’ll admit, my mother kept a tight leash, and a short one, on me throughout my teenage years. Looking back on it, she had a good right to do what she did. She knew me better than I knew myself.

    When I was in seminary, right after Vatican II, it was like I had escaped something. I began to drink—most of my drinking was blackout. I was over involved in the city of Dublin in all kinds of charitable works, youth clubs, etc. All of this was wonderful. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I wasn’t there, I was missing in action. My “self” was hiding deep inside of me.

    I participated in class in the morning, taught in a local high school in the afternoon, attended meetings, studied, and drank. At that time, I drank with friends who lived nearby. I did not drink on my own because I believed that’s how one becomes an alcoholic.

    My sense of loneliness hit me the night of my thirtieth birthday. A priest friend and I pub-crawled across San Francisco all night. I don’t remember much of that day and night, but I do remember at one point crying and telling him that I was a failure, I was not married, had no children, and didn’t own my own home. I felt miserable, alone, and lonely. Not only had I lost appreciation for my vocation as a priest but also I was isolated and isolating emotionally. My awareness of that caused me to drink more instead of getting help.

    My Higher Power pushed me into my boss’s office one Friday afternoon and ruined a weekend of blackout drinking (a whole other story). Dutifully I went into treatment followed by lots of therapy and aftercare. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had this glass wall around me, and knew enough of the counseling language to “put on a good show” except for those who saw through me, and I felt uncomfortable in their company.

    My first four years of the Fellowship were those of a dry-drunk. That was even more miserable but, fortunately, going to lots of AA meetings (for show), my employment as a counselor, leadership in a couple of organizations, and being a single dad, kept me busy. Finally, doing an honest step four and five, and making amends, opened my eyes to my behavior in my blackout drinking. I had enough glimpses into those blackouts—which I thought were signs of being tired—that helped me come to grips with my past. I needed people. I used people. I was addicted to being busy in case I’d have to be alone with myself.

    My Higher Power kicked me again and this time I laughed. I had just declared bankruptcy, went home, and realized I had one thing no one could take from me—I was sober. I laughed, and I laughed. That was the beginning of my journey to peace and serenity through the program of honesty, not baloney.

    Today, I am responsible for my emotional life. I enjoy meetings whether I share or just listen. I can come early, stay afterward, or leave. I have permission to be who I am. I have learned to like my Self.

     “Life takes on a new meaning in AA.” Bill writes. “To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have hosts of friends—this is an experience not to be missed.” That’s for sure.

    I became alive. The Promises were fulfilled. Loneliness vanished and, while not perfect, I have continued to enjoy a wonder full life in my own company and with that of others.

    Séamus D.
    Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

  • 10/25/2023 7:33 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Last week, Libbie S told us of her experiences finding AA and its warmth, fellowship, and support at meetings across the land she encountered in her many travels. I had the same experience, only mine took place when my wife and I had to move to an assisted living facility.  When we were deciding on the move to our new home, I asked if an AA group met regularly there but, alas, there was no such regular meeting. Later, after we moved in, we were socializing before dinner with a large group when someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder, I looked. Someone had placed an AA coin on my shoulder and disappeared. Grabbing the coin, I looked around and across the room and spotted a smiling vigorously waving gentleman. From that moment, every time our paths crossed each day, we ‘held” an AA meeting. What joy we experienced.

    The Program brought us a release from our addiction, but it also brought us a way to live life with serenity, a way to reach out when the road suddenly takes an unpleasant turn. Oh, I suppose there are others like us living here perhaps still walking the path of the addict, but I now know the Program reminds us to accept people as they are with the joys of life itself.

    That smiling face across the room was David D. During the year and a half we were both residents of Traditions of Lebanon, the time we spent focused on laughing, verbally poking each other, tracing our own paths to and into and now living with the Program, and the self-inflicted messes of our Country. As his wife continued her decline, we spent time sharing our personal feelings. When he left, he gave me a couple of “AA books” I did not have, including “As Bill Sees it.” But what made the gift even more meaningful and personal was the fact that this was the book he carried when he first came to the Program and carried it to those early meetings. But the wonderfulness of it all is that he had recorded in that book statements made by the “old-timers,” which as you probably will recall were usually uttered in a stolid voice. The sayings he noted in the book are ones which struck a note with him as something to remember. Apart from family gifts, it’s about as personal a gift as I have received.

    …………………

    With this meditation, I bid Red Door adieu. I’ve written enough. That door of red is always open so please join in carrying the good news of the Program’s easier softer way of dealing with our addiction.

    Jim A. St. X Noon.