SerenitySeekers

American Minute with Bill Federer  July 22

“A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on,” wrote poet Carl Sandburg, who died JULY 22, 1967. A son of Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad, Sandburg left school after 8th grade, borrowed his father’s railroad pass and traveled as a hobo. He volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran’s bill. Carl Sandburg wrote children’s fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag. In 1926, he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln’s birthday. In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote:  “All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel…It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine…I might paraphrase: ‘If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.’”

 Carl Sandburg also wrote: “I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair…I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.”

NACR Daily Meditation for Wednesday, Jul 21, 2010

 Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.  Isaiah 40:31

 Hope gives us strength. We need strength for the journey of recovery. We need strength to make the changes that need to be made — and strength to grieve the losses which come with change. We need strength to keep on keeping on. Recovery requires a great deal of physical, emotional and spiritual strength. We draw that strength day-to-day from hope.

 There are times when hope will allow us to soar. We will feel the exhilaration of change and new freedom. We will think about the future and imagine good things. We will soar with gratitude and joy because of hope.

 There are other times when hope will allow us to run and not grow weary. We will keep going. Keep changing. Keep working. Keep feeling. We may get tired but hope will keep us from getting weary and wanting to give up. Hope helps us to keep running.

 There are other times when hope will allow us to walk without fainting. Some days, in our recovery journey, continuing the journey at all is very difficult. The struggle we face may be so intense that we would faint if it were not for hope. But hope helps us to take the next step. One slow step at a time. Step by step, without fainting.

 Thank you, Lord, for the gift of hope.

Thank you for the days when hope

allows me to soar.

And for the days when it

allows me to keep running.

And thank you for the days when hope

gives me the courage to walk without fainting.

Thank you for hope.

Amen.

 Copyright  Dale and Juanita Ryan

American Minute with Bill Federer  July 19

 ”V” for Victory! It was on JULY 19, 1941, that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held up two fingers as a sign of victory.

It became a symbol for all Western European resistance during WWII, with V signs painted on walls and over Nazi posters.

A year earlier, Churchill stated before the House of Commons, June 18, 1940:

“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization…The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war.”

Churchill continued:

“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

Winston Churchill concluded:

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

 To Donate: http://www.serenityseekers.org/?page_id=9

 In Service to God & Country

Chaplain Peter R Sinrud, SR. CDP

 Peace With Others

             It has often been said that you can’t love others until you can learn to love yourself. I don’t know how true that is, but if it is it also would seem to follow that you can’t have peace with others until you are at peace with yourself. Could it just be the ancient question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Regardless, creating peace with others is as difficult, if not more so, than making peace with yourself. I recall a former senior pastor of mine who made a statement from the pulpit that he was his family’s worst enemy. It seems like an expansion of the Pogo thought with more truth to it than we care to admit. Personally, most of us have the greatest struggles with mates, parents, children and siblings. It seems that in our families the worst of our character defects come out. It would also seem to make sense that if we can learn how to live at peace with our immediate family members, then we should be able to extend that success into our neighborhoods and workplaces. But, in assessing relationships with others, more questions arise,.e.g. what causes friction in relationships? James provides a classic answer to that one in Chapter 4:1-3 in which he asks that very question: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (NIV)

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous expands on these thoughts with these words, “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariable find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later place us in a position to be hurt.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 62) This is exactly the point at which the Twelve Steps come in to rescue us in our relationships with others. The Steps teach us how to do a thorough job of evaluating our part in the struggles we have with others and what we can do to reconcile and/or repair the damage done.

            Those of us in Serenity Seekers have learned these truths to be right on target. We have successfully used the Steps, especially as presented in the Serenity Bible, as the main course and steady path on which we have travelled, as the Serenity Prayer states, to “be reasonably happy in this life.” Beyond the Serenity Bible, Serenity Seekers has many other useful study guides and books that address specific areas of difficulty: anger, depression, overeating, self-esteem, boundaries, sexual integrity, assertiveness and learning the truth about the lies we have grown to believe.

            It is our sincere hope that you, the reader of this brief introduction to Serenity Seekers, will see its value in Promoting Peace with God, Self and Others to the extent that you will at least visit one of our meetings to discover if this is your opportunity to “Trudge the Road to Happy Destiny.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pg 164)

Peace With Self–Remembering Pogo 

            Having arrived at the conclusion that God has done everything necessary to establish peace between Him and humanity, the next consideration is establishing peace with self. The battle with self can be characterized by Pogo, a 1948-1975 daily comic character, in his famous quote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” How very true it is when considering Peace with self, the second segment of Serenity Seekers motto, “Promoting Peace with God, Self and Others.”

            Reflecting back on the definitions of peace, a question arises, “Am I at war with myself?” The easiest way to answer that is to listen to your very own self talk. Do you put yourself down in your own mind with such statements as, “Boy, that sure was a stupid thing to say?” Many of us in recovery are or have been victims of childhood shaming that left us with an overwhelming sense of worthlessness and uselessness. Many of the messages of childhood still speak in the recesses of our minds reflecting name calling and put downs such as “You’re stupid, fat, ugly and dumb.” This type of self condemnation rings over and over in our minds to the point that we truly do become our own worst enemies. One associate recounts being told by his AA sponsor, “Why don’t you take the axe out of your back and bury it? After all, you are the one who put it there.” Others recall being told by siblings, “You are a zip, a zero and a nothing…you will never amount to anything.” Some of us have been born with brain chemistry that set us up to have a life time of struggles with ourselves. Learning disabilities such as ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, and speech problems like stuttering continue to plague and challenge many recovering people into their new found lives of being clean and sober. In AA’s chapter titled “How it Works” there is a statement that reflects the battle with self that many experience, “There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”

            So then, most of us have a legitimate war going on between the ears and we truly are our own worst enemies. But when does the war cease and how can we make peace with ourselves? We think the answer to that can also be found in reflecting on the recovery stories of those who have gone before us. In the process of learning how to live according to the Twelve Steps we are asked again and again to reevaluate and reassess our behavior and to reflect on how that affects ourselves and others. In that process we either become part of a “safe fellowship” or learn how to create one for ourselves to participate in. We keep looking for the truth that Jesus says will make us free. Somewhere along the line we are able to fully accept who we are: good, bad and ugly. When we get to the point where we can honestly say to God and ourselves, “Lord, I may not like the family I was born into, I may not like the disabilities that came with my genetics, I may not like all the failures that I have accumulated in my life, but I am what I am and that’s all that I am, and I am o.k. with it.” We breathe a comforting sigh of relief and let us be who we are and let God be who He is. We can truly begin to live our lives within the context of Serenity Seekers Prayer of Dedication and allow God to complete the work He began in us. We are finally at peace with ourselves and serenity increases. Sleep becomes sweet and dreams become pleasant experiences rather than the nightmares they once were.

Chaplain Pete