Acceptance is not a four letter word…

Truly a place of beauty and serenity, the Wilbur D. May Aboretum…

The chairperson selected acceptance as the topic today… there were only 12 of us at the meeting; down one from the 13 regulars we had this past year.  We get the newcomers  from time to time, but our little core group has been together for so long that the loss of even one is a hardship.  We went to a mass and a wake for our good friend Dennis K. with whom I shared a birthday for 25 years.  He passed away on his 28th birthday… the good thing about our group is, when we get a newcomer we tend to keep until they become at least a teenager.  Our newest baby is now six years old and sponsors two other men; its fun to remember him kicking and screaming his way through the door.  It was hard to lose Dennis, he founded  other meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous that were equally as long-term sobriety as this one is.  My home group is the Eye-opener in Reno Nevada; and we are proud of our sobriety here. I’ve gone to some online meetings to kind of check things out, and they tend to be a bit like chat rooms without any structure.  I need structure in my life today, I know that now and I get it from Alcoholics Anonymous.

I’m hoping this next generation of alcoholics will honor their traditions, and keep to our singleness of purpose… Alcoholics Anonymous has one purpose.  The sole purpose of any meeting is to carry the message; the messages the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Sometimes I hear so much psychobabble, that I wonder how anybody could get sober; my first sponsor used to say to me”ask yourself if what you said would help somebody learn how to stay away from that first drink, that’s your only job, “she was right.  What I had for breakfast, or my latest diagnosis from the doctor , has nothing to offer the new person looking to change the way their life is going… and yet some meetings I hear people rattle on like that had something to do with staying sober.  I have come to accept that some of the people I love will go away before I do, that doesn’t make it any easier…