Amends

I just got back from a really good 9th Step meeting tonight.

.

We talked about our experiences with making amends; with or without sponsors direction/guidance, with or without using the word "sorry", with or without staying on your own side of the street, with or without getting clear on the harm, with or without making a huge production out of it, with or without describing the spiritual nature of the visit, etc.

.

Some of the most helpful items discussed in the meeting for me was finding ways of getting clear on the harm. Some of us use Sacraments of Pennance in our 8th Step to help of find the harm we caused and we also use it to find it in us to have a contrite heart if we are to follow through with the amend. But if we're not clear on the harm, we are all pretty much of the belief that we don't make the amend. Another suggestion is to place yourself in their shoes. How would you react to that person if they treated you the way you treated them? Another suggestion is to just ask the questions, "How did you fuck them?" and "How did you try to stick it to them/ retaliate?"

.

I've been bantering with a person on a forum I frequent, someone who hates A.A. and has an axe to grind with A.A. folks as her husband seems to not have done too well with the Program. She suggests that we alcoholics, drunk or sober, are self-absorbed assholes all of the time and to run away from some assholic A.A.er trying to make an amend to you because they are victims looking for a way to stick it to you again, and twist the knife while it's in. She says we duck responsibility and that's pretty much that.

.

I told her that her description of alcoholic seems to be a sociopath or a psychopath who just so happens to drink again. She said how her ex blacked out, abused his children, etc., then in the morning, said that he didn't feel the least bit bad about what he might have done the night prior because he can't remember it so he is thus off the hook.

.

Drunk or sober, I feel like shit the next day after I cause someone else harm, and you?

Snow is Racist.

How dare snow be always white. What is a poor black kid to think about always seeing snow depicted as white and clean and pure? Someone needs to reprimand FOX News for snow not ever being brown or black or yellow... oh, another story for another day. Next week... Why not a Jewish Santa Claus?

A.A. and the 12 Steps

A.A. did not create the plan of action we know of as the Steps, nor did Bill Wilson. Nor does Bill take the credit for that.

. . .

He wrote a chapter and the other sober drunks at the time helped write the rest of it.

.

So where DID the steps come from? The Oxford Groups which tried to help a number of folks in need of help. . . . . Oxford Group folks were just practicing non-denominational 1st Century Christianity.

.

Bill couldn't get drunks to respond to his Blue-Light Special experience, so he was fine with leaving the God-Talk out of it... until Lois told him, "Don't you dare forget Whom got you sober! You'll be drunk again! "