Drinking Alcohol taught me how to fly
Then it took away the sky....

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Detox..Thoughts




Originally posted Friday, June 26, 2009  on
 steveroni.blogspot.com


DEE-TOX! A FEW THOUGHTS

Now that it is Friday, I am particularly glad to be home, for it is my night to attend a small meeting at "detox". This is a locked area of room-and-board in Naples where people go to slowly have removed from their bodies whatever they were using to make themselves 'feel good' (Detoxification!).

Average stay is usually 4-6 days, and so if I see any of them more than once it would be at an AA meeting, or when I pick them up to go to a meeting. A guy asked me this morning (at 6:30 AM) "Why do you take meetings to Detox--after you've been sober 35 years?"

Good question! "I really don't know. I've stopped asking 'Why' about AA work. It's simpler to just do it, whatever it is."

(LATER, to myself) Wait! I DO know why I feel drawn to detox for a meeting. That is where it seems to begin, for some. For me, I need to observe that beginning stage of "soberism".  Many years of sobriety can create a tendency to become distant from "What it was like".

Sure, I attend usually two meetings a day, Big Book, Step, and Tradition meetings each week.  Even with some service work, I still find that NOTHING brings my chronic, fatal disease so close to home--to reality--as meeting those suffering their first days and nights in a Detox unit.

This is where the hair of the bow meets the violin strings. WITHOUT that 'meeting' there will be no music played. THAT'S why I feel blest to be allowed to share my Experience, Strength and Hope with newcomers.

At Detox tonight were 6 patients, and six of us from outside. Of the incarcerated six, two slept, one said he never had a drink in his liar--oops, I meant LIFE! And three seemed as if they thought we'd meet again.

After the meeting--outside--the six of us (I recall Megan and Alma and Jerry) shared another thought--we knew we had been where we were supposed to be for that hour tonight! Thank You, God. Thank you, AA. Thank you, Blogger Peeps!

In love and service,
Steve E

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

THE WAY TO LOVE by De Mello



THE WAY TO LOVE 

by Anthony De Mello is less about acquiring, more about "letting go", ALL about love. Several of us meet each Tuesday or Wednesday at Starbucks for a read-and-study session of this wisdom of “Letting Go”.

I love what this book has taught me and others, defining what love IS and what it is NOT. And OH! How wrong I--and others-- have been! In fact, I SO believe in the message this small book contains, that I keep two of them (new) in my bike trunk for many months. (SOME day, I'll be inspired to bestow ownership on someone else.)

The scene this morning...We sit outside. I am the last one to leave our small group this morning about 9:15 AM. My bike starts nice, helmet on, ready to go....and a car pulls up RIGHT IN FRONT of me. Immediately I'm having bad thoughts, as a girl gets out of car to go into Starbucks, and she and the driver have me locked in the prison of a parking space. UGH!

What happens next, she walks in front of her car, and stoops down to pick up something, then walks over to me and hands me my treasured book, which I must have dropped--”The Way To Love”.

Only moments before we guys were reading in De Mello that, “...love is an attitude, a disposition (and) this kind of love radiates outward to the world of things—and persons.”

I wait for the “girl” and her companion to park and walk past my bike. I climb off and hand her a new, clean copy of the book. She seems overjoyed! We shall never cross paths again.

In closing this short story I MUST write, “There is NOTHING on earth which contributes more to a joyous heart than to have given a gift...anonymously.”

(I tried to relate this blip of a happening without pride, real or false. Hope it worked—I'll never know!)

--steveroni

4/19/2015

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

LIVE, LEARN, LIVE


THIS IS HOW WE LIVE AND LEARN...
or is it "learn...and LIVE?"


--a short story. Young man came into a meeting last night, his first in three weeks! Always the "quiet one"...sober a couple months.  He sat there for the hour meeting and he who never says a word, began to speak:

"I listen to what you people tell me, but...two nights ago I had dinner with my girlfriend. SHE ordered for herself a margarita, and for me a nice Lowenbrau (beer). I stared at the bottle of beer for how long I don't know, was ready to reach out and quell my fire, when I heard the words.

"It was a story in our Big Book, about a sober guy who felt so strong, and "healed" that he ordered a scotch to dump into his milk. Then one more, because the first went down fine. He was found three weeks later in a trash can in New York...and woke up in a hospital.


"Few sentences after that story was a line which read, 'An alcoholic...will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge...'

"Well, I want you people to know I thought about all that, and just reached out and pushed that beer away." (End of story)

Some will know of what I write. Others will not but I experienced a strong pushing feeling to get it out there on my blog. It's called "live and learn"...I call it "learn...and LIVE!"  (I did!)

(NOTE: I've changed a few facts to avoid copyright problems, and breaking of anonymity, but the conversation is intact.)

--steveroni 
May 13, 2015

Monday, May 11, 2015

MASTER'S TOUCH

I'm Two days late in posting, so I missed OLN.
But readers can still check on others'poetry:
by clicking d'verse poets pub's
OPEN LINK NIGHT #148

A Marcy Purdy photograph

During year 1941 I was chosen to read a poem (because I played a violin)--and the words had no meaning whatever for me.

SEVENTY years later I read the same poem to a group of 150 sober alcoholics--and I cried, (could hardly finish reading) realizing the recovered miracles sitting in front of me in that room...


"THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER'S HAND"
(MY STORY)

Twas battered and scared, and the auctioneer
thought it scarcely worth his while
to waste much time on the old violin.
But he held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar - now who'll make it two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?

"Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
going for three". . . but no!
From the room far back a gray-haired man
came forward and picked up the bow;
then, wiping the dust from the old violin,
and tightening up the strings,
he played a melody, pure and sweet,
as sweet as an angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
with a voice that was quiet and low,
said: "What am I bidden for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow;
"A thousand dollars - and who'll make it two?
Two thousand - and who'll make it three?
Three thousand once, three thousand twice
and going - and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand -
what changed its worth?" The man replied:
"The touch of the masters hand."

And many a man with life out of tune,
and battered and torn with sin,
is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd.
Much like the old violin.

A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
a game, and he travels on;
he's going once, and going twice -
he's going - and almost gone!

But the MASTER comes, and the foolish crowd
never can quite understand

The worth of a soul, the change that's wrought
by the touch of the MASTER'S hand.

~Myra B. Welch