Rembrandt \ Skeleton Rider \ 1655 \ Ink on paper
Welcome to, Our Common Welfare.
Is sobriety all that we can expect of a spiritual awakening? No, sobriety is only a bare beginning.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 8
Practicing the A.A. program is like building a house. First I had to pour a big, thick concrete slab on which to erect the house; that, to me, was the equivalent of stopping drinking. But it’s pretty uncomfortable living on a concrete slab, unprotected and exposed to the heat, cold, wind and rain. So I built a room on the slab by starting to practice the program. The first room was rickety because I wasn’t used to the work. But as time passed, as I practiced the program, I learned to build better rooms. The more I practiced, and the more I built, the more comfortable, and happy, was the home I now live in.
*•I want to provide an auxiliary aid to ensure equal opportunity to communicate effectively for someone, like me, with a sensory disability. It’s an ink dawing by Rembrandt in 1655 called, “Skeleton Rider”
So, I have 3 questions for you
☆ 1. In becoming your own home, which of the following four words best describe your building process? Were you:
a-Renovated- restored to a good state of repair
b-Overhauled – taken apart in order to examine it and repair it if necessary
c-Gentrified-change the character of (a poor urban area) through wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process
d-Demolished-pulled or knocked down
☆ 2. What do you want your home to look like?
☆ 3. Are you the carpentet or the architect?
P.: Short of being homeless, I lived in a tool shed during my active alcoholism. I am still constructing my home.
L.: The drink enhanced everything for me, but sobriety demolished that false reality.
Do.: Very interesting topic. The eclectic people in this ZOOM meeting every morning are in my heart, and that’s my home.
Da.: Alcohol demolished me, I was nothing but a vacant lot, and it was to hell with God. But I was reinvented, I was reborn through this program.
J.H.: Stacy, you have a natural corona from the lighting of Palm trees in your background. I’m talking about just landing on the moon! Alcohol tore down everything important in my life. I had no traction and I was sliding backwards.
W.: I was like a renovated garden shed in winter.
To.: Good meeting. Inside of me is like a house where I am the carpenter and I need to go to Home Depot for more nails. This meeting is gentrification of my character and it nails it for me.
§.§.: Alcoholism was that feeling of being stripped down to the studs, and I’m the bare bones of nothing. And that was the most important moment in which I realized I’m not very much of a life — any life isn’t very much on its own. And AA was the one who really taught me how to be a group, how to be a weird, moving, symbiotic herd. They just kind of move in, and they’re tapping on your bones, trying to figure out which ones are cracked and which ones were rotten to the marrow, and then they’re — without your permission — taking your house apart. And so to have AA lift me up and feed me so aggressively was exactly what I needed.
I’m talking about ☆becoming my own home, and I want to be a mansion on the inside.
§tacy §weeney
§tacyReneè§weeney 