Skeleton Rider

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.

Stacy S. : I feel overhauled. I’m talking about becoming my own home, and I want to be a mansion on the inside.

§tacy §weeney