“True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith . . .” That line from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions opens today’s Daily Reflections, and it’s a good one to carry around all day.
Here’s what I love about it. An open mind isn’t something we only need on day one. We need it on day ten, in year ten, and in year thirty. Recovery never stops teaching, and the best thing we can do is keep showing up as students.
The Thought to Consider in today’s Your Daily Reprieve says it beautifully: “We are not living just to be sober; we are living to learn, to serve, and to love.”
Learn, serve, and love. That’s a pretty good lesson plan for a Sunday!
An open mind is a teachable mind
The writer of today’s Daily Reflections puts it simply: “My mind was open just enough to know that I needed His help.”
Just enough! That’s all it took. Not a perfect mind. Not a fully convinced mind. Just a crack in the door. And look where it led: “The new, sober me is a much better person than I ever could have been without A.A.”
In Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode, I wrote, “Read it, implement the strategies, keep an open mind, and become a student of life.” I still believe that with my whole heart. A student doesn’t have to know everything. A student only has to be willing to learn the next thing.
Humble, not hard on yourself
Some of us hear the word humility and think it means putting ourselves down. It doesn’t. The Meditation for the Day in Twenty-Four Hours a Day clears that up: “Humility is not inconsistent with self-respect.”
It also tells us where humility comes from: “Humility arises from a deep sense of gratitude to God for giving you the strength to rise above past failures.”
Gratitude! Humility grows out of being thankful. Then comes today’s prayer, which might be my favorite line of the day: “I pray that I may be truly humble and yet have self-respect. I pray that I may see the good in myself as well as the bad.”
The good as well as the bad. That’s honest humility. We don’t pretend we’re perfect, and we don’t pretend we’re worthless either. We look at the whole picture, thank God for how far we’ve come, and stay teachable about the rest.
Same lesson, deeper level
Ever catch yourself learning patience again? Or acceptance, or letting go, for what feels like the fourth time? Welcome to the class!
Al-Anon’s Courage to Change speaks right to that: “Perhaps I am learning something I have learned before; I must need to know it more deeply.” Today’s Reminder goes further: “Instead of assuming that I have failed because I am learning a difficult lesson once more, I might embrace the experience as part of a long-term healing process that requires repetition and practice.”
The page closes with a line from Madame de Staël: “The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.”
Progress in spirals. We come around to the same lesson, but we’re a little higher each time. That isn’t failure. That’s growth! As I put it in Success-Full, “Success-Full people are continual learners.”
Let what you learn show
What we learn on the inside has a way of showing up on the outside. Matthew Kelly, in today’s Dynamic Catholic reflection from Feminine Genius, writes: “Let your inner beauty reveal itself in the way you speak, listen, love, lead, serve, dream, nurture, give, encourage, and respond to the people around you.”
That’s where the serve and love parts of today’s lesson plan come in. A good student doesn’t keep the lessons in a notebook. A good student lives them.
Five ways to be a student of life this week
- Read ten minutes a day. A daily reader: a page of the Big Book, a chapter of a recovery book. Trade ten minutes of news or scrolling for something that feeds your spirit.
- Ask one good question. At a meeting or with your sponsor, try “How did you handle that?” It’s one of the best questions in recovery, and people love to answer it.
- Write down one lesson each night. Before bed, finish this sentence: “Today life taught me…” After a month, read it back and watch your own spiral going up.
- Learn from someone different. Sit next to a newcomer, an old-timer, or someone whose story looks nothing like yours. Everybody in the rooms has something to teach.
- Pray for the good and the bad. Borrow today’s prayer from Twenty-Four Hours a Day each morning. Then name one strength you see in yourself and use it before lunch.
We never graduate, thank God!
There’s no diploma in this school, and I’m grateful for that. Every sober day is another day in class with the best teachers there are: our Higher Power, our fellowship, and life itself. Keep an open mind. Stay humble without beating yourself up. Say thank you for every lesson, even the repeats.
Life is GOOOOOOOD!!!
What’s one thing recovery is teaching you right now, maybe for the second or third time?
Go, Go, Go… Dan 🙂
Books quoted in this post:
- Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode
- Daily Reflections
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
- Twenty-Four Hours a Day
- Courage to Change
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Reflection note: I wrote this from my own daily readings. Quotes belong to their original authors and sources (Daily Reflections and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions / Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., via Daily Ponderables and Your Daily Reprieve; Your Daily Reprieve Thought to Consider; Twenty-Four Hours a Day / Hazelden Foundation; Courage to Change / Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., quoting Madame de Staël; Matthew Kelly, Feminine Genius, via the Dynamic Catholic Daily Reflection; Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode). I used AI to help organize it and reviewed it before posting.
Image created with AI assistance.
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