New daily meditation book

Well, harrumph. Hazeldon Publishers turned down my daily meditation book, so bear in mind that I have a slight attitude toward any meditation books they have published. One of my program friends was raving about a daily reading book and I thought, after hearing her talk about it, that I'd ignore my resentment and order this book, which was written in 1997. It arrived today from Amazon. (I love Amazon, don't you?)

Yesterday's Tomorrow: Recovery Meditations for Hard Cases is aimed at what the author describes as addicts or other '. . . ics' who have "perhaps a harder shell when it comes to receiving recovery wisdom." I admit that described me when I first arrived here.

If you don't mind a liberal sprinkling of profanity and a few good laughs, then I recommend the book. It's not a daily meditation book like you're used to. There are no dates like the traditional meditation book, but there is an index that lets you look up topics like "resentments," "embarrassment," "healthy relationships," and much more.

It's really more a book of vignettes, short stories about issues this addict has experienced, who is also, by self-admission, a compulsive overeater, incest survivor and an adult child. Whew! (As my friend Wendy says, "Hello, I'm not a gambler!") It's a collection of Barry L's experiences gained over his (then) 15 years of recovery.

I spent several hours reading it today and I'm enjoying it. I think that as our Fellowship continues to mature, we'll see more books of this nature appear.

What's good about this book is that just when we start once again thinking we're terminally unique, someone will come along with the same problems, thoughts, or insanities that we encounter, sometimes despite a number of years clean.

Until tomorrow, we're battening down for a Midwest storm, so me and twodogs are bundling up.

Daily meditation book excerpt (from my upcoming book)

Courage is fear that’s said its prayers

Emboldened by drugs or alcohol, we often had false courage. As we began to recover, many of us had no idea what fear felt like in our bodies. Part of the journey of recovery is identifying feelings like fear and how fear feels in our body. Once we can identify the feeling, we slowly learn how to handle this new emotion.

In our addiction, we never admitted to fear. Our bravado, we believe, may have saved our lives when drinking and using. But in recovery, fear may sometimes become a paralyzing force in our lives. When fear overcomes us, we must remember -- God is bigger than our fears.

Fear may be the catalyst that allows us to develop deeper faith, perhaps because through our questioning we become greater friends with our God. But beyond the fear, keeping faith requires us to ignore fear-based thoughts. Instead, we focus on the broader spiritual truth — that God, if trusted, will provide our every need.

Courage is an action. Even though we may be afraid, with help from our recovery community and our spiritual advisers, we continue to walk forward courageously trusting that God holds our safety net.

"Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it is that quiet voice at the end of the day that says 'I will try again tomorrow.'”

Mary Anne Radmacher

God Calling journal

I've mentioned my favorite daily meditation book, God Calling, the book on which our Twenty-Four Hour a Day book is fashioned. We were at the bookstore last night and as I looked in the poetry section, my s/o mogged around the religion section and found me a gift. It's the God Calling Daily Devotional Journal.

It is a lovely leather book with gold leaf. It has the daily reading, space to write one's thoughts about the reading, and a Bible promise to go with it. I've used the God Calling devotional for many years, having stumbled across it somehow in my many spiritual travels in bookstores and it's simply, to me, the best devotional around. Recalling that it was written in the 1930s and edited by someone other than the two "listeners," some of the readings may require several readings to fully grasp their meaning. It's worth it, though, because the beautiful comfort found in the pages of God Calling surpasses most of the daily readings I see on bookshelves today.

It's available at http://www.barbourbooks.com/ if you can't find it anywhere else. I highly recommend it.