BROTHERS IN OUR DEFECTS

 April 19, 2023

 

BROTHERS IN OUR DEFECTS

 

We recovered alcoholics

are not so much brothers in virtue

as we are brothers in our defects,

and in our common strivings

to overcome them.

AS BILL SEES IT, p. 167

 

The identification that one alcoholic

has with another is mysterious,

spiritual–almost incomprehensible.

 But it is there.

I “feel” it.

Today I feel that I can help people

and that they can help me.

It is a new and exciting feeling

for me to care for someone;

to care what they are feeling,

hoping for, praying for;

to know their sadness, joy, horror, sorrow, grief;

to want to share those feelings

so that someone can have relief.

I never knew how to do this–or how to try.

I never even cared.

The Fellowship of A.A., and God,

are teaching me how to care about others.

 

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A Full and Thankful Heart

 

One exercise that I practice

is to try for a full inventory of my blessings

and then for a right acceptance

of the many gifts that are mine–

both temporal and spiritual.

Here I try to achieve a state of joyful gratitude.

When such a brand of gratitude

 is repeatedly affirmed and pondered,

 it can finally displace the natural tendency

to congratulate myself on whatever progress

 I may have been enabled

to make in some areas of living.

I try hard to hold fast to the truth

 that a full and thankful heart

cannot entertain great conceits.

 When brimming with gratitude,

one’s heartbeat must surely result

in outgoing love,

the finest emotion that we can never know.

Grapevine, March 1962

© 1967 by Alcoholics Anonymous

® World Services, Inc