Walking in the Sunshine
Do you know an SA member who is likely to be incarcerated soon? Would you like to help that member prepare for the experience? The CFC offers support to incarcerated members in a variety of ways, including sending complimentary SA Literature as requested, offering a Sponsor-by-Mail program, helping members start meetings in prison, and providing parolees with SA contacts.
Dear Fellow SA Members: One great blessing in my life was when I found a sponsor and then let him guide me through the Steps. It was not easy to do as he suggested. However, one constant reminder from the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions kept me focused on what I needed to do: “AA’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole” (12&12 15).
I’m an SA member living in Sudbury, Ontario (Canada). Here in Sudbury, we have a large group of SA members who meet every Monday and Friday. One day I wrote a poem, expressing my gratitude for the members of my group. Long after I wrote it, an SA friend told me the poem had blessed her.
On any given day, while talking on Skype to a sponsee in Malaysia, I might hear torrential thunderstorms. Another time I might hear the call to prayer from a Mosque’s loudspeaker while talking to a guy in Istanbul.
I’m part of a small men’s Step study group that has met every two weeks now for a few years. We’ve worked through several Twelve Step workbooks. This exercise has served to deepen our programs, our spirituality, our accountability, and our ability to be intimate and truly vulnerable with each other.
Recently, I was challenged to write a gratitude list of 10 things that I am grateful for in my recovery. Among the items I listed was the word “HOPE.” It was the only word on my list that I had written in all caps.
Early in my sobriety, I heard a member share that we will never be free from the temptation to lust, but we can gain progressive victory over it. I wasn’t comfortable with that statement for a long time. I wondered, “Can we never be free from the temptation?” Today I believe that, although we will never be cured, we can experience progressive freedom from temptation, just like progressive victory over lust.
Ever since I was eight years old, when I began looking though adult magazines, I was hooked. My life was filled with fantasy, masturbation, pornography, TV, videos, and trying to connect with girls. In my college years, alcohol and marijuana seemed to go well with my lust.
It had been a while since I heard the song “From A Distance” on the radio. After hearing it last week, I can’t get the tune out of my mind!
In September 2007, I lost 18 years of SA sobriety—or so I thought. Looking back, I see that I was hardly ever sober, not in my mind anyway. I had thought that all I needed to do was to not act out, and I had done that since 1989—a few months before joining SA.
