Welcome to the AA Beginners Group 'Maintenance of Our Spiritual Condition' Period of Prayer & Meditation 'When we retire at night...' Monday thru Sunday 9:15 PM EST Maintenance Steps 10 & 11 When We Retire At Night... Zoom ID: 87577128870 Password: alcoholic Monday thru Sunday 6:00 AM EST Maintenance Steps 10 & 11 Upon Awakening... Zoom ID: 87577128870 Password: alcoholic In an effort to honor everyone's time here we are asking everyone to be conscious of the length of sharing on each of the many topics. By all means, if you have something to share, please do so. If it is a sensitive topic and you may need extra time, please consider saving it for afterwards and to even talk one-on-one with someone. We do have the option of breakout rooms so that is always a possibility. I am pasting this Assembly Agenda http://www.aabeginners.com/grouper/retire.html into the chat box right now. My name is __________. My last drink was on ____________. Opening Prayer Heavenly Father, Help us to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Help us watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask you at once to remove them. Help us discuss them with someone immediately. Guide us to make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. How can we best serve You? Your will (not ours) be done. Amen. This prayer was constructed from the instructions listed in Step Ten (AA p.85). 'When we retire at night we construtively review our day.' (AA p.86) [ASK THE PARTICIPANTS]: Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? For resentments (AA p.67): God, save us from being angry. Help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. For selfishness (AA p.63): God, relieve us from the bondage of self that we may better do Your will. For dishonesty (AA p.86): God, direct our thinking, especially that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. For fear (AA p.68): God, remove our fear and direct our attention to what You would have us be. Do we owe an apology? A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won't fill the bill at all. (AA p.83) For amends (AA p.76): We go out to our fellows and repair the damage done. If we haven't the will to do this, God, give us the will to go out to our fellows and repair the damage done. Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? For 5th Step AA p.75: God, have I omitted anything? Were we kind and loving toward all? For spiritual principles (AA p.83): God, show is the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love. What could we have done better? For all of our problems (AA p.69): God, what should we do about each specific matter? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? For self-will (AA p.87): God, we ask especially for freedom from self-will? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? For helping others (AA p.70): We throw ourselves the harder into helping others. We think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. For usefullness to others (AA p.77): Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and to the people about us. After making our review... God, we ask for forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. TAKE SOME QUIET TIME (12 minutes) TO LISTEN TO GOD [IN CLOSING, ASK]: Any thoughts from your quiet time with Him? [CLOSE WITH PRAYER]: Heavenly Father... (Anyone want to offer up a prayer?) Amen We resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code