Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 October 2026
God is near. God is love, longing to communicate Himself to me.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
02 October 2026
Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object. But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something becomes an object and must be limited too. So you have something limited looking for something limited, and you just end up with more of the same folly that has made you miserable.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
03 October 2026
In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
04 October 2026
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast Table
05 October 2026
The first step of wisdom is to challenge everything; the last, to accept everything.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorismen (Sudelbücher)
[To post but not to read out:]
Der Weisheit erster Schritt ist: Alles anzuklagen, Der letzte: sich mit Allem zu vertragen.
06 October 2026
Look at the world through either a microscope or a telescope and you will be dwarfed into terror by the infinitely minute or the infinitely great; both are appalling. When you touch the cosmic force, apart from the blinkers of intellect, there is a wild problem in it. Nature is wild, not tame. No man is capable of solving the riddle of the universe, because the universe is mad, and the only thing that will put it right is not man’s reason, but the sagacity of God
Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, comments on the Book of Job
07 October 2026
When you have given God His place of honour, glory, and power, take your place of deepest lowliness, and seek to be filled with the Spirit of humility. As a creature, it is your blessedness to be nothing, that God may be all in you.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
08 October 2026
We have all spent many years building up a conditioned view of life. There is “me” and there is this “thing” out there that is either hurting me or pleasing me.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
09 October 2026
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
Kahlil Gibran
10 October 2026
He neither sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor thinks,
But only drinks,
Quiet in the yard where tree trunks do not lie
More quietly.
Edward Thomas (poems)
11 October 2026
The sign of dishonesty in a man’s creed is that he finds out defects in everyone save himself—”It is not possible for me to be mistaken in my view of God.”
Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, comments on the Book of Job
12 October 2026
A wise man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast Table
13 October 2026
Oh! Take time to get very low before God.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
14 October 2026
I commenced analysing man’s mission but could conclude only that most of his life was identified with struggle and hardship. Then I tried not to ponder over what the sons of Adam had done and centred my eyes on the field which is the throne of God’s glory.
Kahlil Gibran
15 October 2026
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
Edward Thomas (poems)
16 October 2026
We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. Without exception, we all do this. We remain separate from our life, looking at it, analysing it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions, “What am I going to get out of it? Is it going to give me pleasure or comfort or should I run away from it?” We do this from morning until night.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
17 October 2026
Be silent before God and let Him bless you.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
18 October 2026
“I see no way out,” says Job. He lies down, not in weakness, but in absolute exhaustion. Job is not talking in a petted [sulky] mood but saying that, unless God will be a Refuge for him, there is no way out, death is the only thing. In every crisis of life, as represented in the Old Testament as well as in the teaching of Our Lord, this aspect of God is emphasised—“God is our Refuge”; yet until we are hit by sorrow, it is the last thing we seek for God to be.
Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, comments on the Book of Job
19 October 2026
Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that. But to talk about it is of little use. The practice has to be done by each individual. There is no substitute.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
20 October 2026
And she retorted, “Human beings fear all things, even yourselves. You fear heaven, the source of spiritual peace; you fear nature, the haven of rest and tranquillity; you fear the God of goodness and accuse him of anger, while he is full of love and mercy.”
Kahlil Gibran
21 October 2026
The human problem is too big for a man to solve, but if he will fling himself unperplexed on God he will find Him to be the kind of Refuge Job is referring to. We know nothing about the Redemption or about forgiveness until we are enmeshed by the personal problem; then we begin to understand why we need to turn to God, and when we do turn to Him He becomes a Refuge and a Shelter and a complete Rest.
Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, comments on the Book of Job
22 October 2026
I don’t think that we ever let go of anything. I think what we do is just wear things out. If we start forcing our mind to do something, we are right back into the dualism that we are trying to get out of. The best way to let go is to notice the thoughts as they come up and to acknowledge them. “Oh, yes, I’m doing that one again”—and without judging, return to the clear experience of the present moment. Just be patient. We might have to do it ten thousand times, but the value for our practice is the constant return of the mind into the present, over and over and over.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
23 October 2026
You should at least make a list on a piece of paper [of your sins] and make a serious act of penance about each one of them. There is something about the mere words, you know, provided you avoid two dangers, either of sensational exaggeration—trying to work things up and make melodramatic sins out of small matters—or the opposite danger of slurring things over. It is essential to use the plain, simple old-fashioned words that you would use about anyone else. I mean words like theft, or fornication, or hatred, instead of “I did not mean to be dishonest”, or “I was only a boy then” , or “I lost my temper”. I think that this steady facing of what one does know and bringing it before God, without excuses, and seriously asking for Forgiveness and Grace, and resolving as far as [one can] to do better, is the only way in which we can ever begin to know the fatal thing which is always there and preventing us from becoming perfectly just to our wife or husband, or being a better employer or employee.
C. S. Lewis, Miserable Offenders
24 October 2026
Bow before God until you get some sense of the greatness and blessedness of the work to be carried on by God in you this day.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
25 October 2026
Does Christianity encourage morbid introspection? The alternative is much more morbid. Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others. It is healthier to think of one’s own. It is the reverse of morbid. It is not even, in the long run, very gloomy. A serious attempt to repent and really to know one’s own sins is in the long run a lightening and relieving process.
C. S. Lewis, Miserable Offenders
26 October 2026
Up to the present Job has had no refuge anywhere; now he craves for it. When a man [establishes an active relationship with God], his problems are not altered, but he has a Refuge from which he can deal with them; before, he was out in the world being battered, now the centre of his life is at rest, and he can begin, bit by bit, to get things uncovered and rightly related.
Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, comments on the Book of Job
27 October 2026
Don’t look for some wonderful place where thoughts won’t occur. Since the thoughts basically are not real, at some point they get dimmer and less imperative, and we will find there are periods when they tend to fade out because we see they are not real. They will just wither away in time without our quite knowing how it happened. Those thoughts are our attempt to protect ourselves. None of us really wants to give them up; they are what we are attached to. The way we can eventually see their unreality is by just letting the movie run. After we have seen the same movie five hundred times it gets boring, frankly!
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
28 October 2026
Of course, there is bound to be a first dismay and often terror and later great pain [in listing one’s sins], yet that is much less in the long run than the anguish of a mass of unrepented and unexamined sins, lurking in the background of our minds. It is the difference between the pain of the tooth about which you should go to the dentist, and the simple, straightforward pain which you know is getting less and less every moment when you have had the tooth out.
C. S. Lewis, Miserable Offenders
29 October 2026
Wait on God to show you in this [situation] what you do not know.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
30 October 2026
There are two kinds of thoughts. There is nothing wrong with thinking in the sense of what I call “technical thinking.” We have to think in order to walk from here to the corner or to bake a cake or to solve a physics problem. That use of the mind is fine. It isn’t real or unreal; it is just what it is. But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety per cent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. And we go from birth to death, unless we wake up, wasting most of our life with them.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
31 October 2026
Mr Moore hates Catholicism because it breaks up the house of looking-glasses in which he lives. Mr Moore does not dislike so much being asked to believe in the spiritual existence of miracles or sacraments, but he does fundamentally dislike being asked to believe in the actual existence of other people.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
01 November 2026
“Keep it simple” does not mean “Keep it superficial”. To me, it means recognising the unique opportunity for continuing change possible through steady work with all of the Twelve Steps. This does not require special therapy groups, but simply a recognition of where my help really lies.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Greed, Fear, and Ignorance (Grapevine Article)
02 November 2026
The gruesome part of sitting (and it is gruesome, believe me) is to begin to see what is really going on in our mind. It is a shocker for all of us. We see that we are violent, prejudiced, and selfish. We are all those things because a conditioned life based on false thinking leads to these states. Human beings are basically good, kind, and compassionate, but it takes hard digging to uncover that buried jewel.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
03 November 2026
His real quarrel with life is that it is not a dream that can be moulded by the dreamer. It is not the dogma of the reality of the other world that troubles him, but the dogma of the reality of this world.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
04 November 2026
The AA programme is a process of evolving and developing. It will speak to my condition wherever I am in sobriety. It will strip away false ideas and spurious goals through my persistent, continuing work with every one of the Twelve Steps. As this process moves along, I’ll start to find freedom from the fear and the ignorance that are inextricably woven into the package of greed; I’ll gradually know increasing vitality, growing sanity, greater health, and vastly expanded usefulness. As the ego’s shrill struggle for possessions, pleasure, and recognition subsides, the voice of God grows more distinct, and the concept of His guidance moves from abstraction to daily experience.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Greed, Fear, and Ignorance (Grapevine Article)
05 November 2026
I am not implying that there will not be upsets [if we meditate]. What I mean is that when we get upset, we don’t hold onto it. If we become angry, we are just angry for a second. Others may not even be aware of it. That is all there is to it. There is no clinging to the anger, no mental spinning with it. I don’t mean that years of practice leave us like a zombie. Quite the opposite. We really have more genuine emotions, more feeling for people. We are not so caught up in our own inner states.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
06 November 2026
The truth is that the tradition of Christianity [...] rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be [attacked] in argument and as easily justified in life. One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or faith—that the more hopeless is the situation the more hopeful must be the man.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
07 November 2026
Let every approach to God, and every request for fellowship with Him be accompanied by a new, very definite, and entire surrender to Him to work in you.
Andrew Murray, Daily Fellowship with God
08 November 2026
As writer-scientist Paul Korzybski put it, “God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won’t.” On this basis, the only way to have a good life is to live a life that is good. Misbehavior generates guilt, which, in turn, creates painful inner states. The answer is not to hide behind a pill or deny the voice of the conscience, but to clean up and shape up.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Guilt (Grapevine Article)
09 November 2026
We row; God steers.
AA member
10 November 2026
Work is the best part of Zen practice and training. No matter what the work is, it should be done with effort and total attention to what’s in front of our nose. If we are cleaning the oven, we should just totally do that and also be aware of any thoughts that interrupt the work. “I hate to clean the oven. Ammonia smells! Who likes to clean the oven, anyway? With all my education I shouldn’t have to do this.” All those are extra thoughts that have nothing to do with cleaning the oven. If the mind drifts in any way, return it to the work.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
11 November 2026
Sin—that old-fashioned word—thrusts the sinner out of community. Alone, alienated, afraid, he can still find an answer: to let others know him as he really is and then to make amends for harm he has caused. This approach has been dramatically successful. It rejects deterministic theories that make man a victim of heredity or environment. Instead, it declares the individual’s responsibility for his own life.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Guilt (Grapevine Article)
12 November 2026
Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
13 November 2026
Guilt, on the other hand, has created substantial difficulties on those too-frequent occasions when I’ve failed to live up to the requirements of my conscience. While it may be true that “morality is a matter of geography”, we’re bound by the ethic of our societies and will inevitably feel guilty unless we honestly observe that ethic. For me, the restoration to sanity described in Step Two is contingent on honesty; any time I’m dishonest, it’s a direct route to insanity and disintegration.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Guilt (Grapevine Article)
14 November 2026
Being open to a teacher means not just hearing what you want to hear but hearing the whole thing. And the teacher’s not there simply to be nice to you.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
15 November 2026
The AA message is free. We don’t buy it and we don’t sell it, because money corrupts the message. We give it away in gratitude for our own recovery. That’s the forgotten meaning of Tradition Eight. We work with alcoholics for nothing because it’s our privilege to help another breathe deeply in the life of the spirit and enjoy the vigorous healing generated by our programme’s principles. It doesn’t work for money.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, The View from Here (Grapevine Article)
16 November 2026
It is not only true that humility is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride. It is also true that vanity is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride. Vanity is social—it is almost a kind of comradeship; pride is solitary and uncivilised. Vanity is active; it desires the applause of infinite multitudes; pride is passive, desiring only the applause of one person, which it already has. Vanity is humorous and can enjoy the joke even of itself; pride is dull and cannot even smile.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
17 November 2026
Today, I believe in God, the AA programme, and the AA community. I could not separate any one of these from the others, because it’s you men and women who have taught me the truths that transformed my life. Each time self-will gets me off the track, you put me back on course by showing me what needs to be done in the Steps. It’s obvious to me today that the only way to feel right is to do right; but that knowledge alone would be insufficient if I did not have your continuing help in living what I have learned.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Guilt (Grapevine Article)
18 November 2026
Moment by moment our practice is like a choice, a fork in the road: we can go this way, we can go that way. It’s always a choice, moment by moment, between our nice world that we want to set up in our heads and what really is.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
19 November 2026
Again and again, I’ve met AA members who suffered from depression, anxiety, fear, hostility, and other symptoms because they had failed to use the Twelve Steps. This includes AAs with years of sobriety. Once these AAs began to work the Steps, their symptoms vanished. An AA member who suffers from such symptoms or can’t stay sober needs a sponsor [...] who will work with him just as carefully and thoughtfully as Dr Bob worked with Earl.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Have We Forgotten Dr Bob’s Request? (Grapevine Article)
20 November 2026
Our [meditation] training is designed to enable us to live comfortable lives. But the only people who live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives away, but to be with what’s right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice, headache, being ill, being happy. It doesn’t make any difference.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
21 November 2026
Some years ago I was talking with Dr Leonard Borman, a research associate at Northwestern University’s Center for Urban Affairs and the director of the Center’s Self-Help Institute. Borman, who’d spent years studying the development of the self-help movement, told me, “Two principles stand out in AA and the self-help movement. One is that a person who has recovered from a problem can be far more helpful than a professional using only theoretical knowledge. The second is that when an individual helps another without charge, they both benefit.”
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, The View from Here (Grapevine Article)
22 November 2026
Change is not necessarily progress, and more is not necessarily better.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Have We Forgotten Dr Bob’s Request? (Grapevine Article)
23 November 2026
Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility. Self is the gorgon. Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men and lives. Pride studies it for itself and is turned to stone.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
24 November 2026
When you meet [a mature meditator] you sense it. They’re with life as it’s really happening, not as a fantasy version of it. And of course, the storms of life eventually hit them more lightly. If we can accept things just the way they are, we’re not going to be greatly upset by anything. And if we do become upset it’s over more quickly.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
25 November 2026
That first day, this man talked to me about ‘God as we understood him’. The bewilderment and antagonism of years began to melt, thawed by this unheard-of approach to God. Nobody argued about whose Higher Power was higher.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, It Works For Me (Grapevine Article)
26 November 2026
Mr Moore’s egoism is not merely a moral weakness, it is a very constant and influential aesthetic weakness as well. We should really be much more interested in Mr Moore if he were not quite so interested in himself.
G. K. Chesterton, The Moods of Mr George Moore
27 November 2026
What we need to do is to be with what’s happening right now. You don’t have to believe me; you can experiment for yourself. When I am drifting away from the present, what I do is listen to the traffic. I make sure there’s nothing I miss. Nothing. I just really listen.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
28 November 2026
Isobel: Well, it’s good to be disagreed with. Keeps you on your toes.
Downton Abbey
29 November 2026
The late Father Edward J. Dowling was one of AA’s earliest friends among the clergy. A man of compassion and vision, the St Louis Jesuit was impressed by what he felt were striking similarities between the Twelve Steps and the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. While some might see differences in content and structure between the two, few could quarrel with the view that spiritual growth, like good physical condition, requires continuing work. It doesn’t just happen. It demands unremitting effort.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, I’ve Done the Twelve Steps—Now What? (Grapevine Article)
30 November 2026
A man ought to rest wholly upon God, so that he needeth not seek much comfort at the hand of men.
Thomas a Kempis
01 December 2026
I once said something in [a meditation hall] that upset a lot of people: I said, “To do this practice, we have to give up hope.” Not many were happy about that. But what did I mean? I mean that we have to give up this idea in our heads that somehow, if we could only figure it out, there’s some way to have this perfect life that is just right for us. Life is the way it is. And only when we begin to give up those manoeuvres does life begin to be more satisfactory.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
02 December 2026
The programme is a road, not a resting place. Before AA, and many times after, I looked for answers to my living problems in fields where you’d expect to find them: religion, philosophy, psychology, self-help groups. These disciplines invariably described a goal that was precisely what I wanted. It was a place of freedom, calm confidence, and joy. There was one major problem: they never gave me a workable method of getting there. They never told me how to get from where I was to where I was supposed to be.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, I’ve Done the Twelve Steps—Now What? (Grapevine Article)
03 December 2026
To very great minds the things on which men agree are so immeasurably more important than the things on which they differ, that the latter, for all practical purposes, disappear. They have too much in them of an ancient laughter even to endure to discuss the difference between the hats of two men who were both born of a woman, or between the subtly varied cultures of two men who have both to die.
G. K. Chesterton, On the Wit of Whistler
04 December 2026
Zen is about a life of action, not a life of passively doing nothing. But our actions must be based on reality. When our actions are based on our false thought systems (which are based on our conditioning), they are poorly based. When we have seen through the thought systems we can see what needs to be done.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
05 December 2026
That’s the big difference I find in our programme, [compared to other approaches]. It takes me toward the goal: “a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps”. It doesn’t take me there as fast as I’d like to go, because God’s timetable is always slower than mine. However, as I follow the directions and work my way from Step One to Step Twelve regularly, my spiritual awakening deepens and strengthens. I find everything I need and really want through these Twelve Steps. They provide the goal and the way to reach it. It’s all here and it always was, from the beginning of my AA life.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, I’ve Done the Twelve Steps—Now What? (Grapevine Article)
06 December 2026
When we’re lost in thought, when we’re dreaming, what have we lost? We’ve lost reality. Our life has escaped us.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
07 December 2026
The AA message is a message from one amateur to another amateur. AA didn’t begin as one of many ways to help alcoholics. It began because there was nothing else that worked for alcoholics. That’s still the case.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, The View from Here (Grapevine Article)
08 December 2026
Avdeich was never short of work, because he worked solidly, made a good product, did not overcharge, and kept his word.
[To post, but not to read out:]
Работы было много, потому что работал Авдеич прочно, товар ставил хороший, лишнего не брал и слово держал
Tolstoy, Where Love Is, There is God
09 December 2026
“To go on living,” he said, “is too much for me now, Father. I just want to die. I ask God for just one thing. I have been left entirely without hope.”
And the old man said to him:
“You’re speaking out of turn, Martyn. It is never our job to judge God’s doings. Such things are not for our minds but for God’s judgement. God ordained that your son should die—but that you should live. That means that’s for the best. And if you are disenchanted, that’s because you wish to live for your own joy.”
[To post, but not to read out:]
— И жить,— говорит,— божий человек, больше неохота. Только бы помереть. Об одном бога прошу. Безнадежный я остался теперь человек.
И сказал ему старичок:
— Не хорошо ты говоришь, Мартын, нам нельзя божьи дела судить. Не нашим умом, а божьим судом. Твоему сыну судил бог помереть, а тебе — жить. Значит, так лучше. А что отчаиваешься, так это оттого, что ты для своей радости жить хочешь.
Tolstoy, Where Love Is, There is God
10 December 2026
Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don’t want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is. If tomorrow I have a heart attack, I can rely on that, because if I have it, I have it. I can rest in life as it is.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
11 December 2026
In the spring of 1948, I heard Paul S. talk in Chicago. He was one of the early Akron AAs and I was sober less than a year at the time. Over and over in his talk he said, “AA is of itself sufficient.” If the quality of my life isn’t what it should be, the best place for me to go for counselling or therapy is to the Big Book or to an AA member who has done enough continuing work with the Twelve Steps to understand that “how it works” means precisely what it says.
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, The View from Here (Grapevine Article)
12 December 2026
So they went and knocked at the study door, and the Professor said, “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected.
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
13 December 2026
I heard prayers that night that meant something, and I saw how faith could hold a soul up when everything was gone but God.
Saul Basset, in A Country Christmas, by Louisa May Alcott
14 December 2026
When we know our minds well and the emotions that our thinking creates, we tend to see better what our lives are about and what needs to be done, which is generally just the next task under our nose.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work
15 December 2026
I’ve a notion if each of us did up our own little chores smart and thorough we needn’t go wanderin’ round to set the world to rights. That’s the Lord’s job, and I presume to say He can do it without any advice of own.
Aunt Plumy, in A Country Christmas, by Louisa May Alcott
16 December 2026
‘Pears to me it ain’t wise to be always pickin’ ourselves to pieces and pryin’ into things that ought to come gradual by way of experience and the visitations of Providence. Flowers won’t blow worth a cent if you pull ‘em open. Better wait and see what they can do alone.
Aunt Plumy, in A Country Christmas, by Louisa May Alcott
17 December 2026
We simply try to share our actual experience in working the AA programme. Such experience—generally recent—has shown us again and again that outward problems in our lives are produced by conditions within ourselves. Persistent use of the Steps removes the inward conditions that cause the problems. As we experience changes in ourselves, we live our way into a new understanding, and we gradually stop creating difficulties in our lives. We find answers and solutions that we could never see before, and they all come from the programme. It’s so simple that it’s sometimes tough to believe!
Paul Martin, Riverside, Illinois, Working the Steps in a Group (Grapevine Article)
18 December 2026
Christmas is now drawing near at hand
Come serve the Lord and be at His command
And God a portion for you will provide
And give a blessing to your soul besides
Christmas Is Now Drawing Near At Hand (folk carol)
19 December 2026
Down in the garden where flowers grow in ranks
Down on your bended knees and give the Lord thanks
Down on your knees and pray both night and day
Leave off your sins and live upright I pray
Christmas Is Now Drawing Near At Hand (folk carol)
20 December 2026
… folks that don’t borrow trouble and go lookin’ for holes in their neighbors’ coats, but take their lives brave and cheerful; and rememberin’ we are all human, have pity on the weak, and try to be as full of mercy, patience and lovin’ kindness as Him who made us.
Aunt Plumy, in A Country Christmas, by Louisa May Alcott
21 December 2026
Seems to me it isn’t the sensational exploits that show the hero best, but some great sacrifice quietly made by a common sort of man who is noble without knowing it.
Saul Basset, in A Country Christmas, by Louisa May Alcott
22 December 2026
Then out of darkness we see light,
Which makes all angels to sing this night:
Glory to God and peace to men
Both now and evermore. Amen.
English Folk Carols, collected by Cecil James Sharp
23 December 2026
Then by the hand he did me take,
And said: Poor drowsy soul, awake!
Being awakened from my sleep,
My heart was full; then I did weep.
English Folk Carols, collected by Cecil James Sharp
24 December 2026
This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love;
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all, both rich and poor.
English Folk Carols, collected by Cecil James Sharp
25 December 2026
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Isaiah 9:2
26 December 2026
We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us—the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star—we are all one, all moving to the same end.
P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins
27 December 2026
“Where have you been?” they asked her. “In Fairyland,” said Mary Poppins. “Did you see Cinderella?” said Jane. “Huh, Cinderella? Not me,” said Mary Poppins, contemptuously. “Cinderella, indeed!” “Or Robinson Crusoe?” asked Michael. “Robinson Crusoe—pooh!” said Mary Poppins rudely. “Then how could you have been there? It couldn’t have been our Fairyland!” Mary Poppins gave a superior sniff. “Don’t you know,” she said pityingly, “that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”
P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins
28 December 2026
“I hate being good,” he said aloud to himself, as he trailed after Mary Poppins and Jane and the perambulator on the afternoon walk to the Park. “Don’t dawdle,” said Mary Poppins, looking back at him. But he went on dawdling and dragging the sides of his shoes along the pavement in order to scratch the leather. Suddenly Mary Poppins turned and faced him, one hand on the handle of the perambulator. “You,” she began, “got out of bed the wrong side this morning.” “I didn’t,” said Michael. “There is no wrong side to my bed.” “Every bed has a right and a wrong side,” said Mary Poppins, primly.
P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins
29 December 2026
Eido Roshi said once, “This [meditation hall] is not a peaceful haven, but a furnace room for the combustion of our egoistic delusions.” What tools do we need to use? Only one. We’ve all heard of it, yet we use it very seldom. It’s called attention.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work (Plus)
30 December 2026
And all the time he was enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend, and not caring a bit.
P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins
31 December 2026
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour my self I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
John Donne
Note: adamant = a magnet
Comments
Post a Comment