CHANGE-- AND PEACE

PEACE LOVE HAPPINESS

CHANGE
ONE FINAL WORD

AS STEVE SEES IT

For 70 years I have been playing the violin, in bands, symphony orchestras
 trios, quartets, strolling, inside, outside, here, there, and everywhere. From barrooms to rooms with bars.

Recently--again, without thinking, (no change there)!--I blurted out to a church music director, "I'd like to sing bass in the choir." So that's where I find myself, enjoying it SO much. We sing every Sunday 11 AM mass at St Ann Church. Of course, I will have the opportunity to play my violin on occasion.  The best of two world! Thank God and Twelve Steps...I am sober.

What a change!  You have no idea how I am marveling at the inspiration which guided me to this place. And I thank God for arranging it--that's the way it seems to me. Sobriety allows me free choices every minute, and if I feel that spiritual "push" it becomes my choice. Sometimes OK--sometimes NOT.

NEXT:

I want you all to know you do not have an Angel Gabriel or a Saint Stephen writing all these good changes which have occurred.  I DO have yet a couple thorns which with God's help will be yanked out of my soul one day. I'm ready! Are You? God? "Only say the Word, and I shall be healed."

My promise to you peeps is that I shall continue to change, and will let you know, as I recognize it.

And thank God for Step TEN, where I can get rid of most everything which disturbs me daily, sometimes on-the-spot, and with your help, bloggers, and peeps in the AA rooms, I can live the life of a free man.

ONE MORE THING

I've been asked for "my" definition of PEACE.  Peace--to me--is the absence of chaos. It--is not peace between nations, continental powers, political movements.  My control over those is insignificant.

Peace is you and me. It is a loving meeting of my mind and yours. It IS, in fact--love. It is thinking of you first, before me. It is caring, nurturing, supporting another.  Peace and love are "action" words. I have experienced a huge amount of this love at home and away from home the past five weeks. I experienced that "peace which surpasses all understanding" while traveling and meeting people (scootering) through five states.

On my final ride, the last 50 miles home, I was overwhelmed with the feeling, the knowledge, that I had been so loved in so many ways...accepted, tolerated, fed, "coffee'd", housed, and treated as an equal among equals, no matter what.  And they took me to AA meetings.

Again, for me, "peace" and "love" are so closely related as I might think of the genetic togetherness of identical twins.

The following quote sits on the desk of a long-passed friend of mine. It was meant as a definition of "Humility".  As I read, it usually produces a benignancy, replacing immediately any disturbances which found their way into my heart.

"Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.

"It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble. "
 

Really bloggers, be sober.
Be at peace.
Be loving and lovable.
Steve