November 5 – Spiritual Metabolism
“The purpose of prayer and meditation is to tune ourselves in with the rhythm of life, not to rewrite the song.” — Chuck C., A New Pair of Glasses
One day I was sitting around an AA meeting and they asked if there were any prayer requests. I thought, Here we go again… let’s just get into the meeting so I can hopefully hear something good. Selfish. Then it hit me—AA is a group of people praying and meditating for God’s will to come alive. Not necessarily to change the course of events—I don’t even know if that’s possible—but to bring acceptance into the picture is.
Each of us has a kind of spiritual metabolism. We take in the negativity of the world and, through prayer, honesty, and connection, we have the ability to metabolize it into acceptance. That’s power to me. For me it’s easy to magnify negativity—it spreads on its own. It takes real work to turn that negative into something useful.
In AA groups, through connection, we have the ability to take the events of the world and digest them into something purposeful. Like little spiritual bright spots on the map, where chaos becomes harmony. Problems come our way, we break them down through prayer, meditation, sharing and use them as experience to grow. I pray I stay in this stream of life, doing my small part each day to keep the whole body of AA healthy—whether I’m in a meeting or not.
When life throws you something sour, how do you help turn it into something useful?
