Definition of Miracle:
An extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.
Synonyms of Miracle:
marvel, mystery, phenomenon, prodigy, revelation, sensation. sign, supernatural, wonder, etc.
These notes are from recovery in AA and/or related 12 step programs.
Readers are encouraged to click external links for more detail.
We hope you find them helpful.
Love in fellowship.
Expect miracles of change in people’s lives. People can be changed and they are often ready and waiting to be changed.
Modern miracles happen every day in the lives of people. All miracles are in the realm of personalities. –24Hours | More…
We in A.A. are offering an intangible thing, a psychological and spiritual program. We who have achieved sobriety through faith in God and mental re-education are modern miracles. It is the function of our A.A. program to produce modern miracles. –24Hours | More…
Enough prayer (treatment) will get you out of any difficulty, Emmet Fox insisted. People who have found sobriety in AA are actually modern miracles. They expect more miracles to continue ‘happening’ otherwise, there would be no point in continuing to work with newcomers. And while we’re expecting miracles, let’s remember that countless other human problems will yield to a spiritual approach. Life itself is miraculous when we study it: why shouldn’t there be more miracles ahead? –Walk In Dry Places | More…
People who have found sobriety in AA are actually modern miracles. Life itself is miraculous when we study it: why shouldn’t there be more miracles ahead? –Walk in Dry Places | More…
To God, a miracle of change in a person’s life is only a natural happening. But it is a natural happening operated by spiritual forces.
There is no miracle in personalities too marvellous to be an everyday happening. Miracles are always accompanied by a real desire to conquer self and to surrender one’s life to God. –24Hours | More…
Enough prayer (treatment) will get you out of any difficulty, Emmet Fox insisted. People who have found sobriety in AA are actually modern miracles.
They expect more miracles to continue ‘happening’ otherwise, there would be no point in continuing to work with newcomers. And while we’re expecting miracles, let’s remember that countless other human problems will yield to a spiritual approach.
Life itself is miraculous when we study it: why shouldn’t there be more miracles ahead? –Walk In Dry Places/Mel B. | More…
Miracle is simply the wonder of the unique that points us aback to the wonder of everyday -Maurice Friedman. Miracle involves openness to mystery, the welcoming of surprise, the acceptance of those realities over which we have no control
Addiction represents the ultimate effort to control, the definitive demand for ‘magic’….. and the final failure of spirituality. Turning to the magic of chemicals signifies the desperate (and doomed) attempt to fill the spiritual void with a material reality – to make magic a substitute for miracle.
Drunkenness can be a kind of shortcut to the higher life, the [attempt to] achieve a higher state without an emotional and intellectual effort. The discovery that spirituality involves mystery and miracle rather than magic was critically important to early members of Alcoholics Anonymous because the search for magic had proved fatal time and time again.
The difference between magic and miracle reflects the difference between wilfulness and willingness. Wilfulness involves the demand for change – usually some change in realities outside the self, but also, at times, the demand for change in oneself.
Willingness involves the acceptance that one is not in absolute control, thus opening up the possibility of being changed – being open to what change is possible even if one is not in control. –The Spirituality of Imperfection/Ernie Kurtz & Katherine Kechum p.120-121 | More…
Since these things have happened among us, they can happen with you. The age of miracles is still with us. Our own recovery proves that! –Big Book | More…
Spiritual experiences are ‘experience’ what psychologist William James calls the ‘educational variety’ a ‘transforming experience’ Distinguishing between mystery and magic – to the difference between the wilfulness that demands a kind of magical control over change and the willingness that creates an openness to being changed lies at the heart of spirituality’s horror of ‘idolatry’.
Idolatry represents the attempt to wrest control, even the mastery, trying to twist it into some kind of talisman Most of us living in the modern world have difficulty understanding the concept of ‘idolatry’.
Perhaps the most pervasive modern day idolatry is the worship of ‘technique’ (attention to method, the use of routines) There are no shortcuts to spirituality.
That’s what we tried to find in the bottle, in booze, in alcohol. It didn’t work. We have learned the only technique is what is called in four letters…. TIME –The Spirituality of Imperfection/Ernie Kurtz & Katherine Kechum p.122-124 | More…
Spirituality involves not magic but miracle and mystery; not wilfulness but willingness. Dr Leslie Farber suggests we live in an age of ‘disordered will’
Goals and directions are distorted, even destroyed by attempts to control them. Attempting to treat directions as if they were objects – leads first to anxiety and then, inevitably to, addiction.
Anxiety occurs because the confusion of objects with directions is doomed to failure; The split between the will and its impossible goal deepens with each futile attempt to will what cannot be willed.
Addiction results not in ‘better living through chemistry’, but in the self-destructive ‘location of divinity in drugs/alcohol’. The problem with ‘willing what cannot be willed’ is that we step into a territory that is not ours – we stake the claim to be God.
Seeking to control what cannot be controlled destroys precisely what we are trying to control. To will what cannot be willed is to become in Farber’s memorable phrase, ‘addicted to addiction’ –The Spirituality of Imperfection/Ernie Kurtz & Katherine Kechum p.125-127 | More…
God has always wanted me to be sober but the miracle took place when I wanted it, too. His hands were always extended towards me, the miracle happened when I chose to embrace Him. My sobriety involves me. –Father Leo | More…
I see the pain in those hopeful eyes, I extend my hand, and then the miracle happens: I become healed. My problems vanish as I reach out to his trembling soul. –Daily Reflections | More…
Many of us came to the program because we had no place else to go. Through the mystery of our choices and God’s grace, time goes by and we change.
It is then we realize that the promises of recovery are coming true. As the Big Book states, the promises of recovery are being “fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
They will always materialize if we work for them. –Answers in the Heart/P. Williamson and S. Kiser | More…
I went to a holy man and asked him for help. He told me to get on the Red Road. Pray to Wakan-Tanka (Great Spirit) to help you walk the Red Road.
Traditions, customs and ceremonies help us answer three questions:
Who am I?, why am I?, and where am I going?
When we can answer these three questions, we are on the Red Road.
When we cannot, we have gone astray.
That is why the Holy Men tell us to pray to the Great Spirit and to seek the Red Road.
Why am I? My purpose is the serve the Great Spirit.
Who am I? I am an Indian who walks the Red Road.
Where am I going? My vision is to serve my people. –Elders | More…
Enough prayer (treatment) will get you out of any difficulty, Emmet Fox insisted. People who have found sobriety in AA are actually modern miracles. They expect more miracles to continue ‘happening’ otherwise, there would be no point in continuing to work with newcomers. And while we’re expecting miracles, let’s remember that countless other human problems will yield to a spiritual approach. Life itself is miraculous when we study it: why shouldn’t there be more miracles ahead? –Walk In Dry Places | More…
MORNING HELPERS 