Experience... More So than Faith

Pray --- and keep praying until it brings peace and serenity and the feeling of communion with One who is near and ready to help. The thought of God is balm for our hates and fears. In praying to God, we find healing for hurt feelings and resentments. In thinking of God, doubts and fears leave us. Instead of those doubts and fears, there will flow into our hearts such faith and love as is beyond the power of material things to give, and such peace as the world can neither give nor take away. And with God, we can have the tolerance to live and let live.

TWENTY-FOUR
HOURS A DAY
[Hazelden Meditations]

~

The first step of Alcoholics Anonymous took me to a place of humility in which I had to cede to my innermost-self the state of mind… the gripping addiction… and unmanageability of my alcoholism in what is commonly referred to as a necessary deflation of ego universal for spiritual renewal. Prayer became a routine established early in my sobriety while I was still humbled enough to accept it as a useful tool. I have recently experienced a depression so profound I could barely pray… my mind so confused… I could hardly meditate. Meditation is a practice so established in my morning exercises that I  practice regardless of how I feel. I recite the liturgy of prayer as an automaton in times like these with no hope that anything positive will come of it. Though I rise from my cushion feeling no better for the effort, my experience has been that there is more power in it than I can see or feel. Expectations of immediate relief from prayer foul the big picture by clouding it with the fog of despair if I don’t see results. Experience… more so than faith… tells me that the Heart of Compassion is always there but it takes faith to understand, and have patience, and to see it in my darkest hours.

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