Saturday, December 19, 2015

Ask A Sista: Days 18 & 19


Earlier this week I filled out a staff questionnaire for my new position at the YMCA (I'll say more about that later!). One of the questions asked me what my passion is.  The answer is living a life of service.  All I want to be is helpful.  

 A few years ago I read Step 12 in the AA 12&12, and though I'm not a recovering alcoholic, these words have always stuck with me.  They keep me from getting preoccupied with material possessions or status.  I do my best work and feel most alive when I'm helping someone else.  Here's my favorite passage from the 12th step!

Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human be- ings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can t and belong in God’s scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

  

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