Hello, I'm _____________, and I'm grateful to be your Al-Anon chair today.
This is the opening for the regular Saturday meeting at A Serenity Place.
May we all please observe a moment of silence to reflect on why we are here.
Would all those who care to please join me in opening with the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
We welcome you to A Serenity Place online Al-Anon meeting and hope you will
find in this fellowship the help and friendship we have been privileged to
enjoy.
We who live, or have lived, with the problem of alcoholism understand as
perhaps few others can. We, too, were lonely and frustrated, but in Al-Anon
we discover that no situation is really hopeless, and that it is possible
for us to find contentment, and even happiness, whether the alcoholic is
still drinking or not.
We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that
lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to
place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to
dominate our thoughts and our lives.
The family situation is bound to improve as we apply the Al-Anon ideas.
Without such spiritual help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most
of us. Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions, and we
become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
The Al-Anon program is based on the suggested Twelve Steps of Alcoholics
Anonymous, which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to
our lives along with our slogans and the Serenity Prayer. The loving
interchange of help among members and daily reading of Al-Anon literature
thus make us ready to receive the priceless gift of serenity.
Al-Anon is an anonymous fellowship. Everything that is said here, in the
group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this
way can we feel free to say what is on our minds and in our hearts, for this
is how we help one another in Al-Anon.
In closing I would like to say that the opinions expressed here were
strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you liked and leave
the rest.
The things you heard were spoken in confidence and should be treated as
confidential. Keep them within the walls of this room and the confines of
your mind.
A few special words to those of you who haven't been with us long: Whatever
your problems, there are those among us who have had them, too. If you try
to keep an open mind, you will find help. You will come to realize that
there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too
great to be lessened.
We aren't perfect. The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have
in our hearts for you. After a while, you'll discover that though you may
not like all of us,
you'll love us in a very special way--the same way we already love you.
Talk to each other, reason things out with someone else, but let there be no
gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love and
peace of the program grow in you one day at a time.
Will all who care to, join me in the closing prayer.
God, grant me the serenity to
Accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Revised: 8/23/96