Hello, I'm _____________, and I'm grateful to be your Al-Anon chair today.
This is the opening for the regular Tuesday 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.
THE TWELVE TRADITIONS
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The Traditions that follow bind us together in unity. They guide the groups
in their relations with other groups, with AA and the outside world. They
recommend group attitudes toward leadership, membership, money, property,
public relations and anonymity. The Traditions evolved from the experience
of AA groups in trying to solve their problems of living and working together.
Al-Anon adopted these group guidelines, and over the years has found them
sound and wise. Although they are only suggestions, Al-Anon's unity and
perhaps even its survival are dependent on adherence to these principles.
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest
number depends upon unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one authority, a loving God as He may
express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
servants; they do not govern.
3. The relatives of alcoholics, when gathered together for mutual aid, may
call themselves an Al-Anon Family Group, provided that, as a group, they
have no other affiliation. The only requirement for membership is that there
be a problem of
alcoholism in a relative or friend.
4. Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting another
group or Al-Anon or AA as a whole.
5. Each Al-Anon Family Group has but one purpose: to help families of
alcoholics. We do this by practicing the Twelve Steps of AA ourselves, by
encouraging and understanding
our alcoholic relatives, and by welcoming and giving comfort to families of
alcoholics.
6. Our Al-Anon Family Groups ought never endorse, finance or lend our name
to any outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige
divert us from our primary spiritual aim. Although a separate entity, we
should always cooperate with Alcoholics Anonymous.
7. Every Group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside
contributions.
8. Al-Anon Twelfth-Step work should remain forever non-professional, but our
service centers may employ special workers.
9. Our Groups, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service
boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. The Al-Anon Family Groups have no opinion on outside issues; hence our
name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than
promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press,
radio, TV and films. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all AA
members.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever
reminding us to place principles above personalities.
Revised: 8/23/96