A Letter to Friends

My dear, dear friends on the 12th step path,
Those of you who share this design for living, this letter is for you, my beloved sisters, brothers, my people.
Can words convey how full my heart is at this moment for those of you who work with others, who carry the message, who try.
No, it is not easy but yes, to watch a fellowship grow is an experience not to miss.
And yet at times it dissolves like a mist.
So each morning, I return to my inner room, close the door, cleanse, and connect to my self, to truth, to God. 
Those of you who stay the course!! I praise God and pray for you and LOVE to work with you, to receive your calls, to share your pains, joys, tears, breakthroughs,  your awakening to Presence. 
I also pray for those tangled in the world's weeds, who no longer have time, no longer need "those meetings," no longer surrender to pass forward what was given freely, those who fail to give the same mercy, grace, patience that was freely given to them. "She just wants to talk about her problems!"  I ask you, has someone listened to yours? How did that person steer you back to the toolkit, to the path, to truth, to God, to compassion and LOVE?
I have stayed and must be some kind of a fool, hurt many times by the very rooms that have saved, and continue to save my life.
"Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your Presence?" 
Psalm 139:7
If you were here with me, my beloved friend, we might read this beautiful Psalm together and be enveloped in a deep warmth on the sofa, or maybe on pillows by candles or a fire.  NO need for red wine,  - the WORD is the Spirit - melts, dissolves, molds me into the Great Reality. 
Let's stay open to where other spiritual, religious, wise, experienced people are right. Let's not separate for long from the blues, the Psalms, the Tanakh, the Gospels, from physics, cosmology, authentic "history," from our own life stories detailing the micro-moment to the great personal and universal stories. This is where humility lives... how little I know, understand, am able to see. 
I hear your stories in Step 5 and am humbled by the pain you have endured- humbled by the complexity of emotional twists, humbled by how alcohol, booze, drugs, bulimia, cutting, gambling, stealing, cheating, sexing, how sought-after highs, pleasures that kick off a craving, once saved our lives, allowed us to control Energy in Motion, E-motion,
But it's God's energy that we seek just for today. 
Through it all we choose God and are blessed with many portals - meetings, calls, prayer, meditation, reading, listening, learning! 
All of us are so LOVED!
So not matter what that latest sponsee has done or not done, stay the course and continue with me please, to try to carry this message of liberation, emancipation, endurance, freedom. 
Freedom is NOT free.
A victory for one is a victory for all.
The 12 Step Design for living is not easy at many moments: confusion, fear, fury, hurt, doubt arise!
Remember you are NOT alone.
I am with you, in you, for your ALWAYS in the Holy Spirit, in God, in Yeshua, with your angels and ancestors!
With great LOVE!!!
Your sister forever and always,
​Alma

Ruth and Naomi by Leonard Baskin. Ruth might be saying at this very moment, "Do not urge me to leave you or return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."