June 15
A Sentence That Stays
Someone shares about a difficulty quite unlike ours. The circumstances do not match, and we almost stop listening. Then they describe the way they kept explaining themselves long after the explanation had ceased to help. That part is familiar. A sentence from someone else's life reaches a place our own careful thinking has been circling for days.
Shared experience often helps without supplying a direct answer. It lets us recognize a feeling or a habit before we know what to do about it. We do not need to make the other person's solution fit our situation exactly. We can take the recognition into prayer, a conversation, or our next honest look at the facts. Listening becomes less demanding when every speaker does not have to address our particular problem. Another alcoholic's ordinary account may offer one useful piece, and one piece can be enough to begin seeing differently.
What have I heard recently that stays with me beyond the details of the story?
One sentence may be worth keeping company with.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Twelve, discussion of sharing in meetings.