February 4
What Experience Can Teach
Before trying a suggestion, we may want to know precisely why it will help. We listen to explanations, compare them, and find another question. Thinking carefully has value. Yet there are parts of recovery that remain difficult to understand from the sidelines. We may know every reason people give for service while never discovering what showing up actually does to our attention.
A small honest trial can give belief something to work with. We spend an hour helping, take an inventory seriously, or speak a prayer without claiming certainty about its destination. Experience then has a voice in the discussion. It may confirm what we heard, challenge an expectation, or lead to a better question. There is no need to manufacture a dramatic result. Becoming willing to learn through participation can itself loosen the demand that every spiritual possibility prove its value before we allow it any room in our life.
What might I understand through participation that explanation alone has not shown me?
Experience is allowed a place in the conversation.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Three, pp. 34–35.