"Ritual maintains the world's holiness. As in a dream, a small object may assume significance, so in a life that is animated by ritual there are no insignificant things." Thomas Moore-Care of the Soul
Compulsive eating is a deadly malady, I fool myself about that, buffer the reality, but as the saying goes “it’s as serious as a heart attack”. Thursday evenings at 7:30 there is a meeting in the old church on Rt-55, it’s across from the Arlington High school, just on the south side of the roundabout. People gather here to share experience, strength, and hope; we need hope to help us heal our bodies and minds. The people of the Overeaters Anonymous Lagrangeville Group who regularly meet on Thursday evenings created an event on January 9th called The Promises by Candlelight, a candle lighting ceremony in celebration of the 9th step promises from Alcoholics Anonymous (pg. 83-84).
We never know where or how God, as we understand, will enter our lives and do for us what we have never been able to do for ourselves. Every now and then we get to experience something that is just beyond our human mind’s ability to explain or understand. We know it’s good for us, we feel gratitude for the experience, the gratitude tells us something just happened, we take note, place a marker there for us to recall that moment; that was my experience of the ritual ceremony on 1/9/2020.
— Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous, 9th Step Promises.
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.! Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
