New Age Snake Oil
Orange Papers verbatim:
The A.A. God:
The A.A. God is the generic brand that comes in a plain white box at the supermarket.
The A.A. God has a lot of will. He has a Will for everything and everybody, and everybody is supposed to do something to please God. Apparently, the A.A. God did not succeed in making the world the way that He wanted it to be, so both He and his followers have to be constantly changing things, trying to get it right.
The A.A. God is an authoritarian male figure Who closely resembles an Old-Testament patriarch, like Charlton Heston playing Moses.
The A.A. God is a dictator.
The A.A. God wants you to be a slave forever.
The A.A. God loves you the most when you are grovelling on your knees, confessing what a worthless sinner you are. Only then will the A.A. God do favors for you.
The A.A. God is highly illogical, if not outright insane. First, the A.A. God will stick you with the genes for alcoholism and make you a born alcoholic, then He will wish you weren't an alcoholic and an excessive drinker. Go figure.
The A.A. God has a grand plan for you: First, incurable alcoholism, and then, more incurable alcoholism.
The A.A. God is so harsh that He will condemn you to a horrible painful death by alcohol unless you properly perform your sycophant duties every day. The A.A. God routinely kills alcoholics who don't Work the Steps thoroughly.
When the A.A. God heals alcoholics, He only fixes them for one day at a time. For some unknown reason, God's magic wears off after 24 hours.
The A.A. God micromanages the world. He is constantly tweaking everything, pulling millions and billions of puppet strings to make things happen differently, to make things turn out exactly the way He wants, and to convenience some of his followers.
The A.A. God cheats at solitaire.
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Taking Care of Ourselves
A decade or so ago a friend who was going through a rough patch in her life had a therapist who highly recommended this book of meditations. I happened to be in Barnes and Noble with her when she bought Melody Beattie's book, and after perusing a few of the passages, I bought one for myself. What a difference reading The Language of Letting Go made (and continues to make) in my life.
I've bought and given away several copies of Letting Go since that night in the bookstore in the hope that my friends will benefit as much as I have from these sage words of "gentle" advice and reminders that we deserve "the best that life and love have to offer." A few of my personal favorites are the reminders to be patient and realize that timing is perfect, that it's okay to say "no" sometimes and equally okay to say yes to what feels right and good, and that we are responsible for taking care of ourselves.
The realization that we are being divinely led and that we need to trust our Higher Power is reinforced throughout the book. Anyone interested in growth and self-care will benefit from reading it.
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