On this Christmas Eve, I sat down this morning with one of my sponsees to read about Step Six. He and I have already taken the Steps together and when we were done, we decided to go back and spend some time specifically on Steps Six and Seven by reading (together) a non-Conference approved piece of literature called, \”Drop The Rock.\” I love this book because it puts an exclamation mark on the importance of these two Steps and truly supports my thoughts that while all Steps are important, Steps Six & Seven are the meat and substance of my program. If I don\’t have a personal relationship with Six and Seven on the daily, I\’m screwed.

As we were reading, we came across this passage that shared a beautiful exercise on the idea of \”rituals\” (those things we do that become a habit) or actions we can take to help us become more familiar with our defects of character thereby allowing us the space through recognition of them to become willing to let go of them. The author shared the following…

\”I have attacked Step Six many times. It has attacked me in return. We have had open warfare, and we have had peace. For periods of time, I have on purpose ignored this Step. I have said that it made no sense to me.

The battle began some years back when I regularly attended Step-discussion meetings. I had done my best on the first five Steps, I thought. I had even made a written list of all my defects. They counted up to thirty.

Following the example of an old-timer friend of mine, whose quality of recovery I admired, I printed, in ink, each of my separate defects on a poker chip. Then all thirty chips went into a small pitcher. Every morning upon awaking, I plunged my hand into it (like picking a number from a goldfish bowl) and came up with the “chip for today.” The defect might be anger, fear, pride, resentment, gossip, arrogance, self-pity, procrastination, anxiety, intolerance, and so on, but whichever one it was had to be concentrated on for the next twenty-four hours and either reduced to a minimum or cast away.

It was a kind of game. I enjoyed wrestling with one “defect” a day. I felt I was making progress, really working the Program. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had gone overboard on this “defect” business. Thirty, indeed! How is that for the “pride” defect? Of course, most of them were not serious flaws of character such as the inability to be honest with oneself. Most were bad habits possessed, in some degree, by most humans.\”

As we read that passage together, I thought, \”Hmmmm. Maybe that would be a great exercise for me to start doing.\” So, while I don\’t have a bunch of \”chips\” laying around, I CAN take all of the defects of character that are currently coming up for me these days, put them on a piece of paper, fold them up, and each day, pull one out of the jar, concentrate on it for that twenty-four hours, and become willing to have it removed.

I wish I could say before I begin that the jar won\’t have many slips of paper, but I\’m thinking it may be more full than I would like. LOL! We shall see.  I wanted to share this with you to see if the \”exercise\” resonated with you too.

I pray that this holiday season is filled with much joy & hope for you as you continue participating in the transformation available to all of us as we continue to take these Twelve Steps and become willing to allow a God of our understanding to remove (through Step Seven) every single defect of character that gets in the way of our maximum usefulness.

In love and service,