I gave up everything for one thing, now I've given up that one thing and received everything.

Last evening I was at the Park Street Meeting in Boston.  Its a big meeting, maybe 150 people, quite urbane, Yale to jail represented.  I met a couple of people who shared a common ancestry in A.A., knew Beech Hill,Birch Acres, Marion Johnson, Irene Deviney, Eddie Dalton, the old timers.  A group from Charlestown put on the meeting.  The chairman was good, let the speakers speak and the first guy was excellent, had the gift, noted that for 30 years he had lived in Roxbury only traveling within a one mile radius in a world where no one knew anything about anything except what went on in that microcosm.  He been sober about three years, a newcomer, expressed a lot of gratitude, sounded like he'd come a long way.  Toward the end of his sharing he said, "For a long time I had given up everything to get the one thing I thought I wanted.  Now I've given up that one thing and I've gotten everything else."  It was really a profound and blunt description of the life of the sick addicted person and the counterpoint perspective of the recovering person.  Couldn't ask for a better description of the spiritual awakening.