The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
For those of you who knew Betty, and/or had her for a sponsor, she had given me two pages containing slogans and acronyms. I'm working on these with an alanon friend. We do 1 a week. But I stumbled upon "There but for the grace of God go I," which I don't find in most readers. Perhaps it was used more in her generation. But I wrote on it anyway.
AI describes this as "...and idiom expressing humility and empathy, acknowledging that one's own success or safety is due to luck or divine grace, rather than personal superiority. It means a person could easily be in another's unfortunate, desperate, or scandalous situation if circumstances were different.
I've heard this phrase said over the years, and I think it reminds me that I cannot control anything. Let go and let God I think is expressed here. It keeps me close to my HP. Negative things can and do happen. Nothing will ever be perfect. But I'll take all the help I can get!
Thanks for the share Lyne. I have had several moments in my life where " but for God's grace, that could be me", including on the other side of the fence as a double winner. It's a humbling type of gratitude when it happens and usually sends me scurrying quickly to the normality of my life with a reminder. Now that you've thankfully bought this up for exploration, I've realised a new layer on this side. Sometimes on other sites or in daily life I get really irritated by people who are stuck in the drama loop of codependency. I know at some level that part of it is aversion to remembering that part which was myself. But now, as I approach one year of separation I see those irritations as not historic, but a future I've hopefully permanently avoided. There are many potential futures I've avoided and this is what " but for the grace of God" means to me. There are so many layers to this and it's grounding to meditate on the concept tonight.
Thank you for this one.
I noticed actually a bit further down on this page a thread from 2018 bumped by a newcomer where Betty had expressed her view on this particular slogan. She shared an aversion to it as it could be interpreted as some having God's grace but not others.
Which is indeed an awful thought!
I feel compelled to add for me, the saying actually rams home a very different wisdom. When I think about it, I'm more convinced that human beings are One even when we don't realise it because of our ego. Maybe it sometimes seems like other people have nicer or worse lives than others but at some stage the wheel turns regardless of side. Gods grace may take several generations to arrive or to depart in some instances but life has seasons by design. I beleive in grace.
I also feel that grace is alive and well and a gift from God. Depak Chopra said: no one is above me, and no one is below me. We are all the same in many, many ways.
