Virtue Recovery Meeting - Folkbuilder Ashley McStocker
Virtue Recovery Meeting - Hospitality
The Virtue Recovery meeting is still going strong, for our Asatruar that are striving to be their best selves and have struggled with dependency. Many of us have used a traditional 12 step program, but there are certain steps that do not coincide with our belief system. For example, the need to do turn your will over to an all-knowing God, or to ask said God to remove any shortcoming. This leaves us to either go through the motions and make it work or, more commonly, feel alienated and as if there is not a program that honors ourselves and our Gods. We must give credit where credit is due and we genuinely respect and appreciate the 12 step programs that have done so much good for so many people yet have the need for an inspired and similar yet completely Asatruar congruent 9 step program, which are centered around the 9 Noble Virtues. We are able to be a hybrid meeting. This means that some of us meet together, but those who cannot join in with us via zoom! This opens up the ability for anyone to log on and listen, speak or just observe what we are all about! We are currently averaging 5-10 attendees! Member Josh Hemmingson and I are very proud of where our meeting has gone and look forward to it growing more and more!
This is the 7th installment of the articles so we will be looking at the 7th step: Make direct amends to such people (referring to the list of harmed persons made in the 6th step) wherever possible, except where to do so would injure them or others. Noble Virtue: Hospitality Realizing that I must let go of who I have been, I hang myself from Yggdrasil, dying to who I was, and beseech the Gods for the Runes of victory. I reach out a hand to people I have hurt if it is appropriate.
In the life of an individual that has led a previously non-virtuous life, hospitality was simply out of the realm of possibilities. It was merely not a concern… to be concerned with what another may need of us. In this past life, we lived to survive, and that survival depended on the daily desires that led us away from our true selves. On quite the contrary, in many situations, we relied on and took advantage of those that extended their hospitality toward us, and would delude ourselves that we were owed or deserving of such love and help that no act or gift was returned. Now that we have completed the prior phase and moved on to the next, not only are we able to extend hospitality to our friends, folk, and family, but we find a great deal of joy in doing so. It is an exciting and beautiful thing to be on the positive side of humanity now, and though we recognize that extending endless help to those who are struggling can become enabling and are careful of it, we take the opportunity in our lives to be of service to those we love.
Meetings every Thursday at 7pmCST and Saturdays at 9amCST.
If you would like the link information, please contact Folkbuilder Ashley McStocker at AMcStocker@runestone.org! Anyone is welcome to join!
Folkbuilder Ashley Mcstocker
