We finally see that they are only people sicker than the rest of us, that we who condemn them are the Pharisees whose false righteousness does our group the deeper spiritual damage.
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1946
29
Gratitude Should Go Forward
“Gratitude should go forward, rather than backward.
“In other words, if you carry the message to still others, you will be making the best possible repayment for the help given to you.”
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No satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a Twelfth Step job well done. To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, and above all to watch them awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives—these things are the substance of what we receive as we carry A.A.’s message.
1. LETTER, 1959
2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 110
30
Getting off a “Dry Bender”
“Sometimes, we become depressed. I ought to know; I have been a champion dry-bender case myself. While the surface causes were a part of the picture—trigger-events that precipitated depression—the underlying causes, I am satisfied, ran much deeper.
“Intellectually, I could accept my situation. Emotionally, I could not.
“To these problems, there are certainly no pat answers. But part of the answer surely lies in the constant effort to practice all of A.A.’s Twelve Steps.”
LETTER, 1954
31
In God’s Economy
“In God’s economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.”
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We did not always come closer to wisdom by reason of our virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains of our former follies. Because this has been the essence of our individual experience, it is also the essence of our experience as a fellowship.
1. LETTER, 1942
2. GRAPEVINE, NOVEMBER 1961
32
Moral Responsibility
“Some strongly object to the A.A. position that alcoholism is an illness. This concept, they feel, removes moral responsibility from alcoholics. As any A.A. knows, this is far from true. We do not use the concept of sickness to absolve our members from responsibility. On the contrary, we use the fact of fatal illness to clamp the heaviest kind of moral obligation onto the sufferer, the obligation to use A.A.’s Twelve Steps to get well.
“In the early days of his drinking, the alcoholic is often guilty of irresponsibility. But once the time of compulsive drinking has arrived, he can’t very well be held fully accountable for his conduct. He then has an obsession that condemns him to drink, and a bodily sensitivity to alcohol that guarantees his final madness and death.
“But when he is made aware of this condition, he is under pressure to accept A.A.’s program of moral regeneration.”
TALK, 1960
33
Foundation for Life
We discover that we receive guidance for our lives to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give it to us on order and on our terms.
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In praying, we ask simply that throughout the day God place in us the best understanding of His will that we can have for that day, and that we be given the grace by which we may carry it out.
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There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.
TWELVE AND TWELVE
1. P. 104
2. P. 102
3. P. 98
34
“Not Allied with Any Sect ...”
“While A.A. has restored thousands of poor Christians to their churches, and has made believers out of atheists and agnostics, it has also made good A.A.’s out of those belonging to the Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish faiths. For example, we question very much whether our Buddhist members in Japan would ever have joined this Society had A.A. officially stamped itself a strictly Christian movement.
“You can easily convince yourself of this by imagining that A.A. started among the Buddhists and that they then told you you couldn’t join them unless you became a Buddhist, too. If you were a Christian alcoholic under these circumstances, you might well turn your face to the wall and die.”
LETTER, 1954
35
Suffering Transmuted
“A.A. is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress.”
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For Dr. Bob, the insatiable craving for alcohol was evidently a physical phenomenon which bedeviled several of his first years in A.A., a time when only days and nights of carrying the message to other alcoholics could cause him to forget about drinking. Although his craving was hard to withstand, it doubtless did account for some part of the intense incentive that went into forming Akron’s Group Number One.
Bob’s spiritual release did not come easily; it was to be painfully slow. It always entailed the hardest kind of work and the sharpest vigilance.
1. LETTER, 1959
2. A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 69
