Just for Today
Friday, Dec. 7, 2012
When membership in a fledgling movement hit 2,000 members in March 1941, "(AA) then entered a fearsome and exciting adolescent period. The test that it faced was this: Could these large numbers of erstwhile erratic alcoholics successfully meet and work together? Would there be quarrels over membership, leadership and money? Would there be strivings for power and prestige? Would there be schisms which would split AA apart? Soon AA was beset by these very problems on every side and in every group. But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experiences the conviction grew that AA's had to hang together or die separately. We had to unify our Fellowship or pass off the scene." -Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Foreward, pp xviii-xix.
Just for today, I must acknowledge that my sobriety and recovery are not entirely my own and that they reflect the effectiveness and success of the entire AA Program, to some extent. This is one of my obligations to AA - to represent it to the best of my ability, and the best is measured to some degree by my role in my AA group. Since the Foreward to the Third Edition of the Big Book when AA's membership hit 2,000 people, that number in the years since has multiplied by literally more than a thousand times. But there are still arguments in groups about who is to be "allowed" to attend meetings, who is in "charge," if the group's treasurer can be trusted with members' donated money, if members are out for "power and prestige." We as individuals and as a collective entity need only look to AA's 12 Steps and Principles that demand only the desire to quit drinking for membership, that we have no "leaders" and instead only "trusted servants." And our group "politics" are dictated only by a "group conscience." I ask today if I am a contributor to any friction there might be in my home group or if I am a mediator in potentially divisive issues. Either way, I am representing not only myself but the effectiveness of the entire Program. Today, if my choice is to "die separately" or "hang together," I could have had the former by continuing to drink. Today, I choose the latter. And our common journey continues. Just for today. - Chris M., 2012
Friday, Dec. 7, 2012
When membership in a fledgling movement hit 2,000 members in March 1941, "(AA) then entered a fearsome and exciting adolescent period. The test that it faced was this: Could these large numbers of erstwhile erratic alcoholics successfully meet and work together? Would there be quarrels over membership, leadership and money? Would there be strivings for power and prestige? Would there be schisms which would split AA apart? Soon AA was beset by these very problems on every side and in every group. But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experiences the conviction grew that AA's had to hang together or die separately. We had to unify our Fellowship or pass off the scene." -Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Foreward, pp xviii-xix.
Just for today, I must acknowledge that my sobriety and recovery are not entirely my own and that they reflect the effectiveness and success of the entire AA Program, to some extent. This is one of my obligations to AA - to represent it to the best of my ability, and the best is measured to some degree by my role in my AA group. Since the Foreward to the Third Edition of the Big Book when AA's membership hit 2,000 people, that number in the years since has multiplied by literally more than a thousand times. But there are still arguments in groups about who is to be "allowed" to attend meetings, who is in "charge," if the group's treasurer can be trusted with members' donated money, if members are out for "power and prestige." We as individuals and as a collective entity need only look to AA's 12 Steps and Principles that demand only the desire to quit drinking for membership, that we have no "leaders" and instead only "trusted servants." And our group "politics" are dictated only by a "group conscience." I ask today if I am a contributor to any friction there might be in my home group or if I am a mediator in potentially divisive issues. Either way, I am representing not only myself but the effectiveness of the entire Program. Today, if my choice is to "die separately" or "hang together," I could have had the former by continuing to drink. Today, I choose the latter. And our common journey continues. Just for today. - Chris M., 2012
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