Today I was thinking about the prayer of St. Francis, in the Eleventh Step in the 12&12. Particularly where we ask that we could be a channel of peace for our Higher Power, the God of our understanding. One of those requests is being able to bring harmony where there is discord. That’s where I stopped and backed up.
My thoughts went back to my early years in this program. Back then our main meeting of our group and many groups around us were the Steps. The second meeting in the week, on a once a month basis, was the Traditions. Since there were a few members, old timers, who had come in around the time this program was begun, the history and the meaning of these were emphasized. Why that hit me today is that I rarely witness or hear meetings on these Traditions. And when they do come up the main focus is on opinions and not what is necessarily the reason behind these.
As I was thinking about this, I noticed that I had written the words “our Higher Power, the God of our Understanding”. And here I go down the ladder in my mind. Back when AA was in its infancy, Bill W. in New York, and Dr. Bob in Ohio kept their little groups in the Oxford Groups. That’s basically because the young man in the chapter in the BB There Is A Solution, the one who was being treated by Dr. Carl Jung, had done exactly what Dr. Jung inspired him to do. He had sought a spiritual experience, gotten sober, and joined the Oxford Movement. Part of his experience was his helping an alcoholic friend of his to get sober. He introduced him to the Oxford Group and shared his experience with him. This friend was Ebby T. And Ebby was a friend of Bill W. and they had been drinking buddies. So Ebby went and met with Bill and shared what he had learned with him. And both of them went to the Oxford Group, where they met and helped other alcoholics like themselves.
The bottom line in all of this was what those who were to become the AA program were doing. The Oxford Groups. Then Bill and his wife Lois were asked to leave the Oxford Movement, because the drunks they were helping were beginning to mess things up. Meanwhile in Ohio, where Dr. Bob and his alcoholic friends were using this Oxford Group to recover, the Bishop in Cleveland asked the alcoholics there not to go to the Akron meetings because the Oxford Group was another religion. And that broke up the relations of alcoholics there from that movement.
And that was the beginning of AA. It became independent free from any religious affiliation. And that was where the words “Higher Power and the God of our understanding” came about. The founders of AA realized that alcoholics came from a lot of different backgrounds and educations. Some were religious and others not even close to that. Agnostics, atheists, all kinds of religions, no religions at all, and on and on.
They had already written the Steps and much of the BB, when they realized that the program had to be open to everyone who suffered the disease of alcoholism. So they changed the words, especially in the Steps, to reflect the openness of this program. That it was spiritual and not religious. People could come in, belonging to a religion, or not. Their beliefs or no beliefs were up to each individual. We were not here to teach anyone anything religious.
So, looking back at the beginning of this program, harmony was brought to the discord of mandatory rules and obligations. The only requirement for memberships was the desire to stop drinking alcohol. The primary purpose of this program is our staying sober from alcohol. The first Tradition and all the rest.
I had to stop today and think about why I am here to begin with. I’m an alcoholic. I have the disease of alcoholism for which there is no cure. But the Steps of this program and my living a spiritual way of life in here, whatever that means for me, is what has kept me away from a drink of alcohol for all this time. A day at a time. I have also learned that I cannot stay sober by myself. I need other sober alcoholics like myself to help support and guide me. I need to go to meetings and have an open mind and heart and listen. And I also need to have faith, hope, and compassion or love, in order to reach out and help another suffering alcohlic like myself.
Anyway I wanted to think about my staying sober today. Harmony and discord jumped out to me this morning. I needed to stop and meditate and think about this and how much it has helped me to stay sober.