(Remembering AA's Early
Friends) Bill never tired of telling the story
of A.A.s' beginning and giving thanks for our
many early friends. This is how he told it to
the General Service Conference in 1952.
Answer
"You share with me, I
know, the thought that the closing hours of this
conference bring with them a deep and joyous
realization. The realization that at last we are
surely on the high road that stretches straight
out toward our future, toward, we trust, an
everlasting sunrise. We face the sunrise in high
hope, with a confidence that is almost awesome
and with our hearts full of unspeakable
gratitude.
Gratitude to the Father of
lights, Who has delivered us out of our bondage,
gratitude to friends through whose hearts he has
enabled this miracle to be worked, and gratitude
for each other.
This too is an hour that will
ever stir memory. With me, perhaps more than
most, the wellsprings of memory are at flood
tide. I think of a psychiatrist at Zurich,
Switzerland, who had a patient, an American
businessman, treated him a year.
The patient thought greatly of
his psychiatrist, none other than the famous Dr.
Jung. The patient thought he was well, but
leaving the doctor, he soon found himself drunk.
So he returned to Dr. Jung, who yet unknowing to
this day, is one of the founders of this
society. And he said to this patient, "Unless
you have a spiritual experience, there is
nothing that can be done. You are too much
conditioned by alcoholism to be saved in any
other way."
Our friend thought it was a hard
sentence, but like many of us since, he began to
seek such an experience. He found it in the
confines of the Oxford Group, an evangelical
movement of that time. He sobered at once. There
he found the grace to achieve it. It was then
called to his attention that a friend of his was
about to be committed for alcoholism to an
asylum in Vermont. Together with some other
"Groupers," he interceded. The result was our
beloved Ebby, who first brought the essentials
of recovery to me. Meanwhile, there was a little
Jesuit, Ed Dowling, laboring among his flock,
lame and relatively obscure, he too, was to
light a candle for A.A.
There was a nun, Sister Ignatia,
in Akron who was to become the companion of Dr.
Bob, who as you know, was the prince of our
Twelfth Steppers. She, too, was to light a
candle for us.
Even Francis of Assisi holding
for the principle of corporate poverty, had lit
a candle for A.A. So had William James, the
father of modern psychology, whose book, "The
Varieties of Religious Experience," had such a
profound influence upon us. He had lit a candle
for Alcoholics Anonymous.
Then, too, there were to be
couriers to all the world. Harry Emerson
Fosdick, Fulton Oursler of Liberty, Jack
Alexander and the owner of Saturday Evening
Post. They were to become couriers. They, too,
were to light candles for Alcoholics Anonymous.
But back there in the summer of
1934, the alcoholics of the world felt as
hopeless as ever. And yet, as you see, a table
was being prepared in the presence of our
ancient enemy, John Barleycorn. Candles were
already upon it, and meat and drink was there,
but the guests had not arrived.
Then came some guests and they
partook of the spark that was to become
Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. Then ensued our
period of flying blind, at the end of which,
about 1937 or 1938, we realized that, indeed, a
table had been prepared in the presence of our
enemy. And that the candles upon that table
might one day shine around the world and touch
every distant beachhead.
There were more years of travail
in that pioneering time which ended in 1941 with
the advent of the Post article. Meanwhile, our
book of experience had appeared. No longer need
we travel in person. The message could be taken
through those printed pages to distant ones who
suffered.
Our recovery program was really
complete. Then came the test whether our growing
groups could live and work together, whether the
enormous explosive quality of our fellowship
would find in our principles of recovery a
sufficient containing element. Soon we came to
realize little by little that we of Alcoholics
Anonymous must hang together or indeed we should
hang separately.
And in that sometimes frightening
experience, the Tradition of Alcoholics
Anonymous was forged. And at Cleveland, in 1950,
it was confirmed by our fellowship as the
traditional platform upon which our society
intended to stand.
No body of law was this
Tradition. A set of principles infused with the
spirit of our 12 steps of recovery and enshrined
in the heart of each of us - that would be our
protection, we thought, from any blows with
which the outside world would assail us, our
protection from any temptations to which we
might be subjected within.
Such was the Tradition of
Alcoholics Anonymous.
In this period of infancy and in
adolescence this Society discovered that it had
to function. This Conference culminates that
long process of discovery through which we have
learned how we can best act to carry this
message to those who suffer. Yes, the advent of
this conference in full strength will mark a
great day in the annals of Alcoholics Anonymous.
For me, it marks a time when I
must shift from activity to reflection and
meditation and to the task of acting as your
scribbler, to record the experience of these
marvelous years just past. I realize that I
shall be but a reflector, a scribbler only. I
hope the task will be completed, useful and
pleasing to you -- and pleasing to God.
My heart is too
full to say anymore, excepting au revoir."
