As Bill Sees It. Anonymous

LETTER, 1966

      68

      Renew Your Effort

      “Though I know how hurt and sorry you must be after this slip, please do not worry about a temporary loss of your inner peace. As calmly as you can, just renew your effort on the A.A. program, especially those parts of it which have to do with meditation and self-analysis.

       “Could I also suggest that you look at excessive guilt for what it is? Nothing but a sort of reverse pride. A decent regret for what has happened is fine. But guilt—no.

       “Indeed, the slip could well have been brought about by unreasonable feelings of guilt because of other moral failures, so called. Surely, you ought to look into this possibility. Even here you should not blame yourself for failure; you can be penalized only for refusing to try for better things.”

      LETTER, 1958

      69

      Giving Without Demand

      Watch any A.A. of six months working with a Twelfth Step prospect. If the newcomer says, “To the devil with you,” the twelfth-stepper only smiles and finds another alcoholic to help. He doesn’t feel frustrated or rejected. If his next drunk responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other sufferers, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it any way. He still doesn’t feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his former prospect is sober and happy.

       And he well knows that his own life has been made richer, as an extra dividend of giving to another without any demand for a return.

      GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958

      70

      Truth, the Liberator

      How truth makes us free is something that we A.A.’s can well understand. It cut the shackles that once bound us to alcohol. It continues to release us from conflicts and miseries beyond reckoning; it banishes fear and isolation. The unity of our Fellowship, the love we cherish for each other, the esteem in which the world holds us—all of these are products of the truth which, under God, we have been privileged to perceive.

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      Just how and when we tell the truth—or keep silent—can often reveal the difference between genuine integrity and none at all.

       Step Nine emphatically cautions us against misusing the truth when it states: “We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Because it points up the fact that the truth can be used to injure as well as to heal, this valuable principle certainly has a wide-ranging application to the problem of developing integrity.

      GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961

      71

      “How Can You Roll with a Punch?”

      On the day that the calamity of Pearl Harbor fell upon our country, a great friend of A.A. was walking along a St. Louis street. Father Edward Dowling was not an alcoholic, but he had been one of the founders of the struggling A.A. group in his city. Because many of his usually sober friends had already taken to their bottles that they might blot out the implications of the Pearl Harbor disaster, Father Ed was anguished by the thought that his cherished A.A. group would probably do the same.

       Then a member, sober less than a year, stepped alongside and engaged Father Ed in a spirited conversation—mostly about A.A. Father Ed saw, with relief, that his companion was perfectly sober.

       “How is it that you have nothing to say about Pearl Harbor? How can you roll with a punch like that?”

       “Well,” replied the yearling, “each of us in A.A. has already had his own private Pearl Harbor. So why should we drunks crack up over this one?”

      GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1962