Caretakers Only

The danger Tradition Two closes at the top of A.A. is a headquarters that starts to rule, and Bill W. shut that door from inside the headquarters itself. Writing in 1947 (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 39): "Here at the General Office we have long known that we can merely supply certain indispensable services." Then the line: "It is most clearly apparent that, even here at the very center of A.A., there can only exist a center of service — custodians, editors, secretaries and the like — each, to be sure, with a special vital function, but none of them with any authority to govern Alcoholics Anonymous." A custodian looks after something that belongs to someone else. On the next page he named the threat (p. 40): "So long as we avoid any menacing accumulation of wealth or the growth of personal government at these centers, we cannot go astray." Menacing means threatening. So the Long Form keeps the authority with the groups (Big Book, p. 563): "For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience." Today the claim to rule from above comes as an office or a facility telling a group what it must do. Test it tonight: ask what your group was last told it had to do, and who told it.