Out of Great Weakness

The month ends where Bill ended his story of A.A.'s unity: it was forged under the threat of collapse, and it lasts only while the groups keep choosing it. Bill W., at St. Louis in 1955 (A.A. Comes of Age): "Ours is not the usual success story; rather it is the story of how, under God's grace, an unsuspected strength has arisen out of great weakness; of how, under threats of disunity and collapse, world-wide unity and brotherhood have been forged." Forged means hammered into shape in the heat. And he said what holds it now. The Traditions, he said, "represent the distilled experience of our past, and we rely on them to carry us in unity through the challenges and dangers which the future may bring." The first of them is four sentences in the Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward." The whole first, the member close behind, and the drunk still out there the reason for both. Tomorrow, Tradition Two asks who decides for a group. Test it tonight: ask whether your group would still stand if every person in it were replaced, and why.