Best Stay Whole

Every capture this month has worked the same way: something outside the group gets a hold on it, through money, property or authority, until the group can no longer walk away. The Big Book introduces the Traditions as answers to two questions, and the second is this (Big Book, p. 561): "How can A.A. best stay whole and so survive?" Tradition Six answers it for a group's possessions and its friends. Hospitals and clubs are kept outside. The A.A. name stays off them. Cooperation stops short of a marriage. Under it all sits the last sentence: a group can "bind itself to no one." To bind is to tie, and the ties come dressed as help: a free room, a steady flow of clients, a grant, a partnership, a debt of gratitude. A group bound to no one can leave any room, refuse any money and turn down any partner, and still be an A.A. group the next morning. That keeps the door open to the drunk still out there, free. The same page says why: "We alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone." Test it tonight: ask three questions. Who could close your meeting? Who pays for it? Who decides what happens in it? In an A.A. group the answers are the members, the members, and the members.