AA Book Club

Tuesday AA literature post - Daily Reflections and 24 Hours a Day: Daily Reflections April 30 A GREAT PARADOX These legacies of suffering and of recovery are easily passed among alcoholics, one to the other. This is our gift from God, and its bestowal upon others like us is the one aim that today animates A.A.’s all around the globe. -TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 151 The great paradox of A.A. is that I know I cannot keep the precious gift of sobriety unless I give it away.  My primary purpose is to stay sober. In A.A. I have no other goal, and the importance of this is a matter of life or death for me. If I veer from this purpose I lose. But A.A. is not only for me; it is for the alcoholic who still suffers. The legions of recovering alcoholics stay sober by sharing with fellow alcoholics. The way to my recovery is to show others in A.A. that when I share with them, we both grow in the grace of the Higher Power, and both of us are on the road to a happy destiny.

Throwback Thursday AA history post - October 1950 proposal from Dr. Bob and Bill W. to form a General Service Conference, AA's Third Legacy (You may have to scroll down past an ad): Dr. Bob and Bill W. - Your Third Legacy Will You Accept This

A Big Book topic for meditation, study or use with a sponsee, from our online book study guide at AABookClub.org:   With the Promise of a New Life What Can I Expect? When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances! (Page 100) We have shown how we got out from under. You say, “Yes, I’m willing. But am I to be consigned to a life where I shall be stupid, boring and glum, like some righteous people I see? I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I? Have you a sufficient substitute? Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your ex

 Saturday AA speaker post - Clancy I, one of his funniest talks ever:

Throwback Thursday AA history post - Pat O'D on Richmond Walker (24 Hours a Day) and Sam Shoemaker (Oxford Group): Pat O'D on Richmond Walker and Sam Shoemaker

Tuesday AA literature/history post - A 1945 Grapevine article on Step Four: A.A. Oldtimers…On the Fourth Step A.A. Grapevine, February 1945. Vol. 1 No. 9 Editorial: On the Fourth Step “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Since I cannot speak for anyone else, I’ll have to make my experience with the 4th step autobiographical. Before A.A., I tried almost daily to stop drinking. I hated myself constantly. I could not understand why such a wonderful person as I was would do the things I did. I was in a constant state of mental turmoil and misery, and I knew that I could not handle liquor. On coming into A.A., I had already taken the 1st step, but the 2nd and 3rd steps were discouraging, as I had no faith in a Higher Power. I tried to believe, and would have gladly forced myself to do so, were that possible, because I really wanted to succeed with the A.A. program. However, I skipped over these for the moment, as I was advised to do, and went on to the 4th step. . .

Throwback Thursday AA history post - Nancy K on Women of the Big Book  Part 2: Nancy K - Women of the Big Book Part 2

  From As Bill Sees It: Eternal Values Many people will have no truck at all with absolute spiritual values. Perfectionists, they say, are either full of conceit because they fancy they have reached some impossible goal, or else they are swamped in self-condemnation because they have not done so. Yet I think that we should not hold this view. It is not the fault of great ideals that they are sometimes misused and so become shallow excuses for guilt, rebellion, and pride. On the contrary, we cannot grow very much unless we constantly try to envision that the eternal spiritual values are. << << << >> >> >> "Day by day, we try to move a little toward God's perfection. So we need not be consumed by maudlin guilt for failure to achieve His likeness and image by Thursday next. Progress is our aim, and His perfection is the beacon, light-years away, that draws us on." 1. GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1961 2. LETTER, 1966

Tuesday AA literature/History post - From AA Today, a Grapevine publication commemorating AA's 25th anniversary in 1960, an article by one of our early admirers in the medical field:

Throwback Thursday AA history post - Origins of the Serenity Prayer: Origins of the Serenity Prayer