What They Read When AA Began--Oswald Chambers

It’s often a shock when people in recovery realize that the early members of AA did not have the Twelve Steps and The Big Book. We sometimes take for granted that the language we speak in recovery today must have been the mother tongue of the recovery movement but it was not.

We know from our Alcoholics Anonymous history books that the first guidelines presented to guide personal change were the six steps of The Oxford Group, which was the organization that gave birth to AA. This was the basis used as Bill and Bob began to form the new organization, and the Big Book—initially intended as the first business venture of the new organization.

 (You may recall that Bill was selling stock in AA before the others were able to rein in the natural instincts of Bill the stockbroker and dealmaker. Thank Goodness for Doctor Bob and his insistence on anonymity and humility.)

So, what did those earliest members read and study? Primarily the Christian Bible, and the writings of Christian theologians and preachers,. They also read, almost a counter balance, the works of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Today we know that so many of the practices and directives that we live and prescribe,  are from Jung.

But the “big” book that all of the early Oxford Group members, and early AA’s,  read was a daily devotional called, “My Utmost for His Highest,” by Oswald Chambers. This small blue book is still available and can be found in l recovery bookstores, and, interestingly, in every bedroom at The Wilson House –Bill Wilson’s birthplace and recovery retreat center in East Dorset, Vermont.

Oswald Chambers was an evangelical minister, writer, teacher and World War I chaplain. His small book promoted surrender, faith, trusting God with your life, and daily practices of private prayer and meditation. The Oxford Group in Europe found him and his book, “My Utmost for His Highest” became their daily reading, hence becoming daily reading for the early AA’s.

The osmosis of Chambers powerful messages fed the development of language and literature through The Oxford Group and then into the next generation of evangelical advocates who worked with “drunks and drinkers.” From them it came into the language and habits of today’s Alcoholics Anonymous—and from there into all those groups that end with an “A”—OA, NA, DA, etc.

What did Chambers ultimately contribute to our recovery movement? He gave us much of our practices and thinking around how to know God’s will, and how to understand God in your life, though today we substitute “Higher Power” for the word “God”. 

Chambers also promoted “The Quiet Time” for his followers—that is, daily, private prayer and meditation.  Chambers also wrote about “the fellowship of the Sprit” --not the kind of social fellowship we speak of today, but as an internal way of being with the Holy Spirit of God. But his language transcended to our use today. 

I came back to Chambers recently and his “My Utmost for His Highest” because of a powerful new memoir written by Macy Halford and published by Knopf this year. Halford, a writer for the New Yorker, was raised in an evangelical home in Texas where her family read “My Utmost” daily and kept those practices.

 In her memoir, "My Utmost", Halford explores what it means to have that kind of early evangelical upbringing, and what it means to leave it, questioning whether and what has been left with her and the value of those pieces of faith she keeps today. Her writing is beautiful, and she shows us how to explore whatever religion we met as a child and how to make sense of that as an adult.

In a quote from Chambers that closes Macy Halford’s memoir you will feel the rhythmic echo of page 164 of our Big Book, where we read, “Abandon yourself to God…clear away the wreckage of your past..” 

So many years before our book, Oswald Chambers wrote to his followers:

 “Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step into the Irresistible Future with him.”

The Art of Real Happiness

In the 1950’s and through the 1970’s, Reverend Norman Vincent Peale was a best-selling author while serving as the renowned minister at The Marble Colligate Church in Manhattan.

His books and radio talks inspired millions of people. He started a clinic at Marble Collegiate with psychiatrist Smiley Blanton where they developed a form of religious-psychological therapy, which was radically new and a bit controversial at the time. (Interestingly, today the fields of psychology and psychiatry are returning to practices that directly include the spiritual and religious beliefs of clients.)

Peale’s work was inspirational and like his peer, Dale Carnegie, he helped millions of Americans understand their feelings, beliefs and behaviors, and to learn new methods of communication and personal change.

One of Peale’s most popular books was, “The Art of Real Happiness” which became a hand-to-hand classic within the Alcoholics Anonymous community. And it’s no surprise as Peale’s message was close in tone and meaning to the messages and practices of AA: Surrender, Acceptance, Living One Day at a Time and committing to a regular faith life and habit.

In a used bookstore a month ago I found a first-edition copy of “The Art of Real Happiness” and marveled at my good luck. Then marveled further to see that in 1950 Peale had included a chapter called, “A Solution for Problem Drinking” where he details some of the psychological aspects at the root of problem drinking, naming resentment as a big one. And then he gives—in caring detail—an outline of how AA works—with the example of a businessman who has fallen far, and another showing a woman who is also struggling with drink.

This powerful chapter also tells the story of AA’s start and the importance of having a spiritual experience.

I love knowing that this classic piece of 1950’s self-help literature was also admired and shared by our earlier AA family members, and to know that we are also part of the Norman Vincent Peale lineage as well.

Two-Way Prayer--Part of Our AA History

You know the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and you also know that the basics of our AA grew out of the practices of the Oxford Group that began in Europe in the 1930's. What I didn't know, and maybe you are just learning as well is that the core of the Oxford Group practice was a spiritual ritual called "Two-Way Prayer".

Two Way Prayer was the invention of--or maybe the discovery of--The Oxford Group founder, American businessman Frank Buchman. He had a powerful surrender experience that freed him of some longstanding resentments and as he experienced the resentment leaving him he noticed that it allowed God to flow into his life.

He, like Bill Wilson later on codified his experience and taught others to use Two-Way Prayer and the organization became the Oxford Group that later Roland Hazard will bring to Ebby Thacher  and Ebby to Bill Wilson and Bill to Dr. Bob.

The elements of two-way prayer and the direct communication with God (In the Oxford practices) were teased apart by Bill and Bob and into what we now know as the twelve steps.

The basis of two-way prayer is a daily morning practice of sitting with a notebook or diary, getting very quiet and having a written conversation with God. (We might say Higher Power). The Oxford Group taught that it must be morning and in writing and at least ten minutes or more. You write to God and ask questions and then you listening quietly (or using active imagination) write back to yourself from God.

I have been trying Two Way prayer for the recommended 30 days and it is a very healing practice, and it recalls that part of our Big Book that says we will learn to hear our Higher Power's plans for us. It does work.

What is most fascinating is that early AA's were required to have this morning devotional and two way prayer each day. No exceptions. In fact, in the early days of AA going to meetings was considered a nicety but not required. But two way prayer and a daily practice of morning meditation was absolutely insisted upon.

To learn more please take a look at the website: Two Way Prayer. org. Or click on the link below for more information and to watch some brief talks describing the history and the technique.

http://www.twowayprayer.org/how-to-practice-two-way-prayer

The Six Steps of The Oxford Group

This afternoon I gave a talk at The Troy New York Public Library introducing the new book, “Out of the Woods” published by Central Recovery Press.

Part of the talk included some history of Alcoholics Anonymous and how it integrates Albany history, Carl Jung and The Oxford Group—an evangelical, Christian sect that was lifesaving for Roland Hazard, then Ebby Thacher and ultimately Bill Wilson and Bob Smith.

Many folks in recovery and almost no one outside of recovery knows that early history, and that Bill and Bob were part of the Oxford Group, and the debt we all owe to their yes, religious fundamentalism in the 1930’s.

But we need only read the Six Steps of the Oxford Group to see how deeply indebted we are. Here are those Six Steps that Oxford Group members used for the purposes of religious conversion:

The Oxford Group’s Six Steps

1.       A Complete deflation.

2.       Dependence on God.

3.       A Moral inventory.

4.       Confession.

5.       Restitution.

6.       Continued work with others in need.

AA also benefited from mistakes made by the Oxford Group. One reason the Oxford movement no longer exits is because they got all tangled up in politics, international affairs and had opinions on all manner of public matters.

Today, AA has as one of its Traditions this statement: “AA has no opinion on outside issues.” A lesson that AA learned from The Oxford Group.