Freedom in Form--or Why We Have a Program

We joke sometimes about all of the “suggestions” in AA. The steps are suggestions, and other guidance like “Don’t drink, go to meetings and pray” are also suggestions. But we are also told, “Yeah—only suggestions and death is the consequence of not following them.”

It’s about structure and rules and order and form. All things that alcoholics just naturally resist.

So today I read something great about the benefit of form and structure.

This is from a book by Stanley Fish called, “How to Write a Sentence”. Fish writes:

“A famous sonnet by William Wordsworth begins, ‘Nuns fret not their convent’s narrow room;/And hermits are contented with their cells;/and students with their pensive citadels.” Wordsworth’s point is that what nuns and hermits and students do is facilitated rather than hindered by the confines and formal structures they inhabit; because those structures constrain freedom (they remove, says Wordsworth, “the weight of too much liberty”), they enable movements in a defined space…and then every movement can carry a precise significance.”

Fish says, “This then is my theology: You shall tie yourself to forms and the forms shall set you free.”

Following the “suggestions” of our program, working the steps, living within the traditions then also can set us free. I’m happy to tie myself up in AA.

Ebby and Bill

Today is a special day in AA history. On this day, December 14, in 1934, Ebby Thatcher came to visit his old drinking buddy, Bill Wilson, and in Bill and Lois’s Brooklyn kitchen Ebby gave his testimony and took Bill Wilson through the Oxford Group conversion process. What we today call steps 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. It was Ebby’s gift to Bill and the gift that has been passed on to all of us. In the Oxford Group one could take all of those steps in one evening: The inventory, the confession, the examination, and then making the list of people harmed. Then one went out to make restitution—later called amends. Ebby was Bill’s sponsor. It began here—one drunk helping another. Bill was willing. He saw something in Ebby. He wanted what Ebby had. From this start we get Bill W. committed to sobriety. From a cold flat in Brooklyn to the rest of the world. We know that Ebby later struggled. But he was well used by God. Thank you Ebby.

Working the Steps?

Today’s meeting was about the steps. Surprising sometimes that in all of this AA-ing and meetings we forget that it is about these 12 steps. We say we “do” them, and we “work” them and we have instructions—sort of—in the Big Book.

But what has been your experience of working the steps? Did you do them once? Is it ongoing? Are you of the school that says we do Step One once? Or every day? And how about Step Four? I’ve done several 4th step inventories but some people say you do Step Four once and Ten through Twelve after that to keep things in line and sober.

And from this far out—or into the woods- what do you now say to newcomers who ask when they should start working the steps?

It's Not About Who You Are

Here is one more delightful bit of wisdom I brought home from the International Conference in San Antonio:

A woman shared the guidance from her sponsor when she was a newcomer and starting to work the steps:

“You don’t need to spend any time finding out who you really are. We’re gonna take away all the things that you are not and who you are will show up.”