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Daily Reflections · December 11

A Genuine Humility

Bill W. first wrote of a humble modesty; by 1947 his Traditions asked for humility instead, and the short form of 1949 let those lines go.

Today’s reading

The reading for December 11 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 192: the closing lines of the long form of the Traditions, their first and fuller form, which the book prints after its essays.

This page doesn’t reprint it. Read it free at aa.org, then come back for the asks.

Read it at aa.org

Themes and asks

  1. More than preached

    The passage asks members to practice humility, not only to believe in it. Bill W.’s first try at the line, in January 1946, as the history below tells it, said AA did more than preach it: it practiced it.

    • Where is your humility mostly talk?
    • What could you do this week that nobody will ever know was you?

  2. Credit taken

    Self-importance, says the member who wrote the reflection, is a danger to their sobriety and to the fellowship, and one shape it takes is credit taken for what God has done.

    • What have you been treating as your own doing that wasn’t?
    • Who, or what, had a hand in it that you haven’t thanked?

  3. On a good day

    The passage’s worry is that AA’s blessings could spoil it. Read beside that, Bill W.’s talk at Memphis in 1947 called success a heady wine, and humility the antidote.

    • When things are going well, what slips first in your program?
    • What does gratitude look like for you on a good day, not just a hard one?

  4. A group’s pride

    The member who wrote the reflection fears their own self-importance could hurt the whole fellowship. At Memphis in 1947, Bill W. warned of the group’s side of it: the sickness that once tore drunks apart could start to tear at their groups.

    • What is your group proud of, and does that pride leave room for the newcomer?
    • When your group does something well, who gets the credit?

Behind the words

A heady wine

Today’s lines are the last in the Twelve and Twelve, AA’s 1953 book of essays on the Steps and Traditions. After the essays it prints the long form of the Traditions, their first and fuller form, and point twelve of it closes the book. The Big Book prints the long form too, in an appendix that calls it the Traditions “as first printed in 1946.” One phrase in today’s lines had changed since then.

They began as lines about a word. In January 1946, writing in the Grapevine, AA’s monthly magazine, Bill W. said members were coming to feel that the word anonymous had for them “an immense spiritual significance.” It reminded them, he wrote, to put principles first and to give up glory in public, and it showed a movement that “not only preaches, but actually practices a truly humble modesty.” That spring the sentence became point twelve of the Twelve Points, the Traditions’ first form. The line about glory was gone, the humble modesty stayed, and a last sentence, on AA’s blessings, was new.

By the fall of 1947 the modesty had become humility, the words of today’s title. On September 19 that year Bill spoke at the third Southeastern Regional Convention in Memphis, and in October the Grapevine printed the highlights he had sent ahead, with the points “recently revised in the light of later experience.” (November 28 follows the same talk’s change to Tradition Eleven.) The talk was about humility. Success, Bill said, was “always a heady wine,” and it could make members forget that they lived by grace. “If humility can expel the obsession to drink alcohol, then surely humility can be our antidote for that subtle wine called success.”

The short form, first printed in the Grapevine in November 1949, let today’s lines go. Its Tradition Twelve kept the start of point twelve, anonymity’s spiritual weight and principles before personalities (above them, in its first wording), and left out the rest. As AA’s books print it now: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” Bill still said today’s lines, though. Summing up the Traditions at Cleveland in July 1950, at AA’s first International Convention, he ended on them, as he told it in the Grapevine that September. Then he asked for objections, heard none and offered the Traditions for adoption, and “the crowd stood up.”

The Twelve and Twelve set the short form over Bill’s essay on Tradition Twelve, and the essay ends on the same note as today’s lines: “We are sure that humility, expressed by anonymity, is the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can ever have.”

More on how the Twelve Points were written: Twelve Points, in Rule 62. On Bill taking them on the road, and cutting them down: The short form, in Rule 62. On what the Cleveland convention did with them, and the six books that put it in different words: A standing vote, in Rule 62.

Point twelve, part by part

The parts of point twelve in the order they come, and which of them each version had, from Bill W.’s first wording to the short form. The part names and short lines are this page’s.

  1. Significance

    “an immense spiritual significance”

    In the short form, the spiritual foundation of all the Traditions.

  2. Principles first

    Principles before personalities. The short form’s first wording put them above; AA’s books read before again by 1953.

  3. No glory

    “renounced personal glorification in public”

    Only in Bill’s first wording.

  4. Humility Today’s passage

    In 1946, “a truly humble modesty”; from 1947, the words of today’s title.

  5. Blessings Today’s passage

    New in the Twelve Points: what AA’s blessings must never do to it, and whom to thank for them.

There There, in new words Not there

  1. Jan. 1946 Bill W. in the Grapevine, on what the word anonymous meant to members. Not yet a Tradition.
  2. Spring 1946 The Twelve Points, the Traditions’ first form, in the Grapevine.
  3. Sept. 1947 The points as Bill gave them for his talk at Memphis, recently revised, printed that October.
  4. Nov. 1949 The short form, first printed in the Grapevine. The Cleveland convention confirmed the Traditions in July 1950.

Threads

Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.

Sources
  • Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. The essay on Tradition Twelve, and the long form of the Traditions after the essays (the reading cites page 192).
  • Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. Appendix I, “The A.A. Tradition” (the short and long forms).
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “A Tradition Born of Our Anonymity,” January 1946; “Twelve Suggested Points for AA Tradition,” April 1946; “Traditions Stressed in Memphis Talk,” October 1947; and “We Came of Age,” September 1950 (the Cleveland convention).
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the short form, and the convention’s confirmation of the Traditions).
  • Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009. The entries for November 1949 (the short form in the Grapevine, and its first wording) and 1953.
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. December 11 · aa.org

Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know

Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.

Printed from One Drunk to Another, an independent AA history · onedrunktoanother.org/today/december-11/