One Drunk to Another A Daily Reprieve
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · A farmhouse porch at dusk in December: an iron dinner triangle hung from the porch ceiling on a chain, its striker hanging inside it from the same ring, ready to call everyone in to supper, and the kitchen window lit along the wall. Not drawn from a photograph.

Daily Reflections · December 23

Recovery, Unity, Service

AA hung a circle with a triangle inside it over the stage at St. Louis in 1955, and Bill W. called Recovery its base; in 1993 AA stopped guarding the shape.

Today’s reading

The reading for December 23 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from The Language of the Heart, page 160: the sentence that opens “What Is the Third Legacy?”, Bill W.’s Grapevine article of July 1955. The reading for December 4 draws on the same paragraph, in nearly the same words, by way of As Bill Sees It.

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. The one job

    Bill W.’s single sentence ranks the Twelfth Step ahead of everything else AA does. Read beside the history below, his talk at St. Louis that July, as AA Comes of Age later printed it, makes the same point early on.

    • How did the message reach you: a phone call, a meeting, someone at your door?
    • If a newcomer asked you what AA is for, what would you tell them in one sentence?

  2. All three, from the start

    For the member who wrote the reflection, the three only work as a set, a lesson they credit to others in AA and to their home group. At St. Louis, Bill gave each one a talk of its own.

    • Which of the three takes up most of your time in AA right now? Which gets the least?
    • Where does your group put its weight on one side and let another go?

  3. What it rests on

    The reflection ends on the member’s own recovery, and on what it has to do with helping anyone else. Read beside the history below, Bill called Recovery the base of the triangle, the side everything else rests on.

    • What is your sobriety resting on today: the Steps, a sponsor, a meeting, or only not drinking?
    • When have you tried to carry a message you weren’t living yourself? How did it go?

  4. The shape and the meaning

    Read beside the history below: in 1993 a committee of delegates came to doubt that AA could own its symbol at all, only what it meant. This page reads that as a question a member can put to the things they keep.

    • What do you hold on to as a sign of your sobriety: a coin, a date, a book? What does it stand for that it can’t hold by itself?
    • If the coin and the date were gone tomorrow, what would still be yours?

Behind the words

The base of the triangle

Today’s sentence opens “What Is the Third Legacy?”, the article Bill W. wrote for the Grapevine of July 1955. That month AA marked its twentieth year at an International Convention in St. Louis, over the first three days of July, and Bill gave a talk on each of what he called its three legacies: Recovery on the Friday evening, Unity on the Saturday evening, and Service on the Sunday afternoon, when AA’s founders and old-timers handed its services to the General Service Conference.

A banner hung high over the stage in the Kiel Auditorium, and on it was AA’s new symbol: a circle with a triangle inside it. Bill opened the Sunday talk on it, as AA Comes of Age printed the talk in 1957, edited and enlarged. The circle stood for “the whole world of A.A.,” he said, and the triangle for the three legacies; in ancient times, he added, the figure had been thought to keep evil away. On the first evening they had looked at “the base of our triangle, A.A.’s First Legacy of Recovery, on which everything rests and depends.” Unity made a second side and Service would be the third, and once Service was handed over that afternoon, he said, the symbol would be complete. In the talk as the book prints it, today’s sentence comes next, nearly word for word.

Then the symbol went to work. In 1954 the Conference had asked for a mark on the face of every book and pamphlet it approved, and the circle and triangle, registered as an official AA mark in 1955, came to be printed on them, in time with the words General Service Conference on it. In 1957, leaving it to the areas to make large copies of the seal, as the action calls the symbol, the Conference set where the words Recovery, Unity and Service went on those: along the base, the left side and the right side, as on the card here. By 1982 Box 4-5-9, the newsletter of AA’s General Service Office, was telling members that the symbol on a pamphlet meant it had come through the Conference’s long review and spoke for AA as a whole.

By the mid-1980s novelty makers, publishers and now and then a treatment center were putting it on goods of their own. From 1986 AA World Services contacted about 170 of them and filed two suits, both settled early. By 1990 some members wanted coins with the symbol on them too. A committee of delegates spent several days on the question before the 1993 Conference and came back doubting that anyone could own a shape. “We can own the meaning of the symbol,” its report said. Right after that Conference the General Service Board, AA’s trustees, stopped protecting the circle and triangle as a registered mark, and in 1994 the Conference had it taken off AA’s literature, which now says in words that it is Conference-approved. The Grapevine expected the symbol to stay in wide use anyway, like the Serenity Prayer and the slogans, which AA had never made official.

More on the coins members keep, many of them still marked with the circle and triangle: The chips, in Keep Coming Back. On the Sunday afternoon at St. Louis: Legacy, in Rule 62.

Three sides and a circle

AA’s three legacies, with each word where the Conference wanted it on large copies of the seal in 1957, and the time Bill W. spoke on each at St. Louis in 1955. Drawn from the Conference’s description, without the initials it also asked for, and not copied from any banner or coin.

  1. The baseRecovery The Twelve Steps. Bill’s talk on the first evening, Friday, July 1.
  2. The left sideUnity The Twelve Traditions. His talk on the second evening, Saturday, July 2.
  3. The right sideService AA’s services, from a Twelfth Step call up to AA’s headquarters in New York. His talk on the Sunday afternoon, July 3, the day they were handed over.

The circle All of AA, the world over.

On the booksA circle and triangle, by then with the words General Service Conference, marked AA’s Conference-approved literature until it was phased out from 1993. Since then, a line of words on the cover says the same.

Threads

Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.

Sources
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “What Is the Third Legacy?,” July 1955 (the reading cites page 160).
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “When A.A. Came of Age” (the convention’s dates and the banner over the stage) and “Service: The Third Legacy,” Bill’s talk of July 3, 1955, as edited and enlarged for the book (the symbol, the base and the three talks).
  • Advisory Actions of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1951–2022, as posted by Area 8, for the actions of 1954 (a symbol on approved literature), 1957 (the words on the triangle) and 1994 (the symbol taken off the literature).
  • Box 4-5-9, August–September 1982, “Two Symbols Ensure An Accurate Message” (aa.org).
  • “Whatever Happened to the Circle and Triangle?” Alcoholics Anonymous Cleveland, from the AA Grapevine, December 1993, adapted from Box 4-5-9, August–September 1993 (the mark registered in 1955, the outside users and the suits, the members’ wish for coins, the committee of 1993 and the trustees’ decision).
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. December 23 · 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-23/