Daily Reflections · December 4
Into Action
Bill W. had written today’s words by July 1955, when AA’s founders handed its services to the members, and the services he named that month began with a dime and the coffee.
Today’s reading
The reading for December 4 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from As Bill Sees It, page 13. The same words are in The A.A. Service Manual, and Bill W. had written them, nearly word for word, by July 1955.
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Themes and asks
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People, not only ideas
Bill W.’s passage warns that two people are at risk when the message stays put: the alcoholic who never gets it, and the member who keeps it to themselves. That, he says, is why AA has to be more than what it believes.
- Which of AA’s ideas do you agree with but haven’t put to work yet? What would doing it look like this week?
- Who was in action when you came in? What did they actually do?
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The coffee counts
At St. Louis in 1955, Bill W. put the cup of coffee on his list of AA’s services. The member who wrote the reflection was told much the same thing early on, about the small jobs at their own group.
- What job at your group do you do now, or could you take on? Who showed you it mattered?
- Think of a small job someone did before your first meeting. Who did it, and did you ever thank them?
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What comes back
The reflection finds service paying the member back, in energy from meetings and in hope from the people newer than them. AA’s first book opens its chapter on Step Twelve with the first members’ version of that discovery: working with others keeps the worker sober.
- When has helping someone else kept you sober? What did it give you that nothing else did?
- Is there a newcomer you could call this week? What’s in the way?
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Is it needed?
In his talk at St. Louis that July, Bill W. gave every service one test: is it needed? If not, drop it. If so, keep it going, or fail the alcoholics still looking for AA. This page reads it as a test a member can put to their own hours, too.
- At your group, what needed job is nobody doing? Could you do it?
- What do you do in AA out of habit that no one needs anymore? What could take its place?
Behind the words
The magic word
Today’s passage comes from As Bill Sees It, the 1967 book of short readings from Bill W.’s writings. The same words are in The A.A. Service Manual, AA’s handbook for its services. Bill had written them, nearly word for word, by July 1955. That month’s Grapevine printed his article “What Is the Third Legacy?”, and its first paragraph has them. The first two of AA’s legacies were Recovery, in the Steps, and Unity, in the Traditions. The Third Legacy was Service.
That same month, AA’s founders handed the services to the members, at AA’s twentieth-anniversary convention in St. Louis. On its last afternoon, Sunday, July 3, Bill spoke on the Third Legacy. As AA Comes of Age printed the talk in 1957, edited and enlarged, he made the same point early on, then added: “This is why we so often say that action is the magic word.” He had called action that in the Grapevine in November 1951, in an article that opens on a coffeepot simmering on a kitchen stove.
A service, Bill said at St. Louis, was anything that helps reach a fellow sufferer. The Twelfth Step call was the greatest, and the rest ran from the cup of coffee up to AA’s headquarters in New York. He told it as a story, starting with his own sponsor’s ten-cent trip to see him, and put each one to a single test: “Do we need this particular service or do we not?” In Akron the coffee had come early. Henrietta D., the wife of AA’s third member, said the custom of refreshments after the Wednesday meeting began right away, “with everybody talking to everybody, drinking coffee and smoking.”
Today’s title is also the name of the Big Book’s sixth chapter, which takes the Steps from Five to Eleven. It ends on “action and more action” and hands off to the next chapter, all about Step Twelve. That one opens on what the first members had found: “nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.”
More on the afternoon the services were handed over: Legacy, in Rule 62. On Ebby’s call to Brooklyn and what it cost: Ten cents, in My Sponsor, Ebby. On the hat, where Bill said spirit and money mix: The basket, in Keep Coming Back.
From a dime to headquarters
Some of the services Bill W. named at St. Louis on July 3, 1955, in the order he told them, as AA Comes of Age prints the talk. The words in quotation marks are his; the short lines are this page’s.
Ebby T. · late 1934
A phone call and the subway
Ebby T. heard how bad Bill’s drinking was, called him, and rode out to Brooklyn to see him.
Akron · summer 1935
A living room and the coffee
Anne S. made her home ready for the first little meetings, and Dr. Bob S. paid for the coffee.
Akron
Chairs and suppers
As Bill told it, the growing meeting moved to the home of T. Henry Williams and his wife, Clarace, friends from the Oxford Group, who paid for more chairs, cooked for the crowd and put up with what it did to their house.
The groups
A hall and the hat
When homes got too small, landlords wanted rent. So came a collection, then a treasurer, a secretary and sometimes a chairman.
The cities
A phone and an office
Old-timers hired a small office and a secretary, so that callers could reach AA and hospital patients had sponsors. When the groups’ gifts fell short, they often paid the rest themselves. Out of it came today’s Intergroup and central offices.
Friends outside AA
Hospitals
Medical care was never AA’s to give. Friends like Dr. William D. Silkworth and Sister Ignatia, and hospitals in New York, Akron and Cleveland, gave it.
Friends outside AA
Clergy, press and radio
Counsel from clergymen of many faiths, and free publicity from friends in the press and on the air.
“They have brought alcoholics to us by the tens of thousands.”
New York
The world servicesThat afternoon
The office, the books, the Grapevine and the trustees, serving AA as a whole. That afternoon the founders named the General Service Conference their successor, to carry these services on.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- As Bill Sees It. AA World Services, 1967, first published as The A.A. Way of Life. Page 13, which the reading cites.
- The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “What Is the Third Legacy?,” July 1955, and “Services Make AA Tick,” November 1951.
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. The foreword (the three St. Louis talks, edited and enlarged), “When A.A. Came of Age” and “Four o’clock Sunday Afternoon” (the afternoon of the handover, July 3) and “Service: The Third Legacy” (Bill’s talk on service).
- Box 4-5-9, June–July 1997. The words of today’s passage, quoted from The A.A. Service Manual.
- Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. AA World Services, 1980. Chapter VII, “A.A. number three arrives” (Henrietta D. on the coffee).
- Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939. “Into Action” and “Working with Others.”
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. December 4 · aa.org
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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.