One Drunk to Another A Daily Reprieve
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · The edge of a field in low winter sun: a new stone foundation, square and empty, with string lines stretched between stakes, a mason’s level and trowel on the near wall, and a stack of cut marble blocks beside it. Not drawn from a photograph.

Daily Reflections · January 2

First, the Foundation

The reading’s title reaches for a builder’s word. So did Bill W., all through the Big Book, and he grew up where the stone came out of the ground.

Today’s reading

The reading for January 2 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from As Bill Sees It, page 8, where it is taken from Bill W.’s Grapevine article “The Greatest Gift of All,” December 1957: a question, and his answer to it. As Bill Sees It gathers short pieces from his letters and other writings.

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. Only the start

    Bill W.’s passage puts staying sober at the start of what an awakening brings.

    • What did you expect sobriety to give you that turned out to be just the beginning?
    • What has come to you since that you didn’t know to ask for?

  2. Room by room

    In the member’s reflection, the comfort comes a long while after the concrete, and the first walls go up rough.

    • Which part of your life is still the bare minimum, with nothing built on it yet?
    • What did you build early on that you’d build differently now?

  3. Checking the work

    The Big Book’s own checklist, after Step Five, asks about stones in place and cement skimped (see below). This page’s thought: a foundation can be tested before anything heavy goes on it.

    • Where might you have skimped, and what would checking it look like?
    • Who could you ask to look over the work with you?

  4. The words we grew up with

    Read beside the history below: Bill grew up among men who cut and moved stone, and builders’ words came easily to him. This page’s thought is that most of us borrow our picture of growing from whatever we grew up around.

    • What did you grow up around that gives you words for this?
    • Whose patient work do you find yourself copying?

Behind the words

A quarryman’s son

Today’s passage comes from an article Bill W. wrote for the Grapevine in December 1957, “The Greatest Gift of All.” The article itself never reaches for a builder’s word; the reading’s title does. But Bill had reached for them all through the Big Book eighteen years before.

In his own story, belief begins “upon a foundation of complete willingness.” In “We Agnostics,” willingness to believe is the “simple cornerstone” of a spiritual structure. In “How It Works,” the idea of God as the director of the whole show is “the keystone of the new and triumphant arch” the members walked through. And in “Into Action,” after Step Five, the reader stops to inspect the work like a mason: “Are the stones properly in place?” Then come the cement and the mortar. In 1953 the Twelve and Twelve’s essay on Step One reached for bedrock, in the line January 6 reads.

Bill grew up among stone. His father, Gilman, managed a marble quarry near East Dorset, Vermont, a village Bill’s sister remembered with marble sidewalks and two marble mills. “My people always were operators of marble quarries, that is, on the Wilson side,” Bill recalled, and he could remember, as a small boy, his father setting off in a gig for the north quarry.

Nothing Bill wrote ties the Big Book’s words to the quarries; the pairing is this page’s own. But the boy who watched the marble come out of the hills grew into the writer who asked his readers whether the stones were in place.

More on the quarries and Bill’s boyhood: The boomerang, in Number One Man.

The builder’s words

Where AA’s books reach for building, in the order they come, laid from the foundation up. The order is the books’; the wall is this page’s.

  1. Foundation“Bill’s Story,” 1939Complete willingness, to start from.
  2. Cornerstone“We Agnostics,” 1939Willingness to believe; the word comes twice in the chapter.
  3. Keystone“How It Works,” 1939God as the director, at the top of an arch.
  4. Stones and mortar“Into Action,” 1939The check after Step Five.
  5. BedrockThe Twelve and Twelve, 1953The Step One essay, in the line January 6 reads.
  6. FoundationDaily Reflections, 1990Today’s title, over a passage that has no builder’s word in it.

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 8, which the reading cites.
  • The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “The Greatest Gift of All,” December 1957.
  • Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book). Works Publishing, 1939: “Bill’s Story,” “We Agnostics,” “How It Works” and “Into Action”; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001.
  • Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. Step One.
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 1 (East Dorset and the quarries).
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. January 2 · 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/january-2/