Daily Reflections · January 7
At the Turning Point
Bill W. wrote the Twelve Steps one night in December 1938, in bed, in about half an hour, and read them aloud the same night to two late callers.
Today’s reading
The reading for January 7 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, page 59, in the chapter “How It Works”: three short sentences just before the line that introduces the Twelve Steps.
This page doesn’t reprint it. Read it free at aa.org, then come back for the asks.
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Themes and asks
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The hinge
The passage sits where the chapter turns: what didn’t work on one side of it, the Steps on the other.
- Where are you still trying the halfway version of something?
- What would going all the way look like there, today?
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Every day a turn
The member who wrote the reflection meets turning points in ordinary choices, every day.
- What’s one small turn in front of you today?
- Is it something to begin, or something to stop?
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Not in the mood
Read beside the history below: Bill wrote the Steps worn out and out of sorts, not lifted up. This page’s thought is that turning points don’t wait for a good mood.
- What have you put off until you felt better?
- What could you start tonight, tired as you are?
Behind the words
The night the Steps were written
Today’s passage comes just before the line in “How It Works” that introduces the Twelve Steps. Bill W. wrote them one night in December 1938. The book was going slowly, the money was short, and the New York members had fought over every chapter so far. He was, by his own account, worn out and in no spiritual mood at all.
He lay in bed at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, with a pencil and a pad of scratch paper on his knee. Lois W. said later that he wasn’t really sick; if he could lie down, he did. He meant to break the six steps of the word-of-mouth program into smaller pieces, so that a reader far away would find no “single loophole through which the rationalizing alcoholic could wiggle out.” January 3 tells the first of the six.
It took perhaps half an hour. When he stopped and numbered them, “They added up to twelve.” He thought of the twelve apostles. The first draft, written that night, is lost.
Then two late callers came in: Howard A., his “boon companion of those days,” and a newcomer dry barely three months. Bill read them the new version, and they didn’t like it. November 24 tells the argument over the chapter that followed, December 1 how one word helped settle it, and November 1 how its “you” became “we.”
More on that night and the Steps at a meeting: How It Works, in Keep Coming Back. On the fights over the chapters: Who were we to edit?, in By the Carload.
The night, told twice
Two tellings of the night the Steps were written, in the order each was set down.
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1957Bill W., AA Comes of Age
“I was sore and tired clear through.”
In bed with a tablet of scratch paper. A draft in perhaps half an hour, twelve like the apostles, then two late callers.
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1984Pass It On, with Lois W.
“He got into bed, that being the best place to think.”
A pad of yellow scratch paper. Not really sick, Lois said. The book prints its best reconstruction of the lost first draft.
Sources
- Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book). Works Publishing, 1939: “How It Works”; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. Page 59, which the reading cites.
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the night the Steps were written).
- Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 11.
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. January 7 · 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.