Daily Reflections · November 16
A Daily Reprieve
The line this feature is named for, how it read in the draft of 1939, and what the word meant in one member’s story in the same book.
Today’s reading
The reading for November 16 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, page 85, in the chapter “Into Action,” and it’s the line A Daily Reprieve takes its name from.
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Themes and asks
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Not cured
The six words just before today’s passage, in the Big Book, say it flatly: members aren’t cured of alcoholism. Behind the words tells of a man whose story was still in the first edition, printed in April 1939, after he had gone back to drinking.
- Is there a part of you that still hopes to drink like other people someday? When does it speak up?
- When someone you know goes back out after years sober, what do you take from it?
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A stay, not a pardon
One member’s story in the first edition uses the word with a condemned man in mind, as Behind the words tells. Read beside today’s title, that picture suggests a reprieve puts off a sentence without lifting it, which would make each sober day something given, not won for good.
- Do you talk about your sobriety more as something you earned or something you were given? Which is closer to the truth?
- If today is a stay rather than a pardon, what is it for?
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Kept up
The passage puts a condition on the reprieve, and the condition is upkeep of the spiritual life. In the 1939 draft, Behind the words shows, the sentence stopped before it got that far.
- What does upkeep look like for you on an ordinary day: a call, a meeting, a few minutes of quiet, a page of reading?
- Which of those goes first when you’re busy, or when things are going well?
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In training
For the member who wrote today’s reflection, prayer and meditation matter most for drawing nearer to a Higher Power, and the practice is kept up like an athlete’s routine. On a hard day, the writer says, the program is there to lean on.
- If your spiritual life kept a training log, what would this past week’s page show?
- What’s the smallest version of your practice you could keep up even on your worst day?
Behind the words
Not cured
Today’s passage comes two sentences after November 1’s, near the end of the Big Book’s pages on Step Ten in the chapter “Into Action.” Between the two stands a sentence of six words: “We are not cured of alcoholism.” The sentence after the passage gives every day its work, and two paragraphs on, the chapter takes up Step Eleven, prayer and meditation, where today’s reflection goes.
In the loan copy, the copies of the book sent out for comment early in 1939, the passage was half as long. In a transcription of it, the sentence stops after its first eight words, at the reprieve, with nothing about what the reprieve depends on. The eight words that say so are in the book printed that April. The sources here don’t say who added them, or when. Half a sentence sets the three sentences side by side.
One of the book’s personal stories used the word too. “A Business Man’s Recovery” tells of a man who had tried doctors, a sanitarium and a course of seventy-two injections, and still felt he had “not really been cured.” Back at the sanitarium, a doctor whose name the book prints as a dash told him he knew some fellows who could help, and asked if he’d like to meet them. The writer gives his answer as a question: “Would a condemned man like a reprieve?”
Arthur S.’s timeline of AA history names him as Bill R., a New York member who had come to AA, his story says, in February 1937, and the first chairman of the Alcoholic Foundation, the board AA’s friends set up in 1938 for the book. He went back to drinking, the timeline says, and resigned in February 1939, after less than five months as chairman. The trustees’ minutes record that they accepted his resignation reluctantly and elected him to the board’s advisory committee. The book came out that April with his story in it. The timeline’s list of the book’s stories has his in the loan copy and the first edition only.
Bill W. came back to the idea in a letter to Evelyn H., in a summer when several members two or three years sober had slipped. He knew of no one who had slipped, he wrote, who hadn’t in a sense benefited, and the slips were notice to everyone “that no one is ever really cured of alcoholism.” And: “We only have a reprieve day by day, contingent on our spiritual well-being.” Pass It On, AA’s biography of Bill, prints the letter without a date, in a chapter that opens in 1941.
More on the copies sent out for comment: Loan copy, in By the Carload. On the Foundation’s first board and why its alcoholics were outnumbered: Class A and Class B, in Trusted Servants. On how AA speaks of a cure today: A far safer term, in An Illness of This Sort.
Half a sentence
Today’s passage and the sentences on either side of it, as the loan copy had them early in 1939 and as the book printed them that April. The passage itself isn’t quoted: each square stands for one of its words.
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Before
The same, word for word.
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Today’s passage
Early 1939Eight words, then a full stop
April 1939The same eight, then eight more
The eight added words name what the reprieve depends on.
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After
Early 1939“Every day is a day when you have to carry the vision of God’s will into all of your activities.”
April 1939“Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.”
As nearly everywhere in the chapter, the draft’s “you” became “we,” and what “you” had to do became something “we must” do. November 1 tells why, and counts both.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. “Into Action” (the reading cites page 85), and in the first edition, the story “A Business Man’s Recovery.”
- The pre-publication manuscript of early 1939 (a loan copy), from a transcription. “Into Action.”
- Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009 (the Alcoholic Foundation’s first board; and Appendix 1, the authors of the Big Book’s stories).
- Minutes of the Alcoholic Foundation, February 14, 1939, as quoted on the AA History Lovers list (message 5429, December 2008).
- Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 14 (Bill W.’s letter to Evelyn H.).
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. November 16 · 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.