Daily Reflections · November 20
Thy Will, Not Mine
Bill W. put a condition on asking God for particular things; the words of today’s title, from the paragraph after, were already in AA’s first book, two of them in parentheses.
Today’s reading
The reading for November 20 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 102: Bill W.’s essay on Step Eleven, two paragraphs after November 8’s, just after the essay turns from meditation to prayer.
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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With a condition
The passage leaves room for asking God for particular things, and suggests adding a condition to every request.
- What are you asking for these days, put plainly?
- How would you take it if the answer were no?
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Two shares
The member who wrote the reflection splits the responsibility in any situation into two shares, theirs and God’s, and for handing over God’s share borrows November 7’s slogan.
- Where are you carrying a result that was never yours to control?
- What would doing your part well look like today, however things turn out?
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Counting on it
The member closes on expectations, and on a slow way out of the pain they cause.
- What were you counting on this month that didn’t go your way?
- Where would patience do more for you than pushing harder?
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Saying it and meaning it
Read beside Behind the words, saying the words is one thing and meaning them another. Marty M. wrote of reaching the point where she could do both.
- Is there a prayer or a saying you repeat that you don’t yet mean?
- What would have to change for you to mean it?
Behind the words
Two words in parentheses
Today’s passage comes from Bill W.’s essay on Step Eleven in the Twelve and Twelve, AA’s 1953 book of essays on the Steps and Traditions. Just before it, the essay pictures a morning, with the day’s work ahead and perhaps a problem carried over from yesterday. The first pull, it says, is to ask God to solve each problem in a particular way, and to be able to help other people the way one already thinks they should be helped. Two paragraphs on, it takes up a question members often ask, why they can’t take a hard problem straight to God for a sure answer. It can be done, the next paragraph says, but it has its hazards, and the essay goes on to name them. Today’s title is a phrase from the paragraph just after the passage.
The shape is far older than AA. In Luke’s Gospel, praying on the Mount of Olives on the night he was arrested, Jesus asks for something particular, that a cup be taken from him, and puts a condition on it: if God is willing. Then, in the King James Version, comes “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” The Lord’s Prayer, which many AA meetings close with, has the short form, without the “not.”
AA’s first book had the words from the start, with two of them in parentheses. In “Into Action,” a sentence after November 16’s passage, the Big Book of 1939 gives a thought to carry all day: “How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.” The loan copy, the draft sent out for comment early in 1939, had it the same way, parentheses and all. The Twelve and Twelve, in 1953, sets the words down without them. Its essay on Step Three suggests that in any upset or indecision a member stop and say the Serenity Prayer, and gives the prayer one more line at the end: “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
At home the Wilsons asked for God’s will in words of their own. Once Bill and Lois W. had a house of their own, in 1941, Pass It On says, they made more of the morning quiet time they had begun in their Oxford Group days (November 3 tells of it). The book prints, without a date, the prayer they said at those times, one Bill wrote. It opens with thanks, then asks: “May we find and do Thy will in good strength, in good cheer today.”
Marty M. wrote about meaning them. In her story in the Big Book’s second edition, in 1955, she said her self-will, once out of all proportion, had at last settled where it belonged: she could say “Thy will be done, not mine” many times a day, and mean it. Her biographers suggest she may have been thinking of a storm she had stirred up in AA. In the fall of 1944, opening her National Committee for Education on Alcoholism with Yale behind it, she spoke in public as an alcoholic and gave AA the credit for her sobriety. Many members were alarmed, and some held Bill, her sponsor, to blame. After two years she stopped naming AA in public, and kept her AA life apart from her work.
More on the prayers that open and close a meeting: The Serenity Prayer and The closing, in Keep Coming Back. On the draft sent out for comment: Loan copy, in By the Carload. On Marty’s committee and AA’s alarm: Something useful, in People Like You.
Whose will
The words in the order they were set down, with the part that sets God’s will against one’s own underlined. Today’s passage is marked and not quoted. The words in quotation marks are theirs; the short labels are this page’s.
1611Luke 22, King James Version, in today’s spellingAfter a request
“nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”
On the Mount of Olives, after asking that the cup be taken away, if God is willing.
1939The Big Book, “Into Action”In parentheses
A thought to carry through every day. The loan copy had it too.
1953The Twelve and Twelve, Step ThreeAfter the Serenity Prayer
“Thy will, not mine, be done.”
One more line on the prayer, for any upset or indecision.
1953The Twelve and Twelve, Step ElevenToday
Today’s passage
Not a “not mine” but a condition on each particular request. Read it at aa.org.
1955Marty M., “Women Suffer Too”Meant
Said many times a day, in her story in the Big Book’s second edition.
1962Bill W., in the GrapevineFor all of AA
In “This Matter of Fear,” on why AA’s members needn’t fear what becomes of a frightened world.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. The essays on Steps Three and Eleven (the reading cites page 102).
- Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. “Into Action,” and Marty M.’s story, “Women Suffer Too,” first printed in the second edition, 1955.
- The pre-publication manuscript of early 1939 (a loan copy), from a transcription. “Into Action.”
- Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 15 (Bill and Lois’s morning quiet time, and Bill’s prayer).
- Sally Brown and David R. Brown, A Biography of Mrs. Marty Mann. Hazelden, 2001. Chapters 17 and 18.
- The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “This Matter of Fear,” January 1962.
- The Holy Bible, King James Version. Luke 22:39–46, and the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:9–13.
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. November 20 · 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.