Daily Reflections · November 25
A Powerful Tradition
Today’s passage comes from Bill W.’s 1946 account of how AA’s book, and then AA itself, came to carry the name that lost the vote.
Today’s reading
The reading for November 25 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from A.A. Tradition: How It Developed, pages 41–42, a pamphlet of Bill W.’s writings; the same words appear in his Grapevine article of January 1946, “A Tradition Born of Our Anonymity.”
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Themes and asks
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Second choice
Read plainly, the passage says the name AA carries came second when the members voted, and won anyway, on a fact that turned up after the votes were in.
- What did you once want badly that you’re glad now you didn’t get?
- When your group last voted on something, did anyone check the facts first?
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One more way out
The essay around the passage says the members couldn’t stand to make their book one more of a dozen with the same title. Read beside the Big Book, whose chapters speak more than once of finding a way out, that suggests another count: the ways out you tried before this one.
- Before AA, how many ways out did you try?
- What makes this one different from the others?
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No name on the cover
Eleven years after this article, in AA’s history of its first twenty years, Bill W. admitted he had briefly wanted the other title, because a book called The Way Out could have carried his name as its author. In the same pages he calls the idea “a shameless piece of egotism.” The Tradition the name led to asks members to put principles before personalities.
- Where would you like your name on something that was really shared work?
- What could you do this week without anyone knowing it was you?
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Mysterious ways
Right after the passage, Bill’s essay sums up the whole story with a line from an old hymn about God moving in mysterious ways. The member who wrote the reflection reaches further back, to the call Bill made in Akron in 1935 that led him to Dr. Bob, and finds the same hand behind it.
- What turn in your own story looked like an accident when it happened?
- What’s going on now that you can’t make sense of yet?
Behind the words
Twelve, or twenty-five
The reading cites pages 41 and 42 of A.A. Tradition: How It Developed, a pamphlet of Bill W.’s writings on the Traditions with a foreword he wrote in 1955. It prints today’s passage in a section headed “Anonymity” and dated 1946. The same words appear in his article for the Grapevine of January 1946, “A Tradition Born of Our Anonymity.” Bill opens it by saying the members were beginning to feel that the word “anonymous” held “an immense spiritual significance,” then turns to how they came by it.
What the passage tells in a few lines, the article tells at length. The members, Bill wrote, “must have considered at least two hundred titles,” and voting on them at meetings had become one of their main pastimes. It came down to two. Someone wondered whether other books already had the leading one, and Fitz M., an early member then living in Washington, went to the Library of Congress to look. Right after the passage, Bill sums it up: “God does move in mysterious ways his wonders to perform!” He was echoing the opening of William Cowper’s hymn, first printed in 1774.
In January 1946 there were no written Traditions yet. Later in the same article Bill sketched what one on anonymity might say: with very rare exceptions, no member should publish his name or picture along with his AA activities “in any medium of public circulation, or by radio,” and he asked the members to talk it over. That spring the Grapevine printed his twelve points, and in 1950 the members at Cleveland adopted them, by then cut to the short form. Anonymity became two of the Twelve Traditions: Tradition Eleven, on the press, radio and films, and Tradition Twelve, which calls it “the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions.”
Bill told the story again in July 1947, and this time he said why the name mattered: “because of the implication of humility and modesty,” it had given them “our treasured spiritual principle of anonymity.”
The title that lost never quite left. The Big Book’s second chapter, “There Is a Solution,” says the members have “a way out on which we can absolutely agree,” and the last chapter before the stories, “A Vision for You,” hopes AA groups will be “havens for those who must find a way out.” Both lines were in the copies sent out for comment while the title was still being argued over, and both are in the book today.
More on how the name was chosen, and on Bill’s temptation to sign the book: First names only, in Keep Coming Back. On the twelve points and how they became the Traditions: Twelve Points, in Rule 62.
How many Way Outs?
Each telling of the title story, in the order it was set down: who told it, how many books called The Way Out the Library of Congress was said to hold, and what else it adds. Each shelf shows that count, with a dashed slot for the one more AA’s book would have made. Today’s passage comes from the first telling and isn’t quoted here.
1946Bill W., in the GrapevineToday’s passage
12 called The Way Out
At least two hundred titles, voted on at meetings in Akron and New York. Someone asks whether the leading one is taken, and Fitz M., then living in Washington, goes to look.
1947Bill W., in the Grapevine
12 called The Way Out
After endless voting, Fitz M., now a Maryland man in Bill’s telling, makes the inquiry. The name, Bill adds, gave AA its principle of anonymity.
1957Bill W., AA Comes of Age
12 called The Way Out
More than a hundred titles. Akron leans to The Way Out, New York to Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill wires Fitz at his farm in Maryland himself, and the answer comes back two days later, adding that the library holds nothing by the name Alcoholics Anonymous.
1979Lois W., Lois Remembers
12 called The Way Out
Dozens of titles were suggested. Bill thought The Way Out trite, she writes, so he had Fitz, who was often in Washington, look it up.
1984Pass It On, AA’s life of Bill
25 called The Way Out
Fitz is said to have wired back 25 books called The Way Out, 12 more called The Way, and none called Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill always said, it adds, that more than a hundred titles were considered.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- A.A. Tradition: How It Developed. AA World Services (P-17), printed 2019; Bill W.’s foreword, 1955. “Anonymity” (dated 1946), pages 41–42, which the reading cites. Free at aa.org.
- The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “A Tradition Born of Our Anonymity,” January 1946; “Twelve Suggested Points for AA Tradition,” April 1946; and “Book Publication Proved Discouraging Venture,” July 1947.
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Unity: The Second Legacy” (the Traditions in short form) and “Service: The Third Legacy” (the title, Fitz’s wire, and Cleveland, 1950).
- Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, 1979. Chapter 10 (the title).
- Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 11 (the titles and Fitz’s telegram).
- Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book). Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. “There Is a Solution” and “A Vision for You.”
- The pre-publication manuscript of early 1939 (a loan copy), from a transcription. “There Is a Solution” and “A Vision for You.”
- William Cowper, “Light Shining out of Darkness,” first printed in 1774 and gathered in Olney Hymns (1779), at Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto.
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. November 25 · 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.