An Individual Adventure

Today’s passage comes partway through Bill W.’s essay on Step Eleven in the Twelve and Twelve, AA’s 1953 book of essays on the Steps and Traditions, right after he has walked a beginner through a first try at meditating on a prayer. Earlier in the essay he had called the world’s libraries and places of worship “a treasure trove for all seekers.” The Big Book had said much the same in 1939: there were “many helpful books,” and a priest, minister or rabbi could suggest some.

Dr. Bob, AA’s other co-founder, went about his own search largely through books. Dorothy S. M., the wife of Clarence S. in Cleveland’s early AA days, once reminded Bill of the piles: Anne S. was forever trying to get them up into the attic, and there were books heaped beside his bed, under it, all over the house. “He read about every religion,” said his son, Smitty. He could talk about the Koran and Confucius, and he read the Bible through three times. He loved William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, a book few Akron members took to. And he used to go on retreat with Catholics in Cleveland for a weekend, a member remembered, “with his Bible and his pajamas and a toothbrush.”

Smitty said his father had hoped for a spiritual revelation, the kind that comes to some people all at once. Bill had had one, at Towns Hospital in December 1934. Dr. Bob, AA’s history of Akron says, never had a sudden revelation like that. He worked for one, giving an hour or more a day to religious study, and when nothing came he took it as a sign he might be doing something wrong. Smitty called it “a long, slow process,” and thought his father got there in the end. Dr. Bob told Smitty and his wife, Betty, of one moment at his desk, soon over, when a deep peace came over him that he said he would never forget.

With other people he went carefully. He didn’t press religion on people, Smitty said, for fear of driving them away, and Dorothy said he was slow to recommend what he read in case it unsettled someone, though he’d tell anyone who asked. He could laugh about it, too, Smitty remembered. When Paul S., an Akron pioneer, called some fellow “a reflection of Christ,” Dr. Bob said the man might have “a little dust on his mirror.” Right to the end, Dorothy said, he felt that with more spiritual understanding he could somehow pass the message on.

More on Dr. Bob’s years in the Oxford Group before he met Bill: Secret drinker, in I Just Work Here. On the books Akron handed its newcomers: Your second Bible, in Suggestions Only. On Bill’s experience at Towns Hospital: The Bedside, in The Little Doctor.