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Source: 1955 St. Louis Int, Bernard Smith, The Paradoxs of AA.mp3 File: 1955-st-louis-int-bernard-smith-the-paradoxs-of-aa.mp3 Duration: 01:04:07
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Let's see what I can do to mess this one up. I have been carefully repeating to myself, at intervals for the past few minutes, the tenth step. Continued to take personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it. You know, in a way, I've come to like the flub that I pulled, because now I can get real homey. And instead of Mr. Bernard Smith, I'm going to say our good friend, Bernd Smith, will now present his address, The Paradoxes of AA. Bernd.
Thank you. Bill, Lois, Mrs. Wilson, members of the conference, members of the convention. You who have left your homes throughout North America to journey to St. Louis in the heat of the summer, did not come in search of sobriety. For if this were your purpose, we need not have convened here these last three days. That we who have been here have drawn inspiration out of this great moment in the rich history of AA, we cannot deny.
But the fact is that you who are here have attained sobriety, and have already found within AA the means for preserving it. And with it, a search and a way of living within it, even though it is still a world cluttered with materialistic ideals. So in the last analysis, you are not here to minister to your own sobriety, but rather in keeping with your concept of service to ensure that the structure of AA within which you fought your way back to life is rendered indestructible.
That so far as we here are soundly able so to provide, to ensure that this proven means of your own survival is preserved for the survival of generations of alcoholics yet unborn, may not be threatened by what we do here and what we have done here. But if we fail in our efforts to insulate the structure of AA from human fallibility, millions of people destined to alcoholism will never find the key that can unlock the door of their alcoholic sub-dungeon.
Thus, in the broadest sense, we are here to ensure that our simple offer of human deliverance from a spiritual sickness that once wracked your mind and your body remains open for all people, for all time, to accept or reject. This completion of the structure of AA today is therefore akin to a collective twelve steps, an assurance by this first generation of AA to succeeding generations that this great spiritual means for attaining and maintaining sobriety is preserved for their use and their survival.
There is another reason, however, why we who are here must endeavor to ensure that for all time the structure of AA never crumbles, nor its message is distorted. I, in all humility, see the second reason perhaps more clearly than those of you to whom AA has become not only a way of life as it is for me, but in the first instance, a means of deliverance from the dread disease of alcoholism.
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Some of us who become accustomed to sobriety may overlook the message to society that is implicit in those tenets of faith, the following of which lifted us from the descending path that led to dissolution and destruction to the spiritually ascending one that led to sobriety. For we in the great laboratory of AA have established as the basic truth of this materialistic age that living in terms of human decency, of honesty, of humility, and of friendship is the true life, and that living by the materialistic ideals of a society that almost destroyed us is the illusory one.
And the invisible evidence of this great truth, hammered out of your suffering and your deliverance, is a truth we must preserve so that a world which suffers from social ills that may not take on an alcoholic form may know that there is a truth that affords deliverance to them as it has to you. I enjoy the unique privilege of being of AA, although not in it. I have been spared the agonies of alcoholism, and yet during these years in which I have been permitted by your grace to serve as chairman of your general service board and of your annual service conferences, I have been exposed, as few so-called non-alcoholics have been, to the enduring message of AA, and with it an understanding, I trust, of the depths of the suffering of the alcoholic and the principles of living which ended his suffering and brought sobriety.
And so is one who serves. This afternoon I serve not only those AA here assembled, but also your countless brothers and sisters who have been restored to life through AA, whose hearts are here in St. Louis, though a thousand miles away. In keeping with this concept of service, I must, in talking with you this afternoon, speak in terms of the totality of the collective experience of all of AA as I see that experience.
And so I shall use the words we and us to identify my remarks with all alcoholics who have been restored to life through AA rather than the word you, which could mean only those of AA here assembled this Sunday afternoon. In the sharp line that is drawn between the illusory life that most men live and from which we were liberated, and the real life which we now live, there is found many parts paradoxical.
Take the simple statement, I am an alcoholic. In our civilization, an alcoholic is an individual who, while consuming alcohol to excess, ceases to be able to function effectively by socially accepted standards of behavior. But when we stand before our brothers and our sisters and say with conviction and with faith, I am an alcoholic, we say this at a time when we are not drinking and will not, God willing, drink again.
So that the first time a man or woman stands before us and says, I am an alcoholic, he says it, but he is no longer drinking alcohol. Thus, when the time comes that we describe ourselves as alcoholics, society ceases to regard us as such, and yet it is only at this moment when we cease to drink that we assert the right to describe ourselves as alcoholics. When we lived in terms of the society from which we were liberated, and that society in the years of our excessive drinking referred to us as alcoholics, we refused to accept this description and definition.
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And yet when we, for the first time having ceased to drink, cried out to ourselves and to the world about humility, we are alcoholics, that society ceased to define us as such. Someday, when dictionaries are again revised, some bright man will have to coin a word for us to define an individual who once drank too much, no longer drinks again, and yet talks to himself as an alcoholic. After all, there are enough of us now to warrant one small line in the dictionary.
Yes, that great statement, I am an alcoholic, is a paradoxical one indeed, paradoxical because it is a great truth, with implications that a materialistic society can neither comprehend nor ever define. It is a truth I cannot leave with this simple observation. For in these words, I am an alcoholic, there is an enduring message to a sick society. How can one who has not suffered the tortures and wracks of the alcoholic know what it means to be one?
How can one who has not spent his life trying desperately to live with alcohol know what it means to renounce it? With these magic words, I am an alcoholic. What an unthinking world may look upon as defeat, we know as a triumph, a triumph of the spirit, a triumph of humility over false pride and self-centeredness. How few human beings will ever have the courage to stand up before their neighbors and in all humility say, this is what I really am.
Bound, as most of us are, by the tyranny of conforming to materialistic but unfortunately socially accepted ideals, most of us are far more interested in the picture we present of ourselves to that society in keeping with those ideals than to acquire the humility to present the picture of ourselves to this society as we really are. And so, when we say with conviction and with faith, I am an alcoholic, there is a total renunciation of the illusory world in which our alcoholism was nurtured.
And we who sit before our suffering brother as he sounds the words, I am an alcoholic, followed by the story of the false idols now renounced, our hearts leap with the joy of knowing that our brother who was lost has been found again. He may slip, he may falter, but nothing can take away from him or from us that moment of acceptance by him of himself and acceptance of him by men and women who because of their own suffering understand what it means for an alcoholic to stand before his brethren and say, I am an alcoholic.
And the joy of his deliverance strengthens all of us, for he is our brother and he has been returned to us even as we have once been returned to our brothers and sisters. There are two moments in which the utterance of the words, I am an alcoholic, has great significance. The moment of which I have talked is the moment when in an AA meeting one of us for the first time stands before an assemblage of others and says, I am an alcoholic.
There is another in earlier time which is of perhaps greater significance, and that is the moment when we say to that man or woman who is our sponsor in the darkness and desperation of our souls, I am an alcoholic. And this first moment, when this statement is made, points to a second paradox in AA. In ordinary social usage, we accept as a principle of giving that one who helps his neighbor does so because it is his duty.
Just so because of his superior social and financial position, and therefore because
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of his own strength, should help the weaker members of his community. We are inclined to think in terms of leaders of political and business life, visiting hospitals and homes to cheer and help the sick and the enfeebled. When the society from which we in AA were liberated thinks of the concept of help thy neighbor, it thinks in terms of the socially and financially strong human beings to cure people, organizing philanthropic movements to help the weak and the afflicted. Now I do not decry these socially accepted concepts of help thy neighbor. But the paradox in AA is that we do not approach our suffering alcoholic brothers from the superiority and strength of our position, but from the realization of our own weakness. We talk to him not of our strength, but of our weakness. We tell him of the days when we suffered, even as he is suffering now. We do not boast of our strength in overcoming alcoholism, but speak of our great weakness in being unable to conquer it. We talk not of how misguided he is, but of how misguided we were. We talk not of his shortcomings, but of those which were ours. We sit not in judgment of what he is, but in judgment of what we once were. It is perhaps because at the moment of contact with our suffering brother his thinking is still couched in terms of a society in which the inability to manage alcohol is socially accepted as a weakness, that we who were once too in terms of that society judged as weak are able to do so much in reaching him. He is at that moment much like an embryo bird that has just grown its wings and pokes its head through the shell that has been its world and looks for the first time at the freedom of the great blue sky in wonder. But the sky is wondrous to behold still in terms of the instinct developed by the environment of the world of the shell which still encases it and from which it is slowly emerging. And so in the state of mind in which at the moment of contact our suffering brother says that he is an alcoholic, his thinking is still conditioned by the materialistic world which has contained him and from which he is beginning to emerge. And so he believes, still believes, he is confessing to a social weakness where we know that in the admission of his weakness lies the potent strength of humility and surrender. In that moment of contact two lives are momentarily blended as we are filled with a sense of relief even as great as that of our suffering brother who at that moment for the first time faces up to the reality of his existence and sloughs off the illusion by which he had lived. His acceptance of himself and our acceptance of him is indeed a great relief. And our emotion at that moment is one of relief with him to be followed almost immediately by an independent type of emotion, a tremendous surge of joy not for having given but for having shared our suffering brother's spiritual relief. For when we sit with our alcoholic brother and deliver the message of the source of our recovery, and as we sense the depth of his suffering, we are reliving our own dark experiences even as we are living his. As we pray for his recovery, we pray for the maintenance of our own. But there is something more than a spiritual relief that flows from the acceptance of our suffering brother of the reality of his existence and our acceptance of
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him for what he is. For in the days of our own suffering we too did not accept life but rejected it. Ours too had been a sense of hostility and a sense of defeat which we thought we could drain away with alcohol. We too had lived in a fierce loneliness filled with a choking feeling of entrapment, meaninglessness, and desperation. And so this moment in time when another human being who now suffers even as we had once suffered, and accepting that which we have to offer him, serves to reinforce the acceptance of ourselves. And as we watch our brother move toward recovery, we remember in the fullness of our response how we too had ceased rejecting life and accepted it in terms of the very weakness that was to provide us with the strength to transform our individual world. We recall again in that moment of contact the days when we found acceptance within that society of alcoholics anonymous, which followed by our 12-step work provided us with the courage to face our lives for what these lives really were. Lives based upon the inventory of our true selves. And suddenly we were able to face the anxieties and the terrors from which we formerly sank into the amnesia of alcohol. Self-centeredness was supplanted by self-acceptance, and in that acceptance the hatred of others and of ourselves disappeared. And as our strength is renewed in our brother's spiritual release, we are reminded of how the meaninglessness of life has disappeared for us, when with acceptance life suddenly acquired new and real meaning for us. And as we talk in this moment of self-acceptance by our suffering brother and tell him of what he should do to attain the fullness of liberation which we had experienced, we unconsciously are demonstrating to society another great truth. And that is that we cannot rid ourselves of alcoholism any more than we can rid ourselves of any other social ills, unless we really want to and are prepared to work for its attainment. There is a third paradox in AA that stems directly from our 12-step, and yet relates itself to the same moment of contact with our suffering brother. All of us recall the well-known war bond slogan, give till it hurts. We in AA paradoxically would pronounce that statement, don't give if it hurts. But we have found that we can give and invest our brother with that which we have, only when we experience the joy of giving. A giving that is a taking as well. A giving in which a sense of giving up anything is a sense of sacrifice, and sacrifice is faithful. But we have found when there is no joy in the giving, and the sharing of the message which brought us our recovery, we lose the power to give. If there is no joy in the giving, the power to give, the opportunity of our suffering brother to accept that which we offer, is irreparably lost. Society, in referring to the alcoholics, employs the expression, the enslavement of alcohol. This statement for us is true in a very special sense, paradoxical, if indeed it is true at all. In sober facts, we were never enslaved by alcohol.
Alcohol simply served as an escape for us, from our enslavement to the false ideals of a materialistic society. Our pride, our self-centeredness, our jealousy, which increased with our insatiable
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drive to achieve these false ideals, found all too temporary relief in alcohol. And yet, if we accept society's definition of our former state as the enslavement of alcohol, we can no longer resent this enslavement, for it has served to set us free from all the materialistic traps with which the paths through the jungle of our society are set. When we were drinking, we were withdrawing from a material basis of life, which when looked upon at close quarters, made us inevitably recoil. We first had to face materialism as a disease of society, before we could free ourselves of the disease of alcoholism, and with it be free of the social ills that had made us alcoholics. For us, perhaps more than for any other people, our material strivings and ambitions, our false pride, our self-centeredness, and our jealousy, died hard.
And so, in a sense, we owe a unique debt to the so-called enslavement of alcohol. For most human beings who have never suffered as acutely as those who have recovered from the disease of alcoholism, live lives with little purpose and with no patterns that they can discern. And few ever are provided with an opportunity to change these patterns. At the time of our death, we are little different than in the days of our living. For it takes a spiritual explosion in depth, such as the deliverance from alcohol, to change our patterns and liberate us from the materialistic snares in which we were imprisoned. For when we accepted our weakness and ceased nurturing them, we became free. Free to have the courage to deal with our weakness. Free to have the courage to relive the real life in place of the illusory one from which we had been delivered.
We who use alcohol as an escape are not the only people who are afraid of life. Hostile to the world, fleeing from it into loneliness, trying desperately to run from the society that made us socially ill. Millions of human beings who are not alcoholics are living today in a illusory world, nurturing the basic anxieties and insecurities of a human existence, rather than face themselves with courage and humility. Most of us who are not alcoholics have our own brand of escape whiskey, even though it hasn't an alcoholic content. To these people, we can offer as a cure no magic potion, no chemical formula, no powerful drug. We can only demonstrate to them if we are asked how to use the primitive tools of humility, honesty, devotion, and love, which indeed are the heart of our Twelve Steps. There is still another paradoxical statement of human society which has a special application to AA. For within the meaning of this statement lies the basic significance of our convening here together these last three days. And that statement is the saying that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. The accepted connotation of this expression is that a chain is strong only if it has no weak link. And the paradox of this statement as applied to AA is that in truth our chain is as strong as its weakest link. For the endless chain of AA grows in strength to the extent that we are able to reach the weak link, our still-suffering alcoholic brothers and sisters. And it is in this paradoxical statement It is in this paradoxical statement that the assurance of the survival of our society rests.
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Great civilizations of the past have generally emerged under the energizing force of a generation of strong leaders and of strong people, and these civilizations collapsed when in succeeding generations men of strength became few, and these civilizations began to wallow in the physical comforts of a materialistic age. Thus, when succeeding generations of men of these civilizations weakened and the strength of will was sapped, these civilizations crumbled.
But the survival of AA depends not on the strength of the generations that lie ahead, but on the existence of weakness in human kind in these succeeding generations. For the perpetuation of our society is grounded in the so-called weakness of those human beings who escape the materialistic facies of society through the medium of alcohol. Alcoholism, as we know it, is as old as the vineyard and will continue as long as there are grapes on the vines and grain in the fields. And because human beings are fallible, there will always be those who will seize upon the firmament of the grapes and the grain to escape a brief moment from sick society. And men and women in the generations that lie ahead will, as a consequence, continue to suffer from the disease of alcoholism. And will in their suffering and in their weakness so ensure the survival of AA. For so long as there are men and women who suffer the ravages of alcoholism and are therefore regarded as weak by society, AA will gather strength through weakness, and we will survive because human suffering through alcoholism will inevitably continue. And so, as we here today complete what we hope will prove an indestructible structure for AA, we are providing for the sick societies of tomorrow. For if we succeed in constructing our edifice soundly, we are assured that that which we have built will survive for as long as the weakness implicit in the suffering of the alcoholic human existence. And so, in the fact that suffering through alcoholism of strength through weakness means that in the structure of AA that we are completing today, we are ensuring the existence not only of a means for the recovery of future generations of alcoholics, but a means which the sick societies of tomorrow can use if they will to rebuild themselves into healthy organisms. They need only watch the demonstration of our use of the primitive tools of suffering and our richness in deliverance. Already countless human beings who are not alcoholics have been attracted by the way of life that is AA. And the older our society becomes, the greater will be our impact on the materialistic world about us. And yet, as Bill has so often said, we are not missionaries. We seek to convert no one. We have a faith, but we are not a religion. We seek only by example to show that human society can function in terms other than the unfortunate materialistic socially accepted ideals of the society in which we now live. And it is because we know of the tremendous impact that AA can have on the generations that will follow us, that we have been so painstaking in the completion of the structure of an AA, a structure that Bill so aptly describes as a legacy. But this legacy has a string to it. And this string is that we are granted the use of
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this legacy for our lifetimes upon the condition that we not only look after it, but increase its spiritual content for the generations that will follow us. And each succeeding generation as it receives this legacy must too protect it if they wish to employ it and gain life by it, and then pass the legacy on to the next generation with a similarly increased spiritual content. We here dare not fail. For the alcoholic within AA, by reason of his suffering and his deliverance, has been granted the great opportunity of ensuring that there is ever on display before a world of men a way of life that by its affirmation of the practice of human decency, human kindness, and human love as a way to preserve life, will ensure that no society of men need ever go through the dark ages collectively as we once walked in the darkness individually. For this great structure of AA, and only a non-alcoholic dare make this statement, can serve by example as a stimulating force for the transformation of those materialistic societies that will take form long after the days of our years are ended. And so, this first generation in the life of AA now draws to a close. It is rich in its faith, large in its numbers, and dedicated to its purposes. It leaves a legacy to human society that we who have journeyed to St. Louis are privileged to see completed. And yet, we here have been granted only the right to continue to give and to labor and to work in preserving and enhancing the great structure of AA.
And as we can only preserve our own well-being by constant exertion to help our still-suffering alcoholic brothers and sisters bring themselves back to life, so we must exert ourselves in the years that are still left to us to increasingly insulate the great structure of AA from the ravages of human fallibility. And if we succeed, generations from now, men and women standing before AA groups around the world, repeating the words we have so often said ourselves, I am an alcoholic, will talk of this day in St. Louis and of this first generation of AA.
And they will say as they talk of your suffering and of your deliverance, yes, in their suffering they thought they suffered for their own deliverance. In fact, they suffered for ours. Thank you. On behalf of all of AA, Ben, many, many thanks. And now, Ben will be called to the conference in a second. I now declare the fifth annual conference of the General Service Conference in Session.
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We have completed in the four days of our session all of the tasks which have been allotted to us, save only one, and that is the adoption of the resolution authorizing the General Service Conference to act for Alcoholics Anonymous and become the successors to its co-founders. Only this conference, in all humility, has the power within the concepts of AA to adopt this resolution when it has evidence of the acceptance by all of AA to this convention here assembled.
I propose, therefore, to call upon Bill to read this resolution and then to ask this conference to observe the action of the convention thereon. And when the convention is acted, I will then call upon the conference to carry into effect within the body of its principles and traditions the action of this convention. And the conference will remain convened and will adjourn simultaneously with the adjournment of the convention. And now, Bill, would it be good enough to read the resolution and then, if you will, sense the feeling of the convention the conference will be in a position to act.
We stand on the brink of a momentous decision for me and for you. It is one of the most solemn hours in which this society will ever live. For we are about to confirm its permanent structure permanent structure. Sometimes we of AA, I think, are apt to brag of the so-called virtues of this society, but none of these are earned virtues. We have been forced into these attitudes to begin with by the cruel lash of John Bollicorn.
We have adopted these attitudes, these practices, this structure not at first because we wish to, but because we must. And then, as time seemed to confirm the seeming rightness of our basic principles and attitudes, then we all began to conform, because it was right, some of us, notably myself, with reluctance. And at last, I think we have come to a summit here today, for we stand willing to conform to the principles that experience under the grace of God has taught us.
Now then, I suppose students are going to look at this society and say, well, I don't agree with this, and I don't agree with that, and I don't agree with the other thing. Some of us here may think that, structurally speaking, that we are weak. That we are unique, but in actuality we aren't. Just as our principles of recovery have been
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born, so have been our structural principles. In AA we can see all of the structures, all of the means by which men and women time out of mind have tried to associate themselves. And each one of these means of association has its claimed assets and its certain liabilities. When we first come into AA, we find here, as I've said before, a greater personal freedom than any other society knows. We can't be, in a personal sense, compelled to do anything.
In that sense, this society is an anarchy. Now that word anarchy has a bad meaning for most of us, probably because one of its excitable adherents, Emma Goldman, long ago threw bombs around Chicago. She was more like the drunk who hadn't sobered up yet. But I think the benign Russian Prince Kropotkin, who first conceived the idea, felt that if men were granted absolute liberty and were compelled to obey no one in person, then they would voluntarily associate themselves together in a common interest.
So we are an anarchy of that benign sort that the Prince envisioned. But that wasn't enough, we found. We found that an anarchy was wonderful and free and simple and joyous, but it couldn't function as such. Therefore, as soon as we began to function, our little AA group became a democracy. That is, after the old-timers had taken a walk. And we began to name people to serve. And we voted on that. And each AA group, in that sense, became a simple democracy.
Then when we first put these world services in place, our friends, Smithy and I, working together, we were self-appointed guardians and custodians of this society. And we took it upon ourselves to provide services. And I mean it in no irreverent sense or any exaggerated sense when I say that it was a kind of a double-headed papacy with a college department. So we created a hierarchy of service. But then we learned that in this society, such a hierarchy of service couldn't well float along unless it was somehow connected with a great sea of democracy about it.
So here sit our elected people, named by you, by democratic process, which sometimes has a change of the republic in it. And in their midst sits the original hierarchy of service. Now, however, limited by your will, because in tradition, too, the ultimate authority here is God speaking in the group conscience. So that your hierarchy of service, which is still a hierarchy, may be instructed and informed about your will and about your desire.
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Now then, AA has borne from another form, a form in which the world is now in great doubt, but which nevertheless has its virtues, especially for us who are alcoholics anonymous, believe it or not. And I am speaking of the dictatorship. But luckily for us, there need be no human dictatorship. Because we, of alcoholics anonymous, have two, and profit and grow by both. One is John Balicorn, who is only about six inches from the elbow of each of us now.
The other is the Father of Life, who presides over us all. And God is saying to us, I hope that you will learn my will and do it. And John Balicorn is saying to each one of us, you had better do God's will or I will kill you. And he does. Perhaps it is something new in history for society to borrow from all forms of human association. But clearly enough, we have borrowed from the anarchy, the democracy, the republic, and the dictatorship.
And we hope, indeed we devoutly pray, that we have not inherited too much of the liability of each. I pray with you that the resolution which we are now about to take is God's will for us. I shall now offer it to you and ask for a voice vote. If you agree, if God speaking through your conscience says this is right to the best of your knowledge and belief, then your service conference and its hierarchy of service at the center will confirm your will.
For all the long future of Alcoholics Anonymous, this is the resolution. We, the members of the 20th Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, here assembled at St. Louis in July of the year 1955, declare our belief that our fellowship has now come of age and is entirely ready to assume full and permanent possession of the three legacies of our AA inheritance, the legacies of recovery, unity, and service.
We believe that the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, as created in 1951 by our co-founders, Dr. Bob and Bill, and authorized by the trustees of the Alcoholics Foundation, has now become entirely capable of assuming the guardianship of AA's 12 traditions and of taking over full guidance and control of the world services of our society, as provided in the Third Legacy Manual of World Service, recently revised by our surviving co-founder, Bill, and the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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We have also heard with approval Bill W.'s proposal that AA's General Service Conference should now become the permanent successor to the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, inheriting from them all their former duties and special responsibilities, thus avoiding in future times all possible strivings for individual prestige or personal power, and also providing our society with the means of functioning on a permanent basis.
Be it therefore resolved that the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous should become, as of this date, July 3, 1955, the guardian of the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, the perpetuator of the world services of our society, and the voice of the group conscience of our entire fellowship and the sole successors to its co-founders, Dr. Bob and Bill. And it is understood that neither the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, nor the warranties of Article 12 of the Conference Charter, shall ever be changed or amended by the General Service Conference, except by first asking the consent of the registered AA groups of the world.
These groups shall be suitably notified of any proposal for change and shall be allowed no less than six months for full consideration thereof. And before any such conference action may be taken, there must first be received in writing within the time allotted the consent of at least three quarters of all those registered groups who respond to such a proposal. And we further understand that, as provided in Article 12 of the Conference Charter, the conference binds itself to the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous by the following means.
That in all its proceedings, the General Service Conference shall observe the spirit of the AA tradition, taking great care that the conference never becomes the seat of perilous wealth or power. That sufficient operating funds, plus an ample reserve, be of prudent financial principle. That none of the conference members shall ever be placed in a position of unqualified authority over any of the others.
That all important decisions be reached by discussion, vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial unanimity. That no conference action ever be personally punitive or an incitement to public controversy. That though the conference may act in service of Alcoholics Anonymous and may traditionally direct its world services, it shall never enact laws or regulations binding on AA as a whole, or upon any AA group, or upon any member thereof.
Nor shall it perform any other such acts of government. And that, like the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous which it serves, the conference will always remain democratic in thought and action. Now may we have the vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Members of the conference, you have now heard the resolution authorizing the General Service
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Conference to act for Alcoholics Anonymous and to become the successors to its co-founding, approved by the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous, in convention assembled this third day of July. I will now ask for a motion that the resolution, as read by Bill and as approved by this convention, be adopted by this conference, and that the resolution, as spread upon the minutes of this meeting, as read by Bill, be spread upon the minutes of this meeting.
Will all those who have summoned so move? Will someone second it? Will all those in favor say aye? Motion is carried. In the lives of men, men who have made a powerful impact on human society, there is not infrequently a great woman who, as a wife and partner, to which that man has dedicated his life, provides the support, the inspiration, and the unfailing devotion in times of triumph and times of trial, without which that impact might never have been made.
To us, Lois is not only such a woman as the wife of Bill, but is indeed a symbol to all of us of the wife in AA. Lois Fitts. I want to express here, before you all… Many of us want to live by the 12 steps ourselves, and to help others like us who still are frustrated and alone to do likewise. In the early years, many, many wives, mates of alcoholics were mostly wives then, did just that. And many are still doing it, with great benefits, not only to themselves, but to the new wife and to the alcoholic as well.
In the last ten years, or more, the numbers of mates of alcoholics with this same feeling of need have increased so greatly that it has become possible to band together in groups to better solve our problems of fear, insecurity, and to pass our experience on to others who seek our help. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a spontaneous response to a vital need. In the family…