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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int Bill W. Our Responsibility to AA`s Future.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-bill-w-our-responsibility-to-aas-future.mp3 Duration: 01:27:09
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Dear friends, with true magnificence and superb clarity, Byrne has been portraying the realities of our responsibility to the future. And he has been restating to us those eternal verities that gather around love, which are the substance of our aspirations. In effect, he has said, without humility, there can be no genuine responsibility. And lacking humility and responsibility, there can be no outgoing love freely given.
So it is well that together here, in this World Convention, we have been pondering the subject of our future responsibilities. Since these cover a rather wide range, I think that my comments upon them, upon responsibilities partly or only unfulfilled, could be best packaged up for you were I to paraphrase an article recently done, which some of you have seen in the grapevine. So, as a starter, dear folks, here goes. In AA's 30th year, responsibility is our theme, so it was titled. On the occasion of this, our 30th anniversary, it is ever so fitting that our keynote is AA, Responsibility.
All of us have been thinking of those three decades of AA life that are now history. Stirred by gratitude quite beyond expression, we here give thanks to God, whose grace has made it possible for us to achieve that quality of responsibility which has brought our fellowship into its present state of well-being and worldwide reach. As you and I look back over the years, we are quite unable to conceive of more than a mere fraction of what God has wrought among us.
None of us can imagine the awful sum of the suffering that was once ours, nor the aggregate of the misery that has been the lot of those near and dear. Then, too, who can begin to understand the mysterious nature of our transforming spiritual experiences? Those gifts of God that have opened to us of AA a new world of being and doing and living. Indeed, our blessings have been quite beyond any human comprehension.
Here at Toronto, we see countless new faces. Many from distant lands are heard to speak in other tongues. We are dramatically reminded that the sun never sets upon this fellowship, that 350,000 of us have recovered from our malady, that we have everywhere begun to transcend all those once formidable barriers of race, creed, and nationality.
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This new assurance that so many of us have been able to meet our responsibility for sobriety, for growth, and for effectiveness in the troubled world where we live, has filled us with the deepest satisfaction and joy. Yet, as a people who have always learned the hard way, we certainly do not congratulate ourselves. Instead, we perceive all these new assets to be God's gifts, which have only in part been matched by an increased willingness on our part to find and to do His will for us.
Then, too, we have well recalled how the painful desolation of our illness actually drove us to what was our first responsible decision, our first responsible act in years, that of joining AA. We remember how alcoholism had lashed us to such a point of collapse that we became willing to do whatever was necessary to get well, for indeed it was a matter of life or death. Thus goading on, we finally did join the Fellowship, and there we had our first glimpse of its quite new world of understanding and loving concern.
Presently, we took a look at AA's twelve steps for recovery, yet it must be admitted that some of these, us, promptly forgot ten of them as possibly not needed. At first, we bought only the concepts that we were alcoholics, that attendance at meetings and a helping hand to the newcomers would be sufficient to solve our booze problem, and no doubt all problems. Indeed, some of us began to look with approval on that insidious old cliché which says that drinking is but a good man's fault.
Once off the grind, life should become, we thought, as pleasant as a bowl of cherries. So at first we simply warmed our hands at the AA fire, and all seemed well. Then, by slow degrees, certain dissatisfaction set in. Perhaps our own group was not so wonderful as we had first supposed. Maybe there was some rock throwing at a scandal, or perhaps a distressing row. Who would become the group's next chairman?
Then, too, we found that there were people we simply could not like. And worse yet, the ones we did admire often failed to give us the attention that we really deserved. Even back at home we were apt to get a shock. Once the pink cloud had passed over the household, things sometimes seemed just as bad as ever. The old wounds simply wouldn't heal at all. Though visibly impressed with our sobriety, the bank nevertheless demanded to know when we were going to pay up.
Our boss likewise requested in firm tones that we get with it. At this point, each of us looked up his sponsor and regaled him with these unexpected woes. Those various resentments, anxieties, and depressions were definitely caused, we claimed, either by our unfortunate circumstances or by the inconsiderate behavior of other people. Greatly to our consternation, our sponsors didn't seem in the least impressed.
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We can remember how many of them said, Why don't we sit down and take a good hard look at all of these twelve steps? Maybe you have been missing a great deal. In fact, perhaps you have been missing just about everything. This was the point at which we began to take our own inventories and not the other fellows. As we got into the swing of self-examination, we began to discover what our real responsibilities toward ourselves and toward those about us actually were.
At first, this was a mighty tough assignment, but it did by degrees get easier. Next, we commenced to make restitution to those we had harmed, grudgingly at first, then more willingly. Little by little, it got through to us that genuine progress, spiritual or material, consisted in finding out what our responsibilities actually were, then proceeding to do something about them. Gradually, these activities began to pay off.
We found we didn't always have to be driven by pain and discontent. Much more willingly, we picked up the burdens of living and of growing. Then, surprisingly, we began to discover that full acceptance of any clear-cut responsibility nearly always made for true happiness and peace of mind. Moreover, these durable satisfactions were often redoubled when we realized that our now better quality of willingness made it possible in meditation to find and to do God's will.
At last, we joyfully knew that, at least most of the time, we really wanted a life of willing responsibility. Such was the course of our spiritual unfoldment, our pilgrim's progress, if you like. As it has been with each of us, so has it been with each group and with AA as a whole. For example, I have seen our society timid and fearful, angry and prideful, apathetic and indifferent. But just as often, I have seen these negatives fade as the lessons of group experience were at last learned and applied.
Let me recall some instances of this. In AA's early day, we were so timid we felt we ought to be a real secret society. We shunned publicity because we still labored under the stigma of alcohol. Also, because we thought that publicity might overwhelm us by an influx, now mark this, of so-called undesirable people. When angered by criticism from within or without, we most often found ourselves far better at dishing out our own punches than taking the other fellow's.
Sometimes we did boast that AA is the know-all and do-all of alcoholism, thus alienating our friends. Shuddering at the awful perils of group wealth, we often did convert this fear into a marvelous alibi for failing to meet our trivial service expenses. And this despite the fact that these vital activities were indispensable to carrying AA's message into the world about us. Sometimes, by poor sponsorship or none at all, we did fail the needs.
We did fail the needs of newly arrived sufferers. Then, at great turning points in AA history, our fellowship has, in anger or sheer indifference, at first backed away from what should have been clean-cut responsibilities.
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On a few occasions, disastrous results were barely avoided. A few very old-timers can still recall the book Alcoholics Anonymous might never have been published because some in those days avowed we did not need it, while others shrunk from the hazards of preparing that absolutely essential text. Ten years later, we made a great outcry, some of us, against the formation of the General Service Conference of AA, that always-needed body of delegates which permanently links our society with its trustees and our active world services.
For several years, we had held a belief that no such linkage could possibly be created. Many thought that any attempt at such a project would ruin us. It was commonly believed that we didn't even have sense to run a clubhouse. In consequence, this crucial undertaking nearly fell by the wayside from the sheer weight of indifference, or maybe heavy attack and a little faith. Nevertheless, in God's good time, our spiritual assets did come to well exceed even these most serious liabilities. Today, recovery goes forward on a vast scale. The practice of the Twelve Traditions has amazingly cemented our unity.
Our integral associations and World Service Conference have made possible a widespread dissemination of our message at home and abroad. Each time, it has been the same story. Our pains and our necessities have at first called us to a reluctant responsibility. But in these later years, it is simply great to report that willingness and confident faith have more and more permeated our whole society. Despite so much happy transcendence of the difficulties of yesterday, we do nevertheless deeply realize that our negative traits are still very much with us and always will be.
Hence, our great and our continuous responsibility should be that of taking repeated fearless inventories of our defects as we go along, the better to undertake their mending. Therefore, here at Toronto, we are constantly asking ourselves, what sort of heritage are we now leaving to all those generations of AA that will, in the future, people our society? Is the legacy that we shall bequeath them as good as we can possibly make it? While there is yet time, what can we still do that may multiply our assets and decrease our liabilities?
Now, when I try to make such a survey of our society today, I hope none will regard me as one who presumes himself the righteous elder who would admonish or exhort his followers. As I now inventories AA's shortcomings, please be assured that I, too, am taking my own. Well do I know that my errors of yesterday have left their marks, still have their effect, that my shortcomings of today and of tomorrow could likewise compromise AA's future. So then let us together take a hard look at the more important areas in the life of our fellowship where the challenge for improvement will always be with us.
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Our first concern should be for those sufferers of alcoholism that we are still unable to reach. Let us humbly recollect that throughout the world today, there are some 20 million alcoholics, 5 million situated in the United States alone. These unbelievable numbers are, of course, in all stages of the sickness. Some cannot be reached because they are not ill enough, others because they are already hurt too much. Many suffer mental and emotional complications that seem to foreclose their recovery chances.
However, it would, I think, be conservative to estimate that at any particular time there are perhaps 4 million alcoholics throughout the world who are able, ready, and willing to get well if only they knew how. Clearly, all these sick people need to know what their malady is, then to recognize that they are so afflicted. Being so made ready, they then need to be brought within our reach, or indeed within the reach of any other agency of rehabilitation.
And this by every resource of public information and word of mouth that can tell them exactly what steps they may take to find their road to recovery. When we remember that in 30 years of AA existence, we have reached but a small fraction of those 4 million, we might have been able to help at any time, we commence to get an idea of the immensity of our future task, and of the vast responsibility with which we shall always be charged.
These arresting facts point straight to our next responsibility, a loving sponsorship of each alcoholic man and woman who comes among us asking for help. The concern and the care with which, individually and collectively, we do this can make all the difference to them. Again, I say, the difference between life or death. Indeed, this particular activity is the greatest expression of gratitude that we can ever make for what we ourselves have so freely received.
Perhaps a million alcoholics have taken a good look at AA during the last 30 years. Should we not then soberly ask ourselves what became of those 600,000 and more of fellow sufferers who did not stay with us? How much and how often did we fail all these? This makes it most clear that in no circumstances should we feel alcoholics and anonymous to be the know-all and do-all of alcoholism. Right here in Canada and the U.S. alone, we have perhaps 100 agencies engaged in research, alcohol education, rehabilitation. Research has already come up with significant and helpful findings, and I am certain the researchers are going to do far more.
Those engaged in education are telling the world that alcoholism is an illness, that a great deal can now be done about it. Surely all of these co-workers can make our own efforts ever more effective.
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It is a known fact that such agencies in the United States and Canada treat something like 50,000 alcoholics each year. To be sure, their approach is often different from our own. But why should this matter when many of these agencies are, or could be in the future, entirely willing to cooperate with us of AA and we with them? Too often, I think, we have deprecated, even derided, these projects simply because we did not agree with their methods.
Had we not better now ask ourselves how many alcoholics may have gone on drinking simply because we have failed to go along in good spirit with some of these people? Certainly we must not believe that most alcoholics are going to go mad or die simply because they did not come straight to AA in the first place. Now let's have a look at this matter of criticism, especially the criticism of AA that is made in the world about us.
For years, our society has been amazingly exempt from those usual barbs that are pitched at all movements of any consequence, whether these be social, political, medical, religious. But when this quite usual thing does happen to us of AA, I think we are apt to register undue shock, maybe anger, when people find fault. Sometimes we have become so disturbed that we cannot even benefit by constructive criticism.
We are even less likely to be good-natured about criticism that isn't so good, that is, criticism that is slanted or downright unfair. These are very natural attitudes, and I must say they are not widely general among us, yet it is still a fact that many of us do so still react when we are hit where we live. However satisfying these brands of resentment to some of us personally, they make us no friends, nor can they serve any useful purpose.
Therefore, to react wisely and in good spirit to all criticism should be our constant aim. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religion, nor is it a medical treatment, nor does it profess expertise in respect of the unconscious motivations for human behavior. Sometimes I think these facts are too often overlooked by us. Here and there we find members proclaiming AA to be a great new religion, accepting for purely sobering-up assistance.
We are also apt to underwrite medical contributions to our welfare. Because the relatively new art of psychiatry does not get sober great numbers of drunks, we are prone to discount the values of that profession. When we take such unrealistic and negative attitudes, we are, of course, forgetting that we AAs owe our very existence to medicine and to religion. In all our cardinal principles and attitude, AA has made immense use of the power of the mind.
AA has made immense use of these great resources. It is chiefly our friends in these fields who first gave us the principles that enabled each of us to live and to grow today.
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Therefore, the credit of these vital contributors to our welfare should stand very high among us. True enough, we drunk stood for AA together, yet its basic components were supplied to us by friends. Here especially, our maxim should be, Let's speak friendly with those friends. Next, let us recall, it is a historical fact that almost every group of men and women tends to become more dogmatic. As time passes, their beliefs and their practices harden, sometimes to the point of freezing.
Up to a point, this is a natural process, not all of it bad. Certainly people must rally to the call of their convictions, and we of AA are in consequence no exception. Obviously, too, we should have the right to voice our convictions. This is good principle. This is good dogma. But dogma also has its liabilities. Simply because we have convictions that work well for us as of now, it becomes quite easy to assume that we have all of the truth.
Whenever this sort of prideful arrogance develops, we become aggressive. We demand agreement with us. We play God. This is very bad dogma indeed. For us of AA, it could someday become especially destructive. For example, newcomers are approaching us at the rate of tens of thousands yearly. They represent nearly every belief and attitude imaginable. We have atheists and agnostics, people of many races, cultures, religions.
Now, we of AA are supposed to be bound together in a kinship of common suffering. Hence, there must be full individual liberty to believe in any creed, in any principle, in any treatment. Surely, these are liberties to be remembered by us. Therefore, never let us pressure people with our individual or even with our collective views. Instead, let us accord to each other that respect and love which is truly the due of every human being as he tries to make his way toward the light.
Let us always try to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Let us forever remember that every alcoholic among us is a member of AA for so long as he or she so declares. Some of our obvious perils will always gather around money, around controversies within and without, and about that ever-present human temptation to scramble for personal prestige and power. Our world of today is shattered by these untoward forces.
So let us remember that, alcoholics, we have been even more subject to these forms of destruction than other peoples. Thank God we do have, and I trust continue to have, a tremendous awareness of our responsibility for improvement in respect of these allurements. Our very survival and effectiveness will always depend on such an awareness. However, the unreasoning fear of such evils should never deceive us into absurd rationalizations.
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When lively debate and forthright action becomes a clear necessity, for fear of the ogres of prestige or personal power, we should not weakly fail to endow our leaders in service with our full trust and a suitable authorization to act for us. Yes, prudence is a great virtue, but timid indecision is often the greatest of vices. This is because no fellowship can exist or even prosper if it be leaderless.
So let us of AA never sidestep needed changes. Certainly we shall have to discriminate between change for the worse and change for the better. This is prudence. But once the need becomes apparent to the group or to AA as a whole, it has long since been shown that we cannot stand still or look back. We have seen that the essence of all growth is found in the willingness to change for the better. This followed by an unremitting effort to shoulder whatever responsibility is required of us.
In conclusion, it is reasonable to say that we of AA have thus far been able, in most areas of our lives together, to make substantial gains, both in willingness and capability, for the acceptance and discharge of our obligations, something that this great gathering does well symbolize and demonstrate. As we look forth into the future, we clearly see that these sterling attributes are the keys to that progress which God intends us to make as we move toward his appointed destiny.
To these observations just made, portraying our growth in stature and in responsibility, I would now like to add a deeply important postscript. As you and I stand at this turning point in history, I wish to pose to you the crucial question that besets every human society when its originators vanish from the scene. For us of AA, the precise question is this. Who will be the world leaders of alcoholics and alcoholics in the years ahead?
About one-half of my AA life has been devoted to world service matters, services whose operation can today account for perhaps one-half our present membership and much of our global unity. In consequence, the construction, the operation, the permanent maintenance of this chief world agency for carrying AA's message has been a chief interest of mine for more than 25 years. To make as sure as we can of the continuance of this vital work, there has always been implicit in our situation the difficult question of who will comprise the primary world leaders of the AA Fellowship in time to come.
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For a long while there has been, of course, no doubt that our future top leadership will have to be chosen from our more important body of world servants, our trustees, the trustee members of the General Service Board. Most certainly, we cannot remain leaderless at the very apex of our society. In world service matters, it is therefore something for logic and something for necessity that our trustees will have to constitute the personal world leadership of AA's future.
There is no other choice. Certain of this much, one might suppose that this serious question of AA's future leadership had already been settled. Yet, strangely enough, it has not been settled. Few AA's yet realize the gravity of the dilemma in which we who have been deeply concerned with this problem have found ourselves over the last ten years. Happily, I now speak to you in no alarm because I believe that this question can soon be sensibly and responsibly resolved.
Our dilemma of indecision has been as follows. As most of you know, AA's General Service Board includes two classes of trustee members, the non-alcoholic trustees and the AA trustees. As matters stand today, our non-alcoholic friends occupy a majority position on our board, this by a majority of one. Just as importantly, our non-alcoholic friends still traditionally supply the board with its chief officers, the treasurer and the chairman.
Because of this unique setup devised in our infancy, the AA trustees of the board have remained in a minority. Hence, theirs has been a secondary responsibility in the leadership and conduct of world affairs. Surely this arrangement is not today consistent with our present concepts of full AA responsibility in AA matters. From this brief portrayal, I trust that everyone here tonight can clearly see that our non-alcoholic trustees and officers are still cast in the actual role of primary leadership, not only of AA's World Service Board, but conceivably of AA as a whole over the years to come.
Against this background, our long unresolved leadership responsibility can therefore be summed up as follows. Has the time yet arrived when our AA trustees should be a majority of the Service Board, thereby becoming, in fact, the primary leaders of our fellowship throughout the world? Still more capsuled, the question is, should AA's future world leadership be primarily of alcoholics or of non-alcoholic friends?
It gives me the greatest of happiness and of relief to report to you that we may soon be able to reaffirm our commitment to AA. That we may soon be able to arrive at a solution of this serious issue. About a year ago now, our non-alcoholic trustees came to a definite conclusion
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that the time had certainly arrived for the AA trustees of our board to shoulder the primary position of responsibility. Applause Led by our well-loved chairman, Dr. Jack, these friends then took the initiative in the preparation of a detailed plan for the transference of this great trust. A transference from themselves to us of AA. At last April's General Service Conference, Dr. Jack presented this trustee's plan to our assembled delegates, asking for a year's study and then for a vote at the 1966 conference.
The delegates were also advised that nearly all of our board, alcoholics and AAs alike, hoped for its adoption. Dr. Jack's presentation will always be a magnificent highlight in my own life. So it seems right that I now conclude my part in this meeting by sharing with you the substance of this major undertaking and those comments which I have ventured to make upon it on that most outstanding and memorable occasion.
At the risk of a little overlap and repetition, to you, I did speak to the 1965 conference delegates as follows. Dear members, speaking on behalf of AA's board of trustees, our devoted friend and chairman, Dr. Jack, has called upon us to face a far-reaching responsibility. Future AA historians will no doubt record this occasion as a major turning point in the unfoldment of our well-loved fellowship.
This is because we are now to reconsider and perhaps to recast the whole nature and composition of AA's future leadership. As we meditate upon this long-resolved problem, it would be well to recall that in the affairs of new societies and of nations, the determination of their ultimate leadership has always been a matter of crucial importance. This is the teaching of all human history. Dr. Jack has specifically requested us of Alcoholics Anonymous at the level of the board of the trustees to assume the primary role in the conduct of world affairs.
He has presented a detailed program for achieving this, a plan almost unanimously recommended by his fellow trustees. Should we adopt this new concept in 1966, the chief responsibility for the guidance of world affairs would then be shifted from the non-alcoholics of our present board to the alcoholic trustees of the newly recast board. Our recast board would then be composed of 14 AA trustees and seven non-alcoholic trustees.
Seven of the AA members would be chosen from suitable areas of the U.S. and Canada on the basis of their AA leadership qualifications.
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The remaining seven would be selected on the basis of their several high standards of business, professional, and administrative skills. This would add up to a balanced board of 21 members in which the AAs would function in a majority of two to one. That would compare with our present board of ten non-alcoholics and nine AAs. The chief post of the new board would be open to its AA members at any time such a change might seem disarming.
And for practical reasons alone, the improved balance between these three classes of trustees should commend itself to us all. However, the trustees' plan, as outlined by Dr. Jack, has far greater implications than mere practicality. It carries deep spiritual values. It is the call to the highest of AA's responsibilities. In effect, it is a declaration that AA has now evolved to such a point of stability and competence that it should no longer need to function under what has been since 1938 the symbol of protective custody by non-alcoholic friends.
As you know, the present structure was created long ago in a time when AA had but three groups and only 40 members. It is worth pausing here to recall why our service board was originally so constituted. For us of AA, the year 1938 was one of anguished uncertainty. There was no proof that alcoholics could stay sober indefinitely. Nor was there convincing evidence that we had the emotional stability to look after ourselves, even though sober.
Besides, we had no public standing. People did not know that we existed. Then, too, how many distant AA groups would think of sending money contributions to a board of trustees composed wholly of New York alcoholics? Morning. This, dear friends, was the climate of fear and indecision that darkly overcast us in that early time. Nevertheless, it had already become clear that our infant society would have to head up somewhere.
At the top of our growing pyramid of membership, there would need to be erected a beacon light whose illumination might carry AA's message on the far reaches to those who still suffered alcoholism. Lest one day its radiance be snuffed out by drinking relapses and irresponsibility, we felt in those days that we dare not tend this lighthouse all by ourselves. Some kind of certain protection we thought we had to have.
But what kind of protection? The answer that we proposed in 1938 is now history. We asked carefully chosen non-alcoholic friends to become a majority of the trusteeship. We agreed to make this status legal. We stipulated that there should always be a non-alcoholic chairman and likewise a treasurer. Frankly admitting that AA would have to have such a protectorate, we did somberly estimate that should every one of the AA trustees get drunk, our board could nevertheless continue to function by reason of its non-alcoholic members.
Happily, we can now smile at these excessive fears and elaborate precautions. During the past 27 years, only two AA trustees have been waylaid by alcohol.
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Meanwhile, our message has been carried worldwide most effectively indeed. Half our present membership, much of our unity, has been due in large measure to the efforts of the AA World Service on the Board of Trustees, in the General Service Office, and more lately in the General Service Conference. Of course, we service workers have witnessed severe emotional storms, but none more serious than those which affect most other societies.
But in every single instance, these disturbances have been successfully overcome by the immense spirit of dedication that has always characterized every level of our worldwide effort. The record speaks for itself. Today, we know that we need not fear alcoholism, nor excessive emotional instability. Now let us look back over the years and inquire what has been the value of our non-alcoholic friends all this while.
Without hesitation, I can tell you that their value has been quite beyond any reckoning. Only God Himself could add up their score. Therefore, I deeply hope a sizable contingent of these friends will continue to remain with us just as the new plan provides. Thank you. In the days when AA was unknown, it was the non-alcoholic trustees who held up our hands before the whole world. They supplied us with ideas that are now a part of the working structure of headquarters.
They cheerfully and voluntarily spent hours on end working side by side with us, sometimes among the grubbiest of details. They gave freely of their professional and financial wisdom. Sometimes they helpfully mediated our difficulties. In the early years especially, their presence and strength on our board was quite able to command the full confidence and respect of faraway AA groups. Meanwhile, they could assure the world around us of AA's worst.
These are the unusual services which indeed they still render. Then, too, these are the men who stood fast during that exciting, though perilous time between 1940 and 1950 when AA's unity and its collective responsibility, when these were put to the acid test, a time when the Twelve Traditions were being forged out of the painful essence of that experience. Having myself been a constant resident of AA's House of World Service for more than a quarter century, no one could better understand what these devoted friends have meant to us.
To gratefully set my testimony of their magnificent contributions on the record of this meeting is something for the deepest and most enduring of satisfactions. Nor could any expression of our gratitude be complete unless I were to tell you of a certain indispensable contribution that was once made to AA's welfare by a non-alcoholic friend and trustee. I speak of a man that many of you know. Well, there are many more now.
That's him. I speak of our one-time chairman, our beloved Berne Smith. During the most serious crisis
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that our fellowship has ever known, it was Berne who persuaded us to meet and to shoulder our clear and rightful obligations. As individuals, it must be confessed that we AAs have never been overzealous to meet great responsibilities. We were driven to A on the lash of alcohol. When we arrived in AA, we were confronted with the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. We proceeded to adopt these principles in a rather piecemeal fashion. But as time went by, the conformity began to improve. We commenced to practice these principles because we knew them to be right for us. Nonetheless, it was a very long time before many of us could come to the point where we would accept our heavy obligations with full and joyful willingness.
It has also been observable that, like other people, we AAs are apt to resist any proposal for great change, especially when all seems to be going well. Often enough, these reluctances have been based upon our fears, but sometimes they have represented a genuine prudence. This latter quality of conservatism has occasionally prevented ill-considered or hasty judgments upon important matters. What has been true of us as individuals has necessarily been true of AA as a whole. There was heavy opposition to the creation of the World Trusteeship in 39, to the book Alcoholics Anonymous in 39. I still tremble when I recall the truly fierce resistance that arose in 1946 when our General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous was first proposed. It was then seriously believed by a large majority of AAs that the temptations and risks of such a complex venture as this would be too much for us. However, we may now thank God we finally did face and accept those vital and clear-cut responsibilities.
Nevertheless, on every one of these occasions, we found that we had to be strongly persuaded of the absolute need for change. There had to be manifest at those times a solid core of constructive and convincing personal leadership. This is exactly what our remarkable friend Byrne gave to us when, in 1950, after several years of great heat but little light, we had failed to arrive at a decision to form that General Service Conference. It was his personal leadership that saved the day for AA. Let me briefly background that statement. By 1946, certain facts of AA life were becoming visible. Our trusteeship, then called the Alcoholic Foundation, was becoming more and more isolated as our groups fanned out over the globe. Indeed, the only linkage between our Board and all these thousands of members really consisted of a few tireless AA gals at the General Service office, along with Dr. Bob and me. The trustees themselves had become virtually unknown. Dr. Bob had fallen ill, perhaps fatally. Our linkage was therefore very perishable and far too thin. Hence, some of us felt it imperative that our Board of Trustees should be directly related without delay to AA as a whole. There was still another reason. A majority
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of our groups had already declared that they would no longer live under the absolute protection and management of their local Founders and Altimeters, no matter how well-loved these were. For better or worse, our groups had begun to take the decision to look after themselves. This was the AA revolution which led to the writing of Tradition II, whose principles of AA function provide that the group conscience shall be the final authority for active services and that trusted servants named by the groups shall act in their behalf. Certainly our long-isolated Board members were trusted servants, but it was nevertheless true that the trustees had no direct connection with the group conscience, nor were they directly accountable to it. It was therefore becoming evident that we at New York were still operating as a protectorate, something that had by then become obsolete, quite inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of Tradition II. Consequently, it was proposed to assemble a General Service Conference of Delegates that might squarely meet these deficiencies. As news of this project got into circulation, resistance began to mount. The more the conference was urged, the more the opposition dug in. Many AAs were deeply frightened. They well imagined themselves engulfed in a wave of prestige-seeking, shabby politics, financial troubles, and all the rest of it. Under such conditions, many fine AA members were quite unable to see the urgent need for this radical change. Observing their protests, most of our Board naturally concluded that AAs most emphatically did not want such a conference. Then, too, I am afraid that the growing impasse was made still worse by my own incessant bulldozing of this conference issue. Then came Burns Smith on the scene.
With Matchless diplomacy intact, he began to point out that the actual risk of the conference venture was, in his belief, far less than the risk of doing nothing at all. A policy which he thought would in the future result in a collapse, or certainly a grievous impairment of AA at its very heart of service. He deeply felt that we must not risk such a debacle at headquarters, a calamity from which we might never wholly recover. He also continued to remind us that self-direction was the very first responsibility of every democratic society, such as ours had, in tradition, too, already claimed it was.
As we all know, these views of Burns were finally accepted. I shall never forget that wonderful day in his office when the Trustees' Committee on Structures recommended immediate creation of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous. To our friend Burns, we therefore owe it that we sit in this gathering of that General Service Conference today. Certainly, this story has a deep and clear relevance to that all-important matter of AA's future leadership. The question that is again before us, and one which has been ten years under debate, now is ever so evident that Dr. Jack has been performing us a similar service, a
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service of unique importance, one like Burns in the earlier times. To him and to his fellow Trustees, we of Alcoholics Anonymous therefore owe a similar tribute. It is greatly due to Dr. Jack's wise and patient leadership in this time of change that we have the Trustees' plan before us, a plan which, if we adopt it, will mark our last basic step in the evolution of AA's world service structure. Most assuredly, I hardly need say that I do endorse the Trustees' plan.
Its unfoldment in this General Service Conference meeting is one of the most inspiring and heartwarming events of my entire AA life. Finally, let us reflect together upon the high spiritual content of this all-important project. As we know, all AA progress can be reckoned in terms of just two words, humility and responsibility. Our entire spiritual development can be actually measured by the degree of our adherence to these magnificent standards. Ever deepening humility, accompanied by an ever greater willingness to accept and to act upon obligations, these are truly our touchstones for all growth in the life of the Spirit.
They hold up to us the very essence of right being and right doing, for it is by them that we are able to find and to do God's will. Let us therefore consider the spiritual gifts which our friends, the non-alcoholics, have today offered for AA's future welfare. They have offered to reduce their numbers by three, still a board majority holding its chief posts. Our non-alcoholics all these years have been cast in the role of guardians, a responsibility that they have never really been called upon to meet. Therefore, this old-time symbol of protection long since became almost meaningless.
Our friends recognize this. Therefore, their new trustees' plan provides that the non-alcoholics would in the future act in a minority, thus becoming our associates. In making this humble offer, they have called upon us of AA to assume the highest of responsibilities, the guidance under God of our own life as a fellowship. If, then, this is their demonstration of humility, what is going to be our demonstration of responsibility?
As to a family just coming of age, they have in substance told us, The world of the future strives to be a better place. The world of the future stretches before you, and you are well prepared. Go out into it fearing nothing.
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Our faith in you is confident. Indeed, it is very strong. As you of AA move onward toward your destiny, may you always remember that God in his wisdom has granted you three precious graces. Freedom from a deadly affliction, a life experience that enables you to carry that priceless freedom to others, and a vision ever widening of God's reality and of his love. May we, of Alcoholics Anonymous, remain ever worthy of these three gifts of grace, and especially of the supreme responsibilities that are now ours, for so long as a bountiful God may wish our society to endure.
Applause So that we can all take part in an expression of our gratitude for the AA help we have received, we have arranged a simple ceremony. Taking part in it are AAs from all parts of the United States, and Canada, and from all over the world. Applause Many are delegates from general service areas. Others are past delegates and trustees. Still others have come thousands of miles to represent fellow alcoholics in foreign lands.
From as far away as Guam, and Australia, and South Africa, from Europe, and Iceland, from South America, and Central America, and Mexico, and Puerto Rico. We have asked them to appear on this stage tonight and to recite with us the I Am Responsible pledge that you will find on the backs of your programs. This paragraph states simply what we all feel. It reminds us all of our commitment to ensure our own sobriety by helping another alcoholic to achieve his, and to lead us, who but our beloved Bill and Lois.
Applause Under God's grace, we are gathered in grateful remembrance of what he has wrought among us in the thirty years that are now gone down into history. We here rededicate ourselves to those vast responsibilities which the longer future holds before us all. As members, as groups, as a worldwide fellowship, we do here pledge ourselves to the always inspiring aim of ever-increasing growth in numbers and in spirit.
May we always deserve, and may God ever grant, the wisdom and humility to walk in fortitude and in faith upon that wondrous path that he has long since revealed to us of alcoholic phenomenon.
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In this rededication, I ask a hundred AAs on this platform, many of them from the far reaches, to speak for all of our fellowship and to repeat with Lois and me I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause We say that the language of AA is the language of the heart. It does not matter whether the words are English or in those of another tongue.
So, I think we should all like to hear the I am responsible pledge in other languages. First coming to us from France is Jean-Jacques M., and from Quebec, Bob R. I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause And now from Finland, we'll hear from Beckel K. Applause I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible.
Applause Next, from down in Brazil, Dorothy M. I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause That was good Portuguese too. How do you know? Laughter I'm safe. From Iceland, Ali M. Applause I'm safe. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am safe.
Applause From Switzerland, Maurice B. Applause I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause From Norway, Art S. Applause I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause From Latin America, we have a quartet.
Arturo F. Tempoa T. Thurman G. Javier B. Applause
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I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. Applause And now, how would you all like to rise and join hands and say it together? Would you all like to? You all ready? I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. And for that, I am responsible. And now, while we're standing, shall we close the meeting in the usual manner, and Bill Lois will lead us in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.