There’s More To Service
From the A.A. pamphlet “Inside AA”
Understanding the Fellowship and its Service Agencies
“Service is our Third Legacy. Recovery and Unity are the First and Second. Service to others and to the Fellowship reminds us that we owe our sobriety to the work of earlier members - and that our continued sobriety may depend on the hundreds of thousands who still need to learn of A.A.”
This folder is meant to provide some needed information on A.A.’s service structure and it does so admirably. The first piece they speak of is the General Service Board. What they say is “it is responsible for safeguarding A.A. tradition and A.A.’s service funds.” I say that might well be considered a responsibility we all share.
It also mentions how you and I take part in world service. “When you make a local Twelfth Step call,” or “when you contribute to the support of G.S.O.,” when you use A.A. literature or the A.A. directories,” you are taking part in world service.
Yet, there was one sentence in that first paragraph that stands out to me. “Service… to the Fellowship reminds us that we owe our sobriety to the work of earlier members…
Which leads me to page 164 where we’re told to “Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us.”
I’m led there because I listen to and hear those in meetings that I have the opportunity to see and hear on the “outside.” They may be a “guru” on the inside but their house is in such obvious disarray on the outside, the relationship they have with Him is so totally different (or non-existent) on the outside, that the great events do not come to pass for them or others. Yet they command respect and admiration for their spewage.
We have a responsibility, imo. It is to pass this on the way it was given to us - freely and without requirements. No one has the power, nor the right, to re-write “Alcoholics Anonymous” and affix their name as the new author. It won’t work that way! If you’re hanging with those who insist on being “different” please, please, get away from them!
We owe that to those who taught us and those we might help!
Tags: alcoholics-anonymous, gratitude, Recovery, SponsorRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Principles
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