"Each group should be
autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole."
AUTONOMY
is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us, it means very simply that every
A.A. group can manage its affairs exactly as it pleases, except when A.A. as a
whole is threatened. Comes now the same question raised in Tradition One. Isn't
such liberty foolishly dangerous?
Over the years, every
conceivable deviation from our Twelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That
was sure to be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individualists.
Children of chaos, we have defiantly played with every brand of fire, only to
emerge unharmed and, we think, wiser.
These
very deviations created a vast process of trial and error which, under the
grace of God, has brought us to where we stand today.
When A.A.'s Traditions
were first published, in 1946, we had become sure that an A.A. group could
stand almost any amount of battering. We saw that the group, exactly like the
individual, must eventually conform to whatever tested principles would
guarantee survival. We had discovered that there was perfect safety in the
process of trial and error. So confident of this had we become that the
original statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence:
"Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call
themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group they have no other
affiliation."
This
meant, of course, that we had been given the courage to declare each A.A. group
an individual entity, strictly rely on its own conscience as a guide to action.
In charting this enormous expanse of freedom, we found it necessary to post
only two storm signals: A group ought not do anything which would greatly
injure A.A. as a whole, nor ought it affiliate itself with anything or anybody
else. There would be real danger should we commence to call some groups
"wet," others "dry," still others "Republican" or
"Communist," and yet others "Catholic" or
"Protestant." The A.A. group would have to stick to its course or be
hopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In all other respects
there was perfect freedom of will and action. Every group had the right to be
wrong.
When
A.A. was still young, lots of eager groups were forming. In a town we'll call
Middleton, a real crackerjack had started up. The townspeople were as hot as
firecrackers about it. Stargazing, the elders dreamed of innovations. They
figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, a kind of pilot plant
A.A. groups could duplicate everywhere. Beginning on the ground floor there
would be a club; in the second story they would sober up drunks and hand them
currency for the back debts; the third deck would house and educational project
- quite controversial, of course. In imaginaation the gleaming center was to go
up several stories more, but three would do for a start. This would all take a
lot of money - other people's money. Believe it or not, wealthy townsfolk
bought the idea.
There were, though, a few
conservative dissenters among the alcoholics. the wrote the Foundation*, A.A.'s
headquarters in New York, wanting to know about this sort of streamlining. They
understood that the elders, just to nail things down good, were about to apply
to the Foundation for a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.
Of
course, there was a promoter in the deal - a super-promoter. By his eloquence
he allayed all fears, despite advice from the Foundation that it could issue no
charter, and that ventures which mixed an A.A. group with medication and
education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To make things safer, the promoter
organized three corporations and became president of them all. Freshly painted,
the new center shone. The warmth of it all spread through the town. Soon things
began to hum. to insure foolproof, continuous operation, sixty-one rules and
regulations were adopted.
But alas, this bright
scene was not long in darkening. confusion replaced serenity. It was found that
some drunks yearned for education, but doubted if they were alcoholics. The
personality defects of others could be cured maybe with a loan. Some were
club-minded, but it was just a question of taking care of the lonely heart.
Sometimes the swarming applicants would go for all three floors. Some would
start at the top and come through to the bottom, becoming club members; others
started in the club, pitched a binge, were hospitalized, then graduated to
education on the third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all right, but
unlike a beehive, it was confusion compounded. An A.A. group, as such, simply
couldn't handle this sort of project. All too late that was discovered. Then
came the inevitable explosion - something like that day the boiler burst in
Wombley's Clapboard Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear and frustration fell
over the group.
When
that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter wrote the
Foundation office. He said he wished he'd paid attention to A.A. experience.
Then he did something else that was to become an A.A. classic. It all went on a
little card about golf-score size. The cover read: "Middleton Group #1.
Rule #62." Once the card was unfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to
the eye: "Don't take yourself too damn seriously."
Thus
it was that under Tradition Four an A.A. group had exercised its right to be
wrong. Moreover, it had performed a great service for Alcoholics Anonymous,
because it had been humbly willing to apply the lessons it learned. It had
picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to better things. Even the chief
architect, standing in the ruins of his dream, could laugh at himself - and
that is the very acme of humility.
*In 1954, the name of the
Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of
Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General
Service Office.