The Czar of South Florida AA – Sandy B. 🤣

Okay, what would you think if I were to appear before you and announce myself as being, having just been picked as the czar of South Florida AA and appointed as such by Bill Wilson III, President for Life of AA. And from now on you would be doing precisely as I dictate. Now, would I escape with my life or would I be able to cash in on my funeral policy within the next ten minutes? And we don't think about the way the fellowship is run very much because it seems like it's pretty automatic. As a matter of fact, if you're relatively new, you remember walking in the door and you look around and everybody's kind of doing their thing and things run along pretty smoothly and it looks like it's been here forever. It looks like everybody understands the procedures and they just do them. And as if this fellowship had always been this way, and that's not true at all. As a matter of fact, in the early days they had tremendous battles, tremendous fights about just about everything under the sun Because, you know, when you get a bunch of alcoholics together, even though they're in recovery and especially in early recovery, there's a whole bunch of untreated alcoholism walking around. Big egos, lots of pride, a lot of sensitivity. Many people still pretty much residing in a spiritual kindergarten and in an emotional teenage or even younger. and so at first they had some tremendous problems. By the way, we are going to be today and next Saturday we're going to take a look at the traditions of AA and how to teach them. We're going try to take our close look at them but before we get into the traditions themselves I think it's important for us to understand where they came from and why they were necessary. The traditions have not always been with us. They grew gradually out of experience, and some of the traditions really date back into the 1800s. There was a group in 1840 or thereabouts called the Washingtonians. The Washingtonians got their start when six drunks were sitting around in a bar getting soused and somebody suggested, why don't we get sober? Well let's get it all get sober yeah let's do it they all agreed to get sober so they decided in order to get over they would form a society and they called themselves the Washingtonians. Do you know where the name came from? What did they call it, the Washington? Do you remember where that came from, or was it in Washington? I've often wondered about that, and I don't know. It may be in the literature somewhere, but I don' t know where that word came, where that name came from. Sorry to disrupt your chance thought. Oh, okay. So, by the way, the story of the Washingtonians is somewhere on the internet. Somebody got it for me not too long ago. It was interesting. My copy has disappeared somewhere. I guess I loaned it to somebody. in any event the Washingtonians prospered and they within six years they had acquired some estimated as many as a hundred thousand members they had a lot of the same ideas that we have principally the idea was total abstinence and a lot of carrying the message but they tied in with the churches and the churches were many of them were very active in the prohibition movement and prohibition the dries were what they were looking for was people to be temperate drinkers or not to drink at all but as i understand it there was no pledge of abstinence the washingtonians on the other hand insisted on a pledge of absence and because they were being they were actively involved in what was dear to the heart of many of these the churches which preached prohibition they were welcome in these churches and they were they used these churches as a platform to push their own program, and therefore they got a lot of recognition very quickly. And many, many, people joined the Washingtonians when nobody knows for sure how many actually stayed sober, but they didn't understand some of the basic principles which AA now understands thoroughly and which are embodied in our twelve traditions the principle of anonymity for example now anonymity as it is set out in the 12th tradition we'll see when we get to the 12 position doesn't have anything to do with the fear of discovery anonymity in the twelfth tradition is based upon the principle self-sacrifice or to put another way humility The idea there being that if we do not use our last name, then we are not seeking credit for our sobriety or for what we're doing to help other people. And so at the level of press, radio, and films, and of course in later works we find also TV, and I suppose now on the Internet, anything which is a public consumption, and the tradition admonishes us not to use our last name. That's the 11th tradition. The 12th tradition states why, and the why of it is that if we are to remain humble, we must sacrifice our normal requirement, our normal thirst and hunger and need for recognition, for acclaim, for notoriety, for stardom. Well, the guys in the Washingtonians did not follow this precept. They went the opposite way. They gave speeches from every Chautauqua stop and from all of the pulpits and any place they could get an audience. And, of course, they proudly proclaimed their full names and their being the principal founders of this movement, and they took full credit. And eventually, of course, it was inevitable that some of them started to get drunk. And then the whole thing that they were preaching started looking pretty sad. But that wasn't the worst mistake they made. The worst mistake they made was to tie in with the Prohibition Party, which at that time was a political Party on a national scale. And so they took the Washingtonians and utilized it as a promoter of the Prohibition Party, and they also tied in with the abolitionists, which was a very hot issue in the 1840s and 1850s. And the abolitionist, of course, were the people who were against slavery. This was primarily in the north which is where the Washingtonians were centered, northeast United States. And so they affiliated the Washingtonians with these two very controversial national movements. One a political party of sorts and the abolitionists were extremely active politically as well. As a result of that, they lost whatever credibility they might have had. They also solicited money and took salaries and a couple of guys were getting pretty wealthy by doing this. It was a whole different ballgame than what we're doing now but you see what happened was that the guys who started AA some of them were cognizant of what happened with the Washingtonians and they saw the mistakes that had been made and so from that they learned. And much of what the Washingtonian's did, which caused the demise of the Washingtonia's, they were their zenith was about six years and then they began to go downhill I guess there were still a few of them around but four years after that but the high point was six years after they started. A much more rapid growth, of course, than anything that happened with the AA. But our guys learned from that. And as a matter of fact, we can find the beginnings of the traditions as far back as the writing of the big book in 1939 or perhaps early 1940 when the forward to the first edition was published, or was written. Let's take a look right now at the forward to the First Edition in the big book. You're going to find it right up in front. Now remember that the traditions themselves, as we now know them, the long form, as we now know it, those were not written until 1945. Early 1946 they were first published in the grapevine. But back here in 1939, let's see what we're already finding in the way of what later became the traditions. Next to the last full paragraph, the bottom of page Roman 13, in whatever edition you have, when writing or speaking publicly about alcoholism, we urge each of our fellowship to omit his personal name, designating himself instead as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now there's a corollary to this, of course, because you remember that it is traditional in almost every group now for us to introduce ourselves almost every time we open our mouths as my name is Jim and I am an alcoholic. Well there's nothing in this book or in the traditions which tells us where to do that it is a custom which has simply grown up and it's pretty much now observed by most however it's been carried to some very large extremes for example those groups which when they are holding a closed meeting insisted everybody who was going to be present at that meeting give their first name and identify themselves as an alcoholic There is no tradition which requires this, nor is there anything in the big book. But as a matter of custom, it has grown up. Notice that in the Big Book, the designation which is stated here for us, it's the only place we find this, is that I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, as a sponsor, this can come in real handy for you because you may have somebody who's wavering around about their alcoholism, or maybe they're principally an addict but they want to be a member of AA. They do have a desire to stop drinking, and we've cleared that up. If they're having difficulty identifying themselves as my name is Jim, I am an alcoholic, Remember that the big book requires only that they identify themselves as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, of course this is not entirely apropos because it's talking here about in public. You see there isn't anything in the original concept of AA or in the traditions or in the big books which requires of us that in our meetings we are to use only our first names. As a matter of fact, we find a lot of stuff in the literature debunking that whole idea and decrying it as being a very...creating a serious problem, which is that we have many times we have no way to contact a member. We may know them well but we don't know their last name. have no way to identify them other as sometimes we use little sticky phrases you know like I'm I'm known as so I some people as Big Book Jim which I don't I don't care one way or another or Jim B there are lots of Jim B's around and a lot of times when I'm talking to people I've known for years and they learned my last name oh your name is Bramble I didn't know that well I can tell you right now that I've got a lot of people I sponsor. I don't know their last name. I'm not sure I haven't heard it once or twice, but the main thing is that our custom of using only our first name even in meetings among ourselves, even the most intimate meetings, maybe four or five people gathered together in somebody's home. It's still something that we pretty much stick to. Not everybody does. And one of the things that's kind of ironic is that the few who use their last names in a meeting get sneered at. Well, you know, what's he so pompous about? Or doesn't he know better? And that kind of stuff. But right here in the big book, it tells us flat out that we designate ourselves only as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, please notice that this paragraph is directly applicable to the 11th tradition. Again, talking only about in public. And the reason, again, to make sure we understand is that this anonymity stuff, this first name only stuff, has to do with a principle of humility and self-sacrifice rather than fear, because the traditions are spiritual principles. They are not fear-driven. And so much of what we hear about the traditions would seem to indicate that they're based on the fear of adverse consequences, and that's not true at all. Today it may be that this is a way that they are acceptable. I don't know but in there but when they were written and in their inception they had they were not pandering to fear in any way and then goes on to say very earnestly be asked to press also to observe this request otherwise we shall be greatly handicapped a part of the problem here was when they wrote the book they were pretty sure that there was going to be a flood of response to So as it turned out, that's exactly what happened. And they were afraid that they would not be able to personally handle this great flood of response. At this point, they had not yet formed the trustees or the World Service Organization. That came a little bit later when the books started to sell and money started to pour in and the requests for help were becoming so great. So they set up an office in New York with one secretary, and Bill spent most of his time there for a lot of years. A lot of the answers that were going out were handwritten by a couple of people. Nothing like we have today, but that's where it all started. And they felt that if the press started using their last names, that they would be deluged, seriously disrupt their families, and so on. Not because they were afraid of being found out as alcoholics. That wasn't the point at all. Down at the bottom of that page, we are not an organization in the conventional sense of the word. and those few words are, that's the most diminished way of stating something which is a world-shaking importance that I can think of. We are not an organization in the conventional sense of word at all. We don't follow any organizational rules that anybody ever heard of. As a matter of fact, AA has been referred to as a benevolent anarchy or a poor man's democracy. There are all kinds of ways that people have tried to identify us. We don't have any rules and regulations. I'm always threatening people in the meetings or when they don't show up for meetings to send the AA police after them. Of course, there isn't such a thing in any sense of the word. It is almost perfect freedom to come and go and to do as one pleases so long as we don't do anything illegal or to seriously harm others or to harm other groups or to arm AA as a whole. The traditions are pretty clear about that. Other than that, the rule that an Alcoholics Anonymous group conducts its affairs in accordance with the will of a loving God as he may express himself through the conscience of the group. And this is a unique and powerful concept which is simply not adopted anywhere else that I know of. I guess some of the other 12-steps groups may use that. I'm not sure whether they do or not. The whole idea of a group conscience, then. Of course, today that has been corrupted into a form of democracy run by the select few who form the power elite within many groups, the powers that be. And they're the activists. They're the ones that show up at business meetings. And because the groups have allowed them to do it, these folks have all come up with a planned scheme and device which says that the only time a group conscience can be taken is at a business meeting. Balderdash! That's utterly ridiculous. In fact, what is a business meaning anyway but a violation of tradition? We're not in business, nor should we ever be. and yet it's such a well-accepted custom now that people simply acquiesce in it as if it were a set rule. It is not. I remember a couple of years ago, a little bit more than that, doing a meeting in another group, a big book meeting, or no, it was a step meeting, I guess. Well, the powers that be insisted that I could only talk about the steps for a half an hour and then I had to set the meeting open for discussion. And I said, okay, I'll take a group conscience on it, which I did, and we had a group conscious and the group said, no, you talk. If we have something to say, we'll raise our hand. I said fine. That was a major bone of contention because I was not doing what the business meeting had decided some probably a couple years three years before that was supposed to be the format of meeting but I simply said look there's we had a group conscience and I'm following that so that's the way it's going to be and I don't go there anymore. But we finished the step series. Do you remember that, Ivan? So anyway, there are going to be a lot of things that come out of this tradition stuff that may surprise you because the reality, the truth of these things is quite different from the practice in modern AA. So, in any event, as we're looking here, we see that we're not an organization in the traditional sense of the word and we don't have officers and directors. Some groups now have bylaws, believe it or not. They actually write out all their rules and regulations bylaws just as if they were corporation or something and try to get those changed man that's that's going to take some real electioneering to do that there are no fees or dues whatsoever so that do you ever go to a meeting of any group or you ever anywhere except maybe in church where where they don't strong-arm you, well not entirely, but in AA it's like it doesn't cost you anything to be here and you put money in if you can and if you cant you can and nobody is going to sneer at you or look down on you because you don't. It used to be when the hat came around we'd say put some in if your got it take some out if you need it. I don't ever hear that anymore. I couldn't get away with that with Marilyn anyway. I believe that our money is in safe hands with her. Somehow or another it keeps growing. You don't sit on it to make it hash or something, do you? I invest it. Oh, you invest it, yeah. Okay. Now then, here's something really unique. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. When I first read that, I asked my sponsors, what is a dishonest desire? Or is there such a thing? Or is it a desire at all that's not honest? Well, he said, look to the tradition, you'll see they caught their mistake. So the word honest is not in tradition but here it was an honest desire to stop drinking now this is revolutionary and we're going to find that this is another see you see how far back these traditions were being foreshadowed right here in the in the uh forward to the first edition so a lot of this stuff was already coming clear now this business of uh the only requirement for membership you know what had happened was that by the time they got around to writing the big book they'd already been involved in so many fights about membership and what the and some of the groups there were only three groups with especially New York group and set up some horrendous admission requirements I don't mean it was like I've heard some wild stories I don' know whether they're apocryphal or not but things like they want to see your financial statement I mean it was they weren't taking any bums off the street no way they wanted only good people well God most of us wouldn't qualify then then they then they looked around and to see what the various rules and regulations were and by the time it was whether they were ready to write, the bills were ready to write the traditions in 1945. The rules and regulations among the various groups and there were a bunch of them then were so all inclusive that Bill looked at that and he said I don't think any of our original members could ever be a member of an AA group if all these were enforced. We wouldn't have been allowed in at all. So but we see that by 1939 it was clear quite clear and this was remember that this forward to the first edition was written by consensus with all of those who were then in the fellowship so they had decided that they would no longer try to enforce rules and regulations now this did not get translated into traditions until about six or seven years later well in the meantime the groups have been pretty much free to do as they pleased, and there was just a whole lot of stuff going on out there. And there were great wide discrepancies among the groups, and a lot of temperaments. Man, there were some wild fights going on about this stuff. We are not allied with any particular faith sect or denomination nor do we oppose anyone now remember that the see this comes in part at least from the washingtonians who had allied themselves with the churches and primarily with the protestant churches which were the ones which were deeply involved in prohibition and also some of the Protestant churches which were deeply involved in abolition of slavery so they had identified themselves with these denominations and in a pen and by indirection of course was Protestantism we're not alive with any particular faith sect or denomination nor do we oppose anyone now also this was put in here because remember that the Oxford Ian's were in effect were really a religious organization a kind of a sect trying to practice first century Christianity and in a 20th century American way which wasn't too imitative of first century Christians, I don't think any of them ever willingly went into a den of lions or sacrificed themselves for their cause by getting burned at the stake or anything. But they tried to get back to the basics of Christianity as was found in the beginning. And so AA had been closely identified with the Oxfordians and I believe, although I can't prove it. I don't know I've ever seen it in any literature, but it seems to me that here we find the first serious break with the Oxford group. And certainly they had had their differences and when Bill rewrote the steps from the Oxford six steps to the AA 12 steps, that was a clean break with what the Oxfordians believed because their idea was that once you'd worked their six steps you would you would achieve a sort of a state of perfection and our guys have found that wasn't true at all now it's true that the the the Akron group tended to stay closer allied with the Oxfords for a while how long I don't know but apparently lasted quite a while but this seems to me in the forward to the first edition of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous to be a demonstration of a schism, of a breaking away from the Oxfords. We simply wish to be helpful to those who are afflicted. And that's a definition of a proclamation of AA and it really defines what we're doing here. remember that in the big book it tells us that our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to god and the people about us and this is pretty clear expression of that truth okay bill wrote about the beginnings of the traditions As early as 1945 mediating and giving suggestions by mail for the solution of group problems had put a tremendous volume of work on headquarters With most of the metropolitan AA centers, correspondence files have grown six inches thick. Seemingly every contestant in every group argument at every point of the compass wrote us in this period. It was cheaply from this correspondence from our mounting public relations activities that basic ideas for the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous came. In late 1945, a good AA friend suggested that all this massive experience might be codified into a set of general principles. Principles, simply stated, which could offer tested solutions to all of AA's problems of living and working together and of relating our society to the world outside. If we had become sure enough of where we stood on such matters as membership group autonomy, singleness of purpose, non-endorsement of other enterprises, professionalism, public controversy, and anonymity in its several aspects, then such a code of principles could be written. Such a traditional code could not, of course, ever become a rule or law, but it could act as a sure guide for our trustees, headquarters people, and most especially for AA groups with bad growing pains. Being at the center of things, we at the headquarters would have to do the job. Aided by my helpers there, I set to work. The traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous which resulted were first published in the so-called long form in the AA grapevine of April 1946. Then I wrote some more pieces explaining the traditions in detail. This came out in later issues of The Grapevine. If you have your language of the heart with you, we're on page 154. Meanwhile, at the foundation, we had taken another significant action that was forthwith embedded in these traditions. In 1945, we hade written Mr. Rockefeller and the 1940 dinner guests that we would no longer need their financial help. Book royalties would look after Dr. Bob and me. Group contributions would pay the general office expenses. Since that day when we declared for self-support, the AA headquarters instead vastly refused outside contributions. This is a little known aspect of AA history, by the way, that Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were living on the so-called royalties that they were receiving as a result of the publication of the big book. As a matter of fact, at one time, Dr. Bob was owed about $3,500 on his mortgage and Bill needed some money for living expenses and he had gone to Rockefeller and Rockefeller had kicked in five grand. Well, that $5,000 didn't go into AA at all. It went to Bill and Bob to keep them going. It paid off Dr. Bob's mortgage and put enough money in Bill's pocket that he and Lois could survive for a while more. But then the big book began to catch hold and so they had made arrangements with the trustees where since they were putting a great deal of time into this and Bill was practically full-time that they would be paid from the book sales. Now, if we look at the history a little bit deeper, we see that originally when they put together the idea of the big book, it was set up as a corporation, a for-profit corporation. And I believe they ended up with about 50 or 60 stockholders, all of whom had been assured that when this wonderful book was published and it was sold all over the world that they were all going to make a lot of money. Eventually, of course, they had to decide that this wasn't working at all. The book was transferred over to the trustees. I don't know what they did with the corporation. But Bill and Bob continued to benefit from the book sales. And this happened, I believe, with Bob until he died in 1950. And Bill was still taking money in the 60s, I think. I remember reading in the Soul of Sponsorship of Bill's correspondence with Father Ed Dowling that Bill was talking in the middle 50s in his letters to Father Ed about still receiving money from the book sales and that this was keeping him going. At one point, Bill had tried to go back into the stock market and I guess that he was mildly successful there and I'm not sure what happened with that either but in any event, nobody was... Well, that's not true. Some people were real upset by the fact that Bill and Bob were getting money because the whole idea was that this was supposed to be non-commercial and nobody was supposed to be paid for their AA work. I believe that Bill and Bob took the position that they were in fact employees in the sense that they Were devoting almost full time to the affairs of the fellowship and that if they were not compensated they'd have to go find other employment, and they wouldn't be able to do the job they were doing. Goes on to say, the first reception of the traditions was interesting and amusing. The reaction was mixed, to say the least. Only groups in dire trouble took them seriously. From some quarters there was violent reaction, especially from groups with a long list of protective rules and regulations. There was much apathetic indifference. Several of our intellectual members cried loudly that their traditions reflected nothing more than the sum of my own hopes and fears for Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, Bill was a whipping boy more often than you might imagine. These days he has achieved the status of a kind of a saint or an icon. That isn't the way they thought of him in the 40s and 50s and even the 60s. all those 60s, when Bill had stopped being the big honcho in AA and had backed away and let other people run it and contented himself with speaking and writing, of course his heart was progressively failing at the same time. And a lot of the antagonism and animosity died out. And you can see that in Bill's writings, those of you who have language of the heart if you follow what he wrote from 1944 and you read up into the 60s you'll see that his writing in the 60's was quite different. In fact much of what he write in the 12 and 12 he flatly contradicts in 1960's because he knew looking back that a lot of that stuff was just dead wrong. And, of course, it was also historical fact that Father Ed Dowling died in 1960 and Bill had been tremendously under his influence. He considered him as his sponsor, although Father Ed was not a member. He's a Jesuit priest who principally lived in St. Louis. But Ed had sort of hooked up with Bill in 1940 and their relationship continued for those 20 years. The writing of the 12 and 12 was a substantial part of that book as a result of Father Ed and his editing and his contributions, and Bill wasn't really in any very good shape to write anything at that time. So we see a genesis, a progression of Bill, and it's interesting as you read laying to the heart you'll see how that is reflected in how he wrote he says therefore i began to travel and talk a lot about the traditions people were at first politely attended though it must be confessed that some did go to sleep during my earlier ranks but after a while i got letters containing sentiments like this bill we'd love to have you come and speak do tell us where you used to hide your bottles and all about that big hot flash spiritual experience of yours but for heaven's sake please don't talk anymore about those damn traditions see what happened here was that the traditions had been published first in the long form in 1946 and then Bill was writing articles constantly now and all those articles are here and playing to the heart you don't know about the traditions leave the twelve and twelve aside just pick this book up and you'll find whatever you need to know because what bill did was basically to synthesize what he wrote for the grapevine when he did the tradition section of the 12 and 12. You'll find some languages identical, so the 12 and 12 had a limited space, so he didn't get very much room, so he cut out a lot of stuff short, but the more expansive writings about the 12 traditions you'll find in Language of the Heart. I still think it's second most important literature we have. And there's stuff in the language art you won't find anywhere else. Presently, time changed all that. Only five years later, several thousand AA members meeting at the 1950 Cleveland Convention – by the way, that was the first international in Cleveland, Ohio, declared that AA's traditions by then stated in the now familiar short form constituted the platform upon which our fellowship could best function and hold together in unity for all time to come. They saw that the Twelve Traditions were going to be as necessary to the life of our society as the Twelve Steps were to the lives of each member. The AA traditions were, the Cleveland Convention thought, the key to the unity, the function, and even the survival of us all. And I must tell you that that paragraph takes a lot of poetic license. There's much in the way of euphemism there because there is a tape of Bill's speech to that convention in which he railroaded these traditions through. They didn't really know what the hell was happening to them. They had voted yes on these traditions before they woke up to the fact that's what he was doing. If you listen to that tape, it's pretty clever the way he promoted it. He got up there and started speaking, and I think he asked the first question, is anybody here against having a set of traditions for our fellowship? Stand up and speak if you are against that. Hmm, I don't see anyone who's against having traditions. well now these traditions have all been published in the grapevine I'm certain that all of you already know what they say anybody who doesn't know stand up and be recognized there are thousands of people in this big convention nobody stood up anybody who is against these traditions stand up and be recognised nobody stood up that was the way they were adopted now he's saying And, okay, well, they saw that the 12 traditions were going to be necessary to life of our society. The 12 steps were the life of each member. The 8 traditions were the Cleveland Convention thought, the key to the unity, the function, and even the survival of us all. Well, now, this is pretty much what he preached at them. He told them all this stuff. And I guess he decided that since nobody stood up and complained about it that they all agreed with him pretty sneaky on the other hand what he writes here is true and that's the beauty of it bill was bill was a by no means a common man but he was just a man and for whatever god's reasons might have been he apparently was chosen by God to speak through. And he wrote and he spoke with inspiration part of the time, not always. But these traditions were clearly inspired. They have formed the basis for the continued existence of our fellowship. I'm absolutely convinced if we didn't have the traditions we long ago have fallen by the wayside. Just think about the wild ass stuff that goes on in every group and all of the screwy stuff and the goopy stuff that comes floating around, and sooner or later we usually get back to the traditions and one way or another we stumble through. Now it is absolutely true that a group which does not abide by the traditions will eventually fail. There are three, there were three standing groups and I mean major groups with long-standing in North Miami until a couple three years ago and they all died. I remember there was one group called the Archcreep Group and I did the steps for them twice. I spoke to them several times and Ray O'Keefe was a sort of a member there and they had this great big hall in a church and they'd fill that place up there'd be 125, 150 people in there a couple nights a week but they got into a big fight about money and there was a little core group the powers-that-be that took charge, started running things. They stopped following the traditions and they just fell on their swords. They're gone. It's gone. They just died out. Nobody would come there anymore. The Biscayne Room was a very active club. Many people got sober at the Biscane Room. They died away. And the same thing happened there. Gradually, gradually the places become a dark hole, a black hole you know and instead of there being AA and recovery they become political, they become hell holes of squabbling and especially of backbiting and innuendo and gossip and outright lies about each other this kind and stuff. And when that happens, the group fails. AA is a... alcoholism is a self-cleaning oven. And a group which violates the tradition does so at its own peril. We don't have to worry about the rogue groups because they, I promise you, they won't be around long. There's a group in South Dade, which is in a very wealthy city there, and they have just tons of money. And everybody I know who was a member of that group ten years ago who is still sober today has left. They got this money thing and every meeting they had, every business meeting was a major battle over money. could look you could look in there in the reports of the intergroup letter see who was contributing to intergroup that month and these people are sitting with eighty ninety thousand dollars in the bank and didn't contribute a dime dinner group and so that and how they have survived till now I don't know I can't tell you the North Miami group upper room got into the same kind of thing they almost didn't make it there was a time when the members were having to kick in substantial amounts of money the ones who are left in order to keep the lease they used to have these to fill the place up it's coming back now but only because they apparently learned the lesson that we violate these traditions at our peril and it's not just a matter of the traditions in terms of the fellowship or the group these traditions apply to each of us individually as well when you look at the 12 traditions think of them in terms of the way you conduct your own life and you will find that these traditions are equally applicable to us as individuals and that they are spiritual principles just as surely as the 12 steps are spiritual principle so when you're teaching your responses You want to be sure that they understand as best they can and the best you can teach them that these traditions are not to be ignored, they're to be studied and they're to be honored and that they form a very important part of recovery for each of us. And you can see if you look closely at the traditions, you can say the parallels between the traditions and the steps. And that would be, obviously that would be so, wouldn't it? If we're talking about spiritual principles, they all emanate from one source. They all have a common source, a common beginning and therefore they will all relate to each other in one way or another just as every step relates to every other step. They're all interdependent. And the twelve traditions would have no value whatsoever if the members of the fellowship were not working the 12 steps. There's no way in the world you'd get people who were not on a spiritual path to even consider following these traditions. Unfortunately, we have very few people who are watchdogs or even care to be or even cared to educate themselves enough to be able to speak or think clearly about what the traditions really mean and where they came from so it's real important for us to help our sponsees to join that small minority that eventually are heard we hope they're heard within the group because the groups that do not follow these traditions do not stay together now then let's think in terms of the first tradition if you have your language of the heart you'll find bill's synopsis of the verse edition on page 76. it's important to recognize that the first First Tradition and this Twelfth Tradition set the stage for all of the other traditions. What we really find is that the First Traditions and the Twelfths Traditions bookend all the others, sort of define what is to come in all the other ten traditions. Because both those first and twelfth traditions speak of the fellowship as a whole, they speak of unity, they speaks of the spiritual principles embodied in what we're doing here. So when we look at the first tradition, let's see what it says, and there are two versions Remember that the long form was the form in which they were first published and that was the forum in which continued to be considered just until the Cleveland Convention. And then for the convention, they were rewritten in the short form to be more palatable to the delegates as bill originally wrote it the long form each member of alcoholics anonymous is but a small part of a great whole they must continue to live or most of us will surely die hence our common welfare comes first but individual welfare follows close afterward The short form, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Now then, that sounds a little bit drastic, doesn't it? That our personal recovery depends on AA unity Well, what it's really saying to us is that the common welfare should come first, which means that we will do whatever it takes to secure the unity of the fellowship. Why? Because our personal individual recovery depends upon the continued existence and the unity of the fellowship, which means that not that the big book itself is insufficient to give us sobriety, because it is. We can work the steps from the big books. It was written for that purpose. But our continued sobriete depends upon our ability to continue to carry the message, doesn't it? and where do we find the people that we're able to carry the message to? We find them almost entirely within our group. Now, if you read the 11th chapter, Vision for You, you'll find that most of that chapter is devoted to the promulgation or the promotion of the new people out there in the hinterlands taking what they've learned from the big book and beginning to form a group because it teaches how the groups, the first groups got started and teaches and urges people to take this message and form their own groups because by that time they had found how incredibly important it is to have this foundation, this unity of purpose and to have a place where new people would be able to come and to get the message and where we would have the opportunity as recovering alcoholics to carry the message. Well, now, if the unity comes first, then this means that the first thing we are to think of, and remember, this is a message to us personally now. This is a passage to each of us personally. And it's the same way with the twelfth tradition. It's a message to each of us personally. And when you teach the traditions to your sponsees, emphasize that we're not talking about something here which is applicable only out here in this great amorphous outer world of the groups or the fellowship. These things come right to the heart of our own lives and the way we conduct ourselves. So now, therefore, if I'm to say that the unity of the fellowship comes first, how can I possibly justify the kind of behavior that we see constantly around these rooms? how can I justify gossiping how can i justify taking other people's inventory and taking other people's secrets and spreading them around how canI justify lying about people or carrying rumors or spending a great deal of time being critical I can't because anything like that is destructive of unity it tears it up people are driven out of groups by this kind of stuff and yet each individual who reads this tradition should understand it speaking to them and saying whatever you do which is destructive or the unity of your group or of AA as a whole is absolutely against your own personal self-interest because if you destroy the unity of the group you destroy that very vehicle by which your recovery hinges. So you can see how strong this message really is when you think it through. Now, if we think in terms of the 12th tradition that anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions ever remind us to place principles before personalities. Same message, isn't it? Placing principles before personality. What's the principle here? The unity of the fellowship has to come first. My personal recovery depends upon it. I have to place the fellowship first. and when I don't what's happened here is that I am not practicing the principles that I've learned and have been following supposedly following in the steps love and tolerance of others is our code balderdash you don't find enough of that around the rooms anymore because we're dealing with so many so many cases of untreated alcoholism people who have not and will not work the steps people who belong to the half majors group and stand outside half majors avail us nothing remember that we don't get half recovery from anything and so we have problems but fortunately and thank you God for this there are people like you who will come out on a Saturday afternoon to learn what you need to know to carry the message. And I've been doing this for over 14 years now, and I can tell you that it's hard to get a lot of people to stick it out. Some of you have been here since we started. And there are those who come every time we start a new workshop, they show up, they want to hear more. We're doing a workshop on Wednesday nights in Hallandale right now. we got 30 people showing up for that meeting. And they're coming from all over. See, these are the unusual people. These are the people who really give a damn because what they do is they sacrifice what would ordinarily be their playtime or their sleep time or their reading time or gooping off time to be here. And so what I've found is there are always a few and also in in south florida it's really interesting because marilyn knows and tom knows because we've been together all this time with the stairway group at the beginning right the beginning the stairwell group has always been a group which has attracted people from all over it does not depend upon the people who normally go to meetings here at the 101. we people come into those meetings Tonight there will be people here from South Dade, from South Beach, from West Broward, from Palm Beach. See, because what's happening there is that we're talking about the big book in a way that a few people want to hear. They really want to spend the time learning what's in that book and not spend the times sitting around listening to a bunch of problems being discussed or gossip or innuendo or any of the other crap that goes on. And so what we found is that if you do something that brings the truth centered on the big book and on God and on recovery, people will show up for it. Not necessarily a lot of people but the ones who count. I honor you guys for being here on a Saturday afternoon. I truly do. okay that's just that's the beginning of our discussion of the traditions we'll continue this next week we may run over a little bit but then we don't have a script for this workshop so we'll do the best we can to take a look at some more traditions next week maybe we'll finish maybe we won't if we don t we'll go on until we do that's a way that works i want Thank you all so much for being here and allowing me to share this with you. Let's close the meeting. Let this circle represent the unity of our fellowship. A moment of silence for those who are still suffering, and then we'll say the Lord's Prayer together. Please remember in the stairway group we don't say anything after we say amen. Thank you, 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, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Okay guys, thank you much See you next week God willing the crick don't rise Thank you