The Point

By Sandra D

When I first got into recovery I was anti-God. I had grown up in a Catholic family and then my dad started taking me to a Christian church. I joined a bible study group as a teen and quickly understood that my questions were not going to be answered in any way that I found satisfying, so I stopped going.

From that moment on my definition of God was a white male who I knew to fear and hide from. So when I first got sober I was angry at God and my family for their beliefs. 

I came out as a teenager and this also rattled my beliefs in the only God I have ever learned about. I know the saying is–to the love the sinner, hate the sin–but it all felt like hate to me. So I rejected the word God in the steps and the Big Book. As an angry lesbian woman I also resented the fact that the Big Book describes God as Him when A.A. doesn’t prescribe to any specific religion. As a newcomer I went through the first 160 pages of the Big Book and crossed out He/Him and changed to She/Her.

Being in A.A. helped me to finally feel seen and understood, and yet so much of the text in the Big Book contained underlying misogynistic themes that I couldn’t relate to. This made me feel like I was fighting, yet again, to fit in–in a place that was meant for anyone with alcoholism and addiction. 

As a newcomer I believed in God as Goddess. I made God a Her, and bristled against any implications that God was/is male. If A.A. truly doesn’t believe in any one religion why is God a He and not a She? Why not a They? Why not Gods (plural)?

My journey towards my Higher Power has been tumultuous and joyful; A solid spiritual journey that helped me to realize that God is bigger than gender. God is Everything! A baby’s laugh, a dogs lolling tongue, the taste of ice cream, the love of family, a beautiful sunset, the dear friends we make in recovery and the spirit in every meeting.

Over the many years I’ve stayed sober God has become a feeling rather than a person. When I want to feel closer to God I go to the beach and let myself be humbled by the ebb and flow of the waves and the fierceness of the wind. In those moments I have a sense of belonging and peace because I can feel and see God working her/their magic.

by Sandy B

When I first came into A.A. I was totally mystified. How can something work when there wasn’t a Board of Directors, President, Vice Presidents etc.? In short, a management group responsible for setting the rules to make sure that all were on the same path did not exist. I was told there are no rules in A.A. each group was autonomous. Here was an organization that was responsible for countless miracles and we who worked the A.A. program are blessed with sobriety. Management, as I knew it, did not exist. I was in the corporate world, so this organization made no sense.

Forty one years later my heart is full of gratitude. Over that time, I have come to realize it works because our founders listened to their angels. Ours is a program with Twelve Traditions that keep A.A. on an even keel and Twelve Steps which help us gain sobriety one day at a time. Without the traditions A.A. would have folded years ago. I do not know how I would have been graced with sobriety without working the steps. Yet, there are no rules.

Sometimes it becomes difficult for us to realize that there are no rules. There are times when we want the rules to exist and in those times we may manufacture them to support our concepts of how the A.A. program works.

For now, I am focusing on the rule that “There Are No Rules.” In order to address the concept of group autonomy, it’s important to look at the A.A. traditions.

Tradition One: “ Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on A.A. Unity”

This tradition speaks to the critical nature of the group. “The group must survive or the individual will not.”

Our sobriety depends on each other. We share our experience, strength and hope with each other so that sobriety can be attained. Without the group there would be no way to find each other.

Tradition Two: “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority–a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”

This tradition takes us to another level. Questions such as:
Does A.A. have a leadership body in the form of “Elder statesmen”? or “Bleeding Deacons”?

Or

Does the group conscience speak for itself where the group is led by a Higher Power, whose guidance leads to a working group where there are no rules?

As someone who has been in this program for over 40 years, I can tell you that there are times when it is too easy for an “elder statesman” to start dictating the workings of the program. We create rules along the lines of “it has always been that way!” We become “Bleeding Deacons”, because we have been around this block for some time and have seen what happens when the suggestions are not followed by others in the program. This is life and death and we have said goodbye too often. At some point, we think that rules will prevent people from going off the cliff. Are the “bleeding deacons” right, no. There are no rules. As humans we forget that fact.

Tradition Four: “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.”

This is the most basic of all for a group. “Every group manages its affairs as it pleases, except when A.A. as a whole is threatened.”

We get lost in this one. It is assumed that what was done pre-Covid or what is done in other groups are rules that have to be carried across to the current group or other groups. In rare instances we think that every secretary should know the rules otherwise, why are they secretaries? We FORGET that There are No Rules. Overtime the machinations of our favorite group(s) are carried forward in our minds as rules. We forget that each group establishes the format they want to use for their group. Whether it is the meeting format or the way they want to run their business meeting. For example: When conducting a meeting in the SF area, we ask standard questions. When we do, we say: “It is the custom of most groups in the San Francisco Bay area to:” this is followed by asking if anyone is a newcomer, visitor, and celebrating an A.A. anniversary. In other places meetings may not ask these questions. It doesn’t mean that they don’t know what they are doing, it means they have not adopted this part of the format for their group(s). Remember there are no rules.

This write-up came about because I think we have forgotten that since Covid our groups are reformatting and growing again. The guidelines established before Covid are gone. New people have arrived and do not know about the past guidelines. It came to me that, perhaps, we needed a reminder. Please accept the following as a loving message and a reminder. It is, as always, a suggestion. For those of you who know me, you know where my heart is.

If your group wishes to establish a set of guidelines then:

Announce a business meeting to discuss the guidelines for the group. These can include but are not restricted to the following:

How often should a business meeting occur? Who should attend? How long should a secretary hold the position? Can a secretary who exceeded that time run again? How are elections to be held? And so on.

BUT remember there are no rules.

Please refer to the brochure titled “The A.A. Group … where it all begins”. It is available at the Dry Dock and Central Office for more information.

What makes A.A. work? We have a simple program and must protect its simplicity by not overthinking it. Be well and Be safe my friends. Love Sandy B.

By John W

This particular winter had seemed long in the making
Even longer in leaving. . .like an end that never came
The awaited package which never arrived
A Nordic darkness bereft of light or hope. . .only isolation

A day’s sun seemed measured in minutes, not hours
The frigid cold of being alone was itself numbing
Sapping even the latent desire to live
Eviscerating the last hope of a new life, of change

But change would happen, there was no stopping it now
Except a slip of course, a relapse into “before”
It was clear one of those always lurked just out-of-sight
But not as far out-of-mind, so change was the only treatment

Another slip was certainly possible, another recovery against Big Odds
The Decision had been made, the only requirement clearly met
So being fear-less was possible. . .Without Fear, Fearless-so very doable
No false evidence appearing real, the Decision would overrule it!

The suggestion was to take stock, an inventory, a thorough one though.
No longer could I take the inventory of another and blame me on them
I had to take my inventory, all about me, a personal inventory
With a clear head I could be thorough and fearlessly cross the portal to change

The clarity induced by “without” helped me to be searching
I could more easily see the before, through the clear eyes of today
To be no longer afraid of what I would see
Promised I could not regret it or shut the door upon it

The task thus presented clear, likewise the goal,
For tales of those who avoided the task or missed the goal were gruesome
The lore was steeped in hearsay and anonymity, but ever present:
Be thorough and fearless, do the best you can with what you have or die

No “ifs”, “ands” or “buts” about this fork in the road, just the black and white
Starkness of choice, facing newcomers and old-timers alike, who
With the resolve of those in foxholes as the whistle to attack sounds
Engage daily this life and death struggle, where no quarter is given or expected

“You do not have to do this alone” this Army’s motto
My captain, my sponsor, issued the suggestions
These the same he had received as he this task had faced
My battle was his too, that is why he made so much sense to me.

One by one the resentments were sighted and mapped
My part in their making brought them closer, now well within range.
As each was then catalogued, recorded, a sense of progress becalmed me
“You need not be perfect “ I was told, just be the best you can now!

Only now I was not set up for failure, as had always been true before,
This was different, this change was a new outlook, a new attitude
How easy before it had been to blame them or it
Now the mirror of this process always kept me in focus too

The new day was dawning, I could feel it, as no feeling I had ever had,
I knew too I could admit to it, for I was no longer alone.
In the doing I was changing, in the admission,
I had hope today that the change would really come.

The Doorknob

By Cabin Wisdom

Can a doorknob be your Higher Power? Walk into the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and eventually you hear how “anything can be your Higher Power. Even a doorknob.” Surely folks are still drinking to come up with goofy idea like that, or so I thought. Even so, I “looked and listened” to members who had a working relationship with this Higher Power. I saw their lives change. I saw recovery. There was hope for me. 

One woman said her Higher Power was Mae West—or, at least looked like Mae West—complete with a pink feather boa, lots of money and attitude. Because no lightning bolts struck her for blasphemy, I came to understand the resiliency, the flexibility, of our Program as we wend our way toward a God of our understanding. Maybe it’s a God of our not understanding. Another fellow in the program used to say, “If you can understand God, then your God is too small.” 

At the cabin this morning came the best answer yet. By turning the cabin doorknob, by the simple activity of opening the door, comes relief, fellowship, understanding and love. By turning the doorknob to an AA meeting the process of turning over one’s will and one’s life becomes possible. A simple turn of a doorknob can change a person’s life forever. “Many members have crossed the threshold just this way.” 

Sometimes it takes “all the courage you have,” says our literature. Turning the doorknob to my first A.A. meeting took all the courage I had. As I lingered outside, up came a chorus of inner voices, “Are you really an alcoholic? How would a 7 a.m. meeting solve the drinking problem? Or any other of the myriad I faced?” The monkey mind was in full-force as I crossed the cabin threshold. 

Turning that doorknob opened the gateway to freedom. Freedom from alcohol. Freedom from the monkey mind. We are given spiritual tools to keep us free: Pause when agitated or doubtful. Gratitude. One day at a time. Keep it simple. Today, I give the monkey mind bananas, or mantras like these, and send it on its way—grateful not to be a slave to a line of thinking that always leads to the bottle. Positive thinking for the negative. Speaking of positive thinking and doorknobs comes another memory of carrying the message in and out of jails and institutions. As a participant in Hospitals and Institutions, the feeling of gratitude always arises as the steel door clangs behind me, and the doorknob on my side of the door works! This is freedom too! 

Our Ninth Step promises include “we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” When I arrived, the past was locked behind a door with steel caulking and the key thrown away. By working the Steps with a strong sponsor, together we found the key of willingness and unlocked the door that “to all appearances is still closed and locked.” Truth is told when they say, “The dark past is the greatest possession you have—the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them. Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worthwhile to us now.” 

When the door opened and story upon story of shame and guilt poured out, the best thing my sponsor often said was, “Honey, let me set your hair back for a while.” Then, with great vim and vigor, she’d launch into a similar yet worse story. That sense of loneliness vanished as together we’d laugh ourselves silly over these very same guilt-ridden stories. Freedom came with laughter, dedication to this Program, and by turning the doorknob one day at a time.

Neither He nor She

By Caroline M

My early religious training as a child in Sunday school used the pronoun He for God. I learned too, that when God was angry because we were all sinners, He sent a mighty flood to wipe out life on earth except for Noah, his family and pairs of every other species who survived on an ark that God instructed Noah to build. The impact of this bible story on my five-year-old’s mind sent me into hysterics when a thunderous rainstorm pelted me and my father while visiting the London zoo. I screamed in terror that we were all going to die because we were sinners and God was going to flood the earth and wipe us all out. My father’s reaction was to remove me from Sunday school and never mention God again. 

Years passed and I won a scholarship to a college track high school for girls which happened to be run by the Church of England. We sang hymns at daily assembly and had regular bible study periods throughout the week. Religion was merely another school subject and I found no application for it in my daily life. As soon as I graduated, it was goodbye to church and I didn’t give God another thought but I still held to the idea that God was a He. That was just a given I didn’t bother to question. 

Decades later, when I was introduced to Al-Anon, a recovery program for families and friends of alcoholics, I struggled with the notion of God and Higher Power and what it all really meant. I was desperate and miserable in my marriage to a violent alcoholic and needed to get myself and my two young children to safety. So I followed the 12 Steps as well as I could, referring to God as He or Him as written in the literature. I have to admit that at that time I never felt a connection from my heart to God or a Higher Power. God was still a he and still out there somewhere. I still prayed to God in the way children make a list for Santa Clause. It was the best I could do at the time. And by the way, my drinking had become a daily habit and I even drove drunk with my children in the car. 

A few years later when alcohol finally brought me to my knees, I crawled through the doors of the Alano Club in San Rafael with a hangover, five days before Christmas 1984. I felt sick to my stomach, the cigarette smoke in the room didn’t help. I hadn’t slept at all, my head pounded and yet I could not deny a feeling of relief that slowed my breathing and helped me sit through that first meeting. And something happened to me. Some shift within me that is hard to describe in words, but when I left that first meeting I felt better and wanted to come back. 

Looking back now I can see how my heart had been touched by something bigger than me, bigger than any one person at that meeting, something mysterious that was invisible yet real. It was a power that touched a part of me that had been dormant for years. This new feeling of connection to a Higher Power did not match the image I had held of an angry punishing old-man-in-the-sky kind of God. This power was neither male nor female. It was simply a healing force, a loving, creative force, pure and good. And I wanted to sit with it, be close to it and be connected. I soon found a sponsor and experienced yet another breakthrough when we got down on our knees to recite the Third Step Prayer. I felt that heart connection again and began spontaneously weeping. The memory of that moment 38 years ago is still vivid.

These days I sometimes use the word God as a convenient way to refer to this power but I cannot bring myself to add a gender. Gender is appropriate for humans and other species but this mysterious power that cannot be experienced through the five human senses and yet is accessible to us, does not need to have a gender as far as I am concerned. It simply is and for me that is sufficient.

Counting Blessings

By Judy G

Read by Michelle G

The Universe is Calling 

By Dee H

All the energy of the universe is calling
I need only receive the fathomless Word
There’s no reason for me to keep falling
Relief is in sight when I’ve simply heard
God is my everything—God is my world

A greater reality is calling you—have you heard?
Let us each practice this gift of receiving
It is easy sometimes to open our hearts
Why is it so hard to believe we are living
In a world where God so loved the world?

An intimate Friend holds us near their bosom
Let us all experience Grace Over Destiny
As we walk the happy road of freedom
A path of infinite loving in endless serenity
Knowing we are together and never alone

Say “Hello” to my Higher Power

By John W

As I am sure was true with many, I did not arrive at the rooms of A.A. on the wings of victory. Not long after I crashed and began burning on A.A.’s doorstep I found out that it was also often true that folks like me, who thought they had a vibrant spiritual life, discovered the opposite, which was that it was precisely this aspect of their life that had had become damaged and needed treatment if the drinking problem was to be successfully addressed. This challenge, this need to come to believe was the next skirmish I confronted in my battle with alcoholism. My sponsor had done a great job in preparing me to take the step, but said one plank of it was mine and mine alone. I was the only one who would determine with what I was I coming to believe would restore me to sanity. 

What was my conception of a Higher Power, or if you will as did I, of God? Because I had grown up Catholic, and remain so to this day, I had an early and for me quite pleasant, wonderful and beautiful experience of God. I did not come to see him as a white-haired old man, a pseudo-Santa Claus, sitting in the clouds with a big ledger in his lap, making checks on one side for my naughtiness and on the other side for my niceness. I had seen him as a gentler, kinder figure, much like my father Bob or and my dear uncle John. Each in their own way loved children, welcoming them into their home like my dad or into their machine shop, like my Uncle John. They each used such encounters to “teach” the curious youths like me, as to how to approach dealing with the tasks at hand, in other words how to live life on life’s terms. This could be anything from how to better interact with my three sisters as their then only brother, to how to repair a damaged piece of metal with a lathe and hand file. If, as I had grown up believing, these men, my mom, my sisters and I, that is everyone, had been made in the image and likeness of my God, then I wanted that God to resemble these two men most of all as they were kind, positive and powerful influences in my life. 

That rhapsody with the spiritual side waivered for me after I began drinking and, as a young, single man, got overcome by heartier drinking, mixed with playing rugby, a sport that I loved, chasing girls and working to achieve a professional degree in law. This combination of pursuits did not enhance or otherwise foster my spiritual growth. On the outside I had hung my legal shingle, got engaged to a wonderful Catholic girl from an upbringing which mirrored mine and had the world at my command. On the inside my drinking was getting worse and eating me alive. Overlooked were the legal problems, a wrecked car in a blackout, later DUIs, and stupid antics at social gatherings unbefitting a man of my stature. These shortcomings were all rationalized in one of a hundred different ways, none every being that I had a problem with alcohol. 

Following the exchange of the “I dos”, I began trying to hide my drinking because I quickly realized that my wife was not as keen on my deportment and demeanor after I had had a few. This subterfuge of course only enhanced the marital discord and my lies to cover my transgressions just made everything worse. After over a decade of marriage, with divorce court in the immediate future and business and personal bankruptcies on the looming horizon, I was finally approaching that last house on the block, the one where “those meetings” occurred. The months that passed while I listened but failed to understand the importance of the not drinking part of our Program had at least given me the opportunity to hear how others had ”come to believe.” When I was finally honest with my fellows about my continued drinking and the miracle of the obsession being lifted occurred, my sponsor and I worked the Steps. He helped me to see I had to develop my conception of a God that would restore me to sanity and thus I turned to the faith of my youth again. I asked myself what it was about that conception of God that had so intrigued me in my younger days. While not a complex answer, upon reflection it seemed I arrived at it only by measured steps.

I believe because I had the willingness to search, the door of which we are told we will most assuredly confront, was indeed ajar for me. So it was that the slightest nudge was enough to spring it open and allow me its threshold to cross. It seemed however not that I was in some familiar space or land. Rather, it was as if I had alit from the gangway of an arriving ship and stepped onto a new and wonderful place, a land of serenity. I had the thought that I was meeting an old friend, like a college roommate I had not seen in years. This was my Higher Power greeting me with open arms. I could almost feel his warm hug envelop me, almost hear him say “I’ve missed you.” Since taking that step, the relationship—and yes, I do see it as a relationship—seems to have steadily strengthened as time has passed. 

The moments of indecision seem fewer and farther apart than before. The sense of calm which more often comes upon me, leads me to speculate about what pilots describe as flying through the eye of a hurricane. I wonder whether that which I am experiencing is a personal variant of this phenomenon of mother nature. Like my old friend imagined, I have grown able to tell this new old friend again found everything and anything. I can ask him for help, in the same way I now tell you about that request, and know that he is listening. I have even started to grasp the reality that just because  I know he hears me, does not necessarily mean the answer will come in the manner requested or in the fashion of which I had hoped. But this is a reality I have come to accept completely. 

This is how I describe my God, my Higher Power. Someone to whom you can offer your most heartfelt or anguished “hello” with comfort in the certainty that he will hear it. He will ask you to come join him, to rest a bit in the shade and quiet of a tree’s cool boughs on a warm day and share a draught from a rustling rill trickling by. Best of all, I no longer feel alone. I have come to believe all will be well if I just trust in him. You too should feel free to say “hello” to him (or her). You will be heard, you will not be alone anymore.

Touchstones Into Stepping Stones 
By Christine R.

Walking into these rooms only to hear “pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress,” how heartily I wanted to run the other direction! My alcoholic story was rife with pain and abject misery, going day to day, hour to hour haunted by a river of pain. Loneliness and pain. Wanting only to drown them—not face them. The last thing I wanted was more pain. By working the steps, taking days one at a time, I came to understand the rest of the lines: “The pains of drinking had to come before sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity” (Step 10, pgs 93-94, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions). 

First of all, what qualifies as a touchstone? Touchstone is defined as a threshold, a gauge, a baseline. For us, the baseline bottom line is that some sort of pain brought us through the doors of A.A.: A court-ordered restraining order, the pained look in the eyes of a child, the loss of one’s family, home, car, employment—all things meaningful to life. Pain is an initial touchstone. At the same time, pain becomes the gift. Our painful past “may be of infinite value to others” who are struggling to get sober. The man with three days has personal experience for the man with three hours on how to get through one more day without drinking. We all have something to share. As Bill pointed out, “pains of failure become assets.” 

The answer to why “most alcoholics have to be pretty badly mangled” came while I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge with my friend, Luke, a long-time member in my home group. Racing at top-speed in his Jaguar, Luke gave me a gentle nudge on the shoulder and asked if that got my attention. “Not really,” I replied. Then Luke gave me a strong push against my arm, asking if that got my attention. “Not that much,” I said. Then Luke damn near pushed me out the door asking, “Now do I have your attention?” Shrieking like banshee, I shouted, “Ok! Ok! You got my attention!” Hooking me back in, Luke said alcoholics are like that. We need a big, fat shove out a moving vehicle before we do anything. 

The self-imposed crisis and the incomprehensible pain they talk about was the very thing that drove me into A.A. right on through to the doors of the Mill Valley Cabin Meeting. Getting to a 7 a.m. meeting was a pain but nothing like the non-stop pain of fear, bewilderment and isolation. My disease had me by the throat. The only reason my alcoholism let me live was to provide transportation to get more booze. 

Eventually, came the discovery that willingness provides the flexibility to surrender, to listen and to change. When my sponsor asked if I were willing to go to any length to stay sober, the response was a resounding “Yes!” Thanks to the terrific beating my alcoholism administered, came the deep quality and principle of willingness. 

The way through is the way out. Like the Gordian knot, the more we fight alcoholism, the tighter the noose. Through the pains of getting sober, sometimes right down to the DTs, touchstones can transform into stepping stones, 12 of them in fact. Touchstones need not be painful. Meetings, sponsors and phone calls provide ways out from under. With these new baselines we transition from daily drinking into daily sobriety. 

Sobriety came easier seeing my sponsor seated in the same place, at the same time, alongside other steady members. Simply by showing up every day and participating made all the difference to us newcomers. Eventually we transform touchstones into stepping stones for ourselves and for those about us, one day at a time.