By Anon.
Tradition 6 – “An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.”
OK, I got the part about we don’t run hospitals or rehabs, but otherwise this Tradition seemed as irrelevant to me as the Steps did when I wanted to stop drinking or the Promises did shortly after I did stop. Of course with each new day of sobriety came a better understanding of just how the Steps needed to be interwoven into my being so I might have some hope of achieving the Promises in the time I had left on this earth – if I was painstaking. But then there were these Traditions, those which kept me from homicide, as the Steps had kept me from suicide.
After over a decade of being sober and contributing along a number of the many service opportunities that were available and which had been suggested, I had again read the story of the guy who would be the front man for the ad program on “How It Worked” that was to be sponsored by the Spirits Industry and if he would take the job. When finally the light dawned on him that this job quite simply was not the “next right thing,” he was quoted in what became for me an extraordinary insight when told there was no legal impediment to him taking on the job under consideration.
“But this is not time for legalities, Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, and it comes first. I certainly won’t be the guy to land A.A. in big-time trouble, and this would really do it.” 1
I had no way to know how many times I had read this quote over the years, but for some reason it made so much more sense this time. I realized it was because the chord it struck was the “spiritual one,” the “life and death one,” for the same was quite true for me “Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, and it comes first.” I began to think about how that played out in real time. It was easily more important than sleep and comfort, just thinking about how many times I had gone to that 7:00 a.m. meeting (they met every day, 365 days a year) when sleeping in felt so good – but AA came first. Ironically, it also seemed that those were the days some newcomer showed up needing what I was fortunate enough to have been given by others. My attendance record wasn’t perfect, but thank goodness we sought to progress, not to perfect. Likewise, I had learned that when AA called, my answer was “yes.”
But when I saw the “spiritual aspect” of Tradition 6 play out the fog lifted. Our group was in the throes of a rent increase for our beloved meeting place and the group was splintered about leaving behind 20+ years of local tradition to save rent money. Our solution: the Old Timers suggested we pray for guidance! Pray for guidance, you have got to be kidding me I fumed. Get some comparable prices, focus our “pitch” to the local township for a rent break because of how valuable we AAers were to the community about us. That’s what the situation called for, plans not prayers. But they just smiled, said it would all work out, and suggested that asking for guidance and listening for an answer was the winning plan.
Sure enough everything did work out. A couple of newer folks really stepped up, did their homework and set upon a serene path that worked. Guidance came from those who had been around forever and who knew what to say, how to say it, when to say it and to whom to say it. In this way obstacles vanished, rough edges were smoothed and everything worked out. I saw our principles being practiced in this important, group-wide affair. The Spirituality of the program, unblocked and unfettered by the business mentality I thought had to control the circumstances, had worked, it really had. In this simple way I had learned a valuable lesson which the group had honored in the best way possible, when it had applied to our problem this tradition which reminded us that we could be Bound To No One.
- “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,” page 159. ↩︎
