[Comment: Early AAs read all these items. I found them in Dr. Bob's library. I found them in Henrietta Seiberling's reading (See The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous and The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7th ed). I found them in Clarence Snyder's library as shown to me by his wife Grace in Florida. And I found many mentioned in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers and in early A.A. pamphlets and articles. Anne was the Bible student, the teacher, and the one who conducted the Morning Watch at the Smith home. It is therefore not surprising to see the language on page 87 of the Big Book, 3rd ed.: There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one's priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer. And when I see communications from people that say A.A. is not for Christians only or Lois Wilson's remark that not all drunks are Christians, or hear someone in a meeting talk about excluding all but Conference Approved books from meetings and discussions, I bemoan the lack of knowledge of our own history and of the Big Book itself that exists today. There is no index of forbidden books in Alcoholics Anonymous, and there never was one. Dr. Bob was an avowed Bible student, Christian, and member of Protestant churches. But he read, recommended, circulated, and studied the works of Roman Catholic writers, of Confucius, of new thought writers like Trine and Fox, and the Bible itself. He went to Roman Catholic retreats, Bible and tooth brush in hand. And he seems never to have spoken ill of any religion or denomination an example today's AAs would do well to observe.]
Barriers to a full surrender. (From page 18, as numbered by GSO)
4. Is there anything I won't give up?
5. Is there an apology I won't make?
6. Is there any defeat in my whole life, I refuse to count as sin?
7. Any person I don't like to meet?
8. Any restitution I won't make?
9. Is there any guidance I have had but refused to follow?
10. Is there anything I won't share? Let my surrender be wholesale.
11. Narrow vision, rigidity, a staleness in your relationship with Christ.
12. Telling a lie.
13. If you are sore in yourself, do you work it off on somebody else.
14. Intellectual doubts arise out of an attitude of mind.
15. You can't ask forgiveness from someone you don't believe in.
16. Ideas about self - holding on to my own judgment of things, people, common sense and reason.
17. You can't use a fine needle to do rough darning. Are you willing to take any amount of trouble to win others that Christ has taken to win you?
18. Each confession a fresh humiliation breaks down another barrier. You can get to the place where you have nothing left to defend - that is release. You can go naked to God
[Comment: There are hundreds of similar guides, observations, challenges, and ideas in Anne's 64 pages, plus those we still need to find. You can see many discussed in my title, Anne Smith's Journal, 1933-1939, 3rd ed. You will be surprised, as so many are each day, to see just how much of Anne's thinking and teaching underlies our fellowship ideas. And do you see any mention of higher power, or of acceptance, or of things happen for a reason, or there are no coincidences in A.A. Whatever you think of such expressions, they should certainly balanced against an understanding of what some of us now old school A.A. Let's learn what we were and how successful we were before we start inventing new gods, new philosophies, and new interpretations of reality. The Big Book and the chatter in meetings, if not accompanied by our history, could be likened to a conversation with Thomas Jefferson without a knowledge of the Declaration of Independence.
Our Great Opportunity Today
What a great and unusual day it could be in Twelve Step Fellowships if we actually saw a copy of Anne Smith's Journal mine or hers on the literature table at a meeting. What a great and unusual day if someone read just one page from the real, the original, the un-edited Anne Smith's Journal at an A.A. meeting on the 4th week of every month. What a great and unusual day if A. A. World Services started publishing the real history of early A.A. instead of the diverse opinions of thousands who haven't a clue where we came from. What an opportunity to change the failing treatment ideas to the early Program by just reading at a treatment program what that early program was, as exemplified by Anne's Journal. What a great and unusual day if speakers and International Conventions and other Conferences began talking about something other than their own experience, strength, and hope. One can read the Book of Acts, as Anne suggested, and see plenty of victorious experience, strength, and hope that was based on belief in, and reliance upon, the power of God. The lame walked. The dead were raised. The sick were healed. That=s what early A.A. was really about. In fact, if you look at the 12 times the word Creator is used in our Big Book today, and if you realize that the word God with a capital G is set forthBby name or by explicit referenceBover 400 times in today's Big Book, you might be hesitant about questioning the literature that gave rise to the very Power (the power of Almighty God, our Creator), Whose kindness, healing, and forgiveness put Alcoholics Anonymous on the map as a viable life-changing society that really had an answer to the A drug problem.
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