What is the Message We Carry

TRADITION FIVE

“Each group has but one primary purpose ---
To carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.”

“Shoemaker, stick to thy last!”… better do one thing supremely well than many badly. That is the central theme of this Tradition. Around it our Society gathers in unity. The very life of our Fellowship requires the preservation of this principle.



TWELVE STEPS AND
TWELVE TRADITIONS
(p. 150)

What is the message an AA group is carrying to the alcoholic who still suffers? Is it an evangelistic insistence that we must concede our will to a cultish lock-step convention of acquiring a sponsor, working the Steps and staying so damned busy we don’t have time to look at ourselves after we have done the inventory steps? Are we also so damned busy we don’t have time to stop and ask a newcomer how he/she is doing and to actually listen to what is being said? Is the message also an insistence that we all become reformers and believe in a certain way a certain God... or even the gender of God? Is the purpose of the group to indoctrinate the proper application of the Big Book? Is the Big Book little more than a bludgeon to beat up and judge our fellow alcoholics? I think not. Isn’t our first compelling motivation supposed to be understanding and love for those who suffer?

I get so very tired of hearing a monotone delivery in groups that always follows the same pitch: personal details thrown in but usually tied in neatly with how stupid they were and how wise their sponsor or the "group conscience" is. Rarely do they admit that they possess a basic intelligence or compassion common to all of us… drinkers or not… drunks or not… alcoholics or not. To do so would have to involve taking responsibility for our lives before we stopped drinking. It was this longing for compassion and sobriety that led me to the rooms. I didn’t come to AA to acquire another dogma. I came to be relieved of my suffering. I was a sick man who saw the need wanted to get well… I was not a stupid, evil man trying to reform myself. Today I reserve the right to think for myself because I have the innate ability... the God given... if you will, to do so.

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