After our Stop Press
article of yesterday a member from the UK kindly sent in the following, making
some rather pertinent points about placing “principles before
personalities”.
“Hi fellas,
I read your Stop press
article today. Can you tell me, Is this the same Jim B. who breaks his anonymity
on You Tube?
[Comment: actually it
isn't – although there does seem to be a bad outbreak of these “bleeding”
“experts” at the moment – but you can catch the original elsewhere on the net
“entertaining the troops”” Remember: “The show must go on”!]
If so, someone ought to
educate him on Traditions Eleven and Twelve. He looks and sounds like the
reincarnation of the alarming poser described in AA Comes of Age. If this is the
same Jim B. who is on You-Tube, then I think you should print his email address
so we A.A. members can email him strong emails……..emails of a kind his sponsor
might not like to receive.
Bill W., “AA comes of
Age” page 130-131: “This ultimatum was an 'alarming poser'.........We would
loose control of our public relations......We assured him that if his ‘lectures’
went on air, we would advise every A.A. group of the circumstances and ask them
to write strong letters ……….. letters of a kind the sponsor might not like to
receive. The broadcast never went on air.”
Extract from Tradition
Twelve: “We simply could not afford to take the chance of letting self
–appointed members presenting themselves as messiahs representing A.A. before
the whole public.… Moved by the spirit of anonymity, we try to give up our
natural desires for personal distinction as A.A. members both among fellow
alcoholics and before the general public”….. We are sure that humility,
expressed by anonymity, is the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can
ever have.”
Extract from Tradition
Eleven: “This Tradition is a constant and practical reminder that personal
ambition has no place in A.A. In it each member becomes an active guardian of
our fellowship".
Bill W., “As Bill Sees
It”, page 198: “They forget that, during their drinking days, prestige and the
achievement of worldly ambition were their principle aims. They do not realize
that, by breaking their anonymity, they are unconsciously pursuing those old and
perilous illusions once more. They forget that the keeping of one’s anonymity
often means the sacrifice of one’s desire for power, prestige, and money. They
do not see that if these strivings became general in A.A., the course of our
whole history would be changed; that we would be sowing the seeds of our own
destruction”.
How many people are
being put off A.A. by these Jim B. videos?
Bill W: “Of highest
importance would be our relations with medicine and religion. Under no
circumstances must we get into competition with either. If we appeared to be a
new religious sect, we’d be done for. And if we moved into the medical field, as
such, the result would be the same.” (Language of the Heart Page 150)
……....(Name deleted)
UK”
Cheers
The Fellas (Friends
of Alcoholics Anonymous)
(our thanks to this
contributor)
