The Fundamentals & Utility of
Alcoholics Anonymous History
Origins, Transmission, Successes,
Proliferating Parts
By Dick B.
© 2013 Anonymous. All
rights reserved
Today’s Jumble of “Programs”
All A.A.’s Ideas Were Borrowed, said Bill W.
Early in its founding years, A.A.’s co-founder Bill Wilson
put the torch to the idea that A.A. sprang from just one source. He said
frankly that nobody invented A.A. He said all its ideas were borrowed. And Dr.
Bob broadened the source picture by pointing out that all the basic ideas came
from the Pioneers’ study of the Bible. See The
Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their Last Major
Talks; Dick B. and Ken B. Pioneer
Stories in Alcoholics Anonymous http://mcaf.ee/gj7iw
Unfortunately, neither co-founder put in writing in one
place all the well-springs that produced the component historical streams in
A.A. Consequently, commentators, both favorable to and critical of A.A., have
had a field day with discussions of our roots. Most of them have a number of
erroneous concepts so embedded in their historical approaches that they just
never tell it like it is or like it was.
Those who don’t like the Bible say that we left it behind in
Akron. Those who don’t like the Oxford Group say that it taught us more about
what not to do than what to do. And those who don’t like either the Bible or
the Oxford Group have tried to quiet the waters by diverting the stream. They
say A.A. is “spiritual, but not religious” even though any well-informed
historian, scholar, clergyman, and semanticist would probably ask: “And what’s
the difference?” Nobody really knows, but the distinction without a difference
leaves many in a peaceful atheistic no man’s land.
The real difference in how we characterize A.A. is that,
without a knowledge of A.A.’s various sources—mostly religious—people are quickly
inclined to make up their own sources. That has been called and is in fact “self-made
religion.” And A.A.’s co-founder Rev. Sam Shoemaker pointed out that this
self-fabricated stuff leads to all kinds of nonsense—including “absurd names for
God” and “half-baked prayers” as Sam described them.
So it is. Those who have woven or fabricated their own
sources often say that our Creator can be a tree, that a tree can be God, or that
neither the Creator nor the tree is “Conference Approved.” They often go on to
say that you really don’t have to believe in anything at all. And most AAs add,
“Don’t analyze; utilize,” or “Don’t think and don’t drink,” or “Look for the
similarities and discard the differences.” They may add that the Big Book is
A.A.’s basic text and let it go at that. Thus, “The Big Book says it, and that
settles it” is a common A.A. expression. And that leaves us with what the Big
Book says, but with a barrel full of what it doesn’t say.
AAs today have seen all mention of the Bible deleted from
their basic text. They’ve seen Jesus Christ mentioned only once, and then as a
man whose ideas are seldom followed. They’ve seen the Creator turned into a
higher power which has been turned into a radiator. At the same time, they hear
about prayer and meditation and haven’t the slightest bit of information as to
what those ideas meant either in earliest A.A. or even in the Big Book and
Steps.
Consequently, they are left with nonsense. Prayer to a rock?
Prayer to a chair or a tree? Meditation as a chant? Meditation as listening?
Praying to what! Chanting to what! Listening to what—a light bulb? For
assistance, they read in their Big Book that there are “helpful books,” but
there is no mention of the Good Book which was the major source for their basic
ideas.
The Twelve A.A. Well-Springs Are Not the Basic Ideas—Just Most of the
Sources
I have now devoted 27 years looking continuously for A.A.’s
basic ideas. I’ve published at least one book and many articles on each of
those ideas. And this article will not repeat the materials in those titles.
However, I will point out here though that you can find the well-springs
of the basic ideas and the basic ideas themselves. You can see them discussed
in detail in the following of my titles: (1) The Bible: The Good Book and The Big Book; Why Early A.A. Succeeded (a Bible Study
Primer); The James Club and the Original A.A. Program’s Absolute Essentials;
Twelve Steps for You; The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook; (2) The contents of
Anne Smiths Journal: Anne Smith’s
Journal, 1933-1939; (3) Quiet Time: Good
Morning: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.; (4) The
Oxford Group’s Life Changing Twenty-Eight Ideas: The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous; Henrietta Seiberling: Ohio’s
Lady with a Cause; (5) The teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker: New Light on Alcoholism; By the Power of God;
(6) The Christian literature they studied and circulated: Dr. Bob and His Library, 3rd ed.; The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth; The original program
founded in Akron in 1935; The Akron
Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous; That Amazing Grace; Making Known the Biblical
History and Roots of Early A.A. (7) The Akron Elements from United
Christian Endeavor Society: When Early
AAs Were Cured and Why; The James Club; Making
Known; God and Alcoholism; Cured!
Proven Help for Alcoholics and Addicts.
Other basic ideas came from sources I have researched and
which are covered in numerous articles I have published on my websites. They
are mentioned below in connection with their sources. And they did have influence
on some of the language Bill used in the Big Book and in his other writings.
But that’s not what’s at issue here. Here we’ll take a
cursory look at Twelve Well-Springs of A.A. They don’t fit in a nice timeline.
They are not particularly consistent, nor are they congruous. None of them can
be found ever-present in each one of the various streams of A.A. from Akron,
Cleveland, New York, Sister Ignatia, Father Ralph Pfau, Ed Webster, Richmond
Walker, Father Ed Dowling, or Rev. Sam Shoemaker. They simply ought to be known
as part of our history.
To be brief, our history ought to be known in full and not
just through opinions. And this is so that recovering people can make
intelligent choices and appropriate decisions. Following, then, are the
well-springs—some of great importance, some virtually unknown, and many
conflicting in meaning and emphasis.
Twelve Well-Springs as Sources of our Basic Ideas
Number One: The United Christian Endeavor Society.
Organized about the time of Dr. Bob’s birth. The Society focused
on the young people in a local Protestant Church in Maine. The first Christian
Endeavor Group was formed in that Maine Congregational Church. It developed and
used almost all of the major ideas that were carried over into early Akron
A.A.’s Christian Fellowship led by Dr. Bob. The ideas? Confession of Christ.
Bible study. Prayer meetings. Conversion meetings. Quiet Hour, topical
discussions, reading of religious literature, witness, and fellowship—all under
the banner of “love and service.” See The
James Club and The Early A.A. Program’s Absolute Essentials; The Good Book-Big
Book Guidebook; Making Known the Biblical History and Roots of Early A.A..
Number Two: The Salvation Army.
Organized under General William Booth in England not long
after Christian Endeavor and introducing ideas about working with drunks,
derelicts, and street criminals. Its techniques were used in rescue missions,
observed by Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson, and exemplified by the practical
program of early Akron A.A. The ideas? (1) Abstinence. (2) Resisting Temptation. (3) Confessing
Jesus Christ. (4) Carrying the message of the importance of Salvation and the
truth in the Word of God. (5) Relying on the Creator. (6) Eliminating sinful
conduct. (7) Utilizing the appeal of one saved and recovered drunk in order to
witness to another still-suffering drunk the messages of salvation, love, and
service. (8) Perpetuating the Army’s purpose, fellowship, and witnessing among
the ranks of those recovered “soldiers” already saved. See When Early AAs Were Cured and Why; The First Nationwide A.A. History
Conference. Dick B. and Ken B., Dr.
Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His Excellent Training in the Good Book as a
Youngster in Vermont; Bill W. and Dr. Bob: The Green Mountain Men of Vermont.
Number Three: New Thought Ideas That Arrested Bill W.’s
Attention.
Also beginning to take wing through the impetus of Christian
Science and similar movements that began to flower at almost the same period as
the first two sources. But New Thought focused on a new kind of god—a higher
power—that used words from the Bible. But one of its later proponents, Emmet
Fox, flatly rejected salvation and claimed it didn’t exist in the Bible. Fox
and his colleagues saw God, good, and evil in non-salvation terms. The terms
pop up in the A.A. Big Book and Bill’s writings. But they are accompanied by New
Thought words and phrases like higher power, cosmic consciousness, fourth
dimension, and Universal Mind—words that filtered in to the A.A. stream. But
they could not be reconciled with the Big Book’s repeated explicit and frequent
mention of God, the Creator, the Maker, our Heavenly Father, and Father of
light. The moving New Thought expositors included Mary Baker Eddy, Waldo Trine,
William James, Emmanuel Movement writers, and Emmet Fox. See The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual
Growth, 7th ed; When Early AAs Were Cured and Why; Dr. Bob and His Library;
Good Morning: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.; God and
Alcoholism.
Number Four: Professor William James and the “vital religious
experience.”
It is unclear just who might be the author of Bill’s
“spiritual experience” language. The idea of a “vital religious experience” was
used by one of several men named A.A. founders by Bill W., The first was
Professor William James and his book The
Varieties of Religious Experience, The same solution was used Bill Wilson’s
mentor Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., who wrote in Realizing Religion that the solution to man’s spiritual misery
(separation from God) was three-fold—finding God, having a “vital religious
experience,” and accepting Jesus Christ .Dr. Carl Jung spoke in terms of the
need for a “vital religious experience” when Jung told Rowland Hazard that
Rowland needed a “conversion” experience. William James wrote Varieties of Religious Experience, which
Wilson believed validated his blazing extraordinary white light experience at
Towns Hospital. But Oxford Group writings are surfeited with references to
“spiritual experience” and “spiritual awakening.” Bill first used the term “religious
experience” in referring to the A.A. solution, Bill also claimed that William James
authored the “deflation-at-depth” idea--thought by a few as underlying A.A.’s
First Step. Historian Kurtz says he can’t find the “deflation” idea in the William
James’s book. However, I certainly can and did and underlined it in my title Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s
Spiritual Roots and Successes.
Number Five: The Oxford Group—A First Century Christian
Fellowship.
Not really “organized” until about 1919 when the book Soul Surgery was first published.
Primarily, it was a movement which drew its ideas from the life-changing
Biblical concepts of Lutheran Minister Frank N. D. Buchman. Each one of the
aforementioned well-springs influenced the ideas that were borrowed and adapted
by the Akron program. And to these were added catch-words and ideas that
Buchman picked up along the way toward the group’s actual existence. There were
twenty-eight ideas in all that impacted upon A.A.’s Big Book and Twelve Steps
and existed in greater or lesser degree in some of the practices in the earlier
Akron Fellowship. The 28 ideas can be summarized in eight groupings of the
ideas Buchman adopted: (1) God—descriptions, His plan, man’s duty, believing.
(2) Sin—the blocks to God and others. (3) Surrenders—the decision to surrender
self and self-will to God’s will. (4) Life-changing art—the Five C’s of the
process moving from Confidence to Confession to Conviction to Conversion to
Continuance. (5) Jesus Christ—His power and the Four Absolute Standards. Sin
was the problem. Jesus Christ was the cure. And the result was a miracle, they
said. (6) Growth in fellowship through Quiet Time, Bible study, prayer, and
seeking Guidance. (7) Restitution—for the harms caused by sin. (8) Fellowship
and witness—working in teams loyal to Jesus Christ to change the lives of
others. See The Oxford Group and
Alcoholics Anonymous: A Design for Living That Works; The Akron Genesis of
Alcoholics Anonymous; Turning Point: A History of the Spiritual Roots and
Successes of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Number Six: The teachings of Episcopalian priest Rev. Samuel
M. Shoemaker, Jr.
Sam teamed up with Frank Buchman about 1919. Shoemaker then
began writing a series of many books on the OG ideas and Sam’s own Bible
concepts. And Shoemaker headquartered his efforts at Calvary Church in New
York, of which he became Rector in 1925. It is fair to say that the most
quoted, the most copied, and the most persuasive influence on Bill Wilson and
his Big Book approach came directly from Shoemaker. To the point where Wilson
actually asked Sam to write the Twelve Steps, as to which Sam declined in favor
of their being written by an alcoholic, namely, Bill. See New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A.; The First
Nationwide History Conference; When Early AAs Were Cured and Why; By the Power
of God
Number Seven: The conversion ideas of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung.
Two or three historians who have not really done their
homework now claim that Jung had no connection with A.A.’s beginnings. They
assert that Jung never saw Rowland Hazard as a patient and therefore the
“conversion” solution so dominant in Bill Wilson’s Big Book program did not
come from Jung. But the skimpy research done will not support some speculative
charge or conclusion that Jung, Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thacher, Bill Wilson, and
Sam Shoemaker all lied in order to conjure up a solution. The real point is how
badly Wilson missed the point of Jung’s idea of conversion. Conversion, Jung
said, was the solution for Rowland’s chronic alcoholism. But conversion, to
Jung, did not mean what the Bible describes as a new birth and which Shoemaker
and the Akronites were later espousing. The altar call at Shoemaker’s Calvary
Mission was not the conversion idea Jung had in mind. See New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A.; Twelve Steps for
You; The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook.
Number Eight: The medical ideas of Dr. William D. Silkworth.
Once again, historians who have not really done their
homework now sometimes claim that Dr. Silkworth did not originate the ideas
about alcoholism as a disease. But that has not been my area of interest or
research. And there is evidence that the disease concept may well not have originated
with Silkworth. There is equally strong evidence that it was Silkworth who
spelled out for Bill Wilson the idea that Wilson was suffering from a mental
obsession and a physical allergy—however the details were or would be
characterized in the disease arena. Virtually unmentioned is Silkworth’s
belief—explained to Bill Wilson and other patients—that Jesus Christ, the
“Great Physician,” could cure them of alcoholism. See The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook; The Positive Power of Jesus Christ;
The Little Doctor Who Loved Drunks: William D. Silkworth.
Number Nine: The lay therapy ideas of Richard Peabody.
Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson both owned and studied The Common Sense of Drinking—a book by
lay therapist Richard Peabody. And though Peabody died drunk, Wilson somehow
saw fit to adopt almost verbatim certain words and phrases from the Peabody
book. Among the two most unfortunate derivatives were: (1) There is no cure for
alcoholism. (2) Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. Both concepts flew in
the face of a decade of declarations by the early AAs and their observers that
they had found a cure for alcoholism that rested on the power of Jesus Christ.
This was not something Peabody embraced. And how Wilson got switched from God
and cure to incurable illness on the basis of the writings of a lay therapist
who died drunk is currently a mystery to me. See Richard Peabody. The Common Sense of Drinking; Cured: Proven
Help for Alcoholics and Addicts; When Early AAs Were Cured and Why.
Number Ten: The Biblical Emphasis from Dr. Bob’s youth and
Christian Endeavor.
A.A. detractors and doctrinaire Christians who dislike the
Oxford Group seem impelled to claim that A.A. came from the Oxford Group, that
the Oxford Group was an heretical cult, and that its very existence was an
example of what A.A. wasn’t, rather than what it was. And these canards are so
heavily entrenched in religious and recovery thinking and writing they may
never be dispelled. But they are fallacious and utterly misleading. It is quite
true that Bill Wilson’s Big Book and Twelve Step program embraced almost every
Oxford Group idea, while Bill Wilson was busy denying the fact. But the early
Akron program, which produced the 75 to 93% success rates, really had very
little to do with Oxford Group teams, travels, writing, principles, and
practices. The Akron focus was on abstinence—not an Oxford Group idea;
hospitalization—not an Oxford Group idea; resisting temptation—not an Oxford
Group idea; accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour—not an Oxford Group
idea; relying on the Creator for strength and guidance—a universal idea undoubtedly
embraced by the Oxford Group; Bible study meetings—not an Oxford Group
emphasis; old-fashioned prayer meetings—not an Oxford Group idea; Quiet Time—a
universal idea which pre-dated the Oxford Group and was a big item in Christian
Endeavor; religious comradeship—not an Oxford Group idea; favored church
attendance—not an Oxford Group idea; love and service as a banner—not an Oxford
Group expression, but a Christian Endeavor word of art; working with others—not
an Oxford Group emphasis when it came to alcoholism, nor was it particularly a
Christian Endeavor idea except as to witnessing and conversion. By contrast,
the simple Christian Endeavor program appears to represent the heart of what
Akron did and what it was reported in official A.A. literature to have done.
That program was not incorporated in the Big Book, but it is reported fully by
Frank Amos reports to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. that are part of A.A.’s
conference approved literature. See my titles The First Nationwide A.A. History Conference; The Good Book and The Big
Book: A.A.’s Roots in the Bible; Why Early A.A. Succeeded (A Bible study
primer); The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook; and The James Club and The Early
A.A. Program’s Absolute Essentials.
Number Eleven: The practical records and teachings of Dr.
Bob’s Wife.
How A.A. could have buried Anne Smith’s role, her
importance, and her spiritual journal is a complete mystery. The facts about
Anne’s importance would stand by themselves if she had never even written her 9
year journal. Bill Wilson and many pioneers called Anne the “Mother of A.A.” AAs
were housed in her home from the beginning, and those AAs got well. AAs were
fed in her home, and it became the first real “half-way” house after
hospitalization. Anne read the Bible to A.A.’s founders and to the many who
followed them. Anne conducted a morning quiet time each morning at the Dr.
Bob’s Home where she led a group of AAs and their families in Bible study,
prayer, listening, and topical discussions. Anne counseled and nursed and
taught alcoholics; and her work with newcomers in meetings was legendary. They
were her special focus. Her journal records every principle and concept that is
part of the A.A. picture—God, Jesus Christ, a Biblical emphasis, prayer, Quiet
Time, Guidance, Literature recommended, Oxford Group principles and practices,
and practical guides to working with alcoholics. It seems likely that she not
only shared the contents of this journal—written between 1933 and 1939—with
Bill Wilson, but also that Bill took many of his Oxford Group and other expressions
directly from Anne’s Journal. If so, the fact has never been mentioned. See Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933-1939; The Akron
Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Number Twelve: The Devotionals and Christian Literature Read
and Circulated.
We know that A.A.’s basic ideas came from the Bible. The
Book of James, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 were
frequently read aloud and studied and were considered absolutely essential. AAs
studied literature that underlined these roots—(1) books on the Sermon by
Oswald Chambers, Glenn Clark, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Emmet Fox, and E. Stanley
Jones. (2) Devotionals discussing concepts from the Book of James—The Runner’s Bible, The Upper Room, My
Utmost for His Highest, Daily Strength for Daily Needs. (3) Commentaries on
1 Corinthians 13 by Henry Drummond and Toyohiko Kagawa. And various other
concepts were fleshed out through the literature of Shoemaker on all aspects of
the Bible, prayer, guidance, Quiet Time, and so on. So also in the many Oxford
Group books on these subjects—Soul
Surgery (and the Five C’s), Quiet Time, The
Guidance of God, Realizing Religion, For Sinners Only, When Man Listens,
and so on. In addition, there were prayer guides, Bible study guides, and
healing guides galore—in Dr. Bob’s Library and circulated by him to others. The
whole picture can be found in my titles:
The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7th edition; Making Known the
Biblical History and Roots of A.A.; Anne Smith’s Journal; The Akron Genesis of
Alcoholics Anonymous; Dr. Bob and His Library.
Strange it is that
currently, three or four writers have compiled lists of “50” books, or some
other number of books that have nothing to do with the roots of A.A., that may
well have been read by this or that AA and some time, but are not part of the
extensive library owned and circulated by Dr. Bob—books I personally reviewed
with the people who owned them—Sue Smith Windows (Bob’s daughter) and Robert R.
Smith (Bob’s son). You can find the books, which I firmly believe I was the
first person allowed to inspect—and inspect at length. They are listed in three
of my titles: Dr. Bob and His Library, 3rd
ed., Anne Smith’s Journal 1933-1939, 3rd
ed., The Books Early AAs Read for
Spiritual Growth, 7th ed.; Good
Morning!: Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.
The Whole Picture
As Father Paul Blaes, Ph.D., the Roman Catholic theologian
who endorsed my Turning Point book
wrote so well: there was a “lacuna” in A.A. history when researching and
writing about it from 1990 forward. A lacuna is a gap, a hole. And Father Blaes
had observed for himself the gaping vacuum in accounts of our history. He
therefore welcomed and endorsed my comprehensive history.
When I began, I thought the only missing elements were
descriptions of how the Bible was used and what the Oxford Group program really
was. And there were plenty of gaps even there. But this was just the tip of the
iceberg. A.A. literature said Dr. Bob’s library had been given away. Yet I
discovered about half of it in his daughter’s attic and tracked down the other
half to his son’s home in Nocona, Texas. And without these books, you just
couldn’t know what early AAs were reading and concluding. Next, I discovered
that
Anne Smith’s Journal had simply
never been mentioned in A.A. history accounts; yet you could find the whole
program there. And, thanks to Dr. Bob’s daughter and A.A.’s GSO archivist Frank
Mauser, I was permitted to get a complete copy and publish my book. Then, when
I began with the Oxford Group, it was at the suggestion of Frank Mauser, that I
wrote my Oxford Group book; and over the years, I found hundreds of their
books, encountered an intense interest in those books, my research, and the
relevance to A.A. among its leaders. I then realized the whole Big Book program
was essentially Oxford Group—something broadly suggested in Joe and Charlie Big
Book Seminars. (But I had yet to learn that the Big Book itself was divided
into two separate parts—distinct from each other in regard to the time written
and to the subjects covered. See
Pioneer
Stories in Alcoholics Anonymous http://mcaf.ee/gj7iw.
From there I went to the Akron story and realized the
importance and differences from the present-day A.A. “new version” in the Steps
and the early Christian Akron A.A. Fellowship there. I tracked down the history
and wrote the Akron story. Learning there the importance of the Bible, I
tackled the Biblical roots and am only now getting the entire picture
together—the words in A.A. from the Bible, the prayers in A.A. from the Bible,
the slogans in A.A. from the Bible, and then the immense study of the Bible
that AAs did in the Book of James, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and 1
Corinthians 13.
Even that, however, was not the end. I stumbled upon
Christian Endeavor and began to realize that the whole Akron program was far
more founded on Christian Endeavor principles and practices than on those of
the Oxford Group. Piece by piece, other details emerged. There was the whole
Shoemaker story and my discovery that the words in the Big Book and even the
Steps were largely Shoemaker words. See
www.dickb.com/newlight.shtml;
and that Sam had been asked to write the
Twelve Steps, but declined.
More? Yes. More on Carl Jung. More on William James. More on
Richard Peabody. More on William D. Silkworth. More on Henrietta Seiberling. More
on T. Henry Williams. More on Rev. Samuel Shoemaker. More on Dr. Frank Buchman.
More on Clarence Snyder. More on the Wilson manuscripts. More on the deleted
materials. More. More. More.
These parts of the lacuna could not, of themselves, fill in
the holes. They didn’t add up to the whole picture, or even part of the
picture. And the gap had left alkies to their own devices in fashioning
substitutes. When Bill dumped the Oxford Group in the East, the Oxford Group
details were omitted from his Big Book. When Bob and Anne died, the Bible in
A.A. died with them. When Clarence Snyder got on the wrong side of Bill Wilson,
the Snyder legacy disappeared until recently. When Henrietta Seiberling was put
on the shelf, her reprimands about phony spirituality, séances, substitute
psychology, and sick thinking were shelved along with her futile protests.
People began denying the date of Dr. Bob’s sobriety; and
they’re doing it even more. People began denying that Jung saw Rowland Hazard;
and they’re doing it even more. People just never even seemed to want to know
about Anne Smith nor the early books nor the Bible verses nor the Sam Shoemaker
story nor the devotionals.
Too much religion seemed to be the cry. That from those
studying a program so obviously religious at its beginnings and so obviously
religious today that one court after another has ruled that way and rejected
the “spirituality” ruse.
There’s a lot more. But cheer up. I’ve been able to field 46
published titles, 1550 articles, 70 audio talks, seminars at the Wilson House,
a talk “near” the Minneapolis convention, several large history conferences and
cruises, and five websites where freedom of speech abounds and frequent visits
have added up to over four million these days. Others interested in history are
beginning to let the cats out of the bags.
Plural. Plural cats. Plural bags. Good stuff has just begun
to come out of Silkworth. Good stuff has already come out about Clarence
Snyder. Interesting facts are emerging from the Lois Wilson stories. Some have
dared to mention Bill Wilson’s LSD experiments with his wife, Nell Wing, Father
Dowling, and others. Also his spiritualism sessions at Stepping Stones. Also
his womanizing and squabbles over his estate. Also his obsession with psychic
phenomena, Niacin, and book sales. Also the deadening effect his years of severe
depressions had on A.A. ideas and historical accuracy. And more.
For a long time, I felt the foregoing didn’t belong in the
picture. They had to do with Bill and what may appropriately and biblically
termed his “carnal Christian” walk after the flesh, rather than with A.A. I
thought. In fact, at Stepping Stones, I was asked to bypass the files on drugs
and spooks; and I did. Yet I found that others had trod that route and even
published on it in A.A.’s “Pass It On.”
Then I discovered the missing records on Shoemaker at the Episcopal Archives in
Texas. And that was a real loss because at least two scholars had tried to
research them, couldn’t find them, and were astonished at the gap. Some assumed
the missing papers didn’t exist. But they did and do, I believe. In fact, I’m
almost certain they were shown to me in an apartment in New York City. And are
these things part of the whole picture?
I certainly think so, but not the picture I’m interested in.
I was and am focused on helping the newcomer through our great A.A. Fellowship.
I was and am focused on discovering every aspect of the recovery program that
was used in Akron, and then in Cleveland, and then in the Big Book, and then by
the host of writers who emerged during Bill’s 1943-1955 depression period.
It’s what worked that counts. Not the bickering over
writers, over dates, over opinions. It’s accuracy that counts. It’s the
complete picture that counts. And it’s the relevance to our getting sober,
getting well, getting delivered from the power of darkness, and loving and
serving our Heavenly Father that count.
I think the last 27 years of my sobriety have not only
unplugged twelve well-springs; they’ve started the streams running. And I don’t
think the flood will stop.
Dick’s titles and the foregoing bibliography items can all
be found in the title pages of his website: http://www.dickb.com/titles.shtml.
His titles can all be purchased through that page. They can also be purchased
on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other outlets.
Gloria
Deo
