9/12/2006

Bill W. describing community in the 12 Steps

To see community through my eyes you must understand a loving community of recovering addicts.
Bill W. put it this way in the Big Book:

"An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature. Our struggles with them are variously strenuous, comic, and tragic. One poor chap committed suicide in my home. He could not, or would not, see our way of life. There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity. But just underneath there is deadly earnestness. Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish. Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now. Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men."
Alcoholics Anonymous, Third Edition, pg. 16, 1976.

"Utopia and peace on earth and good will to men" smack so trite and pollyanish, but not if you know addicts! They are all or nothing people and they must throw themselves headfirst into the kingdom or not find it at all! Thank God that he meets us at our greatest point of need.

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