I’ll spend time in the company of people who have a good record of following the program. It does mean we should avoid accepting ideas and ways of living that do not lead to sobriety. “Sticking with the winners” does not mean we should shun people who are having difficulty with the program. They stayed sober, they stayed active in the fellowship, and they helped others. The first AA member in Detroit earned only a modest living, while the second Detroit member became a wealthy manufacturer after finding sobriety. It’s important to remember that the winners can be from all walks of life. The can be of real help as sponsors, as friends, or simply as role models. Seek out people who are doing well in the program, people whose progress is noticeable and admirable. That’s why people are urged to “stick with the winners” in order to find and maintain sobriety. It’s possible for AA members to encourage resentments, criticism, gossip, and other dead-end practices. In the world of AA, that same destructive process can still go on through wrong thinking. In the world of drinking, people lead each other down paths of further destruction. “As we continue to make these choices and so move toward these high aspirations, our sanity returns and the compulsion to drink vanishes,” Then we can choose to try for a life of honesty and humility, of selfless service to our fellows and to ‘God as we understand Him.’ For example, we can choose to admit that we are personally powerless over alcohol that dependence upon a ‘Higher Power’ is a necessity, even if this be simply dependence upon an A.A. “No matter how grievous the alcohol obsession, we happily find that other vital choices can still be made. However, we do know that it takes great willingness to adopt A.A.’s Twelve Steps as a way of life that can restore us to sanity. “We A.A.’s know the futility of trying to break the drinking obsession by will power alone.

I pray that nothing shall invade or destroy that secret place of peace. I pray that I may live my inner life with God. All successful living arises from this inner life. Nothing in the world should seriously upset me, as long as my inner life is lived with God. I must wear the world as a loose garment. To get the spiritual strength I need, my inner life must be lived apart from the world. I can go forth from my secret times of communion with God to the work of the world. I must live in the world and yet live apart with God. I pretended to myself that I was as good as the next fellow, although I suspected I wasn’t. I would never face myself as I really was or admit when I was wrong. I was dishonest with myself, as well as with other people. I took time off from the office and pretended I’d been sick or gave some other dishonest excuse. I lied to my wife constantly about where I had been and what I’d been doing. There are others who must plant the harvest. The fruits I harvest are wonderful: peace, security, understanding and twenty-four hours of eternal fulfillment and with the soundness of mind to listen to the voice of my conscience when, in silence, it gently speaks to me, saying: You must let go in service. The old man replies: “You can see very well what I am doing, my son, I’m planting a tree.” “But why plant a tree,” Zorba asks, “if you won’t be able to see it bear fruit?” And the old man answers: “I, my son, live as though I were never going to die.” The response brings a faint smile to Zorba’s lips and, as he walks away, he exclaims with a note of irony: “How strange - I live as though I were going to die tomorrow!”Īs a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have found that the Third Legacy is a fertile soil in which to plant the tree of my sobriety. “What is it that you are doing?” Zorba asks.

In Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis describes an encounter between his principle character and an old man busily at work planting a tree. Theirs is the sometimes thankless privilege of doing the group’s chores.

Aa daily reflections for march 7