July 12
My Way Worked
The meeting that helped us most can become the meeting everybody ought to attend. The person who sponsored us becomes the model for all sponsors. Gratitude attaches itself to particulars, and understandably so. These people and places were there when we needed them. The trouble begins when another alcoholic finds help elsewhere and we hear their different experience as a criticism of our own.
Nothing has been taken away from what we received. We can speak warmly and specifically about how it helped without making it a requirement for everyone else. There is room to discuss real differences in practice and to return to the literature together. But defending our history is a different undertaking from carrying the message. God was able to reach us through the people available then. Perhaps our gratitude can grow spacious enough to welcome another person's unexpected beginning.
Where has gratitude for my experience become insistence that others repeat it?
What helped me is still worth sharing.
For the A.A. nerds: Alcoholics Anonymous, “Working With Others,” p. 95.