Sacrifice

 OK, my last Traditions post for a while.  I promise.  (Ed. Note:  I might also be lying.)

Sacrifice:  To surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

"Gradually, we saw that the unity, the effectiveness - yes, even the survival - of A.A. would always depend upon our continued willingness to sacrifice our personal ambitions and desires for he common safety and welfare.  Just as sacrifice meant survival for the individual, so did sacrifice mean unity and survival for the group and for A.A.'s entire Fellowship.  Viewed in this light, A.A.'s Twelve Traditions are little else than a list of sacrifices which the experience of twenty years has taught us that we m just, make, individually and collectively, if A.A. itself is to stay alive and healthy."

I've always found it amazing that it took these early guys twenty years to distill these Traditions down.  There must have been some hellish, animated discussions over this stuff.  It takes my home group an hour to change the wording in our anodyne meeting format so I can only imagine the spirited discussions that must have occured when the Founders were trying to come up with rules that applied to whole organization. 

Then Bill W sums up his reasoning in as good a condensation of the Traditions as I've ever read:

"We have denied ourselves personal government, professionalism and the right to say who our members shall be. We have abandoned do-goodism, reform and paternalism.  We refuse charitable money and prefer to pay our own way.  We will cooperate with practically everybody, yet we decline to marry our Society to anyone.  We abstain from public controvery and will not quarrel among ourselves about those things that so rip society asunder - religion, politics, and reform.  We have but one purpose: to carry the A.A. message to the sick alcoholic who wants it.  We take these attitudes not at all because we claim special virtue or wisdom; we do these things because hard experience has told us that we must."

I've always appreciated the idea that the individual makes the choice to adhere to spiritual principles to save his or her own life.  Things have gotten that bad for most of us.  We're out of options.  We're not making these choices because we think that things may have gotten out of hand - they've clearly gotten WAY out of hand.   Then we argue and fight and bicker for twenty years before codifying these principles at the group level; we don't do it because we're smart or wise but because we see that the Fellowship is going to fly apart at the seams if we don't.

Alcoholics Anonymous - the largest organization in the world than no one wants to join.