The NEW Promises. The Old Promises REVISED. Something!

Here are our beloved Promises from the Plain Language Big Book:

"If we are painstaking about Step Nine, we will be amazed before we have made amends to half of our list of people.  We will find new freedom and new happiness.  We will not regret the past or wish we could forget about it.  We will understand the word serenity and we will know peace.

No matter how badly we have behaved in the past, we will begin to see how our experience can benefit others.  Any feelings of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.  We will lose interest in selfish things and begin to take an interest in helping other people.  Self-seeking will slip away.  Our whole attitude and outlook about life will change.  Fear of people and of money worries will leave us.  We will know how to handle situations which used to confuse or worry us.  We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises?  We think not!  These promises come true among A.A. members every day - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.  They will always come into our lives if we work for them."

Work?  Work?  Nobody said anything about work!

Sometimes real fucking slowly.

I have always objected to the assertion that these are not extravagant promises.  I think that they're extremely extravagant.  They're extravagant as hell.

I really like that the qualifier "before we are halfway through" is further explained to mean half way through the amends process.  There has been a lot of confusion about that over the years.

I note that a lot of the phrases translate word for word from the original text.  In the new version, of course, the Traditions and the Steps are not changed.  Old-timers are howling already at the apostasy of changing one word from the original book.  I can only imagine the riots that would occur if we tried to modernize the Steps.

As a kid who grew up in a Protestant church let me draw this analogy to those of you who are offended at this new offering of literature: church services were conducted in Latin - to a largely illiterate population, mind you, meaning the priest could be saying whatever he wanted because none of his parishioners could read a word  - until the 15th century.  Catholics didn't switch to the vernacular until the 1960s, for heaven's sake.  Then, the first translation was called the King James version and was packed with thous and thees and shalt nots and a lot of other stilted, old-timey language.  Eventually, this was replaced by a series of revised versions but not until the start of the 20th century.  At one point my very religious, extremely conservative parents bought me a Bible - which I read several times - that was meant to appeal to people who were a lot younger.  The cover featured hip, happy and attractive young people.  So where does this lead me as I ponder the outrage over the Plain Language Big Book?  I'm very, very, very tolerant.  I'm finding the reading to be completely inoffensive.  I don't think anything material has changed.  The message is the same - just written in the vernacular using words and phrases common in 21st century dialogue.