Through the Red Door Blog

“The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could not do for ourselves.”* That quotation can also be found on January 1 in Daily Reflections.  I think it’s appropriate to begin this New Year with the acknowledgement of “the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.”

What’s miraculous in not drinking? Any idiot can stop drinking.” So, I thought, when I told my boss I’d “quit drinking and go to AA.” Going to AA was easy. Quitting became difficult as the periodic craving tightened my stomach, and my mind was anywhere but on my work in the office or at home.

Looking back on it now, it is a miracle I did not drink during those first four-and-a-half years when I existed on a dry drunk. Self-satisfied, self-important, self-centered and selfish. I did all the right things for the wrong reasons, and it darn near killed me.

I look back now and think “It’s a miracle I did not kill myself driving on those narrow Irish roads in a black out. It’s a miracle I did not drive into a bayou driving in a blackout in Louisiana. Others did it. It’s a miracle I’m alive and well.

It’s a miracle indeed that I am alive and able to tell my story and know that, on my own, I could never have stopped drinking. After one drink, maybe. After two drinks, possibly. After three drinks came the blackout and God only knows what else. Most of what I did I learned about from those to whom I made Amends.

It’s not just certainty. It’s “absolute certainty.” There is no doubt, nor can there be any doubt that God. My Higher Power, stepped into my life and gave me back my life. I didn’t know I was among the walking dead. I never ceased to find it fascinating that I grew up in a denomination believing we were the one and only true church. Had it not been for AA, I would never have put my foot inside the church of another denomination. Slowly but surely, God was pushing me onto a new Spiritual Path that was wider than I could have ever imagined. Not only other denominations, but other Faith communities as well. The Spiritual program of A.A. not only helped me stop drinking, but it also assisted me – when my head was finally fog free - to open my mind and heart to God’s ways, not mine, nor male-made dogma and doctrine.

“He [God, Higher Power] has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could not do for ourselves.” The simple steps. “Seamus, if you’re not living the program, you’re not working the steps.” What was the difference in living the program and working the steps? What do I have to do? “Just do the next right thing.”

Once I learned how to live the program on a daily basis – and that took a while – I discovered there’s a simplicity about this way of life. And yet, I could never have gotten this simplicity or recovery on my own. I wanted to complicate it with my own way of doing things and they did not work.    

It’s a miracle. The spiritual program teaches us that there are miracles on a daily basis; miracles of a newcomer coming to AA on an important holiday. Miracles of someone not killing themselves. Miracles in how we grow up and open ourselves to God’s path and not our own selfish road.

“The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.” And now the miracle lives because “All we have is a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

My Higher Power directed and achieved the goal of getting me into the program, putting winners in my life, opened my mind and heart, and then it was up to me. I now had a choice. I could choose to continue my daily reprieve, or I could choose to return to the wilderness. What freedom! 

It is a miracle that I am here at my desk sharing this. It is a miracle that I am alive and well. I am a walking miracle. Miracles do happen. This new year I want to increase my conscious awareness of my Higher Power and especially in seeing and celebrating the miracles around me. We are all miracles.

*Alcoholics Anonymous.25.

Séamus D.
Séamus is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans area.

I have found it difficult to articulate my feelings each year as I approach my annual “sobriety birthday” in AA.

At my home group, like many groups, we have a chip system to denote our time in sobriety. White chip (one day), yellow chip (30 days), red chip (3 months), and so forth.

The colors of the chips and times they symbolize can vary from group to group, however the act of recognition is the important thing. Celebrating the shared accomplishment, in the context of our fellowship, shows how we are able to support each other. We are able stay sober one day at a time and demonstrate to the newcomer that the program works – it really does.

After a year, you receive a bronze token and get to share briefly with the group (just a minute or two) about “how you did it”.

When I was new to AA and sobriety, I would see folks getting their one-year or multi-year chips and imagine what a celebration it must be. Like a small victory parade: we clap, they smile, handshakes all around. What a momentous and fun occasion! (And without a doubt, it’s an important milestone to recognize.)

As I approached my own first anniversary several years ago, my emotions were all over the place. I was excited to surpass the one-year mark. It seemed to grant access into a certain unspoken society, moving toward “old timer” status where you measure your progress in years, not just days or months.

However, I wasn’t in the celebratory mood I had envisioned. I found myself re-living those last few dark days at my “bottom” before I had totally surrendered, and remembering how unmanageable my life had really become. It was an uncomfortable juxtaposition of tough memories and congratulatory messages. All the while remaining grateful for the journey and the many gifts of sobriety.

So, one of my sobriety tools is running. I ran some before I got sober, however in recovery running has become more spiritual and meditative, with benefits beyond the physical. An hour a day, first thing in the morning – often in the dark – provides time for prayer and contemplation. The first steps of my run each day always begin with the Serenity Prayer. 

At my most recent sobriety birthday (my 7th), I found some peace in a running parallel. I realized that each year in sobriety is not really like running a race at all (where you finish, celebrate, and have a big party).

Rather, it’s more like running a lap on a track. The closer you get to the end of the lap; there you are right back at the beginning again. And in truth, that’s the power of a journey in sobriety, rooted in spirituality and connectedness.

The laps remind me of my own weaknesses and fallibility and guide me through what I now find to be a constructive exercise of reliving those dark days. The laps build the muscle memory that through my recovery program (meetings, sponsorship, working the steps) I can stay sober through a power and a fellowship greater than myself, one day at a time. 

So, as I begin this next lap, I’ll start it the way I do each morning:

God,
Grant me the serenity,
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen.

Rich K.
Durham NC

Many years ago, Andy Williams wrote this Christmas song; “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…everyone telling you “be of good cheer” …with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call…parties for hosting….And tales of the glories Of Christmases long, long ago it's the most wonderful time of the year.”

Oh, how I loved Christmas. Our Christmas parties began on the first of December and continued until mid-January. Tables were covered with all kinds of alcohol, rum cake, egg nog that could knock your socks off, fruit cake that could be set on fire or ingested through a straw. Ah, what memories! I wish I could forget most of them.

Without a doubt, Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. Before Corporations got their hands on the season of Christmas and turned it into Santamas—a profit-making season—Christmas was about the coming of Jesus into our hearts and into the world. It was a time of joy with hymns appropriate to the season. And yet, for all the Joy and jingle bells, I felt alone and lonely regardless of the party.

My first Christmas/ New Year’s Eve sober party was one I have never forgotten. Two tables at the back of the hall were filled with food and drinks—non-alcoholic drinks, the likes of which I had never tasted, nor did I know such a thing existed. There was probably more people in the hall than the fire-department would recommend, and the Joy that was there was something to experience. I remember thinking if that crowd decided to get drunk how crazy they would be because they seemed so crazy- in a good sense- that night and, I wanted what they had. I wasn’t drinking but I wasn’t sober either.

The Christmas season is without doubt a joy-filled season, the Christmas music, the movies for adults and children, all are geared to suspending the darkness of the world around us and letting us dream of a better time, a new life in the year to come.

It took me a few years to appreciate that Christmas does not have to be a lonely, depressing, alcohol-abusing time. After all, for many in the world around me, it’s just another day – people have to work. One year, I joined a few colleagues to work Christmas day so those with family could spend it with their family. That was, in retrospect, a great gift to them and to those of us who worked that day.

Sobriety opened my mind and heart again to the real meaning of Christmas which—for Christians—is the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth who became a radical Jewish Rabbi (Teacher), and, after his crucifixion and resurrection, became the long-awaited Messiah and, in time, believed to be the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity.

This man was comfortable in the homes of rich and poor alike. He had a simple and profound message—the Kingdom of God is within you. Imagine that. The Kingdom of God is within me? Hard to believe, indeed. After all I had done and said and don’t remember the majority of it—god is still with me, within me, guiding me through others to do the next right thing.

I love our A.A. meetings that are held on Christmas day, New Year’s Day, Easter, etc. when someone walks into the meeting and, usually in tears, opens him/herself for the first time in their life, feel at home within themselves, and with the group.

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…everyone telling you ‘Be of good cheer.” And that statement is not followed by offering an alcoholic beverage. Rather, it is offered with a big warm hug from a stranger - soon to be friend and perhaps your temporary or full-time sponsor.

“And tales of glories of Christmases long, long ago…” “I remember my first Christmas AA meeting. My brother….” “I remember this Christmas, I was just a couple of years in the program, and this person….I never laughed so hard in my life.” “I remember the Christmas Mark has his first heart-attack. He scared the life out of us…” Stories of recovery, of joy, sadness, loneliness, togetherness, all told with all the pain and joy that is appropriate to the situation.

And so it is, “the most wonderful time of the year…” However, we celebrate this season, may our days be blessed with peace, serenity, love, compassion, and may the New Year fill us with new friends and another year of peace and sobriety.

Séamus D.

Séamus is an Episcopal priest in the Louisiana Diocese.

The flow of alcohol, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ:

Remembering Christmas

“Cum’on”, be honest...as a practicing alcoholic, you probably saw Christmas as “God sent” in more ways than one.

The former alcoholic in me remembers those December Christmas days of office parties, Saturday and Sunday neighborhood afternoon/evening open houses, endless wine and cheese at charitable fund raisers, and gifting fine wine and liquor.

Honestly, it seemed the excess of alcohol was the norm. But January often brought shame for my December high-jinks. And often late in my drinking days, this started my paying attention to thoughts of ...  “maaaybe” ... ah’tending ... an AA meeting! ... But then again ... maybe not.  Ohhh, those recollections.

I ask myself, honestly, did my December binge morph into the devil’s debt the payment for which was called in January?

I recall that my “last binged-based Christmas” was just that. My shame and anxiousness, festered and grew and ate at me until the early days of the Easter Season when I finally surrendered and went to my first AA meeting at “East One.”

But yes! Many AA meetings after that first one, I still have no doubt I need to recall those December days. They contaminated my life and accelerated my slide down to my deepest alcoholic days. I absolutely do not wish to return to those days. I do not wish to recall the details; shadowy generalities are adequate, thank you. But I must keep just a tiny bit of those days as reminders of the alcoholic depths I had fallen into.

Christ taught us this. We are sinners and always will be. He tells us of how to live our lives by following His path. We admitted we needed His love to provide a new way of life. We work at it in our meditations with Him.

And AA calls us to reach for Bill and Dr. Bob, the Twelve Steps, and the hands of people who have learned to walk the paths of sobriety seeking that “next right thing” in their own lives. 

Referring to our “days of alcoholic rage” is not a comment about going back out but an observation that I need to recall these Christmas alcoholic days and get to a meeting to erase the memory.

I recall one personal episode. T’was Christmas Day in Denver where my son lives. Cold, windy and a stormy snow. Waiting for dinner, Christmas presents opened, noon, quiet, tired of TV and the yakking talking heads and football color talkers. I wasn’t thinking about “going back out” but there was a shadow of those Christmas mad houses. I was not interested in playing “chicken” with that shadow.

I asked my son, “Is there an AA Clubhouse in Denver, and where is it?” It was an easy distance, we headed out, the only car on the road. The Clubhouse was as usual a grand old house someone had left to serve as Denver’s central AA gathering place.

Jammed with people. All laughing and exchanging stories. A typical AA pre-meeting gathering. Then the meeting itself, the same words of every AA meeting were exchanged, words heard at any AA meeting in the world.

What would Christ have said? ... you know well what He would have said...He was there with us talking with each of us and like us, enjoying the feelings of our unity.   

What a marvelous time to feel the presence of Christ, Bill W, and Dr. Bob. a presence wherever we are.

That day, a cold snowy afternoon, that Christmas Day in Denver many years ago, that’s where I was.

Jim A St X Noon, Cincinnati.  

My very first AA meeting was in western MA. I had gone to visit my sister who was in recovery, and she took me. It was a women’s meeting. I cried the whole hour.

When I returned to Seattle, I was maybe a week sober. My life was a mess. My marriage would end after that first year sober. My young daughter would go back and forth to her parents’ houses.

But this isn’t about all that—This is about Holly.

I found a women’s meeting close to my house after visiting my sister. It was a Friday 5:30 meeting. I don’t remember what the name of it was. It was in a church room. When I walked into it there were maybe 10 women. I listened and was shocked to hear the crazy things these women had done while drinking—and they were laughing! Soon I was too. I realized I hadn’t laughed like that in at least a year.

At the end of the meeting, a woman came up to me and welcomed me. She told me it would be ok. Somehow, she shared that she had two years sober and I was in awe! I couldn’t imagine that could be me if I stuck with AA. She told me some of the women go out for dinner after the meeting and she invited me, but I said I couldn’t because my daughter would have to be with me, and I didn’t have anyone to babysit her.

“My daughter can babysit her. You could come to my place; they could meet and then we will go to the meeting together”. So, I did. My daughter loved Katharine. I got to go to a meeting and then have dinner with women in recovery! I did this for the whole of my first year of sobriety. My AA angel—Holly. She gave me the most wonderful one-year anniversary party!

We went to meetings in Seattle for more than 15 years and then Holly moved. My daughter grew up and didn’t need babysitting. Holly and I still had many adventures. We gardened together when I visited when we could and helped each other stay sober. I had a great sponsor, but Holly was my AA best friend.

Two weeks ago, her daughter contacted me that Holly had died. She had a stroke and died 4 days later. I don’t think we had spoken for maybe a year. I would see pictures on Facebook, but we hadn’t visited in a few years.

At my meeting this week here in Green Valley, AZ, we read the first half of the 12^th step. Holly carried the message to me. Over and over again she cheered me on and when she died, she still had 2 more years than me—36 years!

So, if you think that your being in recovery hasn’t really helped since you never went on a Bill Wilson type 12 step call, think again. Each meeting is a chance to welcome someone and help them

Thank you, Holly.

Last month things got dark. I thought of drinking. I didn't have a plan to drink but the thought alone was a warning sign. I remembered the tools given to me in the early days of recovery. I reached out to a friend who was with me in those early days; we went to daily meetings and sat in coffee shops helping each other stay sober one more day. I called her up. I told her I would attend a meeting and once done I would call her again (bookend, I remember them calling it).

I have nearly 14 years of sobriety, but in the last six years or so I have not been attending meetings. I moved to a small town, I was worried about my anonymity at meetings, life was busy. There were many reasons and no good excuses. Despite the long absence, as soon as the meeting started, I felt comfortable: the message had not changed. I was humbled when I realized that my turn to thoughts of drinking was based on feelings of resentment. Anger and resentment had surfaced as my life was taking a turn I had not planned. Early on in the rooms I heard that resentment is the number one reason people in recovery pick up a drink again. Now I was living proof that resentment has the power to make the drink seem possible again.

Then Psalm 124 appeared in my daily scripture readings: “Then would have the waters have engulfed us, the torrent gone over us; over our head would have swept the raging waters.” Yes, I thought, that imagery feels very real. I need to keep my Higher Power and AA close to my side so as to keep the waters of anger, resentment, and darkness from sweeping me away.

The antidote to resentment is gratitude. I was reminded of this when I returned to meetings. How much gratitude can be felt in the meetings! Gratitude for being alive, for being sober, and living a life beyond what we dreamed of when we walked through the doors. I am reminded every Sunday when I exclaim: Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise. I have been given breath for one more day. And I take that breath sober. I used to start my day every morning thanking God for my sobriety. I am going to start doing that again.

Susanne E

“Had I not been blessed with wise and loving advisers; I might have cracked up long ago…Many of my dearest A.A. friends have stood with me in exactly this same relation. Oftentimes they could help where others could not, simply because they were A.A.’s.”*

Bill was quite open with the fact that he needed help, socially, medically, mentally and spiritually. He acknowledges that “A doctor saved me once from death by alcoholism.” “a psychiatrist, later on helped me save my sanity…from a clergyman I acquired the truthful principles by which we AA’s now try to live.”

Bill has set a good example for all of us. I look back at my path to A.A. and see that I was confronted early in the disease process. I ignored it but never forgot it. At eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, I was confronted and told “Seamus, you’re an alcoholic.” I told the individual “You should know, you’re one yourself.” He was, but he was also active in recovery.

For just over four years, I ran my own program doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons and was anything but happy. I went to therapists who were not in the program and, while they meant well, they missed—or it seemed to me later on—my conning them, my lies, justifications, excuses.

Then I went to a therapist who was “one of us.” Oops. She did not let me away with my con game and accepted no excuses. I had to be honest with myself, her, and everyone else. It’s not easy to be honest when you’ve hid behind a wall of lies and excuses. But, as scripture tells us, “The truth will set you free” (even if it is a pain in the derriere and heart).

All of that opened a door for me in meetings. I did not want to let people know that, when I was active as a priest, I was a black-out drinker and didn’t remember much of what I was told when I began to make amends. But this program demands rigorous honesty and so I began a new way of living—being honest with myself, and others.

No one said, “You shouldn’t have done that.” “You should have known better; you were a priest.” “How could you have done that with all your education.” What I got was a hug and told “keep coming back.”

There is a quality of life in A.A. that is different from any other group of people. We have to be honest if we are going to live—not just survive. As the program tells us; “We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not for ourselves.”(1)

I did not want to be in A.A. but, I wanted what you had and only AA people could offer me what I wanted. It was by invitation. “If you want what we have then…” Yes. I wanted what you had; the freedom to be and become who we were meant to be. I wanted the peace of mind that comes from living in the Slow lane; the joy of knowing I can make mistakes and it’s not the end of the world. I wanted the spirituality that helped me find a Higher Power and let me work through my negative religious beliefs and find a God of my understanding.

Only people active in A.A. understand the danger of “a bad day.” I was received as a priest into the Episcopal church. One Sunday, as I stood at the back of the church, a man came up and said, “Father, can you help me. I feel like I’m going to drink.” To his surprise, I gave him a hug, told him I am a friend of Bill’s, that he was in the right place and directed him to a noon meeting. I could never have done that without being active in the Fellowship. Today, and every day, I am grateful for the Fellowship and the program that lets me Live.

Grapevine Aug 1961. [As Bill Sees it. 303]
1)     Alcoholics Anonymous. 96.

Séamus D
Séamus is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Louisiana

Quitting drinking with God's help was a transformative journey that reshaped my life. For years, alcohol had a firm grip on me. What started as casual social drinking slowly turned into a dependency that affected my health, relationships, and spiritual well-being. Despite trying to quit on my own, I always seemed to fall back into old habits. It was clear I needed something more, and that’s when I turned to God.

I began to pray earnestly, asking God for the strength to overcome my addiction. I knew that on my own, I didn’t have the willpower to break free, but I believed that with His guidance, I could find the strength I lacked. In my prayers, I asked for clarity, peace, and a new path forward. I also sought out scripture that spoke to God’s power to heal and restore, which gave me the hope I desperately needed. Verses like Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," became a cornerstone of my faith as I faced the daily struggle of resisting temptation.

As I leaned more into my relationship with God, I started to see the change. I found comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone in my battle. God provided me with the peace and strength I needed to resist the urge to drink. I also sought support from my church community, which became an essential source of encouragement and accountability. Gradually, the cravings diminished, and I began to experience a sense of freedom I had never known before.

Through God’s help, I not only quit drinking but also gained a renewed sense of purpose and peace. My faith grew stronger, and my life took on new meaning. With God by my side, I realized that no challenge is too great to overcome.

I learned how to needlepoint when I was ten or eleven years old.  My mother and my grandmother needlepointed, and I wanted to be close to them, so they taught me. Somewhere, I still have that first project. It is a picture of a little girl walking with a fishing pole over her shoulder. Even then, I was no fussy girly girl.

Years went by before I again picked up needlework. I did crewel and cross stich and some knitting.  During graduate school, the professor understood, I would do my needlework during class as I found that I listened and retained the lecture better when I did.  I have since found out there is a scientific reason for this. I tried to do the needlework in meetings at work, but I never could convince my supervisor that it would be ok.

When I got sober and started my journey of recovery from alcohol and co-dependency, I was often uncomfortable at meetings.  I attended meeting regularly and was told to “keep coming back” and “one day at a time.”  I remembered my needlework and how I enjoyed it and started a project one night early in recovery at a meeting I regularly attended. The needlepoint I chose would become a rug.  There were five sections, and it would take me years to complete it.  I often thought – “why did I start this?  It will take forever!”  Each time I looked at a blank canvas I was overwhelmed with doubt and frustration at the work it was going to take.

I started one of the panels in the ICU of a hospital where my dearest friend’s husband was.  He had had a brain injury after a motorcycle accident and was in a coma. All his and his spouse’s friends took turns sitting with him during the first few weeks as he started to wake up and struggle to understand what happened to him.  I remember thinking I will always remember the fear and the happiness that I could be there for them when I look at that part of my rug.

My life these days is hard. My older sister is needing more and more help as her abilities and memory at affected. I am her power of attorney, and I live on the other side of the country from her. It is very hard. A dear friend, who was once long ago a boyfriend died this week, rather suddenly. We had just emailed at Easter. Everything about the election ground me down.

My rug that took 9 years of meetings to finish is on the floor of my bedroom. What I am learning repeatedly each time I enter the room and see the rug is: every beginning, every challenge, every obstacle seems to be ‘too much’ at the beginning. This is life on life’s terms. But I still go to a meetings, talk with my sponsor, live with what is, stitch by stitch. Like my needlepoint rug, it only got completed – one stitch at a time – so too with life and recovery.  One stitch, one moment, one day at a time.

Libbie S., Sober Sisters, Mondays 3PM

The dust jacket of the “Circus Cover Edition” of the formally titled book “Alcoholics Anonymous” is a very bright red and yellow, centered with a bright red dot on top of an equally bright yellow paper background with a series of yellow and black, white and red stripes. The book itself is enclosed in a very bright red heavy cardboard binding. It’s printed on “the same bulky paper” used in 1939 when published by the Works Publishing Company formed by Bill and Dr. Bob. The cover notes in an apologetic way that the book can be ordered for “free examination” for $3.50 but says the buyer should include “a few extra cents [so that if he or she is] not satisfied the book will be helpful, the money including postage will be refunded.” At 2 inches thick and at a weight of 2.20 pounds, its nickname rightly became “The Big Book”. Thirty million copies of that Big Book have been sold and the Library of Congress has labeled it as one of 88 books which “shaped America.”

The title page of the Circus Cover Edition told us what this large book is all about:

       “The Story of How More than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism”

Just a cute story with a happy ending? Certainly, but what else does all this mean to me? Well, it sure tells the story about a bunch of recovering drunks who believed they had found a way out of the darkness of their alcoholism and maybe for the first time in their lives had found the ability to hold a job, to be happily married, and enjoy relationships with their kids.

For me, to put it in the simplest of ideas, it’s one of those “reminder-books” —one which tells me a lot and demands constant referral and use, not unlike the Bible. In AA’s Big Book, we read and study the stories written by those early recovery pioneers, stories we review at meetings, looking for similarity to our own lives, and how their words in 1939 might guide us as we walk their paths today.

Back when the book was published, AA, its very self, was stymied by society’s stigma on alcoholics. But these recovering alcoholics knew this disease was a far greater illness of society than exhibited by those found on South State or Madison in Chicago or on that “skid row” street in your hometown.  This bright red and yellow Big Book was the start of ridding society of the curse of stigma, and today, “stigma” is seen as nonsensical.

But another important question: what does the Circus Book Edition ask of me? Surely, it’ a tool for use at meetings to identify topics for discussion of how we can work the Steps for ourselves in our own program. Just as importantly, it shows the way for us to live life in a way which guides us to travel the road to the next right thing, not only in the Program but in the way we live life itself. Isn’t this what Christ and the New Testament writings of the Disciples, Peter and Paul and the others called us to undertake? Is not this Big Book, this Circus Book, similar in its callings?

Never had an organized reasonable path been suggested as a way out of our drunken dungeons. The Big Book was a frank discussion of that path, its wondering, the dangers we encounter.

How Bill and Dr. Bob picked the Circus Book’s cover escapes me ... it appears at first glance to be a bright colorful and heavy children’s book. Maybe that was their intention—to carry the message that they’d found that the Program itself outlines—a simple program for complicated people who were acting like children.

So does the “cuteness” of the “Circus Book” merely cause a chuckle, you bet it does—but then it says to me,

“Get out of your chair and get to that meeting at Noon, offer a comment or two which helped you in your own walk, listen to others and learn from them, and always speak to a newbie and walk this path of recovery with them, just as was first spelled out so well in the “Circus Book” of 1939."

JRA, ST X Noon, Cincinnati