AA Grapevine - Traditions Month - November 1956

This is the November 1956, Traditions Month issue of the AA Grapevine. This issue features the articles “The Whisper of Humility”, “Where Psychiatry Fits In”, “The Twelve Traditions” foreword by Bill, and much more!

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This message is included in this Grapevine:

In response to many requests for a return to the custom of paying special attention to AA's Twelve Traditions in the November issue, we have grouped several articles with this theme here, in the heart of the magazine, beginning with a brief statement by Bill W. written especially for this issue, followed by the Traditions themselves: Bill's Foreword to the original edition of the first pamphlet setting forth the Twelve Points of AA Tradition; and three articles by AAs who wrote us in recent weeks on one or another of the Traditions.

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A MESSAGE FROM BILL:

The Twelve Traditions: Our Keys To Survival and Growth

IN AA, EACH ONE OF US HAS TWO PRIME OBJECTIVES. We want to survive and we want to grow. While we cannot demand happiness, we know this to be the only way that it may be achieved. In any case, growth in the image and likeness of the Creator is our primary purpose and the main reason for our existence.

For AA as a whole our objectives are exactly the same. AA must survive and then it must grow in maturity and finally it must carry its message of hope and joy to those who still don't yet know.

That is what AA's Twelve Traditions are about. They are first concerned with our survival as a fellowship and then with our ability to grow in maturity and in numbers. Based on vast experience, they suggest to us how this can best be done.

With every passing year, I find myself more and more confident that AA will always survive and grow, no matter what perils and temptations the future may hold.

This I believe ... because in following the Twelve Steps, each of us will find the right way, and in following the Twelve Traditions, all of us will find the right destiny.

Bill

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Here you can read a portion of the Foreword to the “AA Tradition” pamphlet by Bill which is included in this Grapevine issue:

“How shall we AA's best preserve our unity? That is the subject of this booklet.

When an alcoholic applies the "Twelve Steps" of our Recovery Program to his personal life, his disintegration stops and his unification begins. The Power which now holds him together in one piece overcomes those forces which had rent him apart.

Exactly the same principle applies to each A.A. Group and to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. So long as the ties which bind us together prove far stronger than those forces which would divide us if they could, all will be well. We shall be secure as a movement; our essential unity will remain a certainty.

If, as A.A. members, we can each refuse public prestige and renounce any desire for personal power; if, as a movement, we insist on remaining poor, so avoiding disputes about extensive property and its management; if we steadfastly decline all political, sectarian, or other alliances, we shall avoid internal division and public notoriety; if, as a movement, we remain a spiritual entity concerned only with carrying our message to fellow sufferers without charge or obligation; then only can we most effectively complete our mission. It is becoming ever so clear that we ought never accept even the most alluring temporary benefits if these should consist of considerable sums of money, or could involve us in controversial alliances and endorsements, or might tempt some of us to accept, as A.A. members, personal publicity by press or radio. Unity is so vital to us AA's that we cannot risk those attitudes and practices which have sometimes demoralized other forms of human society. Thus far we have succeeded because we have been different. May we continue to be so!

But, A.A. unity cannot automatically preserve itself. Like personal recovery, we shall always have to work to maintain it. Here, too, we surely need honesty, humility, open-mindedness, unselfishness, and, above all-vigilance. So we who are older in A.A. beg you who are newer that you ponder carefully the experience we have already had of trying to work and live together.“

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This Grapevine is in very good condition for its age. There is light edge wear to the cover and rubbing marks to the spine.

Please view all of the photos for the conditions.