Puella Plateae Latioris | ブロードハイウェイ | La Carretera Ancha | The Broad Highway

     We're all just pilgrims trying to get home.

--Lt. Dave Joyce, The Sherpshead Bay Group, circa 1995 ('The Old Man')

---

     I'm just a lowly beggar

Trying to show other beggars

Where I find bread.

--Frank Buchman, The Oxford Group

---

     We realize we know only a little.  God will constantly disclose more to you and to us.

--Alcoholics Anonymous (164:2)

---

     28-Aug-15 | Happy Friday everyone!

     There seems to be a painful evangelical period we all trudge through when we first hear the message of hope offered us by our beautiful blue Book.  Mine last probably eighteen long years.  As most of you have heard me observe, I got sober in what could most charitably be called the dark ages of AA, where most groups were discussing step work with the 12x12, or even worse, by word of mouth.  It is not my intention to bash AA literature mind you; it's just that there are precious few actual directions contained in the 12x12 for step work.  So, having shivered in the bitter cold of two-fold solution AA for years I was naturally enthusiastic in finding the 'good news' our Book has to offer.

     However!  That is not everybody's experience in AA.  Some swear by our 12x12; others by just attending meetings; fewer still by our Book.  Who's right?  Well, today I think everybody's right. And everybody's wrong.  I need all of it, like it or not.

     I am reminded of the story of 'The Blind Men and the Elephant'.  Several blind men are each sent separately to describe an elephant.  They all arrive - and stop - at the first elephant part they touch and describe.  To the first blind man, having felt the elephant’s ears, the elephant is 'a giant fan'.  To the second who touches the elephant’s snout, the elephant is 'a giant snake', and so on.  At the close of the tale the king brings all the blind men to report on what they had seen, and a loud row ensues, each man describing different animals and all men believing his point of view is right.  The king instructed the men to conjoin all the animals’ tales and the final construct was indeed an elephant.

     Ultimately the moral of this tale I think is that we all touch the same elephant;  its it the unity and the shared joy of discovery that we are graced with  an understanding of that which is too great for any one of us to gasp alone.

     In many ways AA is like this.  I don’t have the only way; our Book is just one of many.  No man’s spiritual experience is greater or less than another's,  however attained.  I only know what worked for me, but as God is my judge I certainly need to know – and rejoice in – what worked for you.

     I love each and every one of you.  Thank you for my life.

Yours in love and service,

COG, 1^st Class.| Megan D., editor.

---