“Every examination for ordinands ought to include a passage from some standard theological work for translation into the vernacular. The work is laborious but it is immediately rewarded. By trying to translate our doctrines into vulgar speech we discover how much we understand them ourselves. Our failure to translate may sometimes be due to our ignorance of the vernacular; much more often it exposes the fact that we do not exactly know what we mean.” (C. S. Lewis)
The Big Book (and other AA literature) was written to be accessible, but it’s not as accessible as it might be. To this problem is added the fact that, although I thought I could read, I could not. I thought that, if I had caused my eyes to pass across sequences of words, grasping the syntax and formulating in my mind some notion of what was being said, I had read something. I assumed, wrongly, that this process meant that I had indeed correctly grasped the syntax and correctly projected onto the internal screen the message that was being conveyed. Furthermore, I would retain next to nothing of what I had read but still believed I had performed some valuable task, ticked the box, checked the item off the list. I took cursory and scrappy reading to be assimilation, readying me for the next thing to read (i.e. not read).
If someone had asked me at a few years’ sober whether I had read the Big Book, once I had recovered from my offence at being insulted with such a patronising question, I think I would have retorted “Of course I have.” If someone had then gone on to ask, for instance, to whom or what I might turn in all things, I would not, I am pretty sure, I have known. If you asked me that now, I would know instantly: “I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.” I would have been equally stumped at or incorrectly answered the questions, “What is the guiding principle?” “What is the cornerstone?” “What is the keystone?” “What is the main object of this book?” “What is the AA message, according to the Third Edition?” “What is our real purpose?”
In a sense I had read the Big Book, in that I’d passed my eyes over the words, etc., but what I could attest to, there, was a trivial, superficial, and pointless activity. I had not processed the content in any comprehensive, useful, operable, memorable, life-changing way. I had read the Book as I might a newspaper or a cornflake packet.
At that point, I was not turning to God (aka the Father of Light) in anything at all, except perhaps in emergencies. I was certainly not turning to Him in all things.
The task, therefore, when reading, is not to read the Big Book as I would a newspaper or cornflake packet but in such a way as to actually engage in the material and thus assimilate it for further use.
The best way to do this, as C. S. Lewis describes, is to imagine I have to explain it to someone in the most straightforward way possible.
A few years ago, a friend of mine reported the following: he and others decided to start a new AA meeting, specifically a newcomers’ meeting, and he proposed that the group members take it in turns to present, in under five minutes, at the head of the meeting, what alcoholism is and how they know they’re an alcoholic, so that new members (or ill-informed members) would acquire a basic grasp—would they have it—of the nature of alcoholism and the nature of the solution. The assembled company, all of whom had taken the Steps, sometimes multiple times, sponsored others, had attended thousands of meetings, and had read the book, said that they would not be able to do that, that they would not know where to start. It turned out that all of the work over the years had been a waste of time: the most elementary, entry-level task, the ability to explain alcoholism to an alcoholic who badly needs the information, was beyond them.
To avoid this embarrassing predicament, the best possible exercise is to go through the AA literature, taking a paragraph, and explaining as simply, accurately, and clearly as possible the ideas contained in the paragraph. It is only if I can explain something important simply, accurately, and clearly that I prove to myself I have really understood it.
Here’s an example of one of Bill’s more flowery passages:
“We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)
Summary:
- AA members are varied.
- But we are unified because of:
- The common problem of alcoholism
- The common solution of the AA programme.