Why We Were Chosen
An often seen piece of AA literature is a
small pamphlet called "Why We Were Chosen". The
source of this pamphlet is a speech given by Judge John T.
on the 4th Anniversary of the Chicago Group in 1943. The
transcript is his talk is below.
"Tonight marks the fourth
anniversary of the founding of the Chicago Group. In some
respects the word "anniversary" ' is not a
satisfactory term to describe this occasion for it carries the
implication that a goal, a congratulatory period, a resting
point on a journey has been reached The program which we have
entered upon really has no terminus, for it involves a
continuous striving for improvement. Congratulatory periods tend
to smugness, resting periods to retrogression.
This program is not to be measured in years. It is timeless
in every sense except day to day, or even more precisely, now!
The history of alcoholic addiction is marked by an unwillingness
or inability to live in the present. For it the morbid past has
an unholy attraction and the uncertain future is filled with
vague forebodings. The hope of the Alcoholic, the real tangible
hope of the Alcoholic is in the present, now is the acceptable
time, the past is beyond recall -- the future is as uncertain as
life itself. Only the now is ours.
As I look about me tonight I see many new faces. Some are
here present for the first time, some who have been here before,
and having failed in their quest of sobriety have returned. To
such of you the knowledge that some of us have been dry since
the beginning of this group four years ago may incline to
feelings of strangeness or timidity, and you should feel neither
strange nor timid with us who share a common infirmity. To you
bit a few days or a few weeks removed from the misery and
remorse of a recent spree, four years of sobriety may seem an
eternity bit there is no such thing as seniority in a timeless
program.
We, who thru the Grace of God have stayed dry, are at the
most, but twenty-four hours in the vanguard. True, we have the
advantage of a better understanding of our problem. Day upon
day, day after day, our sobriety has resulted in the formation
of new habits which makes the matter of staying so a less
fearsome ordeal than it was in the beginning. We have had the
advantage of association with other Alcoholics which has taken
us from our old haunts and tended to remove, in a measure, the
occasions of alcoholic suggestion.
We older ones in our daily attempts to live according to the
twelve steps of our program have made start, at least, toward
eradicating disconcerting personality defects. But, important as
all these considerations are, the great step, toward our
regeneration was accomplished in that moment when we admitted we
were powerless over alcohol and made a decision to turn our
will, and lives over to God, as we understood Him. That act of
resignation was an act of the then present moment, and that
Source is as available to you now as it was to us then. The days
pass quickly by and time seems unimportant. A little while ago
there was Earl, then there were two and now there are hundreds.
This group is not a result of mass production, this pro-gram
cannot be sold. It can be lived a practiced and it is in the
power of example that its first attraction lies. Each of us
presents the unselfish act, or series of acts, of some other one
or ones.
We were reached individually by other men like ourselves, who
maybe for the first time in their lives had performed an
unselfish act. Into our regeneration went no thought of
individual profit on the part of our sponsors, or greed or gain.
We are the products of the most refined charity that men can
bestow upon one another. The recognition on the part of others
of our true dignity as men and their willingness to do unto us
as they would have themselves done unto. The thing that has
happened in the short life of this group is difficult of
comprehension. Jack Alexander, the brilliant author of the
Saturday Evening Post article, says that only through the medium
of fiction can it be adequately depicted. Let us try to appraise
it by an imaginary meeting.
Let us assume that four years ago tonight a group of the most
learned medical men in the city of Chicago were gathered
together to discuss each of our alcoholic case histories. As
they reviewed them carefully, one by one, all followed an
identical pattern. There were those who for years drank as much
as two quarts of whiskey a day. There were others who drank
daily for years to the point of intoxication, and others who
would go months without so much as a glass of beer. There were
those who had voluntarily subjected themselves repeatedly to
numerous so-called "cures"; some who voluntarily had
themselves committed to psychopathic institutions and insane
asylums; others who had experienced no more severe distress than
an agonizing case of jitters. But all were the same in this
respect: that, having started to drink, we had no self-control
that would indicate a stopping point. The records before this
imaginary group of eminent scientists proved we were alcoholics,
many chronic, some acute! They showed long and unsuccessful
hospitalizations, psychopathic commitments and psychiatric
investigations all without a single successful result.
The pronouncement of that august Tribunal of physicians was
that most of the cases were beyond the reach of science, and
that the remainder soon would be. After they had made this
solemn pronouncement, let us assume that a shadowy figure
appeared and in an unearthly voice said: "Notwithstanding
the findings of this distinguished group, in four short years
these hundreds of cases that you have pronounced incurable
shall, with the help of God, be made whole." Around that
room would be exchanged scornful and doubtful glances and these
unbelieving medical men would say as did Thomas of old:
"When we see we shall believe." Yet each of us here
present tonight is living proof that the prophecy of the
imaginary voice has been fulfilled; without the drama of the
miracle but just as certainly and just as attributable to the
God of whom the imaginary voice spoke. The thing which has
happened in the Chicago group, which is happening all over the
country, has come about so gradually and through such material
mediums as to pass unrecognized; even by us, for the moral
miracle it really is.
Instead of suspending the natural law by direct intervention,
God in His wisdom has selected a group of men to be the
purveyors of His goodness. In selecting them through whom to
bring about this phenomenon He went not to the proud, the
mighty, the famous or the brilliant. He went to the humble, to
the sick, to the unfortunate - he went to the drunkard, the
so-called weakling of the world. Well might He have said to us:
Into your weak and feeble hands I have entrusted a Power beyond
estimate. To you has been given that which has been denied the
most learned of your fellows. Not to scientists or statesmen,
not to wives or mothers, not even to my priests and ministers
have I given this gift of healing other alcoholics, which I
entrust to you. It must be used unselfishly. It carries with it
grave responsibility. No day can be too long, no demands upon
your time can be too urgent, no case too pitiable, no task too
hard, no effort too great. It must be used with Tolerance for I
have restricted its application to no race, no creed and no
denomination. Personal criticism you must expect, lack of
appreciation will be common, ridicule will be your lot, your
motives will be misjudged. Success will not always attend your
efforts in your work with other alcoholics. You must be prepared
for adversity, for what men call adversity is the ladder you
must use to ascend the rungs toward Spiritual perfection, and
remember in the exercise of this power I shall not exact of you
beyond your capabilities. You are not selected because of
exceptional talents and be careful always if success attends
your efforts, not to ascribe to personal superiority, that to
which you can lay claim only by virtue of My gift. If I had
wanted learned men to accomplish this mission the power would
have been entrusted to the physician and scientist. If I had
wanted eloquent men there would have been many anxious for the
assignment, for talk is the easiest used of all talents with
which I have endowed mankind. If I had wanted scholarly men the
world is filled with better qualified than you who would have
been available. You were selected because you have been the
outcasts of the world and your long experience as a drunkard has
made, or should make you humbly alert to the cries of distress
that comes from the lonely hearts of alcoholics everywhere. Keep
ever in mind the admission that you made on the day of your
profession into A.A., namely that you are powerless and that it
was only with your willingness to turn your life and will into
My keeping, that relief came to you.
Think not, that because that you have been dry for one year
or two years, or ten years, that it is the result of your
unaided efforts. The help which has kept you normal will keep
you so just as long as you live this program, which I have
mapped out for you. Beware of the pride which comes from growth,
the power of numbers and of invidious comparisons between
yourselves; or of your organization with other organizations
whose success depends upon members power, money and position.
These material things are no part of your creed. The success of
material organizations arises out of the strength of their
individual members; the success of yours from a common
helplessness. The power of material organizations comes from the
pooling of joint assets; yours from the union of mutual
liabilities.
Appeal for membership in material organizations is based upon
a boastful recital of their accomplishments; yours upon the
humble admission of weakness; the motto of the successful
commercial enterprise is: "He profits most who serves
best"; yours: "He serves best who seeks no
profit." The wealth of material organizations when they
take their inventory is measured by what they have left; yours
when you take moral inventory by what you have given. If these
things had been said to us there are those upon whom the
injunctions might lie heavy. They might seem austere and
difficult commands but this would only be because we have not
realized or have forgotten the critical nature of our
infirmities. Physical disease requires drastic measures for its
cure, in many cases delicate and dangerous surgery.
Our conditions when we came into this group was even more
serious than that of one who goes to a hospital with a
gangrenous limb. For, after all, the limit of his risk is his
life while we risked life and in addition things more precious,
sanity, honor, self-respect. We cannot expect to reach a problem
so deep-seated, that science deemed it unsolvable, with as
little effort as is required for the removal of a decayed tooth.
It requires the doing of difficult things including
self-discipline and above all unswerving obedience to a
conscience. It is part of God's therapy that man cooperate; a
cooperation requiring high moral courage in the performance of
difficult tasks.
The aphorism "Man does not live by bread alone", is
more than poetry. It is the utterance of a great philosophical
truth. There is a part of man that is animal. That part requires
that he have bread, and that in quest thereof he be fitted to
take his place in a highly competitive society. He must work, he
must play and he must laugh. But there is another part of man
which is Spiritual and that part can only be properly developed
by the exercises and restraints which conscience dictates.
Unless man's Spiritual yearnings are developed as well as his
physical and mental abilities, he is unbalanced and incomplete
and a prey to those capital enemies of all alcoholics: fear,
loneliness, discouragement and futility. And so as I draw to the
end of these remarks, you must think I have forgotten Earl and
his anniversary. These things I have said to you have been
discussed many times with Earl. Often have I heard him emphasize
that no individual is responsible for this group. Earl was the
leaven selected by wise and benevolent Providence to germinate
this group into being. He used the material entrusted to him
with patience, tolerance and understanding but never for one
moment has he felt that this group is his personal
accomplishment, or that he was more important to its well-being
than the most recently arrived alcoholic. The most that he would
care to hear me say about him is that he has tried to be a
worthy instrumentality to carry out a Divine mandate.
The wise, kindly man may steer us clear of many mistakes but
even he makes some. But in spite of mistakes, in spite of
errors, even in the absence of leadership such as that with
which we have been blessed, this work will continue as long as
the alcoholic recognizes his helplessness and decides to confide
his destiny to God. In conclusion I would like to read a letter
which I received this evening from one of the early members of
this group who says about the group and about Earl that which I
think, deep in our hearts, all of us feel: "Dear John: As I
told you the other day before I left, the discussion I listened
to briefly in Staley's last Friday infused me with the desire to
add my two cents' worth (in this case sixteen cents, air mail,
special delivery) to the meeting at which the fourth anniversary
of the Chicago group will be observed.
There is a strong temptation in all of us, I think , to
rhapsodize over the individual net gains in our lives, which we
attribute to the blessings that flow from the application of A.A.
principles. These individual net gains, measured in the recovery
of jobs, in the restoration of happy family life, in the
rediscovery of self-respect, are fine in themselves, including
as they do some literal miracles, but I rather think that the
Chicago group, of which it was my happy privilege to be an early
member, represents more than the sum total of all these
individual net gains.
As the focal point of the innumerable and necessarily unknown
processes of individual spiritual development by the members,
the group itself has been the graceful means for many to catch a
fleeting but convincing glimpse of the Infinite. That in itself
makes the group a profound thing. This, I'm afraid, is a little
vague. But the fact that the group has been what it is is not
attributable to Providence divorced from the individual, but to
sound, tolerant, and loving minds taking care of the details for
Providence. I think the application to Earl is too obvious to
need further elaboration. If, to save Earl embarrassment, not a
word should be uttered about him Tuesday night, the feeling that
I have at a Chicago meeting, a feeling I know is widely shared,
that Christ is in approving attendance there, - that feeling is
eulogy enough."
~Judge John T. 4th Anniversary of the Chicago Group October 5,
1943
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