A Major Theme of The First International
A.A. History Conference:
Exploring the New England Roots of
Alcoholics Anonymous
Dick
B.
©
2013 Anonymous. All rights reserved
[Note: An enormous
variety of applicable, accurate, comprehensive Alcoholics Anonymous History subjects
will be explored in Portland, Maine, in the week from September 5 to 12 that
A.A. Authors and Historians Dick B. and his son Ken B. will be present and
featured speakers at The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History
Conference there.
And, as the
pre-conference weeks move forward, we will be showing you piece by piece the
rich storehouse of A.A. principles and practices—past and present—that will be
made available to those who understand the present-day need for disseminating
full and accurate Alcoholics Anonymous History to A.A. members, 12 Step
participants, speakers and sponsors and newcomers, Christian recovery leaders
and workers, treatment program leaders, counselors, interventionists, and sober
living facilitators.
The object of this
large, diverse gathering of participants is not to show-case ancient treasures.
The object is to put
before the recovery community the all but obscured and rapidly diminishing facts
about A.A. To a large extent, this is so that the “same old same old”
meandering, repetitious “room wisdom,” whining, vulgarity, self-centered,
speculative, erroneous, incorrect, irrelevant, chatter of meetings and
conferences will take a back seat to how the alcoholic who still suffers can
attain a far greater degree of success in recovery when he or she learns the
key points about A.A.
A.A. grew out of a
scientific, medical, religious, and social human vacuum. A.A. began at and was
preceded by an alcoholic-addict period when churches were no longer focusing on
recovery of the unworthy drunk. When medical people pronounced the drinkers and
users “medically incurable.” When the alcoholics and addicts themselves hungered
for deliverance from the holes they found themselves in. When the suffering
folks lacked on their own and even with the help of others the knowledge,
program, and resources to pull themselves out of the mire.
What will take place
at the Maine Conference in September is a full, fair, and tested presentation
of series of A.A. ideas. Recovery ideas —both before and during A.A.’s founding
period from 1935 to 1938, its new version program in the Big Book of 1939, and
its yielding to secularism, professionalism, treatment ideas, and psychological
thoughts. And recovery ideas born of growing secularism, abandonment of a
God-centered approach, and attempts to reconcile atheism, unbelief, science,
psychological theories, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, humanism, and the “don’t
drink and go to meetings” were not providing a lifeline.
They were not focused
on a long-standing simple program of abandoning drink, turning to God for help,
and then focusing on helping others get well.
For some years, and
particularly in 2012, Dick and Ken B. gathered a substantial group of
long-sober AAs, Christian leaders, writers, archivists, historians, their
wives, and recovery experienced investigators. This group went to Vermont “big
time.” Its participants spread out its effectiveness by having different folks
going to differing historical spots.
But the focus of
this article and its news is the following: Through it all, long-sober,
believing, archivist Jim H. from the State of Washington had traveled all the
way from that Pacific Coast state to the distant Green Mountain State of
Vermont. Jim spent hours taking photos of almost every relevant nook and cranny
in Vermont and nearby Massachusetts that produced the real A.A. beginnings and
picture. Jim brought his camera. He took some 800 photos of the whole scene. He
gathered those photos and made them available. They are yet to be made more easy
to identify and use. But we want you to see the beginning of the end-results
and accomplishments that will highlight every spot investigated, researched,
and discussed during our Vermont tour.
Jim will be present at the Portland, Maine Conference. He will share his
eagle-eye perspective of the findings he photographed, studied, and discussed.
And the following is
now available as a rough preview of the photos that will tell a new, powerful,
and applicable story of A.A.’s New England beginnings, its remarkable
concentration of people, places, institutions, and organizations in Vermont,
and the early lessons which can be applied
today as focused servants put them together and talk about them.
Here Are the Jim H. Photos in Raw Form
That Open Our Vermont AA Story
Pictures taken by Jim H.—an A.A. Area
Archivist in the State of Washington—during Dick B. & Ken’s Sept. 2012 A.A.
history research tour of Vermont
Gloria Deo
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