His chalk talks taught me so much and I’ll take them with me and pass them on where I can. To paraphrase one very important thought that works so well for me;

“There is one undeniable fact about my past – I can’t change it. I can only commend my past to the mercy of God. There is also one undeniable fact about my future – I have one, I just don’t know how long it will be. I can only commend my future to the providence of God.”

From the Ashley web site and Fr.’s biography;

Father Martin’s Legacy

In the words of the late Mike Deaver, former White House Chief of Staff under President Ronald Reagan, “Father Martin changed my life and changed me. When I came to Ashley, I had been with presidents and kings and popes and prime ministers, but Father was the most powerful person I had ever met, and he still is today. You see, Father has the power to change people, to make them better, to make them whole again.” Father Martin’s legacy is Father Martin’s Ashley.

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Father Joseph Martin 1924-2009

One of the many places online with info is the Silkworth site where Dick B. has had his writing reproduced. This is the beginning of that…

What Are These “Four Absolutes?”

You have to be around A.A. for quite a while before you hear much about the “Four Absolutes.” Exceptions to that statement are those who read our Conference Approved history DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, or Dr. Bob’s last major speech, or are in the chain of sponsees beginning with Clarence S., or come from the Akron area, or who have dipped their feet into A.A.’s Oxford Group origins, the role of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and the notes made and shared by Dr. Bob’s wife, Anne S.

We’ll provide a brief statement and documentation of the facts about the Absolutes. And these are long overdue because there have been many misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and confusing questions. Just take this example: Even those who ought to have known better sometimes say that the Four Absolutes constitute a distillation by Dr. Robert E. Speer of Jesus’s teachings in the sermon on the mount.

But that is not so!

Find out where the expression actually came from, how they were used and much more in Dick B.’s writing here. Great stuff!

Then go back in time and find out what the Oxford Group called its conversion process.

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The Absolutes

Quote;

“A.A. is not interested in sobering up drunks who are not sincere in their desire to remain completely sober for all time. A.A. is not interested in alcoholics who want to sober up merely to go on another bender, sober up because of fear for their jobs, their wives, their social standing, or to clear up some trouble either real or imaginary. In other words, if a person is genuinely sincere in his desire for continued sobriety for his own good, is convinced in his heart that alcohol holds him in its power, and is willing to admit that he is an alcoholic, members of Alcoholics Anonymous will do all in their power, spend days of their time to guide him to a new, a happy, and a contented way of life.

It is utterly essential for the newcomer to say to himself sincerely and without any reservation, “I am doing this for myself and myself alone.” Experience has proved in hundreds of cases that unless an alcoholic is sobering up for a purely personal and selfish motive, he will not remain sober for any great length of time. He may remain sober for a few weeks or a few months, but the moment the motivating element, usually fear of some sort, disappears, so disappears sobriety.”

Again – “unless an alcoholic is sobering up for a purely personal and selfish motive, he will not remain sober for any great length of time.”

Can we see where we have begun to lose some of our effectiveness? In 1939-1940 the success rate had climbed as high as 90% in some places.

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Who Said It Wasn’t Selfish?

More importantly, for me, is an audio tape from Henrietta which I first posted last year. It is titled “Never Be Afraid To Acknowledge God.”

Quoting Henrietta Sieberling, through her son John, who made an audio tape of his mother for the Founders Day meeting in Akron in 1971. Bill W. had passed away in the spring of that year and the members in Akron wanted Henrietta to speak but she wasn’t well enough to travel from New York.

She’d said quite a bit prior to this passage and I’d seriously suggest you click through above to read it. But this part is very interesting;

“Father Dowling, a Jesuit Priest, had first met our group in the early days in Chicago, and he came to Akron to see us. And then he went on to New York to see the others. And he said to one of our men, ‘This is one of the most beautiful things that has come into the world. But I want to warn you that the devil will try to destroy it.’ Of course, it’s true, and one of the first things that the devil could have used was having money, and having sanitariums as the men were planning. Much to Bob’s and Bill’s and Ann’s surprise, I said, ‘No, we’ll never take any money.’

Another way where I saw that the devil could try to destroy us was having prominent names. The other night I heard on TV special about alcoholics, a man explaining why they are anonymous. And he showed that he didn’t really know why. He just said that it wouldn’t do to let people know that you were an alcoholic. That’s not the reason. In fact, the surest way to stay sober is to let people know that you are an alcoholic because then you have lost something of yourself.

I would say that the second way that I saw that the devil would be trying to destroy us was to have any names. Those who think that they are prominent or that they have become leaders, all fail people because no one is on top spiritually all the time. So I said, ‘We’ll never have any names.’

I feel that the whole wonderful experience of Alcoholics Anonymous came in answer to a growing great need in the world, and this was met by the combination of Bill, who was a catalyst and promoter, and Bob, with his great humility (if you spoke to him about his contribution, he’d say, ‘Oh, I just work here.’) and Ann, who supplied a homeyness for our men in the beginning.

And I tried to give to the people something of my experience and faith. What I was most concerned with is that we always go back to faith. This brings me to the third thing that would be destructive to the early days, Bob and Bill said to me. ‘Henrietta, I don’t think we should talk too much about religion or God.’ I said to them, ‘Well, we’re not out to please the alcoholics. They have been pleasing themselves all these years. We are out to please God. And if you don’t talk about what God does, and your faith, and your guidance, then you might as well be the Rotary Club or something like that. Because God is your only source of power.’ And finally they agreed. And they weren’t afraid any more. It is my great hope that they will never be afraid to acknowledge God and what he has done for them.”

I would so much like to see this “old-time” honesty and reality return. This is the truth!

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Speaking of Henrietta Sieberling

If you take an unnecessary opportunity to reply to a post about Big Book Prayers to argue that AA is religious in nature then you no doubt are attempting to proselytize an alternative. Else, why argue?

Which means you’re working to try to win a useless argument where no argument had existed.

AA thrives on religious principles. Recovery thrives on religious principles. AA and recovery means that lives which would otherwise have been lost will now be saved.

You who argue appear to have something against the saving of lives. Why? Because you have a resentment towards religion. It just isn’t rocket science. Your resentments are unhealthy and misguided.

But that is just my personal opinion.

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AA Religious In Nature?

Greetings On Our 10th Christmas

1944

Yes, it’s in the air! The spirit of Christmas once more warms this poor distraught world. Over the whole globe millions are looking forward to that one day when strife can be forgotten, when it will be remembered that all human beings, even the least are loved by God, when men will hope for the coming of the Prince of Peace as they never hoped before.

But there is another world which is not poor. Neither is it distraught. It is the world of Alcoholics Anonymous, where thousands dwell happily and secure. Secure because each of us, in his own way, knows a greater power who is love, who is just, and who can be trusted.

Nor can men and women of AA ever forget that only through suffering did they find enough humility to enter the portals of that New World.

How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection; that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth.

Knowing it’s full worth and purpose, we can no longer fear adversity, we have found prosperity where there was poverty, peace and joy have sprung out of the very midst of chaos.

Great indeed, our blessings!

And so — Merry Christmas to you all — from the Trustees, from Bobbie and from Lois and me.

Bill Wilson

[Source]

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Bill and Lois’ Christmas Message, 1944

“The Absolutes were borrowed from the Oxford Group Movement back in the days when our Society was in its humble beginnings. In those days our founders and their early colleagues were earnestly seeking for any and all sources of help to define and formulate suggestions that might guide us in the pursuit of a useful, happy, and significant sober life.”

1. Absolute Honesty

2. Absolute Unselfishness

3. Absolute Purity

4. Absolute Love

Four questions associated with the Absolutes;

1. Is it true or is it false?

2. Is it right or is it wrong?

3. How will it affect others?

4. Is it ugly or is it beautiful?

Thoughts?

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Four Absolutes

We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later when somebody complained about the smell.

We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide

and we probably didn’t know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.

We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, distended and there was nothing they could do.

We died in cells, never knowing whether we were guilty or not.

We went to priests, they gave us pledges, they told us to pray, they told us to go and sin no more, but go. We tried and we died.

We died of overdoses, we died in bed (but usually not the Big Bed)

We died in straitjackets, in the DT’s seeing God knows what, creeping skittering slithering shuffling things.

And you know what the worst thing was? The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank on the principle of so crazy, it just might work, I guess, or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to places like Dropkick Murphy’s.

And when we got out we were hooked on paraldehyde or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, just drink like me.

And we tried, and we died.

We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut. We died playing Russian roulette and people thought we’d lost, but we knew better.

We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.

We died in shame.

And you know what was even worse, was that we couldn’t believe it ourselves, that we had tried.

We figured we just thought we tried and we died believing that we hadn’t tried, believing that we didn’t know what it meant to try.

When we were desperate enough or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough to go for help we went to people with letters after their names

and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them, never suspecting the terrifying truth, that the right words, as simple as they were, had not been written yet.

We died falling off girders on high buildings, because of course ironworkers drink, of course they do.

We died with a shotgun in our mouth, or jumping off a bridge, and everybody knew it was suicide.

We died under the Southeast Expressway, with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our head, because this time the people that we disappointed were the wrong people.

We died in convulsions, or of “insult to the brain”, we died incontinent, and in disgrace, abandoned .

If we were women, we died degraded, because women have so much more to live up to.

We tried and we died and nobody cried. And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another hundred of us, or another thousand, who wished that we could die, who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable and we knew in our hearts it wasn’t ever gonna change.

One day in a hospital room in New York City, one of us had what the books call a transforming spiritual experience, and he said to himself “I’ve got it .” (no, you haven’t you’ve only got part of it) ” and I have to share it.” (now you’ve ALMOST got it) and he kept trying to give it away, but we couldn’t hear it. We tried and we died.

We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark.

We passed out and the bed caught fire. They said we suffocated before our body burned, they said we never felt a thing , that was the best way maybe that we died, except sometimes we took our family with us.

And the man in New York was so sure he had it, he tried to love us into sobriety, but that didn’t work either, love confuses drunks and he tried and we still died.

One after another we got his hopes up and we broke his heart,

Because that’s what we do.

And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was something happened that was worse.

Until a day came in a hotel lobby and it wasn’t in Rome, or Jerusalem,

Or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston, it was in Akron, Ohio, for Christ’s sake.

A day came when the man said I have to find a drunk because I need him As much as he needs me (NOW you’ve got it).

And the transmission line, after all those years, was open, the transmission line was open. And now we don’t go to priests, and we don’t go to doctors and people with letters after their names.

We come to people who have been there, we come to each other. We come to try and we don’t have to die………

Thank You Bill and Bob for all you did to get the ball rolling.

[ Jack's permission? Here - "Feel free to read the poem to any audience any time. But if you should give out a printed copy or an email, please make sure my name is on it. If the poem survives, I'm not humble enough yet to want it to be as 'by Anonymous.'"]

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“Drunks” by Jack McCarthy

In April of 1840 six drunks got together to condemn the curse of drink and drew up a pledge of complete abstinence from alcohol. From that first meeting came part of our current format for speaker meetings.

“They chose the name Washington Temperance Society in honor of George Washington, and a membership fee of twenty-five cents was established, together with monthly dues of twelve and a half cents. With fond embraces they parted, each agreeing to bring one new member to the next meeting at the tavern. And they stayed sober!

In response to membership growth and at the frantic urging of the tavern owner, the group eventually rented its own hall and decided to meet weekly. At these meetings, a unique format developed. Each speaker told his own story: “what I used to be like–what happened–and what I am like now.” The idea was greeted with explosive acceptance. It gave new impact to the entire temperance movement. Total abstinence had created the miracle of the man at the podium!”

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The Miracle of the Man at the Podium

From the Original Manuscript;

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after, have been designed to sell you three pertinent ideas:

(a) That you are alcoholic and cannot manage your own life.

(b) That probably no human power can relieve your alcoholism.

(c) That God can and will.

If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away!

That’s right – if you’re unconvinced, throw the book away! And we should practice stroking feathers in recovery? I doubt it.

This is what we need to get straight;

This is the how and why of it. First of all, quit playing God yourself. It doesn’t work. Next, decide that hereafter in this drama of life, God is going to be your Director. He is the Principal; you are to be His agent. He is the Father, and you are His child. Get that simple relationship straight. Most good ideas are simple and this concept is to be the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which you will pass to freedom.

When you sincerely take such a position, all sorts of remarkable things follow. You have a new Employer. Being all powerful, He must necessarily provide what you need, if you keep close to Him and perform His work well. Established on such a footing you become less and less interested in yourself, your little plans and designs. More and more you become interested in seeing what you can contribute to life. As you feel new power flow in, as you enjoy peace of mind, as you discover you can face life successfully, as you become conscious of His presence, you begin to lose your fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. You will have been reborn.

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If You’re Not Convinced