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Just For Today

Up Or Down

'This is our road to spiritual growth. We change every day.... This growth is not the result of wishing but of action and prayer.'

Basic Text, p. 35-36

Our spiritual condition is never static; if it's not growing, it's decaying. If we stand still, our spiritual progress will lose its upward momentum. Gradually, our growth will slow, then halt, then reverse itself. Our tolerance will wear thin; our willingness to serve others will wane; our minds will narrow and close. Before long, we'll be right back where we started: in conflict with everyone and everything around us, unable to bear even ourselves.

Our only option is to actively participate in our program of spiritual growth. We pray, seeking knowledge greater than our own from a Power greater than ourselves. We open our minds and keep them open, becoming teachable and taking advantage of what others have to share with us. We demonstrate our willingness to try new ideas and new ways of doing things, experiencing life in a whole new way. Our spiritual progress picks up speed and momentum, driven by the Higher Power we are coming to understand better each day.

Up or down - it's one or the other, with very little in between, where spiritual growth is concerned. Recovery is not fueled by wishing and dreaming, we've discovered, but by prayer and action.

Just for today: The only constant in my spiritual condition is change. I cannot rely on yesterday's program. Today, I seek new spiritual growth through prayer and action.

pg. 238

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AA Grapevine History

The Story of the Grapevine

The Grapevine was created by six AA members in the New York area — four women and two men. With the blessings of AA's co-founder Bill W., they published the first issue in June 1944, just nine years after the founding of AA. A copy of that first issue was sent to every AA group — about 300 at the time — and to all known AA members in the armed services overseas. An entire page with the heading, "Mail Call for All AAs in the Armed Forces," was devoted to letters from these members, who began calling the Grapevine their "meeting in print." The title stuck, and today the Grapevine and La Viña carry it on their covers.

At the heart of the early Grapevines, then as now, were first-person stories. There were also news and notes on current happenings at the Central Office, plus reports of the explosion of new groups in North America and around the world. In addition to AA news, there were book reviews and magazine reprints and pieces written by nonAAs, including some well-known literary figures. Discussed were such burning topics of the day as the place of women in AA, returning veterans, and cross-addiction.

By the fourth issue, the magazine began printing this description of itself under the masthead:

A monthly Journal devoted to those seeking further knowledge on the problem of alcoholism, in the hope that it may prove a unifying bond to all alcoholics everywhere. Individual opinions expressed here are not, necessarily, those of AA as a whole.

The Grapevine was in fact appealing to "alcoholics everywhere" and in 1945, at the request of the groups, it became the national journal of Alcoholics Anonymous. Four years later, when the Grapevine's readership had expanded to include members in Canada and Europe, the designation was changed to the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Later issues of the Grapevine reported on important developments in the growth of the Fellowship, worldwide, such as the birth of the General Service Structure, World Service Meetings, and the publication of the Third and Fourth editions of the Big Book. The history of the Grapevine is the history of the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1986, the General Service Conference reaffirmed the magazine's place in AA with an advisory action that recognized it as the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Twelve Steps		The Twelve Traditions
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptlym admitted it. 11. Sought though prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.		1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity. 2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern. 3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. 4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole. 5. Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. 7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. 8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. 9. A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. 10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy. 11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films. 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.