Preface
Good
evening and welcome to the Men's Step Application Group.
We
are gathered here because we are faced with the fact that we are powerless over
alcohol and are unable to do anything about it without the help of a Power
greater than ourselves.
Please
join us in a three minute meditation to help welcome this Power into our lives
and into this room.
Amen.
We
alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking.
We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control.
All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such
intervals – usually brief - were inevitably followed by still less control,
which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of
a progressive illness. Over any
considerable period we get worse, never better.
The
feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement
that binds us. But that in itself
would never have held us together as we are now joined.
The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a
common solution. We have a way out
on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and
harmonious action.
No
A.A., regardless of his veteran status, can ever relax his guard against the
encroachments of a reviving ego. Years
of sobriety are no insurance against its resurgence. Our Higher Power grants us a daily reprieve from this disease
based upon our fit spiritual condition. With
that in mind, the sole purpose of this group is to share in a fellowship of
recovery based upon the action of the 12 Steps as taken from our basic text,
Alcoholics Anonymous. In order to
accomplish this, all that is required is honesty, open mindedness, willingness
and an active feeling of love and compassion for each other.
In
the spirit of the traditions, we practice the principle of group autonomy.
With this freedom comes a responsibility to grow, as a group, in
effectiveness and understanding, particularly as it applies to our primary
purpose: carrying the message of
hope and recovery to the suffering alcoholic.
We openly invite newer and older members alike to join us in our newly
found gifts of freedom and responsibility.
Please
join us in the Third Step Prayer:
'God,
we offer ourselves to Thee - to build with us and to do with us as Thou wilt.
Relieve us of the bondage of self, that we may better do Thy will.
Take away our difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to
those we would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life.
May we do Thy will always!'
Tradition
Seven states: "Every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining
outside contributions," therefore as we now pass the hat, we ask that
visitors and guests to our group please refrain from contributing so that we can
more closely follow this tradition. Thank
you.
Are
there any announcements pertinent to this group?
I
will now turn the meeting over to our chairmen: ____________________
[at
the closing]
Drunkenness
and disintegration are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they are
the results of personal disobedience to spiritual principles.
We must obey certain principles, or we die.
The group too can deteriorate and die, therefore we of AA DO obey
spiritual principles, first because we must and ultimately because we love the
kind of life such obedience brings. Great
suffering and great love are AA's disciplinarians; we have no others.
We
would like to close our meeting with the Seventh Step Prayer:
'Our
Creator, we are now willing that you should have all of us, good and bad.
We pray that you now remove from us every single defect of character
which stands in the way of our usefulness to you and our fellows.
Grant us strength, as we go out from here, to do your bidding.
Amen.'
