Pg. 17 - borrowed from Joe & Charley
Like all great teachers Bill is going to begin by telling us about something he assumes we already know a great deal about. Bill’s example will be the great ocean liner.
READ to “Captain’s table”
-ocean liner as transportation
-steerage – immigrants or those without much money
-classes of service, 4th through 1st
-the Captain’s table
It is a very long way from the captains table to those in the steerage section. On an ocean journey those two would never have met. They had separate stairs.
TITANIC eg. – at the edge of a ship, one man in his tuxedo and one man in his work overalls.
Nothing in common but when their butts hit that cold water they suddenly had something in common. “How in the hell do we save ourselves?” When they were rescued and got back on dry land between them was a feeling that was “indescribably wonderful”. Always true when people escape from a common peril and that’s what we have in AA. We don’t care about the differences, only are you an AA if so, there is a feeling amongst us that is indescribably wonderful.
Going to give us a WARNING..READ “Unlike the…”
These two guys back on shore separated probably never to meet again. But we will always be alcoholics and we find it city after city, country after country. We are bound together as alcoholics. The feeling we have for each other never goes away.
READ to the end
“This is the great news” – not the news of the fellowship but the news of the common solution. The common solution is the spiritual experience brought about through the program of action.
Power of the fellowship and the power of the spiritual experience. We are not going to recover without both of them. We may stay sober a while but we’re not going to recover.
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