The Life of Bill Wilson
More alcoholics and addicts find recovery around Christmas than during any other time of the year. The days shorten, the nights grow colder and some new felt Presence in the season whispers an invitation to our souls to turn inward and reflect on how we’re living life. Each year, when the outside world turns its absolute coldest and darkest, we pause to look inside and search for some light.
Back in December of 1934 Bill Wilson came stumbling in from the cold and out of the dark. He’d looked inside and found only emptiness in the place where love should be.
And so for the fourth and final time he climbed the familiar steps of Towns Hospital that led him once again to his bed in detox. Maybe the season played a hand in deepening his depression because after a few days his pain became so unbearable that he finally cried out, “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!”
Something strange happened to Bill that night. What it was exactly he was never sure and we will never know. He called it his “white light” experience. He said that he sensed a Presence in his room that night; a Presence that entered his heart and changed him forever. Bill spent his remaining 36 years trying to hold on to that Presence because he knew that staying close and carrying it to others somehow kept him sober.
Bill Wilson was not a saint, but he was a man well chosen for his life-work as the co- founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Both his gifts and his demons made him fit for the assignment. Mel B. in his book My Search for Bill W. points out several character traits that helped equip Bill for his task. He was first and foremost, an overachiever. Had AA been left in the hands of Dr. Bob alone, it would never have left Akron. Second, Bill was a born fixer who carried pains from a broken childhood that drove him to work tirelessly healing the wounds of others. Bill was a rugged individualist steering clear of tying the fellowship too closely with organized religion and he was a penniless entrepreneur determined to achieve success. In the end, Bill will be best remembered as a statesman and social architect whose12 Traditions have charted the fellowship’s course and kept it safe thus far.
There’s an anonymous writing that has circulated in 12 Step programs for many years. Bill Wilson didn’t write it but it carries both his message and his spirit and it speaks to the heart of the principle of anonymity that he dearly loved. It’s a good time of the year to pause and look inside, remembering where we came from and the work we’re called to carry on. It’s entitled:
Why We Were Chosen
God in his wisdom chose this group of men and women to carry the message of his goodness. In choosing them he did not go to the proud, the mighty, the famous or the brilliant. He went instead to the humble, to the sick, to the unfortunate. He chose the drunks and the addicts, the so-called weaklings of the world. Well might he have said to us: "Into your weak and feeble hands I have entrusted a power beyond estimate. To you has been given that which has been denied to the most learned of your fellows. Not to scientists, not to statesmen, not even to my priests or ministers have I given this gift of healing that I entrust to you.
"It must be used unselfishly; it carries with it grave responsibility. No day can be too long; no demands upon your time can be too urgent; no case can be too hopeless; no task too hard; no effort too great. It must be used with tolerance for I have restricted its application to no race, no creed and no denomination. Personal criticism you must expect; lack of appreciation will be common; ridicule will be your lot; your motives will be misjudged. You must be prepared for adversity, for what men call adversity is the ladder you must use to climb toward spiritual perfection. And remember, in the exercise of this power, I will not ask of you beyond your capability.
"You are not chosen because of exceptional talents. And be careful always, if success should come your way, not to ascribe to personal talent that which is really only my gift. If I had wanted learned men to accomplish this mission, the power would have been given to the physician and scientist. If I had wanted great speakers, there would have been many anxious for the assignment, for talk is the easiest used of all the talents with which I have endowed mankind. If I had wanted scholars, the world is filled with better-qualified men and women who would be available. You were chosen because you have been the outcasts of the world and your long experience as alcoholics and addicts has made you - or should make you - humble and alert to the cries of distress that come from the lonely hearts of the addicted everywhere.
"So go and carry this message to all who still suffer and keep ever in mind the admission you made of your own powerlessness and your own unmanageability.
Remember, I am with you always."
Merry Christmas, Bill. And from all of us: Thank you!