Sept 2015
Welcome to the September edition of the Alanoclubs.com monthly newsletter. The days are getting shorter and the nights are slightly longer. This is the time of year, fellow Alanoclub readers, when cosy evenings in with good eats and good company begin to beckon and mornings start to nip with frost. It is the time for sharing in the fruits of the harvest with your friends and loved ones. As you gear up for the next few months of celebration – Halloween, Thanksgiving, culminating in Christmas and New Years – take time to reflect on how far you have come and how far you have yet to go, and be grateful for the moments that you have to share. Above all, don’t forget to take it One Day At A Time!
The Laughter and Learning Corner
An man walks into a bar in his hometown, orders three pints of Guinness and sits in the back of the room, drinking a sip out of each one in turn. When he finishes them, he comes back to the bar and orders three more. The bartender asks him, “You know, a pint goes flat after I draw it; it would taste better if you bought one at a time.”
The man replies, “Well, you see, I have two brothers. One is in America, the other in Australia, and I’m back here at home. When we all left home, we promised that we’d drink this way to remember the days when we drank together.”
The bartender admits that this is a nice custom, and leaves it there. The man becomes a regular in the bar, and always drinks the same way: he orders three pints and drinks them in turn.
One day, he comes in and orders two pints. All the other regulars notice and fall silent. When he comes back to the bar for the second round, the bartender says, “I don’t want to intrude on your grief, but I wanted to offer my condolences on your great loss.”
The man looks confused for a moment, then a light dawns in his eye and he laughs. “Oh, no.” he says, “Everyone’s fine. I’ve just quit drinking.”
Did You Know: The Origins of the Slogan “One Day At A Time”
“One Day At A Time” is not in the main text of The Big Book. The phrase does appear at the very end of The Oxford Group pamphlet called The Four Absolutes. That booklet ends with this paragraph:
Remember our four questions, “Is it true or false?”, “Is it right or wrong?”, “How will this affect the other fellow?”, and “Is it ugly or beautiful?”. Answering these queries every day with absolute integrity, and following the dictates of those answers one day at a time, will surely lead us well on our journey toward absorbing and applying the Absolutes.
AA grew out of The Oxford Group and the pamphlet pre-dates the beginning of AA, so this would seem a likely source for the phrase.
“One Day At A Time” does appear in many personal stories published in The Big Book and appears in other AA literature as well. It can be found in As Bill Sees It and Twelve Concepts for World Service among other books and pamphlets.”
