M4 Snohomish Tribal Lodge

Meeting 4: Snohomish Tribal Lodge, Marysville WA
Saturday, June 5th
Speaker's Meeting

Getting to the meeting involved a drive over the beautiful Deception Pass in the north of Whidbey Island. It was a double first for me; my first visit to a native American reservation, and my first big speakers' meeting involving one of the key AA circuit speakers. Bill was an ex-Hells Angel from California. Like all the best AA speakers he had that winning combination of sardonic humour and the ability to inspire and educate.

Bill was a firm believer that AA was by far the most important social movement of the 20th Century. By his estimation more than 300 million people have had their lives improved by the AA 12-step programme and the hundreds of other 12-Step programmes that were inspired by it.

The one practical thing I took from the meeting was when he said that steps 1 through 9 are only about 15% of the programme. What he said makes a lot of sense. In fact, doing the first nine steps is just putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It restores us to something like sanity and is a starting point and not a culmination. After the first nine steps just going to meetings is not enough. We have to apply the principles of the programme to our daily lives.

The way forward is of course to make steps 10, 11 and 12 a living part of your every day routine.
Time for me to think about that daily meditation and prayer I so seldom do.