2.—For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.
...and now, the short form which is actually longer... than the long form...
2.—For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
So... the short form makes mention of the "twisted serpents"... er-"trusted servants".
And so I found something about this tradition in that service manual;
"Hence the principle of amply delegated authority and responsibility to "trusted servants" must be implicit from the top to the bottom of our active structure of service.This is the clear implication of A.A.'s Tradition Two".
From the 12 and 12:
"Where does A.A. get its direction? Sole Authority in A.A. is a loving God as He may express Himself in the group conscience. Formation of a group. Growing pains. Rotating committees are servants of the group. Leaders do not govern, they serve. Does A.A. have a real leadership? "Elder statesmen" and "Bleeding Deacons". The group conscience speaks".
Check it out yo check it check it out...
So who's the boss around here? Is it Bill? Bob? Well... no. They're dead, for one thing. But I'd bet some would like to pin leadership on them. But they can't. Are they like the teflon Dons'? There again; perhaps our detractors would like to think that. God. A loving God is the "Ultimate Authority". And why? Because... A.A. as it has spread across the land came about as necessity and you would literally have a founder trying to rule every town... when it is obviously best to use delegation and rotation for leadership and to keep the politics out of it... from what I can understand.
Any thoughts/comments on this? Is this not what Bill W. was getting at in the 12 & 12? "Servants, not Senators". I like that.
This whole thing was tested when Charlie Towns from Towns Hospital told Bill W. that he could use an office in his building to work as a therapist and earn some bucks because... it was common knowledge at the time, Bill and Lois were "hard up" for money. He brought the idea to the group and they told him... if they sell out to anything like that... they for one thing would be tied to a hospital... and although that may be good, it's not good enough. Another thing is that the group would be divided. The book quotes the line, "the good can be the enemy of the best". They said Bill could never become a professional.
So... the group conscience spoke. And Bill heard it... and followed it. Thank God.
In my home town, there's this cool annual event called Ocsoberfest. It takes place in the Convention Center in about the second week of Ocsober...er October and it's funny how it started. Some dude was the treasurer of the CSO and the seed money or whatever you call it got stolen by him. He disappeared from the scene or something. Somebody ponied up the difference or a collection was taken up for the difference. People weren't so upset by the guy doing that. They weren't happy about it, but they were worried about him and didn't want to see him go get drunk over the thing. He came back and had the money to return... for restitution. By then, it was water over the bridge. They didn't know what to do with the money. So thus the start of Ocsoberfest. It is now a yearly event. They don't run Ocsoberfest when the State Convention is in Pueblo.
Not necessarily a Tradition 2 example directly, but I'm sure they had many a call for Ultimate Authority in dealing with this situation.
