Your Third Legacy
By Judy F.
December 1950
“We, who are the older members of AA, bequeath to you who are younger, these three Legacies – the Twelve Steps of recovery, the Twelve Traditions, and now the general services of Alcoholics Anonymous. Two of these Legacies have long been in your keeping. By the Twelve Steps we have recovered from alcoholism; by the Twelve Traditions we are achieving a fine unity.
Being someday perishable, Dr. Bob and I now wish to deliver to the members of AA their Third Legacy. Since 1938 we and our friends have been holding it in trust. This legacy is the general Headquarters services of Alcoholics Anonymous – The Alcoholic Foundation, The AA Book, the AA Grapevine, and the AA General Office. These are the principal services which have enable our Society to function and to grow.
Acting on behalf of all, Dr. Bob and I ask that you – the members of AA – now assume guidance of these services and guard them well. The future growth, indeed the very survival, of Alcoholics Anonymous may one day depend on how prudently these arms of service are administered in years to come.”
According to Bill, “an AA service is anything whatever that helps us to reach a fellow sufferer – ranging all the way from the Twelfth Step itself to a ten-cent phone call and a cup of coffee, and to AA’s General Service Headquarters for national and international action. The sum total of all these services is our Third Legacy.”
As 2024 draws to a close and since this is our last printing of Santa Clarita Valley Central Office newsletter, Gratitude Gazette, for 2024 I wanted to express my gratitude for the opportunity to be of service to our local central office for this past year. I have learned so much about service opportunities that go beyond the AA meeting and how important it is for me to have an open mind to “AA being organized.” As Bill noted, “It began to dawn upon AA that group responsibility would have to reach much further than the meeting hall doorstep on Tuesday and Thursday nights only. Otherwise, the new man approaching our door might miss his chance, might lose his life. Slowly, most reluctantly, groups in densely populated areas saw they would have to form associations, open small offices, pay a few full-time secretaries. Terrific outcries went up. To many, this really meant destructive organization, politics, professionalism, big expense, a ruling officialdom, and government.”
As a group and as an individual are you familiar with the “arms of service” Bill refers to? If not, I believe we do a disservice to AA as a whole in making sure this fellowship is around for our kids and our grandkids. Let’s not just assume the person next to us is taking on that responsibility. Let us assume that responsibility ourselves and then carry the message of its importance to the person sitting next to us. This was Bill’s message for the Third Legacy.
As Bill so eloquently stated “by our Twelve Steps we have recovered, by out Twelve Traditions we have unified, and through our Third Legacy – Service – we shall carry the AA message down through all the corridors of time to come. Of this, I am happily confident.”
Most of this article was from Language of the Heart Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings.