two connected A.A. stories

[honeydumplin]

From the book 'Pass It On'
The story of Bill Wilson
and how the A.A. Message reached the world
p. 241-243

For Bill, these were tantalizing days; his hopes would be raised, only to be dashed.
They still had no home of their own; he had no job; the Big Book wasn't selling; A. A. wasn't getting the wide publicity it desperately needed; the Rockefellers hadn't come through; Hank was drinking. Bill was frustrated, impatient, restless, dissatisfied, and depressed. Some even described him as being on a dry drunk – in other words, he had all the symptoms of being drunk except the alcohol.

What happened next was unexpected and unforeseen; if Bill had been asked what would have made him feel better, he would hardly have thought to name the gift that came to him, apparently at random.

On a cold and rainy night late in 1940, deep in the winter of Bill's discontent, “I was in our little club in New York, the first one ever to open its doors. I was lying upstairs alone, except for old Tom M__, who made the coffee downstairs. Lois was away someplace. I was suffering from an imaginary ulcer attack – I used to have a lot of those. I felt very sorry for myself. It was a rather bitter night, sleeting outside, and old Tom, a very brusque Irishman, came up and said, 'Bill, I hate to bother you, but there is some bum from St. Louis here.'

“Well, it was ten at night, and I said, 'Oh, no, not another one! Well, bring him up.' So I heard a painful progress up the stairs, and I said to myself, 'This one is really in bad shape.' He finally stood in the door of my little bedroom, a terribly crippled figure, coat drawn up around him, leaning on a cane. And he sat down and turned back his collar, and then I saw that he was a clergyman.

“He said, 'I'm Father Dowling from St. Louis. I belong to the Jesuits out there, and we've been looking at this book 'Alcoholics Anonymous'”.

Thus began a conversation that lasted for 20 years. Father Dowling, crippled Jesuit priest from St. Louis and editor of the The Queens Work, a Catholic publication, said he was fascinated by the parallels he had discovered between the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Exercises of St. Ignatius, the spiritual discipline of his Jesuit order. When Bill confessed that he knew nothing of the Exercises of St. Ignatius, Father Dowling was delighted, and Bill warmed to him.

“We talked about a lot of things, and my spirits kept on rising, and presently I began to realize that this man radiated a grace that filled the room with a sense of presence.” (Bill had used the same term, “sense of presence,” to describe the atmosphere of Winchester Cathedral.)

That evening, Father Ed began sharing with Bill an understanding of the spiritual life that then and ever after seemed to speak to Bill's condition. Bill, author of the Fifth Step, would later characterize that evening as the night he took his Fifth Step, and also as a “second conversion experience.” He unburdened heavily on his mind, and of which he had found, until then, no way to speak. This extraordinary communication, this openness of sharing, was to be vital for Bill. Father Dowling's “spiritual sponsorship” would endure, grow, and be nourished during a correspondence and a deep friendship that would last for the next two decades. The subjects of this interchange, although interspersed with “business” matters of the Fellowship – Father Ed was one of its staunchest supporters, responsible for founding A.A in St. Louis – were almost always the questions Bill continued to ask throughout his life, about faith and no faith, about the church and its role in human affairs.

That night, Bill “told of his high hopes and plans, and spoke also about his anger, despair, and mounting frustrations. The Jesuit listened and quoted Matthew: 'Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst.' God's chosen, he pointed out, were always distinguished by their yearnings, their restlessness, their thirst.

“In pain, Bill asked if there was never to be any satisfaction. The priest almost snapped back: 'Never. Never any.' He continued in a gentler tone, describing as 'divine dissatisfaction' that which would keep Wilson going, always reaching out for unattainable goals, for only by so reaching would he attain what – hidden from him – were God's goals. This acceptance that his dissatisfaction, that his very 'thirst' could be divine was one of Dowling's great gifts to Bill Wilson and through him to Alcoholics Anonymous.”