![]() ![]() As such, it usually has a narrative cast and speaks in terms of “we” or “I” in relation to our drinking past and our recovery in AA. ![]() Much of it is adapted from Walker’s earlier work, “For Drunks Only,” and from the BB, which it quotes liberally. Looking briefly at each of the three sections, we will find that the AA Thought for the Day, as the first word suggests, centers around our experience as alcoholics. Francis Prayer in Step 11 of AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12&12), published seven years after the LBB. Instead, there’s a harmonious integration of the three which involves deep spiritual reflection and contemplation. Here meditation does not seek to by-pass reason or dispense with prayer, as some forms of mediation do. They form a spiritual continuum which engages head, heart, and imagination. Thought, meditation, and prayer are therefore closely linked to each other. The third prays that an ideal or aspiration contained in the thought or meditation may become a practical reality in one's own person and life. The second moves one or more ideas in the theme to the level of sustained meditation. The first introduces a theme and concludes with a question which refocuses the reader’s attention on a main idea within that theme (sometimes the entire passage may be a series of questions). The three sections generally form a thematic whole. This arrangement is consistent throughout the work. The Thought takes roughly the first half of the page, with the Meditation covering most of the second half and the Prayer usually the last three lines. Each page (measuring only 3" x 8") has three sections: AA Thought for the Day, Meditation for the Day, and Prayer for the Day, with the last two printed in a smaller font than the first. Organizationally, the LBB is a model of simplicity. Three years later he published “For Drunks Only” under the sponsorship of the Quincy group of AA, a pamphlet that would also inspire the LBB, a work he started after his move to Daytona. After a brief relapse in 1941, he joined the newly-founded AA group in Boston in 1942. ![]() His drinking career started in college at the age of 20 and ended 27 years later in 1939, when he got sober in the Oxford Group (OG). He was intelligent and highly educated, a thinker attracted to the likes of Plato and Kant. The LBB was published anonymously, the only reference to its author being a note in the back to the effect that it was “Compiled by a member of the Group at Daytona Beach, Fla.” Richmond Walker was born of a well-to-do family in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. It went on to spawn the new genre of the modern meditation book, launched Hazelden into the publishing business, and became the best-selling recovery work after the BB, with sales now surpassing 10 million. Between 19 (when Hazelden picked it up), the book sold 18,000 copies, a considerable figure given the size of AA at the time. Printed at the local county court house and distributed from Rich’s basement, the book was an immediate success. Wanting to share in these meditations, members of the AA group in Daytona Beach encouraged Rich to turn them into a book and publish it under the group’s sponsorship. What would be known as the Little Black Book (LBB) started as a series of small cards Richmond Walker wrote out for his own personal use. It was nevertheless one of these devotionals, God Calling, which inspired one particular alcoholic to write a book that would actually speak to his fellow drunks. That pretty much left alcoholics with religious devotionals, which of course were not written for drunks and which, then as now, don’t address the special needs of those in recovery. Instead, the Big Book (BB) suggested one memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles it discusses and seek further advice from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Step 11 in Alcoholics Anonymous called for daily prayer and meditation, but it had left no detailed instructions for how to practice these disciplines. The Little Black Book: A Review of Twenty-Four Hours a DayĪt the time of its publication, Twenty-four Hours a Day filled a spiritual vacuum among recovering alcoholics. ![]()
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