AN AA FRIEND was describing what resulted from his being distracted during his boyhood assignment of bellows-pumping for the local church organ. By way of explanation: Bellows-pumping behind the scenes forced air through the pipes of the old pipe organ; without this air, no music was created, no matter how many keys the organist frantically pushed.
So when the “bellows boys” allowed their attention to waver, the music drifted into nothingness, and then the boys had to “pump like hell,” as my friend put it, to get the music started again.
Do you find yourself in this spot in the AA program? Is your music drifting off into flat chords or into nothingness because of your failure to pump energy through the bellows? Then, is It necessary to “pump like hell” to get serenity, standards, values, and enthusiasm back into your sobriety?
When my life of sobriety is not quite as contented as it was, when a little of “Is this all there is?” sets in, when I am distracted from daily reading of our literature, when my behavior does not seem to be conforming to my own standards and values, I begin to ask what the contributory factors might be.
There is a great deal of merit in the standard answers from those whose opinions we have learned to respect: not enough meetings; not enough gratitude; not enough honesty; not enough twelfth-stepping; lack of daily inventorying; failure to take Steps Four and Five; failure to think often of how it was in the world of active addiction (without dwelling on it).
The music, the vibrancy, the aliveness of our program are surely dependent on good, positive attitudes in all seven of those areas.
More than any other omission that might lead to low-key day-today living is lack of attention to Step Eleven–or so it has been in my life. When I “came to believe,” I was sure I would always seek to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding. It had taken such a long time to come to believe, and it was such a miracle; somehow, I felt I would never forget to nurture that miracle. I don’t stop believing when I slight the daily meditation, but the closeness of contact is not the same.
That closeness–that total awareness–makes daily living an adventure instead of a chore, gives us that something that newcomers want, levels our attitudes toward little daily irritations, and makes it possible to accept the things we cannot change.
When the bellows need pumping, I have to go back to that quiet place fill them once more, knowing that if I don’t keep the music flowing, this way of life may lose the sparkling tones and reverberations–it’s too beautiful a way of life to chance that!