Keeping an Open Mind in Australia

I WILL always be grateful to the chairman of the first meeting I attended. After reading the usual introduction about the AA fellowship he appealed to the newcomers to keep an "open mind" about what was said at the meeting. There would be many things with which we might not agree. There were. It all looked too good to be true. Yet, the chairman assured us, if we kept on listening, something would ring a bell. Maybe it would be that night, maybe another night. The point was to keep on coming until we found something which suited us. Sufficient for the first night was to realize that each and every alcoholic in the room had suffered from the same disease we were experiencing. They had thought the same kind of thoughts, done the same kind of things as we were doing. They had recovered: so could we. For the first time in years we could promise ourselves some hope of recovery.