December 11

Bill Wilson, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Averroes

Author

David Barnhart
December 11, 2025

English countryside, 2011. Own photo.

On this day in 1934, Bill Wilson took his last drink of alcohol and entered treatment for the final time. On a night where he was going through painful withdrawal, he cried out to God, “I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let him show himself!” He felt bathed in light and serenity, and resolved to hang on to this spiritual experience. He and Bill Smith started the peer support 12-step groups that would become Alcoholics Anonymous. Steps one, two, and three of the 12 steps are 1) admit our powerlessness over our addictions, 2) believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, and 3) make a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understand them. 

Today is the birthday, in 1918, of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian author and activist whose death we marked on August 3. 

Today marks the death, in 1198, of Averroes, Muslim theologian and philosopher, whose birthday we marked on April 14.

Reflection:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: 

“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.”

and

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Bill W. wrote: 

“You can’t think your way into right action, but you can act your way into right thinking.”

Prayer: Holy Spirit, all our intellectualizing and excuse-making is revealed by our action, or lack of it. Help us act our way into right thinking. Amen.