the least promising vessel and the gift freely given
founded in the Year of the Whopper by a nail-tough old chronic drug addict and alcoholic who had spent the bulk of his adult life under the supervision of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections before discovering the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at M.D.C.-Walpole and undergoing a sudden experience of total self-surrender and spiritual awakening in the shower during his fourth month of continuous AA sobriety.
Context
The origin story of the novel's second great institution, and its whole ethic in the telling: recovery arrives to a lifelong con in a prison shower as "total self-surrender," and the only response the gift permits is to pass it on. The House exists because a man decided the thing given him for free had to be given away — the least promising vessel imaginable made the vector, which is exactly the doctrine's point.