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From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 06 Apr 1999
Time: 18:54:18
Remote Name: ip233.atlanta.ga.pub-ip.psi.net
The is an add-no to the original post. Personally, I think using the Serenity Prayer at both ends of our meetings is the best and seems to be universal. But since our strength really IS our diversity, I would like to encourage members to show a warmth and generousity to the sometimes confused members who may be Christain and let them know we are not rejecting them with this policy.
When I lived in Aliquippa, I knew a family of recoverying addicts where the guy had a high pressure job in one of the unions and spent much of his time at work or in the field. I was by his house and as a very welcome guest, was running off at the mouth about some of the changes in NA at that time and ran through the thing about how would you feel if you were Jewish and got hit with a Christain prayer everytime you went to a meeting. He experienced such honest confusion because to him, while he understood the prayer was Christain, it was never meant to be offensive or exclusive. To my knowledge, he never properly processed this and it could have hurt his recovery at that point, or even now. Callousness is not spiritual and my heart goes out to our semantic victims who get caught in a word crunch where improvement is intended but harm is sometimes at least a factor in the result. It would have been better to have at least an inclusive prayer statement in the form of an ip or something to help these people process and deal with the changes. Failure to process it almost a hallmark of our addiction.
While I am not Christain, I sincerely applaud and appreciate many of the Christain virtues and treasure my Christain friends.
In Loving Service,
Bo S.