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From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 07 Apr 2002
Time: 19:04:58
Remote Name: 216.0.47.235
I know you will check out the post and eventually get back to me.
Don't think this situation is cute or funny to me. It is real damn sad that much of the real 'leadership' in the eighties and ninties got such a cold shoulder from the Fellowship. I was their choice of course and we have to live with it. The feeling in the air was like 'I know you are the oldtimer but we run NA today and ultimately, we are the future. You can have your long clean time and hold forth in a learned way but we will vote in these changes just to show you whose boss.' It was like watching a baby play with a loaded gun, and the gun went off. Someone asked me recently if I thought God was in charge of group conscience even when it was uninformed. I paused because I think about this stuff and said, somewhat harshly, "Yeah, like when there is yellow fever in the valley and everyone thinks it the ghosts, God will let all the people die, wait three hundred years and then send someone who suggests they should kill the mosquitos."
God's will without willing instruments can be pretty rough. Much of our recovery program is geared to lead us into an awakening of the spirit. I believe in that. Then, with the spiritual principles actively part of our way of living, we enjoy a spiritual awakening. To me, it is like being able to quietly, calmly, see what's happening. I am not so goverened by passion and I don't bear a lot of ill will towards anyone. It's a big disease and it takes a big spiritual awakening to work for me.
This is all a prelude to saying there are a lot of members who love NA but don't have a clue what has happened in the last ten years to change things. You can't have a bridge club and take up putting on flower shows. You can't have a recovery program and take up 'let's please the treatment centers' sessions. I respect treatment centers and the world would be a lot worse for us if we didn't have them. But the best thing about a treatment center is that free little meetings of NA down the hall. The fact that the people who run that meeting are free and in charge lends itself to enbolden and empower those people to carry our message. If they are prevented in any way from doing this, we don't even call it an NA meeting. It's an H&I meeting. Without the vote, what you and I think and say is irrelevant. The idea that some good people will listen to us and act upon our direction doesn't make sense to me. It is almost like the times they agree don't count. It is the times when the Fellowship wants to do something and the governing group says no that takes the heart out of it for me. I got clean in a free, spiritual Fellowship and the greatness of our spirit is evidenced by our writing of the Basic Text and carrying the message to the whole world.
A service board or committee cannot run NA. And people in NA don't really seem to know that, as a rule. Thanks for allowing me to share.
In Loving Service,
Bo S.