Posted by Bo S on February 22, 19102 at 12:43:14:
Juice
While it never made it into any of our service writing or guidelines, back in the late seventies we used to talk about how having a service position gave a person juice. Juice is like power in a sense but also righteousness in hopefully a good sense. Like, "Hey man, you're in on it. You've made an honorable commitment to do something good in your life. You're going to be one who helped NA come to life." It was a useful term to a degree.
The reason I bring it up is that we have to break the impasse existing between our effort and the service structure. If you don't know, breaking impasses in an agreeable win/win fashion is nothing new to us. It is a good way to do business and it even happens to work well in spiritual service. When our effort - to write the NA Way of Life - was younger, we felt no need to press our cause. We were certain our good efforts would speak for themselves. I have felt for some time that it is necessary for the Fellowship to learn the strengths and weaknesses of corporations. A spiritual Fellowship like ours far exceeds the boundaries and ability of any corporation to control, manage, deny or dictate. Think about it. If WS told you it was ok to do a particular drug, would you? If WS told you that you didn't really have to share your 4th Step with another person, would that change the way you work your program? If WS told you to burn books or destroy old minutes from the World Service Conference, would you? See, their power have very defined limits. Just the arrogance and thrust of power is pissing off a great many members. Remember, it is their incompetence creating this false bluster. They know they are trapped. They've done it to themselves. They've painted themselves into a corner with a great big Fellowship watching, saying, "Duh."
Group conscience is no joke. If an organized group of committed members sets out to inform and activate the general Fellowship, then more and more members have a 52 card deck - for those of you who don't play cards games, that means the members have a full deck to begin the game. Therefore, they have an equal chance of being dealt the ace of spades, a pair, three of a kind, two pair and so on. Taking certain cards out of a deck nullifies the game. It is cheating. It is something dishonorable one person does to create a dishonest win. Now, the idea is that no one with a life is going to stop everything and just study NA like a rocket scientist for five years. A very few insane compulsive members - like us - will do this and that is ok. But the vast majority of members will pick up an idea here, an idea there. They will mention it in meetings or to friends or to a sponsor or a service group. Over time, they will eventually get a more or less complete picture for themselves. The important thing is that they have ACCESS to all 52 cards. If certain cards are missing or never seem to come up, you have the take a break and count up your cards. When you poll - ask a question - to ten thousand members who have over 40 cards in their deck you not only get interesting answers, the members are able to interact effectively, experience that wonderful thing called comraderie and feel themselves to be an effective part of the whole. Some members service in H&I;, PI or Literature. We all do personal service, our most important service. Helping others individually or collectively is still the greatest thing we do beyond our own abstience and recovery.
If members are not informed, then group conscience becomes group non-sense. We have to actually come to a point where all this is standard information that everyone knows to have a basis for group conscience. When you present some material on how you work your 2nd Step to the thousand informed NA members * who have prayed, meditated and discussed the subject with other members for the purpose of writing* you get some spectacular answers. Our members love to show off and there is nothing more wonderful than watching excellence breed excellence in terms of spiritual recovery. Now, for all this to work out, it has to have some special requirements, right? Isn't that only fair? Here's the deal: every body involved in the process prays for the God of their understanding to remove their ego and self-will and give them the strength and guidance to do God's footwork. I entreat you to consider this article most carefully. Evidence that this process works is in the hands of each one of you right now, but it is best if you come to your own awakening in your own time. Then you will be ready to act not on your own terms but well beyond your personal boundaries.
To lovingly break the impasse, we have to find a way to give honor and juice to the general service structure. For purposes of discussion, imagine that members who see themselves as accountable and responsible to a group of members experiences a certain �charge' or sense of greater purpose. That is why our trusted servants used to be called representatives. That was changed but it can be changed back. Delegates are different, they have a different function technically. It may be that the growing Fellowship will realize that a small but tactically important mistake was made. It is ok to make mistakes today. It is also ok to 10th Step them and make corrections. This is a personal article and my field of service is literature. I have had to learn other stuff to be effective and general knowledge never hurts. It is great fun being in on God's miracles. It would be so wonderful to see the Spirit flood outward through a hundred thousand deadened souls into awakeness, clarity and focus. The great dream of NA is to have a world wide Fellowship of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. This Fellowship has the ability to puzzle out and solve its problems of growth and to remedy disorders and abuses that may occur from time to time.
We in the NA Way of Life movement have a corollary within NA. The NA History movement is gaining momentum and a few members have amassed huge collections of NA memorabilia, minutes, records, flyers, and newsletters. It won't be long before some of these are available on the internet and in books and booklets. I believe knowledge of our past is the key to our future. Without it, we would be doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. With it, we can learn what works - and what does not - in NA. My conclusion is that when members are in on things, feel responsible and a part of, then miracles happen. It is hard, expensive, time consuming and important. When I reach out and help you, I get the juice. When I hold back, I feel let down. I don't want to let my Self down.
In Loving Service,
Bo S.