WRONG!

I live in a city where the overwhelming majority of people have very different political views than I do. We disagree on matters of a moral, social, and religious nature as well, again overwhelmingly. I'm in a teeny, tiny, vanishingly small minority. It's kind of fun most of the time being a contrarian for the hell of it kind of guy, but it can also be frustrating. A lot of these folks are pretty militant about this stuff. They aren't interested in what I have to say because I'm so clearly WRONG! and they're going to have to spend the time to show me why this is so.

In a way it's like the good old days when I sought out places to drink that were filled with people who thought and acted like I did. If you sit around swapping war stories and slapping people on the back who ape your opinions it's inevitable that you're going to fall under the illusion that everyone believes the way that you do and if they don't then they're WRONG!

This is all well and good. I don't have to talk to these people if I don't want to. If I'm unhappy where I live I can move somewhere else. Where we have to be careful is in our meetings. Last night someone tossed off a dismissive, belittling comment typical of this area that suggested that I'm a bit of an idiot. Now I'm not saying I'm not a bit of an idiot, as so many of you have made abundantly clear over the years. I don't have any trouble with someone calling me an idiot to my face, as has happened millions of times. But not in a meeting. We don't criticize anyone's views or opinions on the outside world.

Shame on me for showing so little spiritual growth that this offended me, but shame on him for stomping all over Tradition 6. Now I look at this dude with a jaundiced eye, and my liver is working just fine right now. This is jaundice by choice. I'm having trouble separating his program, which I admire, from his politics, which I do not.

Early on in my sobriety I was in a meeting where people were tossing around the phrase "recovering Catholic" in their comments. I don't think they meant any harm. Some of the stuff was pretty funny. I think they were trying to explain how we can take anything good and wreck it.

One woman finally piped up: "I'm a Catholic and my faith is very important to me." She was offended by what was being said. If she had been brand new, maybe she wouldn't have come back.

I'm glad no one offended me at my first meeting. I was looking really hard for a reason not to come back.