Back In The Saddle Again

So . . . I've been traveling again without a lot of access to The Fellowship.  This means a lot of fond reflection of all the good and wonderful things about my regular meetings.  I've been home for a couple of weeks again, re-engaged with my people.  That's about long enough to get the Resentment Machine fired up and in fine working order.

Actually, it has been great.  If the choice is meetings or no meetings there's going to be a clear winner.

At my morning meeting today (why does that always sound so ominous when I'm typing it?  In the interest of honesty I should simply say "I'm going to start bitching about my morning meeting" instead of using such a casual, conversational tone) we had a bit of an uproar with a probably homeless, certainly mentally ill member of the group.  She's pretty regular and awfully polite - when she occasionally shares she generally makes sense, more or less, and doesn't take up too much of everyone's time.  Today was the exception - she was disruptive and off-topic - but our group secretary handled the situation with dignity and kindness and we soldiered on, a few feathers ruffled but everyone calm after things settled down.

This wasn't a teaching moment for me although I was learn something later.  A few of us have been talking about making a format change to the meeting to eliminate this kind of incident.  We realize this is going to be controversial, that most people hate change, but really feel that we are . . . you know . . . fucking right.   One of these people - a friend of mine - was sitting behind me and made a demeaning crack that was clearly audible to a lot of people when one of our more . . . ahem . . . irritating members shared.  Again.  For the 2,894th day in a row.  He's a Legend in his own mind yet he does manage to annoy a lot of folks in the meeting.

In a hypothetical world I would have laughed.  I don't like the Legend guy who shares every day - he's brutally coarse and quite the racist.  Normally I avoid him like he's sick and catching, and if he started going somewhere else every day, for ever and ever, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.  I'm polite and I'd help him out in a pinch, but I keep my distance.

So here's the rub: a newish guy approached me after the meeting and asked for my advice.  He has been talking to a brand new guy - a dude struggling to simply stay sober - who really likes the message from the Legend Guy.  The Legend Guy is fiercely anti-religious and anti-god, which appeals to members who struggle with the Higher Power thing.  As you can imagine the demeaning quip about him - in direct earshot of the struggling guy - didn't make The Fellowship come across as too tolerant and loving.

So where does that leave me?  Do I stay on the team of The Quipper to get my format change voted in?  Or do I suggest that we add something to the meeting format suggesting that maybe we should make sure that we keep our snarky ad libs to a minimum?  Who's right here, and who's wrong?  What exactly needs to be changed?