*&^!! 'Em

"I must try to love all humanity.  (Ed. Note: ALL humanity?  Jeebus.)  Love comes from thinking of every man or woman as your brother or sister because they are children of God.  (Ed. Note: EVERY man or woman?  Jeebus Heebus.  That's a lot of people.  That's too many people.  I think we should all be able to leave some people out.  It should be like jury duty where the lawyers can simply reject people in the jury pool without giving an explanation.  We should be able to say: "Nah, I don't like the guy.  Fuck 'em.  He's out.")  This way of thinking makes me care enough about them to really want to help them.  I must put this kind of love into action by serving others.  (Ed. Note: Want to HELP other people?  REALLY want to help them?  SERVING others?  Good grief but we're out of control here.)

It sort of ruins the mood when I take a spiritual passage and eviscerate it with undisguised snark.

Steering Committee:  A group who guides a body on a project from start to finish.  Members of steering committees meet and collaborate to define, prioritize, and control projects. They also provide guidance to the project manager on various issues.

I was at the inaugural gathering of the Keep It Complicated Steering Committee yesterday.  It didn't look like an official group as described in the official definition - it looked like five aging men and women sitting around amazed at the power and force of all the personalities found in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous.  It makes me laugh, it makes me cringe, it makes me angry, all at the same time.  

Actually, it was fine.  I believe we're simply going to have two separate groups going forward.  I have no idea why we needed a steering committee to figure that out.  Suburban Bill and other friends of mine from the Midwest and the East Coast wondered why we had to include the break-away members in any discussion of how the original group was going to handle things once we start to have in-person meetings.  That was my suggestion at the outset: "They don't want to come?  Fuck 'em.  They can stay where they are then."  I'd like to say that my attitude was mostly tongue in cheek but there was some real honesty behind it.  I didn't actually say these things out loud but I did let it be known that I thought the members of the original group should decide how the original group is going to operate.  Why would we query people who don't attend that meeting, who have said they aren't going to attend that meeting, and who appear to have some giant, Buick-sized resentments about that meeting?  I mean, why would I bend over backwards to get someone that pissed to come back to my meeting?  Personally, I'd like them to stay where they are, resentments and all.  Personally, I believe A.A. is best served by having as many different meetings as possible so we get a ton of mixing and matching of personalities.

Because I learn from all of the mixing and matching I was gratified to hear a couple of the people last night bring up group unity and comity in A.A.  "Our common welfare comes first; personal recovery depends on A.A. unity."  I mean, it's the first Tradition.  Number one.  It suggests that without unity in our Fellowship I will struggle to recover personally.  So when I get the "fuck those people" jive going on I'm glad some less pissy people are around to make sure I look at the issue from a different angle.  Because my angle sucks sometimes.