Proverb-a-geddon

Courtesy of my current morning meditation book . . . 

There is more to life than increasing its speed.  - Gandhi

We come into this world crying while all around us are smiling.  May we live so that as we exit we're smiling while everyone else is weeping.  - Persian Proverb

There are three things that only God knows: the beginning of things; the cause of things; and the end of things.  - Welsh Proverb

I guess the message here is don't change anything, ever.  - Rob B

And my personal favorite this week:

Pray to God but row away from the rocks.   -  Indian Proverb

I did NOT attend the business meeting yesterday.  I may have mentioned that already.  I did not MISS being at the business meeting.  I really can't remember HAVING business meetings in sincity or Chicago, at least not regularly.  If something needed to be addressed the members would take a quick group conscience and make a quick decision.  If you weren't there, well, tough shit.  Show up every week and you won't be cut out of the loop.

I feel a little weird as an old-timer being involved in these kinds of decisions, anyway.  Just because I've been sober a long time and have attended meetings regularly this doesn't give me some special influence or power.  Life in A.A. - life in general - is much different than it was in the late 80s.  If I'm overly involved in deciding how things should be run then I'm depriving the newer people of their say in how the Program is going to look going on.  People have cell phones and social media account now.  They text and chat online.  When I was getting sober (there it is again!  when I was getting sober, whippersnapper) the only way to get in touch with another person without seeing them in person was to make a phone call, from your dwelling, to another person who also had to be home and who didn't have an answering machine or voice mail.  This seems right to me.  A sponsee checking in with a one line text message doesn't do it for me.  But what am I going to do, in my dinosaur phase.

The homeless issue - the cookie-chomping, coffee-guzzling, washroom- bathing homeless people issue - was solved by the people that went to the business meeting in this fashion: it was decided that because we've got some "scary people" showing up we need to make sure that more than one person is in the room before the secretary locks up and leaves the building.  Me?  I would get rid of the fucking scary people.  The group?  Make sure no one is left alone in the basement with the scary people.