Making Coffee

I once heard it said that service work (in AA) is anything that makes a twelfth step call possible. So, you might be the person who answered the phone when the new guy called, you might be the person who said hello and shook the newcomer's hand, you might be the guy making coffee at the meeting or the person chairing the meeting. You don't have to be a group officer, you don't have to serve on a committee, or be the treasurer or a secretary, but these are all service positions you can do simply by volunteering to do them.

In my early days, I did the things that didn't require much skill: setting up the chairs or making the coffee or standing at the door, greeting. As time passed and I became more confident, I agreed to do one of the readings. From there, I chose to sit at the chairperson's side, serving as his or her secretary, and eventually as the chairperson which really is just more reading.

In the past 25 years, I've served on various committees, as a representative of my group and even as the leader of the district committee. None of the jobs I have done are any more important than the other. Like an inukshuk, each stone in the structure supports the others.

Currently, I am the general service representative for my group, I chair meetings at my group when asked to, and I will also be a speaker for birthday meetings at my group, when asked to. I find that I don't always have to say yes when I'm asked to do something, but if I have the time to do it, I should agree to do it. 

The way I have always seen it is that if everyone thinks someone else is making the coffee, the coffee won't get made. And then, when a newcomer shows up, who will be there to greet him or show him where to be seated, or where the coffee pot is, etc. It is true that I should never over-extend myself in service work by taking on too many jobs, or by doing one job for too long a period of time.

January 6 - Trust

My word today was Trust. I thought if it had been Expectations, I could have found it more appropriate for today. I have an online group that I started a few years back. I decided to get it back up and running, so I spoke to a few members who used to attend and let them know it was happening. I also spoke to some members from other groups and in the end there were 11 people in the group.

When meeting time started, there were 4 of us in attendance, out of 11 persons. I was not impressed, but only because I had erroneously placed expectations on people I really don't know that well. I suppose my higher power sent the people he knew needed the meeting tonight and if the others need the meeting next week, they'll be there next week.

Maybe the word from my godbox was appropriate.

January 4 - Trust God, Clean House, Help Others

 The words I pulled from my god box this morning was Help Others. The first thing that comes to mind when I see that is sponsorship. There is a phrase in our program that says trust god, clean house, help others. It's common knowledge that we cannot transmit something we don't have; we can't heal a sick mind with a sick mind. So, first we need to see that our own house is in order before we can try to fix another's house. Before we begin to work on ourselves, it's suggested that we allow god or a higher power to enter our lives to offer us guidance. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, in a passage on meditation, it says before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking. The same applies with helping others. Before we begin, we ask god for guidance. Everything is connected; the trick is finding the dots.

I have been sober for 24 years but I still go to a fair bit of meetings. Bill W, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous once wrote "we meet frequently so that newcomers will find the fellowship they crave". I attend meetings frequently with the newcomer in mind. I even have a small group started so that newcomers, and others, can read the big book and study it because the suggested twelve step recovery program is within its pages, waiting for eager minds to grasp it.

January 3 - Our common welfare

We watched a few more Harry Potter movies today. I think we have 4 left in our collection. It's been twenty years since we watched these but they are still enjoyable.

The zoom meeting we attended today was based in the Hawaiian Islands. That's the thing I've always enjoyed about the internet. Although some of us attending the meeting were in different provinces of Canada, some were on various islands in Hawaii, some were from New Zealand, we all came together on a chat server based in Hawaii, so we could all say we were in Hawaii.

I thought our supper was going to be shake and bake pork chops, but what I thought were pork chops in the deep freeze turned out to be small boneless beef steaks. I improvised and made a beef stirfry with rice. But, it suggested to me that I could mark the bags in the freezer so that I know what I'm thawing out. We gets wiser as we gets older.

I learned something today, in the meeting we attended. It was good to know I am still teachable. The topic for discussion was the first tradition, so it was basically about unity. Now, I've been noticing the passion the group members have for their group. I know, from my own studies on the twelve traditions, that the unity they speak of in that tradition is not so much about group unity as it is about the unity of the fellowship as a whole. One way to not practice unity is to compare one group with another or to make comments that suggest AA is better in one place than it is in another. They make many comments about their group being the best group in the whole of AA. I was going to point this out to the group today when suddenly I realized that for me to do so would itself be detrimental to the unity of AA. Sometimes it's best to let people figure things out on their own.

January 2 - Importance of Meetings

Another day draws to it's ending. It was not an unusual day but not an overly typical day either. To start with, I overslept, about an hour past my usual waking time. Luckily, I had arisen two hours earlier and took the day's ham out to continue thawing it. After eating breakfast, I baked a few dozen peanut butter cookies. You understand today is Sunday and every Sunday my stepson joins us for supper. I like to bake him cookies and those are his favorite.

For the meal, I made a glazed picnic ham. It was delicious. At some point during the day, Nancy suggested we watch some old Harry Potter movies so we started with the first one. We had to pause it while we ate, but that's why they invented the pause feature, right. We like to attend our self-help meetings. There's one we've just started going to that is in Hawaii, but the time of that conflicts with a local meeting we go to, so we're attempting to alternate each day between the two, to see how that works. Our home group also meets on sunday evening, so we attended that one this evening.

We managed to watch the second Harry Potter movie. I suppose we might have been able to do 3 or 4 movies if we had just skipped our meetings, but that's not how it works for us. We plan our life around our meetings and not our meetings around our life. The way we see it is simple. Without recovery from alcoholism, we would have no life. We recovered by going to meetings and now that we are recovered, we continue to go to meetings, partly because we enjoy them and partly because we like to explain to the new people what I just explained to you.

Know what I mean. Jellybean.

Beginning of the Year Rant

 

It's the first day of 2022. I don't like to make new year's resolutions. I prefer to just take things a day at a time. When I do my daily inventory, sometimes I see things that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing, or things that I'm not doing that I should be doing. So, I make a mental note to change those items. Of course, the only day I concern myself with is today. If today I make positive changes, then when I make my inventory I won't see those items I saw before. People say if you do a thing every day for 2 weeks, it will become a habit. I suppose the same can be postulated concerning things that you don't do.

One of the items in recent inventory lists of mine was writing or blogging more frequently and here I am, doing that. I was thinking of starting a fresh blog but another of the items in my inventory was the elimination of unnecessary clutter. I already have a blog. Why create a new one? I'm not really going anywhere with this post other than just creating a beginning of the year rant. I see,by the clock, that I have 36 minutes to finish this rant or it will be tomorrow's.

So, that's all for now.