Most of my life these days I seem to be able to sail along without having much stress or being sucked into the drama that seems always there (if I notice it). It's not a particularly new skill but it's been a real gift recently in that there has personal betrayals and attacks in my AA service life (I wrote some about that the last month or 2). I hate it that this program that I love is populated by some people who seem to just have some issues with me that they need to work out in public. Oh well...I've spent some time in the past few months looking into AA history and realize this is nothing new. As loved and venerated as Bill Wilson was in our fellowship, in his own time he was demonized, castigated, sued and publicly chastised and accused of all manner of bad doings and nefarious motives.
A few things (questions, really) come to mind:
- Do we always treat our leaders this way in AA? ...in other organizations?
- Are my directions wholly pure and untainted plans and motives? (no, but...)
- Why would anyone ever want to be a leader? Why do I volunteer to be a leader?
- What is it in me that tolerates this from those that I profess to love?
- Why don't I just quit?
- How can I be effective if the proposals I make are attacked in the process of attacking me?
- How can I not take it personally when people accuse me of not telling the truth, of obfuscating the truth, or promoting personal agendas over the good of AA?
Frankly, I do it because I think I'm being of service to AA and the drunk that needs AA's hand to be there and I believe my life depends on that.
I expect, however, more will be revealed...
Ed
3 comments:
I'm a big fan of the principle of rotation, and I rotated out of the service structure a long time ago. I respect people who can hang in there with all the nonsense you have to endure.
When it gets to be too overwhelming you can rotate out, like MC said. You can always come back after you have rested. While the Lambda Center here is not AA, it functions with the principles of AA and I have watched the board members be attacked, get frustrated, resign. It's part of the deal it seems.
I love Step One.
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