Hello my fellows!
The business meetings are the good stuff, the holy grail, the sacred cylinder of cheese. Through these meetings OA decides by collective group conscious what defines us, what is abstinence, what literature we offer, and in what direction we want to go next. Good gracious. How do you get a room of addicts to agree on those things? The only answer is there must be a HP guiding the process.
The business meetings always open with the Serenity prayer in various languages. Today we heard it in Polish, Swedish, and English. Each time, it gave me goose bumps.
Then we established who was here on different levels. On the Intergroup level, Greater Ann Arbor has two delegates here. On the Region level ( WI, OH, MI, parts of IL and Ontario, IN, and KY, ) we have 19 delegates, which is not many. There is a lot of talk about how to bring more of us here —in order to establish the will of our members, we need to have a broad group conscious. On a World Service Level, there are 171 delegates here.
Today we heard reports that discussed our financial status- doing well! About exciting projects for professional outreach- national health fairs! And heard about the strategic plan— build a larger membership through strong meetings, PI/PO awareness, committed service bodies, and financial health.
We also heard from the candidates for incoming trustees. This, as our chair mentioned, is one of our most important tasks as delegates. There is so much recovery amongst the candidates: 15 years of abstinence, 17 years, 35 years!
And yes, we had a bit of a dramatic time during which the delegates decided to keep the Tool of an Action Plan. There were passionate arguments on both sides, and the WS Chair did a good job of reminding us that after the decision, the best thing for our recovery was to let it go. The serenity prayer was said before the vote, and the Seventh Step prayer afterwards.
It’s interesting—the vote was done by paper ballot—unusual, but it protects the fellowship’s unity—we don’t know who voted to keep and who wanted to discard the tool.
Friday brings us more voting on issues such as literature and some other hotpoint issues, such as changing the definition of abstinence and whether we should use AA literature other than the Big Book and AA 12&12.
Bring it!
We are not a glum lot, Thursday edition
If I could only become the kind of person my dogs think I am, I’ll be all set
From the Chair: Connie and the pages will conduct a standing vote….Connie and the pages– that sounds like a singing group from the sixties
The region 10 trustee made a visit to Australia and was asked to talk about her trip.
Region 10 trustee: I left for Brisbane on Monday-
Chair: you have one minute left…
Trustee: The trip was great!
IDEA Day - Holiday Bootcamp - November 19, 2011
