The miracle of community

 

Last night I went out with some AA friends from the city for supper and we sat and talked and listened to one another on the topic of resentments. Along with digressions into shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings, why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. We stayed until the restaurant was past closing time and the manager wanted to throw us out.

It interested me that most of my friends wanted to talk about the resentments of here and now, not the major resentments that they had uncovered in Step 4.  Those they had long forgotten. But all of us have hurts and resentments that stick with us today, as we go about our routines, as we interact with others: slights and grievances and pinpricks, small disgruntled molehills swelling up into volcanic mountains, the anger that we hold onto until it festers within. Momentary passing anger that doesn’t pass.

My fellow diners talked about lingering family resentments. The difficulties of living with a sulky insolent teenager. The heartache and suppressed fury of living with an addict or alcoholic in the family. The long disengagement after divorce, the fraught  relations with step-children, mothers-in-law, the former partner’s new husband or wife. The resentments around the workplace: financial conniving by  business partners, the unfair promotions, the bitterness of being excluded or left behind. The resentments incurred in AA, through pettiness and gossip and members ‘ganging up’ against other members, social networking rather than fellowship, the perils of choosing your own company with the likeminded rather than reaching out to the newcomer and those struggling. I’ve noticed on occasions that the ‘meeting after the meeting’ can undo all the warmth and honesty of the meeting, through speculation and  gossip masked as concern.

‘What you hear here, let it stay here.’

And how each of us has to find a way to come to terms with thie hurt and anger, let go of resentment and move on. ‘Resentment is not an aberration,’ commented one person. ‘It is very rare that anger just passes like lightning and we are able to let go immediately. Most of the time, I know I should let go but I am not ready to do so. I have to make an act of will, say I am willing to forgive, and then just wait for the damn resentment to ebb away. I try not to feed it or encourage it.’

 

There is so much wisdom, generosity and compassion in AA community. As I sat there listening and sharing my own battles, fumbling my way forward to greater understanding, I had the feeling that my particular cherished resentments were melting away,  becoming insubstantial as a small lump of mud dissolving in a bowl of clear water.

 

I’ve had this feeling before. When I sat in a crowded meeting one Sunday evening and suddenly heard my own voice saying out loud that I wanted to drink and felt confused and  unsure what to do. Without addressing me directly, others spoke up at once and shared on how they could identify and what they had done to surrender and work the Steps, how they had been helped, how they had given in to the drink and  then struggled to come back, how they had discovered a Higher Power, how they had reached out in service and the desire to drink had been taken away. As I listened to them with tears in my eyes, four months sober and wobbling on a tightrope, I felt the desire to drink just vanish. By the end of that meeting I knew I would go to sleep sober that night.

We have a community that is one great collective miracle.

 

To change the subject:  a small but necessary disclaimer. I do not publish comments relating to vanity publishing or writing teachers or authors’ professional websites. I don’t publish comments emanating from rehab centres in South Africa or abroad. Don’t send me books for review, I will not give you an obligatory mention. I will not help publicize recovery memoirs in return for a mention on your website. I will not let you use my comments function to sell anything or to criticize  Alcoholics Anonymous. You are welcome to criticize my opinions. I write as a grateful member of AA, but my opinions are my own, on AA or any other aspect of my life.

While each member of A.A. is free to make his or her own interpretations of A.A. tradition, no individual member is ever recognized as a spokesperson for the Fellowship